Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (most interesting books to read TXT) 📕

“It’s an aerial photo of a house,” Sarah said, with rising excitement. “Josh, how in hells did you get this?”

“It’s in the data, look…” Josh hunched over his screen and jabbed his finger at a long string of numbers and symbols. “See this? There’s a line of code in there that I recognized from one of the dungeon sim hacks we did last year—remember when we created those custom giant spiders in Malkin’s Thrall? We used a random core generator to create their attack pathways? Well, it gave me an idea. I thought that I could run some bits of the code through a crystal pathfinder and see if I got anything intelligible. When the pathfinder got to this, I saw that it had something. It was a fragment of a randomly generated location creator, and when I decoded it I found…”

“What did you find?” asked Todd breathlessly when his brother paused for dramatic effect.

“GPS coordinates,” said Josh smugly. “And that’s not all. I pulled up the coordinates and found this location…”

“Where is that?” Sarah asked, interrupting. She peered at the photo. There was something about it that looked vaguely familiar.

“It’s about forty miles from here, just outside the city limits,” said Josh, “But…”

“That close!?” interrupted Todd, springing to his feet.

“Yes, but…”

“Is there anything else?” Sarah asked eagerly.

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Josh impatiently. “The string of data that came after the GPS signal, I was able to match it to an online encyclopedia of dungeon lore.”

Sarah felt her skin prickle all over. “You… you found a name?”

Josh nodded slowly. His eyes were wide with excitement. “That’s right, boss. This isn’t just any dungeon. This is Kyrine.”

Chapter 6

When Kyrine, Astrid, and I got back into the workroom, I was feeling pretty high from all the sex and fighting. Kyrine had restored us back to our regular clothes. I was thinking about the next step in our progression—examining the crystal and getting information about the Technomancer—but Astrid and Kyrine were in a playful mood.

I headed through to the workroom, but I heard them laughing from the training room behind me. The drone in hand, I walked back through to see what they were up to. Kyrine had activated the holographic jacuzzi, and Astrid was lowering herself into it.

“You don’t mind, Jeremy?” she said. “I feel like I need a soak, and Kyrine says the level up won’t do me any harm.”

I laughed. “I don’t mind. Take your time.”

Kyrine joined her, and I left them, both leaning back in the bubbling tub and chatting quietly.

I had half a mind to join them, but something about the portal training area had awakened my interest. There was so much potential there, and ultimately the dungeon’s progression was now my responsibility. So was her safety. Tempting as it was to spend the day soaking in the tub with my two beautiful… girlfriends? Companions? Just what was my relationship with Astrid now?

With a shake of my head, I set that thought aside for a moment. Tempting as it was to spend the day soaking in a tub with them, I had a responsibility press ahead with the mission. The Technomancer was the most immediate threat to the dungeon’s security, and we potentially had information we could use within the broken drone that had killed the Technomancer’s minion.

The leather of the luxurious chair creaked as I sat down at the big desk. The smashed remnants of the drone were in front of me. I glanced up, noticing for the first time that there was a bottle of water on the desk, and two glasses. I cracked the seal on the water, enjoying the fizz as I drank half the bottle off.

“So,” I muttered to the drone. “What have you got to tell me?”

The thing had a round central body about 10 inches long, mounted on four propellers, two at the front and two at the back. The blades of the propellers were cracked and buckled where I’d used my Ensnare ability to bring it down.

I reached out and flipped it over.

On the underside of the drone, there was a mounted gun. I examined it closely. It was small, a short-range, low-caliber weapon, only capable of firing one shot. That had not made it any less effective. I remembered the crack as the Technomancer’s minion had staggered backward, blood blossoming from a hole between his eyebrows.

I shivered involuntarily. I was no stranger to death, but this assassination was so cold and calculating… Whoever could enact a plan like that must have a heart of granite.

“How are you powered?” I asked the drone, looking closer at the main body. There was a black metal plate in the back of the otherwise featureless body, with two bright screws. Perhaps the power source was in there?

My new desk was equipped with an army of drawers of all sizes, and I began to rifle through them on the off-chance I might find something to open the drone with. Sure enough, in one of the bottom right-hand drawers I found a set of screwdrivers.

I tried two before I found the one that fit. As I unscrewed the metal plate, I realized something strange about it. I would have expected it to be steel or some other light, strong alloy, but it was not. The rest of the drone was made of hard polymer plastic, clean white, but the panel I was unscrewing was black iron. Just like my enchanting table. Why?

When the two screws were loose, I pried the little iron plate off. Then I had my answer. Below the panel, there was a little square chamber containing a fat round crystal the size of my thumb joint. Something swirled within it, a pale mist that moved restlessly toward the light that shone