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

got a cup of coffee from the kitchen. Selena was finishing a late breakfast, looking bleary. She told me she’d got involved in a gaming session with a group of friends the night before and stayed up later than she’d intended.

I laughed. “I understand where you’re coming from,” I assured her.

I filled her in about where we were at with the Technomancer, and I let her know about Belinda, too. The psycher had gone down into the city to meet up with her boss Amanda Fallon and deliver her report.

Selena listened closely, but she didn’t have much to add. Soon, she said she was going to go back up to her room. “I’ve got some… work to do,” she said. By ‘work’ I figured she meant gaming.

I grinned. “Enjoy,” I said.

When I was alone again, I found myself feeling restless. I went up the stairs and back to my rooms. In the wardrobe, I got changed into a pair of shorts and my sneakers, then headed into the training area. The red portal panel was still attached to the wall, but I didn’t go through. Instead, I made use of the weights.

Working out had always helped me think, and I had a lot to think through. I pounded the weights for an hour, feeling pleased with my ability to lift, and happy with the way I looked when I checked myself out in the mirror afterward.

While I was working out, I let my mind go blank, forgetting everything but the burn in my arms and the feeling of the sweat running down my face as I pushed my capabilities to the limit. Afterward, I felt much, much better.

I walked to the jacuzzi and passed my hand over the crystal. The holographic water began to bubble and steam. I walked back through to the workroom, grabbed one of the bottles of golden spirits from the rack and popped the cork out. I sniffed it. To my surprise, it smelled like bourbon. That would do nicely.

There were some nice tumblers in the case with the bottles, so I poured a generous slug of the drink into one and headed back to the gym, carrying the bottle. There, I undressed and slipped into the hot tub with a groan of pleasure. This would do me nicely, I thought as I sipped my drink.

I lay in the tub, enjoying the heat and sipping my bourbon, and thinking things through. How would I guide the dungeon’s progress next? What would be best to do?

It would be important to let word get out into the world that there was a real dungeon again. In the city, I knew there were teams of people who made a sport of running VR dungeon sims—they would jump at the chance to run a real dungeon. We’d need to get higher-level potions to the adventurers too, as loot, and I’d need to talk to Kyrine about creating gold coins to reward them with.

Perhaps, I thought, we could get some modern items, too. All the stuff in the mansion was pretty old-fashioned, apart from the stuff the agents and I had brought in. If Kyrine was going to create items for adventurers as loot, we’d have to think about what to bring in.

And there was the important issue of creating the actual dungeon experience. What would we do? Would we have them fight through the grounds? In the training area? That seemed a bit unsatisfying. The only actual ‘dungeon’ part of the mansion was the core chamber, and it would be way too risky to have adventurers running that.

No, we’d have to come up with some other way of creating a dungeon experience for adventurers, one that kept our living quarters in the mansion’s core safe from invasion, and also gave a variable and interesting experience to attract adventurers back.

What was the solution?

My eyes landed on the portal. Of course! That was how we would do it! I would see how much Kyrine could customize and vary the space behind the portal. Then, perhaps we could place the entrance at the door of the mansion? I would have to talk to her about it.

There was work to do, that was for sure. When the Technomancer came along, we would have to be ready, and we needed to not lose sight of the bigger goal—training up new cultivators and upping the world’s magic game in preparation for the advent of the Fateweaver.

I considered reaching along our connection to summon her, but on second thought I decided I would leave it till tomorrow. Tonight, I would take it easy and enjoy the perks of being the Dungeon Keeper.

With a sigh of satisfaction, I reached out for the bottle and refilled my glass.

Chapter 7

“This isn’t working,” said Astrid. She sounded frustrated. We had been working on creating a new dungeon all morning, and tempers were running short. It wasn’t that we couldn’t do it. The creation of a dungeon space was well within Kyrine’s capability. The problems came when we tried to create it in such a way that it could be modified on demand, could be accessible to me and to Kyrine without us actually being inside it, and could also be accessible to outsiders.

So far, our best attempt was a stone corridor that we made accessible through a hole in the floor in the kitchen, but as soon as we exited it, it collapsed.

“Couldn’t you make something like your snow garden? Something with an entrance like that laid over the door?” Selena had asked.

“The snow garden ceases to exist when my avatar leaves it,” Kyrine snapped in reply. “If one of you went in without me present, you would be caught in limbo with no way back out, and I’d have to come find you. No, it’s not that simple.”

“We need some way of having a