“Boonce, get your boonce.”

“Orc kebabs, fresh off the grill!”

As Zelhaut walked down the main street of Likenwood, people hawked their wares on the sides of the gravel road. Including that deceptive bread that everyone seems to like.

A loaf of the boonce, that golden bread, was shoved in front of his face as he walked by the stall.

“Sir. We have the best boonce around these parts, why don’t you try some?”

Zelhaut knocked the bread out of the merchant’s hand. He stepped close to the merchant, lifting his large hat enough for the merchant to see his face.

“You. Will. FUCK! Off.”

The merchant backed off in fright with a gasp of surprise. Zelhaut couldn’t blame him, he had looked in the mirror, his face was scary.

He swept his cloak and continued on his way with the golems behind him. Zelhaut had just arrived in this town. City? It was fairly large, so he would call it a city. There were many trees spread around inside of the city, all the buildings were also made out of wood, making the city seem like it was growing. He even saw leaves sticking out of some buildings.

The adventuring guild soon loomed into sight. It was tall and was built inside of a very large tree. The tree had windows cut into it at varying heights. The tree also looked dead, as he saw no leaves, but the wood was very well preserved to be not rotting.

As he opened the wooden door, he stepped inside. The inside was small, but he guessed that they made up for it with multiple floors.

“Hello there, how may I help you?”

The receptionist was a female elf, wearing a green robe. Many would say she looks beautiful. But Zelhaut had no such thoughts in his mind.

After having these thoughts, Zelhaut ignored her and went to the mission board. He was looking for a mission inside of the dungeon so he could be more efficient with his time. But alas, he did not see any mission for inside the dungeon.

“Hmm.”

He left soon after this realization and headed for the dungeon. It wasn’t that hard to find, he just followed a group of people wearing flashy armor and weapons. They led him to the entrance that was being guarded by two knights in shiny full-body armor. The two knights did not check for his adventurer medallion, they just gave him a nod as he entered through the opening in a giant tree and stepped down some stairs in dimly lit darkness.

The inside of the dungeon had a fresh smell as if he was still outside. It was very pleasant. The darkness was dimly lit by a faint green glow coming off some moss spread around. The walls were dirt with roots winding through, keeping the dirt from collapsing.

He felt a sharp metal hand on his shoulder. Zelhaut turned to see Krindle shaking his head back and forth.

“What are you doing?”

Soon, the walls of the dungeon slightly shuddered. The roots began to move slowly, reaching for Krindle.

He quickly ran outside. Once they were out, the roots returned to normal. Zelhaut looked around to see if anybody had noticed what just happened.

The guards at the entrance looked at him a bit weirdly, as he had just entered the dungeon then left a moment later. The group soon left the dungeon and rented a room at an inn above a bar. The sun was still high in the sky, but Zelhaut decided to call it a day and find out what happened.

When they entered the room, Zelhaut ordered Krindle to sit down.

“Sit down Krindle.”

The heavy golem sat down as the floorboards creaked under his weight.

“Now then, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!!”

He flung his hand in the air with anger.

“I can explain. But please lower your voice commander.”

Zelhaut calmed down but couldn’t help his foot tapping in annoyance.

“Well?”

“The dungeon sensed me. And it obviously does not like me being in there, stupid divinity-sanctioned dungeon. “Oh, look at me. I’m the god’s play toy, ooh hoo” Fucking babies.”

It seemed that Zelhauts personality was rubbing off on this dungeon golem. Krindle never used to swear this much.

“Ugh. Fucking God’s. Guess you’ll just have to stay outside.”

Zelhaut rubbed his forehead in annoyance. Krindle was his strongest golem, his battle strength would fall without Krindle battling alongside himself.

“But how am I supposed to grow stronger just sitting around?”

Krindle was unwilling to see himself fall behind.

Zelhaut looked at this golem with a dumbfounded look on his face.

“Are you fucking with me?”

Krindle shrugged his shoulders to say he wasn’t.

Zelhaut leaned close to Krindle's face and whispered.

“You are in the middle of a city. There is prey all around you, you fucking idiot.”

“Ohhh. But won’t they catch me?”

“Just be careful. Like holy shit, do you need a babysitter? Anyways, I’m going to sleep. I’ll enter the dungeon at night, that way, you’ll be free to hunt with the darkness covering your tracks. Wake me when the sun sets.”

Zelhaut flopped onto the bed and fell asleep.

…

Slice, smash. These sounds echoed inside the underground chamber. A large glaive cut through a giant squirrel, splattering its guts onto the coniferous tree branches, creating a Christmas tree with organs as decorations.

“You fucking squirrels! Rats, your nothing but fuzzy fucking rats!”

With another swing of his glaive, another squirrel was sliced in half, its guts adding even more red color to the tree.

“Squeak!”

These squirrels may have looked cute, but they were devils. As soon as Zelhaut had arrived, the giant squirrels had gathered in the branches above his head and began dropping swords on top of him. Swords! Where these squirrels had found these pointy weapons was unknown. Also where the swords went once they touched the ground was also unknown. Every time a sword hit the ground it would phase right through it. Zelhaut was appalled by this wealth simply passing right before his eyes.

“Sque-”

The last of these stupid rodents were killed by a sharp wooded arm through its skull.

“Oh, fuck me, I’m tired.”

His golems surrounding him were dyed crimson and often had the odd sword sticking out of them. As for himself, his large hat had blocked the projectiles for him, leaving behind just a slight ringing in his ears.

The golems had been improved by him recently, specifically their arms which resemble stakes. He had learned a skill called “condense” at a class level of 60. This allowed him to condense a material and make it harder and stronger. He had applied this skill on his golems arms to make them strong like a spear.

The “condense” skill took a very long time to work its magic. And through testing, he even discovered that the better the material he was working with, the longer the skill would take to harden the material to a satisfactory degree. So he had just decided to harden the parts of the golem that improved their offense capability. He did not have all the time in the world, he needed to get strong enough before the gods smell that something was up.

“Well, let’s keep moving deeper.”

As the golems passed him, he tugged out the swords stuck in them and stored the weapons in his bag.

…

In the branches of a tree, a hunk of metal was crouched, watching the ground below. This hunk of metal was Krindle, waiting for some prey to come close.

Krindle was watching the people beneath the tree, waiting for a person with a delectable soul to pass by. He did not want to kill too many people, that would raise suspicions, therefore he was going for quality over quantity.

An adventurer had appeared on the street, wearing leather armor and wielding two daggers. Krindle could see the quality of this man’s soul was better than the normal citizens around him.

A soul’s quality depends on levels. So the higher level the person was, the higher quality their soul would be. So Krindle’s ability to see souls were often a good power indicator.

Krindle began to follow his target, moving in between the branches of the trees, trying to remain a certain distance away to not be sensed. Krindle stalked his prey for an hour as the target got further away from the center of the city and entered the outskirts. Finally, the man entered an inn.

Krindle waited until the moons were high in the sky then moved towards the inn. He peaked inside of the windows, trying to sense the soul he found earlier. While clinging to the building and looking for his target, he discovered a truly overwhelming soul.

Krindle quickly ducked his head underneath the window then scaled the building to get back into the treetops. Just as he climbed onto the roof of the building, a person stuck their head out of the window he was looking into just before. The person looked around then soon went back inside and closed the window behind him.

Since there was a much more powerful person residing in this inn, he decided to find a different person. He soon found the next prey, who had a little bit of a weaker soul but not by much.

He followed the person back to a different inn. He discovered the prey’s room on the first try, but he did not attack yet. Learning from the dangerous experience he had just before, he checked the rest of the rooms for any other powerful people.

Not finding any, he proceeded to sneak into the target’s room through their window. Krindle slowly slid one of his thin claw-like fingers through the slit in the window and unlocked the latch holding it closed. Slowly the window opened. Krindle slunk into the room and clung to the walls, he did not want to touch the floor and make a creaking noise.

He slowly approached the woman lying on the bed. When he was close enough, he lashed out with his claws and dug the woman’s throat out, holding her windpipe in his hands. The woman’s eyes shot open and stared at Krindle in surprise and fear. Then they slowly closed as the life force left her body.

Krindle could see a shimmering mass rising from the body like steam. He opened his toothy mouth, with a throat that directly goes to his core, and began pulling the soul towards him.

The wisps of soul began to enter his mouth and were absorbed by his core, causing a shiver to go down the golems spine.

Now at this moment, the divinity-sanctioned cores would stop, and allow the rest of the soul to leave the body towards the heavens above. But Krindle was no divinity-sanctioned dungeon core, he was a demonic core.

The soul-sucking force increased as a soul resembling the woman who had just been killed was lifted from the corpse, screaming silently from the fear of being eaten. The soul was slowly brought closer and closer to the open maw as the soul tried to escape. Finally, it entered the toothy mouth and was absorbed by the dungeon core.

Krindle snapped his mouth closed and smiled.