Cat Core 3, Chapter 10, and a peek at something new.

Today we have chapter ten of cat core 3, it's a short transitional chapter so I thought I'd include the first chapter of something new I've been working on as my contribution to a LitRPG short story collection that will feature the work of several new and well known authors. It's called The Summoned and is my take on what would happen if instead of the main character being a mage summoning things, the main character is the person who keeps getting summoned. Let me know what you think.

Cat Core 3, Chapter 10.

“Silence you fool! Give me silence or face the consequences,” Berikoz demanded, using his waning power to silence the dungeon core formerly known as Aaron Lavelle. Pain slammed into Berikoz, worse than the feeling of loss when a phylactery was destroyed, this was the unique pain of one of his prepared cores being destroyed. He wasn’t used to pain, that was a benefit to the life of a lich, freedom from the weakness of the flesh, but when it came to his link with a dungeon core, he found that pain was once again a possibility.

Berikoz reached out, pulling at the tether he held with each of the cores under his influence. There were six others out there, not including the one he was currently residing in. Of those, one or two others stood a chance at housing his being. The others were still linked to him, but would fail and shatter if he tried to reside there. Despite them being flawed, they were still useful and he was slowly draining them of life to prevent his decline. So far, those hunting him had been thrown off the trail by Berikoz’s use of a dungeon core to house himself. His phylacteries, stored in various places around the land after centuries of effort, were falling one by one, and only a score of them remained.

Two levels sloughed off as the pain ended and he could better concentrate on the world around him. Berikoz railed against the feeling of loss, it was just a short time ago that gaining a level was a trivial matter, and now each one that was gained or lost was significant. If he wanted to grow, he needed to guide this current core, to feed it what it needed even as he siphoned the lion's share for his own use. A glance at the strands connecting him to the core gems revealed who he had lost, it was the beast dungeon. It was a poor performing place before his intervention, the core running it had retained a bit too much of its past life, which seemed to interfere with a dungeon’s efficiency.

It was a common theme in the dungeons that Berikoz was compatible with, they were ruled by those souls that retained a bit of what they had been before. He sensed something with this backlash, a familiar presence that didn’t bode well for him. Berikoz activated a failsafe he had placed in the core room of each of his dungeons, a failsafe triggered by a simple spell, or it would have been a simple spell back when he was at full power, now, it was a grueling experience binding the spell together with his limited mana, and pushing it out.

In the ceiling above the now-empty core room of the beast dungeon, a skeletal mouse scampered from a small hole in the ceiling. The beast twitched as Berikoz exerted his influence, pulling what he wanted from the undead beast that had been tasked with hiding and observing the dungeon core. Berikoz was thankful that he had gone with such a small minion, he wouldn’t have had the strength to access the memory of a larger undead being. He passed through its mind, the undead mouse had possessed a feeble mind during its life, and being undead hadn’t done any favors to its intellectual capacity. Berikoz found what he was looking for easily enough, it didn’t take much mental capacity for his minon to simply observe anything that approached the core gem.

“Could it be her?” Berikoz said to himself as the image from the dead mouse’s mind filled his head. There, standing next to the gem was something new, something he hadn’t seen before. Seeing something new was rare for a lich as old as Berikoz, but there was also something familiar about this new being as well. It appeared to be an elderly human woman, but he knew far too well that looks can be deceiving. The old woman placed her hand on the gem and went silent, not even moving. That gave him a chance to see the other two creatures that were lurking in the core room. One looked like a tiger or large cat, likely the companion of a druid, hunter, or the like. The final figure was a gnome, but even it had odd magic about him.

The gem shattered and the old woman stepped back as a person emerged from the ruins of the gem. This shouldn’t be possible, but there he was, a man born of the gem that had once contained his soul. And there, Berikoz could see it as the man blathered on, a link was there, a link between the man and the old lady, a link that was far too close to the one he had woven with these gems to be mere coincidence.

“The first step is to get out of this place, and then I need to find where the next corrupted core is hiding,” the elderly woman said. That voice, he knew it.

“Hey, it’s that lady from the card shop,” Aaron Lavelle mumbled, the core somehow seeing what Berikoz was.

“Keep away from my work!” Berikoz shouted at the nosy core, his backlash causing the core gem some exquisite agony. He would have to stop the pain soon, it wouldn't do to have his home damaged, but this core needed to know its place. He was master here.

“Florence Valentine, how did you survive? Did one of my enemies conjure you forth from the dead? I would love the chance to dissect you and find out what makes you tick, but if you’re a puppet of one enemy or another, I can’t suffer you to live, can I? Sorry, you old bag, but it’s time you died for a final time,” Berikoz said to himself, the core too distracted by the pain to listen to him. The old woman was back and in a body of some type. No matter, his reach was still long, and he knew where she was going, she was coming for another of his cores. Which dungeon would she visit next?

“Dogan, come to your master,” Berikoz called out. From the dark of the core room, a hulking man appeared. Despite the cold, Dogan wore only a simple tunic, the tattoos covering his body, ones Berikoz had personally designed, prevented Dogan from suffering from thirst, hunger, or harsh climates. The man might have eschewed armor, but he was a walking arsenal of weapons. Axes, swords, knives, and cudgels of all types were stapped to the man’s body. A simpleton, Dogan had been used by his tribe as a baresark, and now that Berikoz had bound the tribe to his service, Dogan was a slave to the lich’s desires, serving as an errand boy, as well as an additional bodyguard to help protect the core. The man’s simple-minded nature was a benefit, in this case, he would focus without distraction on whatever task Berikoz assigned to him. Berikoz filled the man’s mind with an image of the being he believed to be Florence Valentine. He was to kill her and then burn and scatter the remains. The question was, where to send his simple-minded assassin?

The nearest dungeon to the now destroyed beast core was either Frostweavers Glacier or the Catacombs of Darnglade. While the roads were better and it was typically easier to reach the city of Darnglade, the glacier was closer in a straight line. Given her magical nature, Berikoz didn’t think that Florence would be hampered by a poor trail, her seemingly elderly body was likely just a shell to house whatever magical construct that Berikoz’s enemies had summoned forth from the grave. Frostweavers Glacier was likely her destination, and that is where he sent Dogan. Running out of the dungeon without a word, Dogan set a fast pace toward the glacier dungeon and the target he was ordered to kill.

“Now, Aaron Lavelle, I believe you’ve learned your lesson. We have work to do, and more power to gain. Look, my associates have brought us dinner,” Berikoz said. In the first room of the dungeon, a group of warriors brought seven bound and gagged victims that they roughly dropped on the floor. The warriors were of the same tribe as Dogan, a bloodthirst and barbaric people. Once, their raids prevented adventurers from visiting this dungeon, but when Berikoz arrived, he used some of his waning power to corrupt and enslave them. Instead of keeping adventurers away, they now hunted the mountain passes for victims to feed to the dungeon. The prisoners squirmed on the floor, trying to shout through the gags in their mouths. Even if they could shout, it wouldn’t do them any good, already, the dungeon’s defenders were stalking toward their prey, and with each kill, the dungeon and Berikoz would be fed a bit more power.


The Summoned, Chapter 1. 

Chapter 1: A Big Decision.

There are a few critical decisions that we make in our lives, and you wouldn’t think that choosing between waiting in the checkout line or using the self-check at the grocery store would be one of them. Well, for me, it is, or at least it can be. In fact, a lot of stuff that is normally mundane in your day-to-day activities can turn out to be a disaster for me if the timing is wrong. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because of a condition that I’ve developed over the last few months. It wasn’t some medical problem, more like a magic problem. Yes, I can see you roll your eyes, but I assure you, magic exists. It doesn’t exist in our world, but it’s the main power source in so many others. The fact our world doesn’t have magic is due to the absence of mana, old Earth here is like a giant dustbowl in the multiverse, a place devoid of the one resource that everyone wants.

So, what does that have to do with me and my condition, not to mention my checkout line decision? You see, in the worlds that are blessed with an ample supply of mana, there is a special type of mage called a summoner. These summoners are about what you’d expect if you’ve played video games or watched enough low-budget fantasy movies. Summoners defend themselves and handle various work tasks by, just like the name says, summoning beings from other worlds to do their bidding for a short time. For the most part, it’s extremely difficult to summon a being from a mana-rich environment. I don’t know the science of it, or if you can even use the scientific method to explain it, but the reality is that it’s far easier to summon and pull a being from a world without mana. Mana fuels their worlds, but it’s also like radio interference for these summoner mages. They need to reach toward a world without interference or summon a being that’s been specifically tuned to them.

Well, about three months ago I was the lucky human selected to be summoned by some mage on some world I’ve never heard of. One minute I was at my desk working and the next, I was standing in another world, wearing only some strange tabard with a symbol that must have been the symbol of the dope who summoned me. My foray into this new world lasted a grand total of thirteen seconds, that’s how long it took for the army of some unidentifiable monsters to tear me apart. Obviously, I didn’t stay dead, that’s one of the perks of being a summoned being, if you die on the world you’ve been summoned to, you’re just dumped back where you started from, perfectly healthy and, if anything, feeling better than you did when you left.

One of the problems I have is that time isn’t exactly lined up perfectly between the worlds. Sometimes the same amount of time passes as it did on my first summons, and sometimes, you pop back into our world hours later or only a second after you left. According to my co-workers, there was a loud popping sound and a strange odor that permeated the area when I was snatched up. They describe the odor as inoffensive but a bit distracting since it’s something nobody has likely ever smelt before. I’m gone when it happens, so I can’t give you my take on what the smell is like since it automatically dissipates when I return. My problem isn’t with the leaving part of the summons, it’s with the return. The return process is kind of traumatic the first few times it happens, and it’s also the reason I was fired from my job.

My job wasn’t all that great, but I did need the money it brought in. I worked in a call center for an insurance company, handling people’s auto accident claims. Some days I’d rather face a horde of angry orcs than listen to the verbal abuse I was subjected to regularly. If you ever worked a job that deals with the public, you get it, but just imagine that everyone you talk to is angry after being in an accident. Now I don’t mean angry because they were hurt, those claims were handled by other people who make way more than me, but, hey, oh, sorry about that, I’m rambling again. I have a tendency to do that, I don’t get out that much, well, not out in public in our world, that is.

So, how did I lose my job? It turns out when you’re summoned, it’s just you that’s summoned, not anything you possess or anything you’re wearing. Depending on the level of the summoner, and the tier and type of the spell used to summon, you’ll have some type of gear issued and equipped automatically on your person when you arrive. Back on Earth, all your stuff is now just laying in a pile, waiting for you to reappear and claim it. When you return, you’re buck naked, not to mention that you’re dropped back into the place that everyone nearby is probably looking at due to the sound and smell emanating from it. Well, at the end of that first summons, I appeared nude in my cubicle, which, of course, didn’t go over too well with my co-workers. I figured that telling them that I was summoned by a mage to another world would have gotten me not only fired, but also locked up for a mental health eval, I kept quiet and accepted the termination of my employment. That was just the start of my problems.

Over the next few weeks, I’d be summoned randomly, making every daily task riskier. What if I was walking across the street when I was summoned, only to be dropped back in front of a speeding truck. Lots of dodgy stories start with Truck-kun, and I don’t want mine to end with it. I made it through the early days without any real disasters. Don’t judge me if I’ve acquired a few indecent exposure charges during that time, I’m not a creep and it was obviously outside of my control. I eventually found a workaround for the whole naked thing, so it’s not a problem anymore.

The other problem you’re probably already asking yourself about is the fact that I just seemingly disappear into thin air. That turns out to not be a problem. From what I understand, when the summoning spell activates, the pop, smell, and all that is the result of a minor mana explosion of sorts. While harmless, the small mana release also serves to cloak what happened in that location, messing with the short-term memories of everyone witnessing the event. Every once in a while, the return takes far longer than expected—remember the time wackiness I described earlier—and it probably wouldn’t surprise you that when I return after being gone for a while, my wallet, phone, and whatnot have been pilfered. Pro tip, if you get tagged to be a summoned being, don’t carry a lot of cash and only buy the cheapest disposable phones you can find.

The summoning has become kind of normal for me now, and in fact, I can predict a little bit about when it’s going to happen. It’s an ability I’ve acquired, and yes, I will get to how I acquire them later, hold your horses, I’m still trying to explain my checkout conundrum. It starts with pressure in my head, kind of like you would feel with a head cold or bad allergies, and then progress to a full-on migraine. Right now, I’m moving from the pressure feeling stage and starting the headache portion of the process, so yeah, I’m about to be summoned.

How long do I have until the summoning is complete? No idea, but from where the pain is at now and how fast it progressed, I suspect I have about fifteen minutes or so. That gives me very little time to checkout, pay for my groceries, and make it to my apartment one block over. Going through the regular checkout line isn’t looking too bad today, only one person in front of me, but the person in front is elderly, so there’s a high likelihood of them taking their time to write a check or gab with the Gloria who’s running that checkout lane today. This is the closest store to my apartment, so I kind of have the place dialed in and know everyone. Gloria is nice enough and a good employee from what I can tell, but she’s also one of those people that can’t talk and do anything else at the same time. If the elderly customer is as gabby as I suspect, Gloria is just going to talk, scan an item, talk some more, scan another item, you get the picture.

If I risk waiting in line, I get all my purchases, which will last me for a week. Don’t ask about how I’ll carry a couple of dozen grocery bags all the way to my apartment, like I said a couple of times already, I have some abilities, but we’ll get to it later. There’s a good chance I’ll make it halfway home and be snatched up with the summoning deal and lose all my groceries by the time I come back. There are a lot of frozen dinners and a tub of ice cream in the cart today, don’t judge me, I burn more calories now that I’m a summoned being. If I do self-checkout, I can rock through the line but have to narrow my cart down to fifteen items or less. The pain’s getting worse, so self-check it is.

The choice is difficult over which items make the cut, and I opt for stuff I really need, like that box of cereal with the marshmallows, coffee, milk, some toiletries, and a couple of the Salisbury steak frozen dinners, you know, the ones with the mac and cheese as a side dish. Are you still reading? I’m sorry to bore you with my personal taste, or lack thereof, in frozen dinners, so I won’t tell you about the trip home and getting stuck at the crosswalk forever since drivers here never seem to look for a pedestrian. Anyhow, I made it home without incident, and even put away the refrigerated and frozen stuff before the summoning was completed, which it’s about to happen right about now.