Puny God Read online

  Damsels and Dungeon Cores

  1: Puny God

  Andrew Beymer

  Contents

  1. Failure

  2. Damsel in Distress

  3. Two on One

  4. Drink the Night Away

  5. Otherworldly

  6. Dungeon Core

  7. Hangover

  8. Evening the Odds

  9. Improbable Rescue

  10. Damsel in Distress, Again

  11. Standoff

  12. Enemies With Benefits

  13. Hitting the Fan

  14. Pest Control

  15. Wrapping Up?

  Thanks for reading!

  Damsels and Dungeon Cores

  1: Puny God

  A Dungeon Core Harem Adventure

  By Andrew Beymer

  Copyright 2019 Andrew Beymer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First digital edition electronically published by Andrew Beymer October 2019

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  Failure

  I stopped in front of my door and put my forehead against the thing. The painted wood was cold, and then I felt a sharp pain. I pulled away with a curse and felt at my head.

  “Motherfucker,” I hissed. “Did I just get a fucking splinter in my forehead?”

  I turned the key in and stepped inside. The place reeked of the combined dust of decades of college students, which always did wonders for my allergies.

  I kicked some papers as I stepped inside and cursed again. I hated that this place didn’t have a mailbox like God intended.

  Whatever. I stooped down and found a bunch of junk mail and a few bills. My eyes narrowed as I came across an envelope that didn’t have any postage on it, but it did say URGENT in angry red sharpie in my landlord’s handwriting.

  I sighed again and collapsed against my couch. The thing creaked and a couple of springs poked me in the ass. Whatever. I considered myself lucky the thing didn’t come with bedbugs when I’d grabbed it from the trash pickup at one of those massive “dorm alternative” pleasure palaces on the north side of campus last year.

  “Son of a bitch,” I sighed as I opened the letter. “This can’t be happening.”

  Sure enough the letter told me if he didn’t have payment by the end of next week he’d start the formal eviction process. He even underlined “formal” in that red sharpie to make things clear.

  Probably because the last time he threatened to throw me out over something silly like not paying rent I’d told him I knew my rights and I’d get campus legal on his ass.

  Not that I was going to be able to get campus legal on his ass for much longer. Not with my midterm grade in Physics. I couldn’t fail that class without kissing my dreams goodbye, and I couldn’t withdraw without having my hours go below the minimum required to maintain my scholarship.

  I was fucked, and not in the way most people think about getting fucked when they go off to college.

  “Could this day get any fucking worse?” I asked.

  I looked up to the ceiling above. I figured asking if there was any way the day could get any fucking worse was asking for the universe to send its middle finger down and flick me to show me there were always ways things could get worse, but nothing happened.

  Dust sprinkled across my face. I coughed and waved it away. Not for the first time I hoped there wasn’t any asbestos in that dust.

  The dust was accompanied by a familiar thumping from above. Which meant the hottie in the apartment above was getting busy with her boyfriend.

  The thought of her getting it on had been intriguing the first couple of times it happened. Back when I’d still entertained the fantasy that I might be one of the lucky bastards thumping that bed across her floor someday.

  These days it was just annoying. I thought about getting out the broom and banging it against the ceiling, but the last time I’d done that the walking muscle that was her current boyfriend had given me shit.

  I looked over to my computer instead. I knew I shouldn’t. That motherfucker was what got me to the point where I was on the verge of either failing out or withdrawing and having the money I needed to pay for this shitty lifestyle revoked.

  I sighed. I knew what I should do, and I knew what I was going to do. The funny thing was that nagging voice telling me I should be studying was wrong. There was no turning around my classes or anything at this point.

  So I sat down and flipped on my computer. I was comforted by the bright green neon glow all around me as the thing purred to life.

  Part of the reason I didn’t have much money to spend on the finer things in life, like rent and food that was more nutritious than some boiled ramen, was a good chunk of my funds had gone into building this beauty, but whatever.

  Totally worth it. This thing could play anything I threw at it. It’d been a dream of mine ever since high school when I got into gaming but never had a machine that could run anything above low settings without catching fire.

  A familiar calm washed over me as I opened Kingdom Builder Battle and checked my ranking. I frowned as I realized I’d moved down from Diamond to Platinum I.

  I knew people who would’ve killed to be in Platinum I, but those noobs needed to get good if they were ever going to hit those lofty heights.

  I grinned. If I’d been kicked out of Diamond overnight that meant it was time to play a little more. I even made sure to turn on my livestream.

  I never had many viewers, Kingdom Builder didn’t draw many eyes since it wasn’t the hot new thing these days, but I was good and I always had a few people watching.

  Not for the first time I thought about playing a game that would actually draw some eyes. The problem was there was no guarantee I’d be any better than those scrubs who couldn’t get past the Bronze ranking and bitched about how it was clearly the game and not their inability to play if I switched to something else.

  Whatever. This was my game and I was going to have some fun. I’d forget about the world for a little while, because I really needed to forget about the world.

  It was better than calling my parents and confirming everything they’d ever said when I first went off to college.

  I entered a match and stared down at a familiar view. The map was a blank slate with a single peasant unit in the center ready to obey my commands.

  I always liked playing games where I started from nothing. Games where you had a starting scenario were for noobs who couldn’t handle their opening game, and the opening game was where I kicked ass.

  Also? It was a forest setting. I grinned. I loved forest starts. There was something about zooming in and being surrounded by the digital trees that always had a calming effect on yours truly.

  “Here we go,” I said, giving the peasant a command to build a Golden Tree that would serve as a base of operations as I started building my kingdom.

  A knock at the door brought my attention away from the game. I worried it was the landlord coming around to have an in person conversation about when he could expect the rent, but then the door turned and opened and I knew that wasn’t the landlord.

  He knew better than to come in without notice. That was another long conversation we’d had about renter’s rights that’d ended with him pissed off at me, but he hadn’t barged in without permission since.

  He’d even stopped doing it with Brandi upstairs once I let her know her renter’s rights included not having a pervy old man barging in on her. Usually when she was in the shower or some other situation where she wasn’t wearing much, which always had me wondering exactly how he knew to barge in, but whatever.

  I didn’t have anything approaching the kind of ha
rdbody a pervy old man would be interested in barging in on, so I’d never worried about it all that much.

  Jake stepped through the front door and made a point of theatrically waving a hand in front of his face.

  “Damn it always smells like dust and ass in here man,” he said, looking around.

  “Up yours,” I said, flipping him the bird.

  I couldn’t do much about the dust. The dust bunnies in an ancient house like this multiplied faster than real bunnies. I did make sure to keep the place tidy, at least.

  “Playing your old shit again?” Tom asked, stepping through the door behind Jake.

  “This stuff is classic,” I said.

  “And the only game you’re any good at,” Tom said. “Real gamers play first person shooters.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I prefer a game where I have to think about what I’m doing instead of relying on my twitch skills to save my ass,” I muttered, trying to concentrate.

  “Spoken like someone who doesn’t have the twitch skills to make it in a real game my man,” Tom said with a wink that let me know he was only half serious.

  I frowned and clicked to an alert on my minimap. A Darkscout had come through my forest, but one of my own elf scouts was hidden in the trees where the thing hopefully couldn’t see me. Which meant I knew the general direction my opponent was coming from, and that he’d chosen Darkness as his starter, and he had no idea where I was.

  All the information I needed to kick this fucker’s ass.

  “Going up against a Darkness player with the Golden Tree?” Jake said, looking over my shoulder. It was the closest he was ever going to get to a Diamond or Platinum game. Even Tom scooted closer to have a look, for all that he liked to bitch about this not being a real game.

  “Yup. Another unoriginal asshole playing the flavor of the month,” I muttered.

  “Remember that asshole Brad who’d do the same thing back in high school?” Tom asked.

  I grinned. Getting out of high school so we didn’t have to listen to that FOTM chasing asshole who was always going on about how his inability to play the game was the designer’s fault and not his for always chasing the latest overpowered piece of crap waiting to get nerfed had been a blessing.

  “He’ll be sending in Reavers soon,” I said. “Probably going for the rush.”

  Sure enough there was a ping on the minimap that told me something was approaching. I clicked and saw a bunch of Reavers cloaked in shadows moving past one of my treed scouts.

  They might’ve been a fine strategy if they were playing against someone else who was running Darkness, but I was Golden Tree, bitch. Which meant I got a notification whenever something aligned Darkness came into my territory.

  “These assholes are all the same,” I growled. “Sitting at their desks drinking their Mountain Dew brushing Dorito dust off their fedoras thinking they’re this big scary brooding dark master or something.”

  “Judgmental much?” Tom asked.

  I grinned. Tom had gone through an ill-advised fedora wearing stage our freshman year when we were still all in the dorms together.

  I’d been interested in actually getting with a lady my first year of college, and the last thing I needed was the virginity preserving power of a fedora in my dorm room when I brought a girl back for some fun.

  “His grade must’ve been really bad on that Physics midterm,” Jake said, a little quieter. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Nope,” I said as I activated my treed scouts and rained down holy fire on the Reavers that’d made it into my central camp and were milling around in confusion.

  There was nothing for them to hit. I’d pulled all my workers into the Golden Tree and hidden all my offensive units in the trees. There was nothing for them to attack unless they went for the Golden Tree, but the Holy power infusing that thing was enough to disintegrate a paltry unit like a Reaver the moment it made the mistake of touching the thing.

  “I love it when a plan comes together,” I said.

  “This is what passes for high level play in Diamond?” Tom asked.

  “Don’t knock it,” Jake said. “If you’d been the one playing that game he would’ve had his units in your camp fucking you up before you even realized he was there.”

  “Speaking of,” I said.

  I looked up to the Darkness camp in the top left corner of the game map my treed elf scouts had just reached. It was familiar, for all that I’d never played Darkness. It was all twisted black trees since this was a forest setting, though it looked like they were in the middle of creating a Dark Keep.

  Not that it was going to save them. They were too late making that thing to do a damn bit of good.

  “Now it’s time to see why things work the way they do at Diamond level,” I said, checking my opponent’s rank real quick to see if this would be enough to get me back into the highest levels of play.

  He was only Platinum II. I guess most everyone who was worth playing at this level was still in class. Which was fair. I should’ve been at the library studying, or doing something to figure out how the hell I was going to get out of this fucked up situation that’d been caused by me spending too much time playing these games, but I couldn’t help myself.

  The rush of dopamine I was getting from owning this flavor of the month Darkness asshole was too good. Besides, I was close to a win.

  I instructed my units in the trees to open fire on his supply line. The asshole should’ve built his Dark Keep earlier.

  “Why doesn’t he have that thing up like you did?” Tom asked.

  “Because he went for the Reaver rush,” I said, watching my units raining down holy fire with their hidden arrows and killing the asshole’s entire supply line.

  There was a pause. I could imagine him sittin at his desk swearing up a blue storm, but I had audio turned off. I didn’t need my opponent to tell me all the many colorful ways he was going to fuck my mother to enjoy these games. It was enough that I was handing his ass to him.

  “Big mistake,” I said. “It’s almost not even a real win. He’s just sticking to the standard Darkness strategy. The prick probably managed to spam that all the way to the top with all the other FOTM pricks, and now he’s finding it isn’t a one playstyle fits all type of thing. Happens to everyone when they get close to Diamond.”

  “Got it,” Tom said.

  There were no more gathering units left. Simply a pulsing darkness where he’d been adding trees to the Darkness. There were a few woodland critters that got turned to the Darkness along with the trees, but they were coming through piecemeal and it was easy enough for my units hidden in the treetops to take them out.

  The Darkness stopped spreading, and then slowly began to recede. It would contract a hell of a lot slower than it expanded, but the point was he was fucked.

  “Ready to surrender?” I typed into chat.

  “Fuck u noob,” came the response.

  I sighed. “I hate it when they can’t be good sports about having their asses handed to them.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tom said. “What’s the fun in a rush game like this? Isn’t it always more fun when you get to the endgame and you can pull out the big stuff?”

  “If you get to the endgame where you’re pulling out the big guns you’re playing wrong,” I said. “No offense. That’s just not how the game is played.”

  “You say so,” he said, watching as the Darkness camp was razed to the ground.

  It only took thirty seconds of steady fire to destroy the remains of the half built Dark Keep, and then a screen popped up letting me know I was victorious.

  As though there’d ever been any doubt.

  I leaned back in the chair and pumped my hands in the air a couple of times for good measure. Oh yeah, I loved it when a game came together and I got that sweet victory notification.

  Even better? I got a notification that I’d been put back into the Diamond League. Hell fucking yes!

  “You sure do care a lot about thi
s old fucking game,” Tom said. “Isn’t this like twenty years old?”

  “Older than that,” Jake said. “It was a pen and paper strategy game for decades before they started making the first video games back in the ‘80s.”

  “They’ve updated the game and come up with new versions since then,” I muttered.

  “I still say you could make a hell of a lot more if you actually played something new. Go with a strategy game if real games don’t do it for you,” Tom said.

  I turned and flipped him the bird. I was feeling too good after that victory and reclaiming my throne to care all that much about the shade he was throwing, but I figured it was worth at least a middle finger.

  “Up yours Tom,” I said. “I’ll listen to you when you learn how to play a game that takes more skill than what you use to jerk off.”

  “Not much skill there if what Cassie said about his prowess in the bedroom was anything to go by,” Jake said with a laugh.

  “Up yours man,” Tom said.

  I leaned back in my chair and looked at the guys who’d been my two best friends since elementary school.

  “So what brings you over?” I asked.

  “Tom saw you storming through campus looking like you got kicked down to Bronze in that stupid game,” Jake said. “We figured that meant nothing good, so we stopped by to see if there was anything we could do to help.”

  I heaved a sigh. Just like that I was out of the game and back in the real world.

  “I failed my Physics midterm,” I said. “That means there’s no way to get close to a passing grade in there, let alone the A I need if I’m going to be competitive.”