Empire Builder 1: Breed, Populate, Conquer Dante King (i read books txt) 📖

for purchase. But in vain. He slid back to the ground in an undignified slump, then proceeded to nonchalantly lick his behind as if that had been the plan all along.

Melody giggled and smiled at their child with a mixture of amusement and affection.

Fortunately, the entrance itself had flat steps with a textured surface, allowing Ben and his companions to walk inside without difficulty. Two giant obsidian doors stood wide open to either side of the doorway. The entrance rose dozens of feet into the air, opening like a great gaping mouth, leading them into the interior.

The first chamber they entered was a splendid atrium. It was a large square courtyard where marble statues of various divinities, warriors and monsters stood between fountains and well-kept vegetation. Light filtered in through the obsidian walls, which were less opaque from the inside than they were from the outside.

It took another half hour for Ben to explore the bottom level to some degree of satisfaction. Three other entrances, identical to the first, led into the tower from the other directions of the compass.

Passing through the atrium at an entrance would bring a visitor first to a long passageway leading to the heart of the first floor. In the passageway, obsidian gave way to ruby. Ben wasn’t sure if the entire heart of the tower was in fact made of ruby, or simply some sort of red volcanic glass, but it shone bright red.

Here and there some sort of glowing crystal was lodged in the walls, much like the crystals they had taken from the plant level of the dungeon. The walls were cleverly designed to reflect this light throughout the passageway, bathing their surroundings in a warm red light.

Each of these four hallways led to the center of the tower. Branching off the halls were networks of passageways leading to groups of rooms which spanned city blocks. They found kitchens and workshops on the first floor, well equipped with everything that might be needed. They deposited the deer carcass and the roots Vinata had harvested in one of the kitchens.

Many of the passageways were blocked, however. When Ben attempted to enter these halls, a message of swirling letters appeared in front of him, much like the message he’d received from the crystal ball when he’d activated it when he first came to the world.

Armory currently unavailable

He headed down the hallways, checking other rooms and finding that they were also unavailable. These included crafting labs, torture rooms, and supply chambers. Ben tried to bypass the warning, walking past the floating, swirling letters. But in each section an invisible wall blocked him, one that didn’t give way no matter how hard he pounded it with his fists.

“I wonder what I need to unlock these rooms,” Ben asked out loud, his hands throbbing with dull pain from his attempts to break through.

Melody shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t have any information about that.”

“I’ll work that out later,” Ben said. “For now, I think we’re all in need of some food and rest. I could do with a shower or bath after all that fighting this morning too. This place is huge—there has to be a bathroom somewhere around here. And if we’re lucky, it’ll have some running water.”

“I’ll start preparing some food,” Vinata offered.

Melody looked at her. “All the food?”

Vinata squirmed. “I suppose I can prepare all the food.”

Ben laughed. “I’m going to explore a bit more and work out where our sleeping quarters and the baths are.”

“I’ll come with you,” Melody said.

Nipper brushed against Ben’s leg. It looked like he would be coming too.

Imogen shuffled her feet.

“What do you want to do, Imogen?” Ben asked.

“I’d really like to see the foundations. My family would be so jealous to see this tower.” She smiled shyly.

“Come on then—we’ll see how you can get down there. It’d be good to have your expert eye on them to make sure they’re all solid.”

“I’ll come too,” Lulu volunteered. “I want to check how you could get a clean water supply into the tower.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Ben said, his tone one of gratitude. He was pleased to see that all his crew was eager to help and make themselves useful any way they could. There’d be no room for freeloaders with the task ahead.

They set off for the middle of the tower, leaving Vinata to begin preparing the food. In the very center, the low ceiling opened out into a vast space. In the middle a thin ruby spire rose as high as they could see. At the base a pair of doors opened on each side, facing the hallways.

The nearest pair of doors was open, revealing a glass cylinder.

“It looks like an elevator,” Ben said.

The women looked at him, perplexed. He caught himself, realizing he’d made another reference to something they’d have no idea about.

“It looks like that cylinder will take us to different floors in the tower,” Ben explained.

They all got into the elevator, which had room to spare. Ben suspected a cohort of fifty men with their equipment could fit in the elevator.

A series of names and numbers in a runic font were inscribed on the glass surface on raised plates. At first, the runic symbols were completely foreign to Ben, but as he peered at them, their meaning slowly became revealed, as though he was recalling a language he had mastered many years ago. Now that he could read the names, Ben examined them for a minute.

“Cellar seems like the best choice to see the foundations.” He placed his finger on the plate. The letters glowed bright red, and the glass doors noiselessly slid closed.

Ben felt the dropping sensation in his stomach that he associated with descending rapidly, like hitting the peak of a rollercoaster and starting the plummet, but it lasted no more than an instant.

The doors slid open once more, and a very similar floor was revealed. But there was no sunlight here, only the glow of crystals. Evidently the underground cellars received no