The first unfortunate victim

By my orders, the dungeon was creating as many minions as it could, at the cost of their individual strength and intelligence. They were still far stronger than an ordinary human (at least from my old world) and would have no trouble subduing a peasant, but real soldiers were a different matter. And not only were they unable to speak, but even their thoughts were… limited, so to say.

But it didn’t matter. I needed as many hands as I could get to advance my plans. The dungeon needed expansion, traps needed to be prepared. Not to mention the matter of exploring outside…

Of course, I had already sent out scouting parties to explore the immediate vicinity of my dungeon: Apparently, the dark twins had actually fulfilled my wish for my dungeon to be created deep underground, far beyond the eyes and ears of any surface creatures. The only exit (which was located far away from my throne room) lead to a hidden cave, an old riverbed of sorts. Much to my dismay however, that meant that it had barely any side-caverns. Akin to a tunnel cut into the stony ground, it lead almost directly to my dungeon! I would have to collapse it and create a different entryway later on, maybe even a decoy dungeon of sorts…

The cave itself opened up in the middle of an ancient forest, with no civilization in sight. That was good. But what now? If I sent out a search party and encountered civilisation, I would probably alarm them to my presence. Worst case, they could somehow track them back to my dungeon! I was not ready for a full-blown **** yet!

But still, I needed to gain information somehow… Well, here’s to hoping that somebody no one will miss accidentally stumbles inside my dungeon and I can press them for information… Ah, who am I kidding? The odds of that actually happening are extremely low and the only thing that stumbled into my dungeon so far was a giant rat.

And so, the days came and went. Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months as I slowly raised a small army of minions inside my ever-growing labyrinthine dungeon.

I spent most of my time overseeing the work of my minions and working on the dungeon myself. When I wasn’t busy with that, I experimented with my magic. Being a minotaur/erosarkic hybrid with an ‘Inspiring’ core, I obtained very little magic by merely levelling up. Thankfully, I had my life infusion to rely on!

As I discovered, life-domain magic was indeed best suited for protection and healing, but also so much more! Reshaping the bodies of living creatures as well as creating new, simple forms of life such as plants or even pathogens like diseases or parasites were also part of life magic. Truly, there was no better infusion I could have chosen.

The first order of business was growing. When I chose my starting size back in the void, I had become ‘huge’ because the perk gained suited my purposes better, but I really, really REALLY wanted to be a massive monster! So, I spent weeks channelling mana and the experience I gathered into my body in order to grow. Receiving a second core in this manner would have been nice, but sadly, it didn’t happen. When I was done, I pretty much looked the same, except that I was now 8m tall! All my body parts had grown proportionally, I didn’t really want to change anything about them.

During my experiments, I also discovered that, while my ability to create even simple life from nothing was very limited, I could actually use it to attack! By growing plants with sharp thorns on their vines or edges on their leaves, I managed to turn the most defensive elemental domain into an offensive one!

From this point forward, a significant part of my resources went towards sending my minions out to capture comparatively weak wild beasts like wolfs, bears, lynxes, and the like, to release them in my dungeon. By strategically blocking off paths beforehand, I used them to test traps, combat strategies, the strength of my minions, and many more such things. In the end, I would always kill them from far away by using my plant-growing magic to attack without them ever noticing me, slowly accumulating kills for the sorcerer as well as the assassin class.

Night had fallen on the outside world, meaning that inside my dungeon, we were reaching the height of activity. Hunter parties were getting ready to set out and capture new beasts, workers were busy building new parts of the dungeon and others were doing all kinds of crafts, like turning the hide of killed beasts into leather or roasting and smoking their meat. As magical creations of my dungeon, my minions didn’t need to eat, but I had a monstrous appetite, befitting my new size.

I was in the throne room, busy fixing the last pieces of my new, massive stone throne in place. Since I had grown in size, my old one had not fit me anymore and I needed to build this new one. It was placed right in the middle of the giant hall, resembling a massive, four-legged armchair that seemed to grow out of the stone floor. It was quite simple, really. The only thing notable about it besides its size was that the back had a giant, arched opening, allowing me to sit down and lean on it without squashing the tentacles on my back, and instead move them freely around the hall.

With a sigh, I sat down on it, stretching my limbs and savouring the feeling of finally resting comfortably after weeks without anything but the stone floor. From a quality of life perspective, growing this big definitely wasn’t an improvement.

Just as I was about to finally relax, a quasi-telepathic massage of the dungeon reached me: “There is an intruder” it notified me “No, two intruders,” it quickly corrected itself.

“Any more information, like Race, gender, age, combat ability? Why the correction?” I inquired.

“Two humanoids. One female, one male. One child, one adult. The adult entered after the child.” it answered, once more demonstrating its limits. Not only was it very vague, it also completely left out their combat abilities!

And yet, I can’t help but smile. Finally, a female! Maybe a mother chasing after her child? That would be too preci-

Wait, I don’t actually know which one is the child.

“Gender of the child?” I asked.

“Female” came the prompt answer.

Damn! Why did fate have to be so cruel?! I was just a simple **** monster that wished to have a little fun with hot women… For a moment, I thought about taking either the girl or the man but no. I wasn’t attracted to males, and definitely not to children either! In fact, even hurting them repulsed me.

I took over the senses of one of my minions close to them. I couldn’t discern much of her through the bad eyes of my minion and in the dim light of the dungeon, just enough to fight. The child came running towards the minion I controlled, and came to a grinding as she noticed it standing there. For a moment, she seemed hesitant. She looked back the way she came from and then towards the minion again, seemingly considering something.

Then, she came running towards the minion again!

I sensed how my minions wanted to crush her, but I quickly ordered them not to move. I was curious.

The little girl circled right around the minion I shared senses with and then hid behind its leg. She must have been more afraid of whatever she was running than of my minion!

I considered my options for a moment. A quick inquiry at the dungeon confirmed that no other being had entered, meaning that the little girl was most likely running from the male humanoid. I didn’t know his combat capabilities, and neither did I know his race. For all intents and purposes, he could even be a devil or something that would wipe the floor with me!

However, even keeping his unknown threat level in mind, he now knew of my dungeon, and therefore I would need to silence him. The most optimal way to do that would be to engage him personally, in my throne room where I could move freely.

Now, to get him there.

I quickly ordered my minions not to attack him or the little girl, and to stay out of his side as they rallied back to my throne room. Then, I ordered the minion behind whose leg the little girl was hiding to tap her shoulder and point down the hall, toward my throne room. It took a few tries for her to understand, but eventually, she came running toward me.

The free space around my throne filled quickly as streams of my minions converged in the throne room. Somewhat surprisingly, the little girl was amongst the first to arrive. She must be a fast runner.

“Whoaaah! Sooooo biiig!” the little girl gasped, her eyes fixed on my massive form without even a hint of fear in them.

That was somewhat disconcerting. Why wasn’t she afraid?

“AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF ME?” I ask her.

The blinked once. Then twice. “Should I be?” the little girl asked. Her voice was high and clear, almost angelic. What an unbefitting sound for a place like this.

“NO. I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU.” I told her as I reach out with my massive hand for her.

The little girl eyed my hand for a moment, then slowly stepped forward and climbed into my open palm. Whelp. My hand was so big compared to her small frame that she could sit in my palm like on a chair.

I brought her up, closer to the torches on the ceiling of the room as well as my eyes. For the first time, I could see her clearly.

Normally, I wouldn’t call a child beautiful. Children were cute, or ‘growing up to be beautiful’ at best. But this girl… she was an exception. She was a true beauty already, even though she was… what? Maybe 8 years old? If she lived long enough to grow into a full woman, her beauty would rival the gods themselves!

But that was not the only thing I noted. The flesh around one of her big, innocent blue eyes was swollen as if somebody had hit her not too long ago. Her wavy blonde hair could not hide the **** marks around her throat. And her porcelain skin only made the bruises, welts, and scrapes in varying stages of healing more apparent. Her simple dress was in tatters, closer to rags than to real clothes, and she was thin, much too thin. Almost starving.

“WHO HURT YOU?” I asked her. Anger was rising within me. To do something like this to such a small, helpless creature was truly distasteful. There couldn’t possibly be a good reason for it!

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Many people.” She answered, looking confused, as if it was weird of me to ask her that.

I sighed internally. This would be harder than I thought.

“YOUR LEFT EYE IS SWOLLEN, LIKE SOMEONE HIT YOU. WHO DID THAT?” I tried to pry some more information from her.

She reached with one hand, feeling her eye as if she had already forgotten about the still recent injury. Which was honestly quite possible, given the number of her wounds.

“Oh, that. That was Frank. He wants me to call him ‘daddy’, but he’s not my real daddy. My real daddy is dead. Just like my mommy.” She explained, barely showing any emotion as she did.

What the hell was wrong with this child?! Well, apart from the obvious fact that she was injured, regularly physically and probably psychically abused, her parents died, she had undergone at least one very bad adoption and… hm. Now that I think about it, it was a miracle she was this stable.

“Liliiii!” a male voice echoed through the dungeon.

“IS THAT FRANK?” I asked the little girl.

“Yes.” She said, attempting to hide behind my fingers. “I heard him and my new mommy talk about selling me. So I ran away.”

“SELL YOU?” I inquired.

“As a ****. A pleasure ****. Some people like theirs to be young.” She explained.

Rage walled up inside me. Pure, unadulterated rage, a feeling almost foreign to my normally so callous and calculating mind. Had she been a grown woman, I doubt I would have felt much empathy. But a child? That was a different matter, at least to me.

Admittedly, it was more justifiable to sell a child than to beat it, but this sounded like it wasn’t because they had to. They were purely in it for the money.

“CAN YOU CALL HIM HERE FOR ME?” I asked her

The little girl looked at me wide-eyed. For the first time, there was fear in her eyes.

“He wants to take me back, but I don’t want to go back! You want me to go with him!” she accused me, almost crying at her seemingly helpless situation.

“NO; I WANT HIM TO… GO AWAY. I PROMISE.” I reassured her.

She hesitated. Considering her options.

“I am heeereee!” She cried out. Apparently, she had decided that she had **** but to trust me. For now.

Soon, rapid footsteps could be heard and then a middle-aged man stepped inside the room. He was of average height, with a beer belly and burst blood vessels of a heavy drinker in his face. He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw my minions. Then, his gaze slowly went upwards, and his eyes widened in terror as he realized that the massive thing sitting on the stone throne was not a statue, but a living, breathing monster.

“Ahhhhhh! Please, don’t eat me!” he screamed. Then, he noticed the little girl in my hand. “There! You found her! You can eat her instead, she will taste much better as well!”

What a pathetic fool. Even if this were a negotiation, I already had her, so he couldn’t offer her to me.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES,” I told the little girl as I rose from my throne. She did so, and even covered her ears with her hands. What a good girl!

The man attempted to flee, but I ordered my minions to keep him in place. With one mighty swing, I brought my massive fist down on him. There was a wet squelching sound, then the cracking of bones. As I raised my fist again, there was nothing but blood, meaty sludge, and split bones on the floor. Well, that took care of that.

I ordered my minions to bring his remains way and eyed my hand. It was covered in his blood. I brought it up to my face and licked it experimentally.

Mmmmmhhhhh.

Human blood was surprisingly tasty to my monster tongue. I continued to lick my hand until it was mostly clean. Then I gently tapped the little girl’s shoulder. She opened her eyes and removed her hands from her ears.

“Where… where is Frank?” she asked.

“HE… HAS GONE AWAY. HE WON’T BE BOTHERING YOU ANYMORE.” I answered. She looked at me for a moment, without revealing any emotions.

“Hurray!!!” she exclaimed, beaming at me happily. “Now I don’t have to go back! Thank you so much, mister…?”

“I DON’T HAVE A NAME,” I told her. “YOU CAN JUST CALL ME MISTER, IF YOU WANT. WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”

“They call me Lili, but my real name is Li-Lif.” she said, apparently unable to pronounce the last part properly.

“LI-LIF?” I asked.

“No, Li-Lif!” she tried and failed again.

“LILITH?” I guessed.

“Yes, that’s it!” she exclaimed happily.

“WELL THEN LILITH, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?” I asked her. She looked hesitant.

“I… I don’t know. I didn’t think so far.” She admitted, her face darkening at the thought.

Ohhhh boy. It was honestly impressive that she got this far at her age and in this state, but that didn’t help now. I could throw her out/let her go, but that would basically mean abandoning her in the middle of the wilderness, for wild animals, bandits, her old family or even slavers to find. It just meant a cruel ****. Alternatively, I could give her a quick, gentle ****, a coup de grace, in a sense.

But that just felt so WRONG. Harming her felt wrong. Hurting her felt wrong. Especially after I just saved her from that monster of an adoptive father! No, I would never hurt her. In fact, I wouldn’t allow anyone to hurt her!!

“HOW ABOUT YOU STAY HERE, WITH ME?” I proposed.

She looked at me hesitantly. “Stay here… with you?”

“YES. I PROMISE; I WOULD NEVER SELL OR HURT YOU. AND I WON’T ALLOW ANYBODY ELSE TO DO IT EITHER” I elaborated.

“I… I think I would like that…” Lilith said, a small smile appearing on her face.