Dungeon Tamer 1

Author's note:

This is the first installment of the Dungeon Tamer series. Do not expect there to be a sex scene every chapter, as I will put emphasis on the story. Also, expect no precise schedule, at least for now. I will write when I feel like it.

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The main hall of the Conversion center was bustling with people. They were mostly young folk, but a few older persons were also waiting, most of them with a resigned look, and wearing shabby clothes. Some of the younger ones also looked desperate, but many faces showed various degrees of excitement and anxiety, and clothes showed varying levels of wealth. Many stood in small groups, speaking quietly, as if not to disturb the two armed guards that were keeping watch next to the open entryway, their semi-automatic weapons resting in their hands.

Erwin was standing to the side, keeping to himself. He was among the young ones, and tried to avoid showing his nerves. This was the day he had been waiting for, ever since he was diagnosed on his 18th birthday. It was customary to check everyone on their 18th birthday, since diagnoses were not quite reliable before adulthood, and it did not really matter anyway for minors. Erwin had always secretly hoped to become an adventurer, but he knew the virus naturally only ever struck a small percentage of the population, and he was nowhere rich enough to get inoculated. It had therefore been quite a shock when the doctors sent him the results, but it was also the result he had been hoping for.

It had been four months since his diagnosis, and he had had the time to accept his fate, either positive or negative. Tonight, though, was the first Conversion night since then, and thus, like everyone else in the hall, he had been legally required to show up. He knew that his own Conversion may not actually happen on that day, but every diagnosed adult had to come to a Conversion center on the eve of every Conversion night, up until (and if) their Conversion actually happened, in case they turned into a monster of some kind or otherwise provoked a catastrophe.

All conversations suddenly stopped when, with a huge rattling sound, the large metal doors leading further inside the Conversion center finally opened, and six armed guards came through, wearing military outfits and carrying semi-automatic firearms. Following them was a full team of five adventurers, in full medieval getup. One of them had an axe to his side, and was wearing a full set of plate armor and a rectangular shield, as well as a helm, visor opened at the moment. His short blond beard half hid his brazen face, and if Erwin had to guess, he had to be at least 35, making him one of the oldest adventurers out there. He was followed by an amazon of a woman, towering above him at 2.10 meters, in leather armor laced with metal plaques, a winged helmet on her head, a pair of blond braids falling on her shoulders. She was carrying a short spear, and had a bow hung over her shoulder. She appeared to be in her late twenties, and her figure, while partially obscured by her armor, seemed quite voluptuous.

The third adventurer did not look quite human. She wore a white cloak with golden embroidery, and a white ornate staff. Her hood was off, and two fox-like ears stood out from among her crimson curls. Her striking green eyes were slanted vertically, and she had whiskers around her aquiline nose. She was making a face, as if she was smelling something unpleasant, and looked at the assembled people with a frown.

The last two adventurers to enter wore nondescript grey robes with their hoods on. One of them, with a darker grey robe, looked to be perhaps as tall as the amazon if standing straight, but their crooked back made it hard to judge it accurately. Erwin felt a shiver down his spine as his eyes met two ember lights coming from under their hood, seeming to fix him for a few moments before they turned their head away. Those lights, if they were eyes, were too low for a normal human face.

They had no visible weapons, but their hands, as well as the rest of their body, were entirely hidden from view. The last adventurer was a small and bulky figure, and was also completely covered. Their shape was hard to discern but Erwin thought they did not have a human build at all, and wouldn't have been surprised if there turned out to be more of a huge dog under there.

They were followed by two official looking persons, a man and a woman, in black suits, each of them carrying a clipboard.

"Welcome everyone to the Conversion center." the man said. "If it's your first time, here is what's going to happen. Please form a queue in front of me, and prepare your ID. When your turn comes, you will give me your name, my colleague will check your ID, and then your will be brought to a Conversion chamber. Once there, you can make yourself comfortable, as you will spend the night. Be assured that you will be monitored during the night, and, in case you end up dying or need to be put down, your family will be compensated accordingly. Now please form a line."

While waiting for his turn, Erwin looked attentively at the adventurers that were now standing against the wall behind the two officials. Those were the first adventurers he saw in real life. Of course, he had seen some on TV, and he might have seen some adventurers in civilian clothes without realizing it, but those were the first adventurers on active duty he saw in the flesh. Consequently, the fox woman was also the first non-human he had seen. Though he doubted the cloaked individuals were actually human either, since he could not really observe them, she was the one who had most of his attention. She appeared barely older than him, if at all, and was actually quite cute, despite her pout, her frown and wrinkled nose. She rested her back against the wall, her staff in the crook of her arm, and her attention was on something in her hand.

What first came to his mind was a phone, and he wondered if adventurers on duty actually carried electronics when outside the dungeons. She seemed nonchalant, and had an air of contempt to her, as if she felt superior to everyone else present. He could now see that she had very short fur all over her face and hands, and he felt a strange need to go over and pet her. Blushing, he turned his gaze away, only to once again meet the amber gaze coming from the dark robed figure. They appeared to have been fixing him, but quickly turned their head away as soon as he looked. He thought they were quite spooky, and over the next few minutes, he crossed their gaze another two times, each time feeling his spine shiver. He wondered if they were actually singling him out, or if it was a trick of his mind, and if everyone present felt as if they were being repeatedly fixed by the burning red eyes.

Every time someone had their identity checked, they were brought behind the metal gates by a guard, and the guard returned alone about ten minutes later. This, together with actually seeing and hearing what happened in the hall, gave him a good idea of what to expect when his turn came.

"Name please?"

"Erwin Williamson." he answered, giving his ID to the black-suited woman.

"Erwin Williamson, 3rd district, 18 years old" said the man after checking his documents, "diagnosed on the 5th of July, natural infection".

"Correct", said the woman after checking his ID. "Here is your ID sir. Please put your legs apart and spread your arms."

She gave him back his ID, and the man proceeded to use some kind of hand scanner, which he used to scan Erwin's whole body, looking at a small screen on the device. Erwin had seen them similarly scan every other person that went through, except that the scan was performed by the woman when a woman was scanned. Since the scan required no physical contact, he wondered if it actually showed his naked body on the screen, or if there was another reason for the distinction. It may have just been that some contact was sometimes necessary, and that they always applied the distinction anyway.

Whatever they were measuring seemed to correspond to their expectation, because soon they sent him through the door.

"Very well, follow the guard to your Conversion chamber. Next!"

Erwin followed a female guard along a wide corridor to the left, past what appeared to be a series of closed safe metal doors, until he reached an open one, and the guard motioned him through. Inside was a white padded room with no windows, a single white light on the ceiling, and a simple metal bed on the far left side, with the sheets made, as well as a metal table and chair bolted to the ground. The table and chair were padded as well, and a tray was resting on the table. On the tray was a simple meal: bread, some kind of stew, with what appeared to be meat, carrots and potatoes, as well as a plastic bottle of water. It actually smelled quite nice, despite the room's otherwise sterilized odor. Lastly there was a kind of metal bucket bolted to the floor that he guessed could be used as an emergency toilet if necessary. Erwin could not shake the feeling that he was entering a jail cell.

"You will stay here for the night." said the guard. "You can eat tonight, and will be released tomorrow morning. That is, unless your Conversion was successful, of course."

With that, the guard proceeded to close the door, which made quite a lot of noise, including pressure hisses and several locking sounds. The door was smooth on his side, with no obvious way to open it, and he thought it was probably devised so that he could not open it from the inside, neither currently, nor after a possible transformation.

Previously, he had been able to focus on the present and avoid thinking ahead. Now alone in the white room, the nerves came back, and he started to seriously flip out. He was locked inside a secluded room, which was, for all intent and purpose, a cell, and expected to transform however the virus saw fit. He knew that when midnight struck, probably around half of the people in those rooms would experience a transformation of some sort. This transformation, called the Conversion, happened to part of the population, all at once, at semi-regular intervals. Well, not that regular, actually, but between adventurers who had augur skills or similar, and the recent advances in technology, Conversion nights could be predicted accurately, and there had not been false negative in the last fifteen years. That is, all Conversion nights had been successfully predicted, even though the converse was not always true. Sometimes nobody actually transformed, which may have meant that it was not actually a Conversion night, or it could have been that it was one but nobody actually transformed, since each individual transformation seemed to happen (or not) randomly.

Once someone went through Conversion once (and actually transformed), that was it, they were forever changed. The changes themselves seemed to be semi-random. The signature of the virus responsible for the Conversion was now well known, and people that could actually transform could be differentiated from healthy carriers, but nobody could predict precisely what changes would happen, or if any would on a given night. Augurs and the like could sometimes get some partial information, but that was sketchy at best. There had been some scientific advances to inoculate variants of the virus that led more predictable (and better) transformations, but those were still quite expensive, and did not concern people like Erwin, who got infected naturally. For him, there was no predicting what he would turn into.

Erwin spent the time wondering what transformation he would experience, his guts twisted with worry and anticipation. Best case scenario, he would remain - at least mostly - human, and acquire some supernatural powers, becoming what was known as an adventurer. If that happened, he would be monitored, and required to serve the State, either going on dungeon raids or being otherwise useful, possibly for the rest of his life. That was his dream.

Less ideally, he could experience a very minor change. That would mean that, after some tests where done on him, he could return home and have a normal life, just as if he was never diagnosed in the first place. He would essentially be a normal being, and could not go through Conversion again, making him immune to the virus. He knew, from speaking with other infected people, that this was actually the best outcome in many people's opinion. He knew his mother, at least, prayed for that outcome, and had been crying with despair for many nights since he was diagnosed. His father told him he was proud of him and expected great things, but Erwin suspected that he, too, hoped for that outcome. He did not know what his older sister Sylvia thought about that, or if she knew about it at all, or even if she was still alive, as he had had no contact with her ever since her own Conversion. They had never even told him what happened to her. He hoped if he became an adventurer, he could learn more.

He knew he could also turn into a monster, something dangerous that was hard or impossible to control. In the early days of the virus, after the first Conversion night (and even the following few), there was widespread destruction. People turning into monsters, creating cataclysmic weather events, or downright exploding, caused apocalyptic chaos that took a long time to settle, even with the help of the newly transformed adventurer, and caused millions of deaths. This was the main raison d'être for the Conversion centers. If he became a monster, some effort could possibly be made to constrain him and keep him alive to study him, but a lot of people turning into monster had to be put down as a security measure, or they just outright killed themselves. Plus, as he was neither rich nor otherwise important, he doubted that much effort would be spent to maintain him alive if he became a monster.

And of course there were those whose transformation did not allow to maintain life, and simply died during the process. He had heard rumors that the dungeons themselves were transformed people, becoming a whole - nonliving - space in another dimension.

To avoid thinking too long about these last two possibilities, he went to his meal and started eating. Even though the meal had been appetizing when he first entered the room, he could now barely taste it. His worry twisted his stomach, and after a few bites he became nauseated and had to heave over the bucket. Thankfully, nothing came out. Abandoning his meal, he lay on the bed, still queasy, and tried to think about something else, anything else. His mind wandered to the adventurers he had seen in the hall. Some had been awe-inspiring, like the heroes of legends, but others had been quite disturbing. The hooded one with red eyes, in particular, had been both spooky and intriguing, given their unnatural posture which presumably hid some otherworldly traits, and their seeming attention on Erwin. Erwin shivered again, just thinking about them. This individual may represent a hidden bad outcome within the "become adventurer" one.

Not wanting to linger on this, he thought about the fox girl. With her fur covered face and hands, he wondered about the rest of her body. She probably had short fur all over her arms and shoulders. Did she have some on her chest? Did it cover her breasts, or were they smooth? If they were covered in fur, was it a lighter colored fur? Her face was lighter colored than her ears, so, perhaps? And what about her nipples? Were they more human-like, or more beastly? He then thought about other parts of her body, that may or may not have fur. Did she have a tail? Would it arouse her if he stroke it? Surely, her pussy had to be hairy, at least as much as a human woman. Or did she shave? Were her lips bare, pink, and moist, waiting to be parted? What would her expression be if he took her? Would she stop frowning and scrunching her nose? Would her pouty lips part in ecstasy as she was taught to respect others?

Quite excited now, Erwin took another look at the room. It seemed completely sealed from the exterior, including sight and sound, and he did not see any cameras. He had heard that electronics meshed pretty badly with magic, and doubted cameras survived most successful Conversions, so he thought he was pretty isolated. He was actually feeling more excited than he had been in a while, and needed to keep his mind off the Conversion anyway. He pulled his trousers and boxers down, and took his rod in his hand, already very hard, and continued fantasizing. He thought about taking the fox girl from behind, her, naked save for a silver collar, squealing with every thrust, and him spanking her every few thrust, until she yowled into the night. He imagined the blond amazon, tied and gagged, her eyes silently begging to cum as he pounded her pussy into oblivion. He even thought of the woman in the black suit, about taking her right there, in the main hall, while the man in the black suit watched. In his fantasy, the man was the woman's husband, and he looked on in dismay and arousal, kneeling on the ground, his dick caged, while Erwin fucked his wife into orgasm after orgasm, providing her with much more pleasure than he ever could.

Erwin was becoming harder and harder and longer and longer. Harder and longer than he had ever been. His dick was coated in precum as he stroke it desperately, closer and closer to cumming, but never quite reaching climax. He was not purposefully edging himself, but he still climbed higher and higher and higher, without ever reaching the top.

Time seemed to stretch eternally. He no longer thought rationally. He just stroked, faster and faster, harder and harder, with inhuman strength and stamina, as his body and mind started to change and twist and grow. His muscles tore, his bones cracked, as pain got mixed into the pleasure. The world around him warped, static electricity permeating the air, the tension ever rising, until finally, he reached his peak. One spurt, two, three, five, seven powerful spurts erupted from his dick, as Erwin writhed in ecstasy and agony, and into unconsciousness.