Bound To The Groom (D’Amore Family #3)
Previously
Vester Gambit arrived on Ordinal after a bus crash killed him, his twin brother, and several other people.
Five of those people were chosen to become Deneb Gambit’s Party, a group of powerful Adventurers who would support the Hero and help him grow in power: Jack Kincaid, Jack’s half-siblings Rachel and Davis Kincaid, Emma Waters, and Kimmy Davis.
Vester wasn’t supposed to arrive at all.
The Reincarnation Network drew his soul along after Denny’s due to their nature as identical twins. This threatened to disrupt the plans of the gods, so four of them placed curses on Vester in an attempt to ensure he’d live a pathetic, uneventful life.
Peace cursed him so that her followers would hate him, wanting him to be denied the services of the Temple of Light.
Law cursed him so he would be forced to obey the rules of the organization he was destined to serve, intending that to be the very same Church of Light.
War cursed him so that he could not wield weapons, wear armor, or deal direct damage to any living thing. War believed that leaving Vester unable to engage in combat would mean Vester couldn’t level, and no creature on Ordinal lasted long if it couldn’t grow in power.
Death cursed him in the most insidious way, however, issuing a command that Vester was denied death.
No wounds, torment, torture, or accident would be enough to snuff his life force.
It was her intention that Vester turn into a decaying collection of broken wounds, and when they grew pronounced enough, she could transform him into a powerful undead and make him her Avatar.
Julius, the God of Life, stepped in. Julius gave Vester a Blessing: to heal perfectly from any injury and to stay young forever. The felid god claimed he was doing it because the others were being too hard on Vester, but in truth he was assisting his sister, Non.
Because Non waited until the last moment to make her move.
The Goddess of Chaos claimed Vester for her Avatar, Blessing him with her favor.
She reshaped Vester’s body into that of an elf, with dark skin, silver hair, mismatched eyes—one blue and one purple—and what she considered a handsome form.
She promised him he would grow in power, if he was clever.
Vester’s arrival on Ordinal was a brutal, unpleasant affair.
After appearing in the same temple the Hero and his Party had been summoned to, the Church of Light attempted to execute Vester repeatedly, but as he couldn’t die, he merely suffered for the attacks.
Then Tomlin, the Founder of the Adventurer’s Guild arrived and took Vester from them without allowing for argument.
Non’s last trick had been to modify Law’s curse a hair. Instead of serving the Church of Light, Vester would be bound to the Adventurer’s Guild. He became a receptionist and Tomlin sent him to a far-off outpost called Porter’s Walk to assist a new Guild Master named Kora Dol.
Kora, a kitsune who had stopped delving after she’d gone blind, discovered that she could see Vester’s illusions perfectly through her Mana Sense. This gave her hope she might be able to delve once more. She offered to Party with Vester, and they signed a magical Contract to protect his secrets.
On the vapor-wagon to Porter’s Walk, Vester made friends with a Puppetmaster named Skylar Free.
The blue-skinned woman was cheerful, friendly, and very low level.
Her class was focused on the crafting and directing of golems, and it was extremely costly to level because she had to make her own puppets using costly materials to get full benefit.
Vester agreed to go delving with her at some point, and the pair found themselves having an easy time getting to know one another.
The trip to Porter’s Walk saw them attacked by bandits, goblins, and a giant, but the steam-wagon made it through every obstacle.
Vester, a Dreamspinner, learned he could trick people into getting killed and gain experience with his illusions.
He also gained some levels when Kora fought—the Party connection at work.
With hope that he could grow in strength, Vester found his opinion of Ordinal mellowing.
They arrived at Porter’s Walk and discovered the small dungeon wasn’t what it appeared.
Instead of an isolated, frontier dungeon, they’d actually found a new gateway to the Great Dungeon, a place of infinite danger and floors.
The Great Dungeon was one of the most prominent sources of levels, resources, Quests, and power on Ordinal, and the Adventurer’s Guild maintained a strict neutrality regarding its usage.
Vester got caught up in establishing Dungeon Gate 5 around the dungeon entrance, and met Krysta Breen, a pandali reincarnate from another world who was also working with the Guild.
Krysta turned out to have a powerful skill and a unique class—Hospitality Mage—but was only level 1.
Kora couldn’t get away from her duties, so Skylar, Vester, and Krysta delved the dungeon together without her.
Their trip was rough, mostly because of other delvers, and they had to save the lives of Li Ra—an oni Gunslinger—and her bunny-girl friend.
They paused their delve to ensure Li Ra and Sincarla could make it out to the surface, then resumed their descent.
Fighting side by side with others allowed Vester to develop a strong bond with his team.
Krysta and Skylar admitted they’d gotten Quests to seduce Vester, which he was deeply annoyed by.
He had an… interesting argument with Non about his love life, which somehow ended up with him dating his Party members.
During their romantic distraction, the Great Dungeon attacked them with a wandering Boss and they were dropped onto the second floor.
The trio struggled to defeat the more powerful monsters, but eventually made their way back to the surface.
They weren’t nearly as strong as Kora Dol, but now they were close enough in level to her that they hoped to delve alongside the kitsune.
Their plans were derailed by the arrival of Founder Tomlin and several powerful delvers.
Kromm, a minotaur, was placed in charge of Dungeon Gate 5, which left Kora relieved of duty.
Elondolin, an elven Warden of the Woods, was charged with forming a Raid to escort the Arch Mage Tolbert down to the Safe Zone on the tenth floor, with the intention of testing a theoretical teleportation system that would allow instant travel between Safe Zones and the first floor.
Kora was conscripted to be one of the Raid delvers, and with her came Vester, Skylar, and Krysta.
They needed another damage dealer, and Li Ra was looking for a new group after her friend had given up Adventuring.
The oni wanted to work with Vester because he had saved her in the dungeon, and after an interview, she joined their Party.
Unfortunately for Vester, the Church of Light had signed a treaty with the Adventurer’s Guild to make the Raid a joint venture. His brother, Denny, and the Hero’s Party would be accompanying the Raid along with a high-level church official known as Purifier Ran.
Even more complicated was that the higher-level delvers couldn’t use their skills without risking the dungeon dropping everyone to a deeper floor, leaving the brunt of the work to fall on the weakest Parties.
Most of the floors did not represent a great challenge, though the shifting desert sand with killing heat in the day, frozen temperatures at night, and brutal sandstorms cost them.
Their travels through the floors allowed Vester and Kora to grow closer.
A minor cultural misunderstanding over the significance of grooming others saw Vester, Krysta, and Kora experience some tension, but he overcame it through patient communication.
The tension between himself and Kora finally crested, and she admitted she wanted the same connection he had with Krysta and Skylar.
Right at the end of the fifth floor, the dungeon dropped the delvers straight to the ninth, and in doing so isolated all of the powerful delvers in crystal cocoons.
Vester and the other lower-level groups were forced to fight off waves of troll-kin for nine full waves before they opened the path to the tenth floor.
On the tenth floor the Raid regained all its members, though some had limits placed on them by the Great Dungeon, and the entire group was forced to battle the Boss, Sargo.
The giant serpent used a combination of overwhelming strength and ghostly flames to devastate the Raid, but in the end, they managed to down the Boss and enter the Safe Zone.
Tolbert set up the teleportation gate and opened the ability to move between the first and tenth floor with ease.
But only if the individuals had defeated Sargo—even Tolbert’s powerful magics couldn’t defy dungeon laws.
Vester and his Party took time off from working for the Adventurer’s Guild to focus on delving. They were still on the lower side in terms of levels and needed to build their power to the point they could defeat Sargo on their own.
After a little over six months of constant delving and courier work, Vester and his team reached an average level of 35. They intended to resume working for the Adventurer’s Guild, though Vester wasn’t thrilled to be given warehouse-inventory duty.
The Church of Life had other plans, but so did the God of Life.
On the same day an assassin attempted to murder Vester, a badly injured woman appeared near the hot spring Vester’s Party was developing into a resort.
They were bombarded with Quests to preserve the woman’s life and fix her crippling injuries.
It took true effort, but they designed new limbs for the woman.
Krysta and Li Ra left to another dungeon to harvest plants they needed to cure the wounded woman. Kora and Skylar had to go to a separate dungeon to gather mithril and adamantine so they could forge her the prosthetics she needed. That left Vester tending the wounded patient.
…a patient who turned out to be the Dark Lord Denny had been summoned to defeat.
Reve, an evolved bat-monster from the Great Dungeon, had been working with the Empire of Beasts to prevent the Church of Light from taking over their territory after the Church had discovered the Empire was sitting on a mountain of mithril.
When Li Ra and Krysta returned, Vester and Li Ra had a talk that ended in Vester learning far more about oni mating habits than he’d planned. Sixteen hours later, Krysta was teasing him about how exhausted he was. He’d have been lying if he denied the happiness of weaving Li Ra into his love life.
Even better, Non didn’t seem to have given the oni a Quest to fall for him—the Goddess of Chaos was finally learning.
When Kora and Skylar returned, Vester, Kora, and Li Ra went to the Trading Post to gather some rare materials Krysta and Skylar needed to finish their Quests. The group was attacked on their journey to the Questhall, and they were forced to kill a number of Peace’s followers to make it through.
Tension between the delvers and the followers of Peace grew more significant. Elondolin told Vester and his team about a special Quest on the eleventh floor and requested they delve deeper to ensure they claimed the reward before the Church could.
When Vester got back to the resort, he told Reve the truth about Denny: the Hero was his twin brother. The Dark Lord reacted with understandable anger, but she managed to regain control of herself and calm enough for Krysta and Skylar to finish repairing her body.
Reve officially joined Vester’s Party after his team restored her arm and leg. Vester even made an enchanted eyepatch that would allow her to see on her blindside. They registered her with the Adventurer’s Guild and discovered that the Church had attacked the delvers at the Trading Post.
Purifier Ran’s forces had disabled the teleportation gate, and in the battle her Party and Elondolin’s team had all been thrown deeper into the dungeon. The Guild’s remaining representative was relieved to see Vester’s return, and Krysta got straight to work healing every injury she could.
Vester received a special Quest from Non, and following it saw him taking an orc hammer to the face in a blow that would have killed him if he hadn’t been functionally immortal. While no one was thrilled that Vester’s face had been shattered, the rewards were amazing.
The Party made their way up from the tenth floor to the first, and then out to Porter’s Walk so they could report everything to Kromm and the Adventurer’s Guild.
Kromm requested Kora remain for a debrief, so Krysta, Li Ra, and Skylar went back to Skylar’s workshop to see about building some better golems.
Reve and Vester intended to sell off all the materials they’d gathered in their climb, but before they were able to find the relocated crafter’s district, they were ambushed by Jack Kincaid and many of the Church of Life’s warriors.
The assault was fierce, so Vester was forced to activate the new skill he’d gained from Non’s reward.
Unfettered allowed him to fight without War’s curse holding him back.
He and Reve worked together to defeat all the soldiers, and after a fearsome battle, Vester killed Jack.
The end result left him unsettled, though he found he didn’t regret it as much as he thought he would.
He and Reve made their way to Skylar’s home to let the others know what they’d done.
The Party agreed that life on Ordinal was growing more dangerous, but their focus turned to descending to the eleventh floor and claiming the special Quest that Elondolin had told them about.
None of them believed that the Hero would forgive the death of one of his team, but they refused to let the Church of Light dictate the course of their lives.