PrimeVerse: Dose of Chaos: A GameLit / LitRPG Adventure

by R K Billiau

  You have died in the dungeon. Would you like to respawn or exit?

  Respawn/Exit

  Warning! Once you exit you may not enter again until your entire party has exited.

  Your party has a total of 9 deaths allowed before the dungeon is considered failed.

  I selected respawn and the world jumped into motion, and once again I got to watch my corpse slowly dissolve.

  “Okay, so that was dumb,” I yelled to my stunned group. I jogged over to them and caught Kai smirking at me.

  “Didn’t you used to raid abandoned buildings?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but they were never trapped. Or well, rarely.” I quickly explained how the respawn mechanic worked in the dungeon so everyone knew and stopped mid-sentence. I looked at my character sheet and saw that my death counter had not gone up from my last stupid death. Thankfully.

  “So it looks like the dungeon is a win or lose thing, no real shades of gray,” Madison said.

  “It’s kind of nice that dungeon deaths don’t count towards your death total,” I said. “Makes it so they can be good places to experiment without getting close to reincarnation.”

  Carl cocked his head. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Every 100 deaths or 100 years, whichever comes first, you get a chance to reincarnate. You can use what you’ve learned to get a new class or go to a new spot in the world.”

  “Wow, so this is something everyone can do? How did you find out about it?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth, but Kai interrupted me, clearing his throat. “Gentlemen, as interesting as this conversation might be, could we save it for another time? Say, after we complete the mission and get into the village?”

  I grinned and nodded. “Sorry yeah, I get caught up sometimes talking about everything I’ve learned.”

  Madison chuckled and pushed me towards the trapped door. “We know. Now how about using those treasure hunting skills to hunt us up some treasure? And maybe NOT forget to look for traps again.”

  I smiled and walked up to the door- a little more confident now that the first traps had been sprung- and stepped through the doorway. Only to have the floor break like eggshells beneath my feet sending me sprawling down, flailing wildly, into a pit complete with a nice bed of sharp spikes below. I tried to shout a warning, but the spike going through my neck stopped any noise from coming out as I very quickly bled to death.

  Your party has a total of 8 deaths allowed before the dungeon is considered failed.

  “Seriously!?” I shouted from the entrance. I spied Carl bent over laughing while Kai and Madison shook their heads.

  “That looked painful,” Kai said when I got close.

  “Thanks buddy,” I replied.

  “Uhm, Huddy, aren’t you supposed to like, check for traps or something when you enter a new area?” Madison said, her grin wide and playful.

  “Yeah yeah, everyone’s a comedian,” I growled and stepped up to the room again. This time I was determined to do this right. I slowly, carefully stepped into the room and took stock of the situation. Hanging from the ceiling was the boulder, underneath it, just past the entryway, was the crumbled floor of the pit trap. The entryway moved into a corridor of carved stone, which led to a T intersection. The floor was made of stone in large square sections, maybe ten foot by ten foot each. I couldn’t see beyond the second square, but the corridor broke into two paths.

  I smiled when I saw this, I liked mazes. There was enough ledge around the now open pit trap that a person could shimmy their way across, which is exactly what I was about to do when I decided to learn from my last two tries and use Assessment to check out the situation first.

  Congratulations! You have gained a point in your Conscious attribute!

  I loved getting affirmation that I wasn’t being stupid. My eyes moved across every square inch of the area, back and forth, looking for anything out of the ordinary. After a full minute, my eyes rested on three small holes in the wall I planned to walk against. I sighed.

  “This looks like it’s going to take a while guys,” I said. I got down on my knees, below the holes in the wall, and inched my way across the ledge, moving slowly and intentionally, testing every flagstone along the way, and trying not to fall into the pit.

  I paused when I found a stone that had a little spring to it when tapped lightly. It felt different than the others. Scootching as far back as I could and making sure to stay low, I stretched two fingers out and pressed on the stone. With a loud shhtoonk! sharp wooden sticks shot out of the holes above me, extending about a foot from the wall. This place was not messing around. Those things would have skewered me and dropped me in the pit trap.

  After a few seconds, the death sticks retracted back into their holes. I studied the triggering stone and pressed it again. The sticks poked out again, but this time I grabbed one and snapped it off before it could retract.

  I jammed the broken stick into the side of the stone, forcing it to stay up so it couldn’t re-activate. Then I slowly crept my way across the ledge to the next square. I performed another Assessment and found yet another trap, this time a small hole in the ground in the middle of the square. I was annoyed that I couldn’t find the trigger for whatever fun toy this was. I assumed my Assessment skill just wasn’t quite high enough. There were so many skills that were useful in this game, and so few slots to put them in so they could grow.

  Bypassing skills and using my good old-fashioned digital eyeballs, I carefully studied all aspects of this square. I looked for bumps and cracks, uneven parts, anything off-colored, holes- anything out of the ordinary or anything too ordinary- but couldn’t find anything of interest.

  With a shrug, I stepped onto the square, only to have the whole side push down as if it was balancing on a single point. The hole in the center was now directed right at me as my weight tilted the square. I yelped and stepped backwards, arms wind-milling to keep me from falling in the pit. The tilting square slowly receded back to its normal position as foggy gas began sputtering from the hole. I quickly shut my mouth and nose to try to avoid it.

  Regardless of how fast I was, I must have inhaled some of the gas. A debuff faded in and out in my HUD, a picture of a person in a crooked position with little swirls around it. I could feel the effects too, a dizziness that if I had sucked in more of the gas, I’m sure would have been enough to land me right back into the pit. Instead, I very carefully made my way back to the ledge and crawled across, waiting until the gas dissipated.

  Now that I knew what to look for, I studied the block. Sure enough, I could lift the square and look under to see the contraption that made up the trap; an air bladder that was slowly refilling from an unknown source, and a diamond shaped wedge of stone holding the flooring up precariously.

  Congratulations! You have gained a point in your Connection attribute!

  Congratulations! You have learned the skill Detect Traps.

  Detect Traps – You are more likely to find traps when searching for them. 10 Spirit and 1 minute of study per use. For every 10 points in the Connection attribute, the time needed to detect a trap is reduced by 5 seconds.

  Audeo – Your Detect Traps skill has been increased to level 10.

  Nice. Another skill. How was this different from Assessment, though? Closing the wobbly floor gas trap, I used my new skill. After a few seconds I was rewarded with the hole in the middle glowing slightly and the whole square was outlined. I lifted it again and the trap below glowed, with the bladder showing a stream of energy flowing into it. It seemed this skill, being more specialized, allowed me to see all the workings of a trap. I reached in and pulled the spout from the bladder off the hole and tied a knot in it like a balloon. That should seal it off nicely.

  With that done, I stood at the crossroads; a path leading to the left and a path to the right. I looked both ways back and forth but shrugged, not seeing any difference and headed to the left.

  When I got to the next block, I used Detect T
raps again. Two thin, glowing lines appeared on either wall of the corridor, illuminating a very narrow crack in the stone, about waist height.

  I laid down and army-crawled my way to the square gasping as two long blades shot out of the crevice, eventually meeting in the middle before retracting back into their slots. With the sound of metal still ringing in my ears, I was starting to get annoyed. Was there a trap every ten feet in this god forsaken dungeon?

  The short answer was yes. Each block had some new trap designed to kill. I made it over four more blocks before deciding it was time to turn back. I had disarmed what few traps I could, even earning the Disarm Traps skill in the process. I was starting to feel like a regular Indiana Croft. I just needed a whip or dual pistols.

  I looked at my mini-map and realized this section of the dungeon was a giant, spiraling hallway. The bird's-eye view showed the narrow corridor continuously circled around itself.

  I made my way back to the group, careful to avoid the traps I hadn’t been able to disarm. When my feet crossed the threshold back into the starting room, I let out a huge breath I didn’t even know I had been holding.

  “The next section of this dungeon is all traps. I can detect them and disarm some, but not all of them, so I think we should travel together,” I said.

  “How many traps are there?” Kai asked.

  “Like, literally every ten feet. It’s kind of ridiculous,” I said.

  “Who set up the traps though?” Carl asked. “I thought there weren’t any other people in this world.”

  “That is a good question,” I said. “One that I don’t have a good answer for. Maybe it’s just a game thing and dungeons have traps?” I shrugged, not wanting to talk about my suspicion that the traps might have been set by an Archon of Dungeons or whatever.

  “Well, lead on then Huddy,” Madison said. “If we’re all together, I can heal anyone that gets hurt.”

  I nodded and led my group, pointing out the things I had detected at each trap we came to, as well as the ones I had disarmed. When we got to where I had turned around, I gestured to a spot in the ceiling that released a spray of acid tied to a pressure plate on the ground.

  “I just got the Detect Traps skill!” Madison exclaimed. “Is that why you’ve been showing us every trap?” she asked and nudged me with her elbow.

  “I received it a couple rooms ago once I realized what Hudson was doing, and started paying close attention on my own,” Kai said.

  Madison rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Kai shrugged.

  “Wait, what are you talking about? You got a new skill?” Carl asked.

  “Yep!” Madison said.

  Carl stared at her, “Okay, maybe I wasn’t really paying attention. It’s hard when I had something so nice to look at instead,” he said, eyeing Madison.

  “Say what?” I puffed up my chest and turned to set the guy straight, but Madison beat me to it.

  Her face was cold as ice. “Look Carl, I don't know if you're trying to be funny, or if you're being serious, but I am really not into it. We are in the middle of a dungeon where every stray move could prove fatal. Pay attention to what Hudson is showing us and keep your eyes off me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to be supportive.

  Carl raised his hand placatingly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I don't know what's come over me really, I feel like I can’t keep certain thoughts out of my head.”

  “Gross,” Madison said, and Carl's face turned to a dark frown. “I don’t want you thinking about me like that either.”

  “Look, if you want to learn the skill, I’ll keep telling you about the traps when I see them,” I said. It was interesting to see Madison get all fiery and lay the smack down. Kinda hot really, but it would probably be a bad time to mention that.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Empathy attribute!

  We continued for another hour, Madison bringing up the rear now. Each new room had one trap after another. Falling rocks, poison darts, floor spikes, pit traps; it was getting old, not to mention too easy. Carl eventually learned Detect Traps, and all of them learned Disarm Traps, so we took turns. What I thought would be an interesting maze just ended up being a spiral corridor of trap after trap after trap. Finally, after what seemed like ages, we saw something different.

  The corridor opened into a square room with no other exits. This room had a similar look with the floor made of flagstones, and carved walls and ceiling, but the floor was made of a black obsidian-like stones, roughly eighteen inches square, not the dull gray stones of the hallway.

  Sitting directly in the center of the room was a large treasure chest. The chest was made of smooth, shiny wood, and had a gold inlay on all the edges, with a massive golden lock directly in the center.

  “Is that a treasure chest?” Carl asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “Did you get an attribute increase for such an astute observation?”

  “Let’s open it!” he yelled, ignoring me, and started forward. I put my hand out to stop him.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. This whole section of dungeon has been nothing but traps, right? What do you want to bet that thing is a mimic?”

  “A what?” Carl asked.

  “Yes, what is a mimic?” Kai asked with his head cocked towards me.

  “Oh! I know this one!” Madison said. “Isn’t it some kind of creature that takes the shape of something to lure you into a false sense of security, then when you get close enough, it attacks!”

  I finger-gunned her. “Got it in one. I’ll bet you that thing is a mimic.”

  “That’s got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever heard of,” Carl said. “A monster in the shape of a treasure chest?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a thing. There’s even a whole book series about them.”

  “No wonder they started killing people and uploading them,” Carl said, annoyed.

  “That’s enough,” Madison said. “Can we please go look at the chest?”

  “Hold on, let’s Detect Traps first,” I said.

  We all activated the skill, and when it came up empty, I took a cautious step into the room. Immediately after my foot hit the ground, the stone it was on launched me with spring-loaded action and I was sent flying through the air, into the wall above the entryway. It hurt. I could tell it hurt because my Pain debuff flared to 10% and I lost a chunk of my health bar. I fell gracefully to the ground, landing gracefully on my face, and gracefully losing another chunk of health.

  And because the game is so fun, when I landed on the ground, the weight of my body, or perhaps the force of its landing, set off yet another springing trap, this time sending me into the center of the room. I came to a sudden stop as my body slammed into the chest, my Pain debuff increasing and my health decreasing. The chest did not eat me.

  “Good news!… I don’t… think it’s… a mimic.” I wheezed.

  “Hudson!” Madison shouted and in one of her less thought out plans, ran in after me, only to also step on a trap and be launched even faster due to her initial momentum, into the wall opposite the entry. When she hit the ground, she too landed on another spring trap and was projected again into the wall. I watched helplessly as this happened several more times, a sick pendulum, until with a loud crack one of the springs snapped her neck and she died. Or at least laid really, really still.

  Chapter 16

  Your party has a total of 7 deaths allowed before the dungeon is considered failed.

  It’s weird watching someone you care about die. Even in this world when you know they will be back. It sent a shock through my heart to watch Madison turn into a lifeless corpse. Her body was there, but all her bubbly Madison was just gone. I mean, I didn’t like, scream to the heavens or anything, but I was stunned for a moment.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Connection attribute.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Emotion attribute.
>
  Nothing like a system message to snap me out of it. I rolled my eyes and turned to look at Kai and Carl. Carl had a little smirk on his face that he quickly wiped away into a frown when he caught me looking. I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged.

  Kai had his usual placid look. “Watch that first step,” he said with a slight smile.

  I rolled my eyes again. I didn’t know what was worse, the traps or Kai’s terrible sense of humor. For such a calm, collected guy, he had the worst jokes. And he didn’t even crack a smile at some of my funniest- and I’m funny!

  I turned towards the treasure chest and studied it. It looked like a typical treasure chest you would expect to find anywhere there were treasure chests. A pirate’s cove, a video game, a dungeon. Big and sturdy, banded in a shining golden metal, with an oversized lock on the front. I tried to open the lid, but yeah. It was locked.

  “Well this sucks,” I said.

  “You say that a lot, you know,” Kai said. “What is the problem?”

  “It’s locked,” I said, “and this being a dungeon, I bet we have to find the key to unlock it.”

  “What does this being a dungeon have to do with it?” Carl asked.

  “You didn’t play many video games, did you?” I asked. It’s not like I had played a lot either, well, any of the big fancy ones, anyway. I had definitely put in my time on the emulators and played through a lot of the earlier video games out there. They could be good friends when you were all alone, cold and hungry. With phones having the mandatory environmentally friendly charging systems, escapism through books and video games on a small screen had been a large part of my earlier life. You didn’t forget that you were hungry when you were going through Chrono Trigger New Game+, but you could put it in the back of your mind for a bit. Until you got to the bit about the Enertron anyway.

  I sighed in relief as Madison’s health bar, a nice, long healthy red bar, populated in the party window.