Dungeon Dalliance

by Charles Andrews

  I resisted the urge to make a very rude gesture in their general direction. Mostly because I was too preoccupied dodging the crystal Pig God. Keli was still slamming the thing with her sword from the other side, but I could look at the way its hit point percentages were going down and do some math.

  We weren’t going to make it out of this alive if this kept up for much longer. As much as I hated it, I had to swallow my pride.

  I turned to yell to the two players who’d just passed us by.

  “Hey! Think you could give us a little help here?”

  The other one, a warrior of some sort if the massive sword strapped to his back was anything to go on, turned and looked at me as though I was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his armored boots.

  Which was a look I was pretty used to getting from people considering all of my interactions at the Academy. It didn’t make it any less frustrating to see that kind of reaction happening in the real world, but I was used to it.

  “Go fuck yourself noob,” he said. “And thanks for taking care of the entrance guardian for us!”

  The two assholes laughed and high fived each other before turning and heading towards the cave entrance. I ground my teeth together as I watched them go, but there was nothing for it but to go back to the fight.

  Even if it was a fight I was pretty sure we were going to lose.

  5

  Crystalfiend

  “At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I told you we shouldn’t have done this!” Sefia shouted.

  “Thanks so much for the input!” I growled back at her. “But it’s not really helping!”

  Sefia hit the thing over and over again with holy energy, but it wasn’t taking the thing’s health bar down by more than maybe a fraction of a percentage point every time.

  “These things are supposed to be difficult,” Keli grunted, taking a step back from using her summoned sword and slamming the thing with a couple of fireballs instead. “Pretty much the strategy for getting into the caves has been to let someone else take on the crystalfiend guarding the entrance and then sneak past it.”

  “Why the hell would someone want to go into a dungeon when they can’t even kill the monster leading into the dungeon?” I shouted.

  “Because the monsters inside are a hell of a lot easier. Until you get to the big boss at the bottom!” Keli shouted, jumping back as she hurled a couple more fireballs at the thing.

  I tried to hit it with a stun, but the things weren’t hitting all that well. This thing must have an overabundance of Mental Fortitude it was using to keep me from really fucking it up.

  What was the point of being a useless Psionics Healer if I couldn’t even use the Psionics part of the equation that was supposed to make me better than your average Healer? Not to mention if this is what it was going to be like in every fight against a crystal creature, something I got the impression was lurking in a large part of the game world if what Keli said was to be believed, then my abilities were going to be even more useless than I’d initially feared.

  Fucking great.

  Only there was that weird thing that kept happening every time I used one of my Psionics abilities. The crystals pulsed in time with the stun. Like there was energy building up in them every time I used my stun, but then nothing happened when the stuns didn’t land.

  I took a look at the battlefield. I got the feeling there was something I could do here, but I also didn’t want to do that something where Sefia could see it. She seemed a little touchy about everything to do with these crystals, and the last thing I wanted was to break our social link because she thought I was messing with powers beyond the understanding of mortal man rather than using a game mechanic I was starting to get a sneaking suspicion was put into place to make these fights a hell of a lot easier than they seemed.

  It sounded like everyone had been tackling these fights the same way we were taking it on now. Running up to the monster and bashing it over and over again in an attempt to destroy it. An attempt that didn’t work all that well if what Keli was saying was anything to go on.

  Sefia was out of sight on the other side of the crystal Pig God. Good. She wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing. So far she hadn’t remarked on the strange pulsing in the crystals either.

  Which meant she hadn’t seen it, or this was business as usual. I really hoped it was simply that she hadn’t seen it, because right now I was betting the farm on this trick being able to save us. Otherwise I was going to have a one way trip to wherever characters went in this game when they died and were brought back to life.

  I hit another stun, only this time instead of hitting the crystal Pig God I targeted one of the crystals. I wasn’t even sure if I could target the things at first, but then sure enough when I looked at one it glowed with a targeting icon.

  I figured that was promising. Like really fucking promising. It was another tantalizing hint that what I was going for here was something that the game actually wanted me to do.

  At least I hoped and prayed it was something the game actually wanted me to do. It was entirely possible I was messing with forces beyond the understanding of mortal man and I was about to blow our characters up for messing with those forces, but whatever.

  Dead was dead, whether it was a suicide because I fucked something up or old crystal Pig God here gouging my ass with his crystal tusks.

  I hit the crystal with a stun, and the thing lit up with that energy. It seemed to pulse, and suddenly a new spell appeared in my action bar. It wasn’t like before when I’d hit the stun and all the crystals had hit the original living Pig God.

  I could direct the energy with this new ability. I grinned. Now this was more like it! I targeted the crystal Pig God and fired off the ability.

  The reaction was immediate and spectacular. A blast of pure energy shot out of the crystal and slammed into the pig, and this time it noticed the damage! It turned and stared at me with fury, but I hit another crystal with another stun, got another new spell in my bar, and hit the thing while targeting the crystal pig without stopping to read exactly what the fuck it was I was doing.

  I was here to lead, not to read, motherfuckers! Every time the thing got blasted giant chunks of crystal came off the thing while at the same time it lost giant chunks of hit points.

  This was more like it. Work smarter, not harder. I danced around the thing and blasted it a few more times, until eventually the whole thing seemed to stumble under its own weight before it keeled over to the side.

  I should’ve felt some triumph in that moment. We’d managed to kill something that, if Keli was to be believed, was something no other player had done.

  Only I felt a malevolent anger pulsing all around me. I fell to my knees, and I was so distracted by that malevolent force that washed over me that I didn’t even notice the way the crystals gouged into my legs because I dropped with such force.

  At least I only dropped to my knees rather than falling forward. That would’ve been a good way to get my whole ass gouged by those crystals that were sharper than knives and more than able to provide enough environmental damage to kill someone who wasn’t careful about where they stepped.

  The sheer power of whatever was hitting my mind was incredible. It was like nothing I’d felt in the game so far with my psionics abilities, and it terrified me. I worried that whatever that was might actually be looking for me.

  Then the thing passed over me. It wasn’t looking for me, or at the very least it couldn’t do anything to me. Yet.

  I looked at the entrance to the Crystalia Cave and wondered what powerful entity might be lurking in there that it was able to hit me with some mental juju that was that fucking overwhelmingly powerful.

  A high pitched whining started in my head. Okay then. Not a great thing considering that might mean whatever was out there threatening to invade my mind had come back and decided it was going to fuck with me after all. I looked around, but the whole world went bright white around me.

&
nbsp; Then that malevolent anger turned to curiosity. Don’t get me wrong. Whatever was filling my head with these thoughts was still really pissed off, but there was curiosity there too. Maybe it wondered what had finally killed the crystalfiend watching over the entrance?

  Then it was gone, though the curiosity lingered for a moment longer than the anger. The thoughts were surrounding me one moment, then they were gone the next and the world reasserted itself around me. As it reasserted itself I saw that the crystals all around me had been filled with a blinding light, but they were slowing to a pulsing, and eventually they dimmed.

  I looked at the dungeon entrance again. I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever the fuck was lying in wait in there for players stupid enough to come after it had just sent its mind out here via the crystals all around us. The thought that something that powerful could surround us was terrifying, but it was also really fucking interesting.

  I wanted to know more about this thing, and what was going on in this dungeon!

  “Um, where do you think you’re going?” Sefia asked.

  I realized I’d taken a couple of steps. I’d been so excited that I hadn’t even noticed the trail of blood I was leaving behind. I guess that was saying something about just how good this game was in getting its hooks into me!

  As if looking at the blood trailing behind me was enough for reality, or unreality as it were since we were in a simulation, to reassert itself I suddenly was hit with pain that bloomed through my body. I cursed and nearly pitched forward from losing my balance thanks to all that pain, but managed to keep it together.

  “Motherfucker that hurts!” I growled.

  “And you’re going towards the cave that’s going to have more stuff that’ll hurt you?” Sefia asked.

  “I mean the monsters in the cave are supposed to be less scary than the guardian crystalfiend, and we did just kill the guardian which no one has done so far,” Keli said.

  “I still don’t think this is such a great idea,” Sefia said, her social link ticking down as she said it. “The stories of what happen in there…”

  I let them have their debate. I knew what I was doing, and they could come along or they could hang around out here. I wasn’t going to force them to come with me, that wasn’t my style, but I was going to get in there and figure out what that intelligence was I’d felt moving out through the crystals.

  I hit myself with a heal and leaned down to tap on the crystal guardian that’d taken the form of the late, infamous, Pig God.

  “Huh,” I said, looking at the item in there. It was a crystal staff, and it had bonuses to Mental Fortitude and Psionics. I guess the game thought I deserved a new present for figuring out the puzzle to killing Pig God.

  Though honestly it surprised me that no one else had thought of attacking the crystals. I’d have to look into that. Later, when I wasn’t about to go into a dungeon that was probably going to kill my ass.

  I held the thing up and Sefia and Keli’s reactions were a study in differences. Keli looked at the thing like a gamer looking at an awesome piece of loot. She was wide-eyed, and there was just a touch of avarice in her eyes as she stared at the thing.

  Sefia looked at it with the eyes of someone who was terrified of what we were discovering in a part of her world that no one had bothered until a bunch of crazy heroes had started invading and attacking things that shouldn’t be attacked.

  “Looks like the Crystalia Cave is giving out gifts to people who can kick some ass,” I said. “And I intend to find out what’s in there.”

  I couldn’t get that overwhelming power out of my head. Like in the sense that I couldn’t stop thinking about it and not in the sense that it was in there calling the shots. At least I hoped that wasn’t the case, but who knew how things might work in a game where mind reading was totally a thing.

  It occurred to me that I didn’t know if that extended to mind control, which would be a good thing to know. If some malevolent power could take control of my mind it’d be pretty easy for it to force me to, say, suicide against all the convenient pointy crystal shards sticking up out of the forest floor.

  “Anyone joining me?” I asked. “I’m not going to force you, but I intend to have a look at what’s waiting for us in that dungeon whether or not I have help.”

  Keli stepped forward immediately. She had an eagerness that said she was hoping for some choice loot waiting for her in the cave. Sefia hesitated for a moment, then I heard her sigh and follow.

  Though when I glanced at her the social link had gone down just a little bit more. Damn.

  6

  Dungeon Run

  “I don’t understand,” Keli said. “There should be a lot of nasty stuff in here waiting for us.”

  We moved into yet another wide chamber that looked like something out of antiquity. There were columns running around the place, and all of it was made out of clear crystal that reflected sunlight that had to be coming from the sun far overhead being refracted and reflected a million times over in the massive crystal mountain.

  It was impressive, to say the least. It also made me wish I had a pair of sunglasses that would let me see without constantly squinting, but I hadn’t seen a sunglasses retailer in the town.

  Though that might be a nice growth business if it turned out running through these crystal dungeons was going to become a pretty regular thing in this game.

  I thought of possible answers for why there wouldn’t be anything in here, and there was one I kept coming back to.

  “Did you see those two assholes who came up to the dungeon while we were fighting the crystal guardian?” I asked.

  “I was a little busy fighting off the pig,” Keli said, her tone suddenly dry. “Didn’t see anyone pass through.”

  “Those assholes were jerks,” Treanna said with a sniff. “I hope they get their asses handed to them in here!”

  “I didn’t either,” Sefia said. “But why would someone come along and not assist us in fighting the guardian? That is a heartless thing for a hero to do.”

  “Poor innocent thing,” Treanna said.

  Keli and I exchanged a glance that said it all. The truth of it was there were a lot of assholes in the gamer population, and there were a lot of people out there who really didn’t care what happened to other people as long as they got theirs.

  Ninja looting, kill stealing, ganking, and a number of other terms had popped up when MMOs really started becoming a thing and had since become part of the pop culture lexicon.

  The fact that there were so many negative terms floating around out there associated with games like this was proof of just how nasty some gamers could be.

  “Not all heroes in this world are going to be good,” I finally said. “It’s best to treat all of them as potentially dangerous until they’ve made it clear they want to help you.”

  “And even then you should be careful they’re not telling you what you want to hear so they can take advantage of you,” Keli continued.

  “Kinda funny considering the way you took advantage of…”

  I shot Treanna a warning glance and she shut up, but it didn’t stop her from giggling and blowing me a kiss. She thought she was so fucking funny.

  Sefia frowned, clearly not liking this new view of the “heroes” who were coming to her world.

  “This world you heroes come from must be a truly terrible place if you have people who are willing to act like that when they come to save another world.”

  I shrugged. There were parts of me that were inclined to agree with her. That were inclined to say that maybe part of the problem was that most of the people who were coming into her world right now were the kind of rich self-absorbed assholes who could afford to have the world bend around them, and so they were naturally going to act that way when they came into a world that had quite literally been developed to be a playground for them to enjoy.

  Two things stopped me. The first was that Keli was one of those self-absorbed rich assholes, and she’
d proven to be anything but a self-absorbed asshole so far.

  The other thing that stopped me was simply that I’d known plenty of assholes down on the flatland. There were bound to be a lot of assholes on a planet that was populated by billions, and not all of them had money by a long shot.

  “Not all are bad,” Keli said, scanning our surroundings as she talked. As though she was expecting an attack to come at any moment, and almost disappointed when that expected attack never came.

  The reason for that lack of attacks became apparent as we moved deeper into the dungeon though. I smiled at the sound of fighting up ahead, and if I didn’t miss my guess that meant that my guess had been absolutely correct.

  “What is that?” Keli asked, frowning and turning one of her pointed ears towards the noise.

  “This dungeon is pretty linear, and if I don’t miss my guess that means the assholes who were nice enough to clear it out ahead of us are up ahead fighting,” I said.

  “Oh,” Keli said, then grinned and shook her head. “I guess that makes sense. No instances in this game, so you have to play nice with other people if you’re doing a dungeon run.”

  “Or not play nice,” I said, thinking about how those pricks had basically used us fighting the entrance guardian as a nice convenient way to get around that guardian so they could start exploiting the dungeon proper without worrying about dying at the beginning.

  The pricks. Then again they were nice enough to clear the dungeon out for us, so they weren’t all bad.

  We stepped into a tunnel that curved down and around. I got the impression this entire dungeon was one big vertical shaft that went down on a spiral path, and I wondered how long it would take us to get to the bottom.

  Sure enough when we stepped into the next room a level below there were the assholes who’d laughed at us up top. One of them was a mage of some sort and the other was definitely a fighter. They were doing your standard tank and DPS setup with the fighter taking on several crystal monsters that looked like woodland forest critters, but with evil glowing eyes and their whole bodies were made out of translucent rock.