Dungeon Dalliance

by Charles Andrews

  All of them also had that bright light glowing deep within.

  Trippy, but hardly surprising after what I’d seen of crystal Pig God up top. It would seem that the crystalline corruption that was taking over the local forest was also trapping any unfortunate living creatures that came among the crystals and making copies of them.

  Or something like that. Sort of like a crystal Dr. Robotnik capturing animals and enslaving them, but there was no hedgehog to come along and save the innocent forest critters.

  “And here we have the reason for the dungeon being cleared,” I said, eyeing the room and wondering if there was a way to get around them.

  It wouldn’t be that difficult. There was a raised platform that ran around the edge of the room to a hole on the other side that presumably led to the next curving tunnel that led down into the depths.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Wait,” Sefia said. “You’re not going to stop and assist them?”

  I turned to look at her. She was easy on the eyes, but her ignorance of the way the game world worked was really starting to grate.

  Not that I was complaining too much, mind you, but it still would’ve been nice if I didn’t have her trying to act as my in-game moral compass all the time.

  “We aren’t going to get any XP for helping them kill something when we aren’t part of their group,” Keli said.

  “That means we won’t get favor from the gods for killing the creatures because they’re working together and don’t want us working with them,” I quickly added, once more trying to translate game mechanics into in-world speak so Sefia would understand what Keli was saying.

  “Smooth,” Treanna muttered. “I think she’s slipping.”

  The real bitch was Treanna was right. Every time we had a conversation where the reality of this being a game was revealed I could see the numbers for my social link to Sefia getting lower.

  We were a far cry from when she’d gotten overwhelmed in that temple and… Well, that’d been a hell of a good time, and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get a repeat with the way things were going now.

  “Right,” she said finally, slowly, like she didn’t like it.

  “Besides. They didn’t help us up top. Something tells me they’re as likely to try and kill us as they are to be grateful that we’re jumping in to help them,” I continued.

  “If you say so,” Sefia said.

  She didn’t sound particularly happy about the arrangement. I wasn’t exactly happy about it either, but it’s not like there was anything I could do about these two assholes being a couple of assholes. After all, this was a gaming thing that went back to decades before I’d been born. It’s not like I was going to change that by trying to make nice with these pricks.

  It was easy enough to make it around the edge of the room to the next entrance. That’s when I heard the shout.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, noob?”

  I turned and saw the mage looking at me with such scorn and anger that I worried he was about to attack us. He held a fireball over his hand and it danced from finger to finger for a moment, and for that brief moment I thought he really was about to try and take us.

  Then he turned and fired on a small crystal squirrel with glowing red death in its eyes, and I figured they were occupied enough with the crystal woodland critters that we didn’t have to worry about them coming after us.

  Yet.

  “Come on,” I said. “We need to get a move on.”

  We descended deeper through the tunnels, but there was nothing waiting for us in this tunnel either. I wasn’t sure if that should be an annoyance or a relief. I was well aware that we’d made it this deep through sheer luck more than anything else, and I worried that if we did find anything lurking in here it’d be the sort of thing that could wipe out our little party without much trouble.

  “Be careful as we move through here,” Keli said. “There’s going to be all sorts of nastiness now that we don’t have another group ahead of us going for the boss.”

  “The what?” Sefia asked.

  “The magical entity controlling this place,” I said, thinking back to the mental sparring that happened out among the crystals when we were fighting the guardian that had taken the very odd form of a giant pig.

  It wasn’t exactly a giant marshmallow man, but it was still weird as far as giant monsters went.

  We reached the bottom of yet another spiral and I found myself staring at a room that was the most ornate yet. At least I was pretty sure it was ornate. It was a little difficult to tell what with everything being carved out of pure crystal that pulsed with a bright light that made it sometimes painful to look at directly, but it looked like the inside of a cathedral or an impressive opera house or something. One of the old ones back on earth, or maybe one of the numerous ones they had up in the elevator that were mostly brand new but designed to look like the old stuff down on earth.

  That was all interesting, and all, but I was more interested in the massive crystalline monster in the center of the room. A monster that looked like a hulking half giant made entirely out of crystal.

  It was hanging out in the center of the room for the moment, but I got the distinct feeling that if we moved too far into that room the thing wouldn’t hesitate to attack.

  “The second crystalfiend guardian,” Keli whispered. “I’ve heard of people who got this deep, but I’ve never been here myself.”

  “So that’s the dungeon boss?” I asked, looking it over and realizing there wasn’t a chance in hell we were going to be able to fight that thing.

  “Not even close,” Keli said. “People have distracted the second guardian to get down to the final boss, but they were never able to defeat her.”

  “Her?” I asked. “The thing in this dungeon is a her?”

  I thought of that power earlier, and wondered what an all powerful lady dungeon boss would even look like. Considering the way the art department tended to treat women bosses in games like this I figured it was even money on whether or not the thing was a hideous crystalline monstrosity or something that was so sexy that it hurt to lok at her.

  Looking at the example of Keli the insanely hot elf battle mage and Sefia the holy mage who was also impossibly ball achingly hot I could imagine which way the designers had gone.

  “So what do we do?” Sefia asked. “There’s no way we’re going to defeat a creature that powerful.”

  I grinned as I looked at the two of them.

  “We’re going to do the same thing we’ve done at every other point in this dungeon. Wait for our friends up top to come along, and use their distraction to sneak past the big scary monster!”

  7

  Sardines

  So it seemed like a pretty good plan at first blush. The only problem was we couldn’t very well hang around in our current tunnel hiding place. Not without those assholes passing us by while they were on their way to fight the boss.

  “We’re going to have to get into that room,” I said. “I really hope that thing’s aggro range is far enough out that it’s not going to bother us.”

  “We should be okay,” Keli said. “Everything I’ve ever read about this fight says that the thing won’t attack until you attack it.”

  “Well that’s useful,” I said.

  The more time I spent with her the more I was looking at Keli in an entirely new light. The woman seemed to be a veritable font of knowledge when it came to this game, and I’d been playing enough of these games throughout my life to know that the person who was obsessed with figuring out what made the game tick and could recite that knowledge at a moment’s notice in the middle of an encounter was the kind of person I wanted to have in my party.

  We moved into the room. I kept a nervous eye on the crystal half giant in the middle of the room, but so far it didn’t seem like the thing was all that interested in us. No, it stood there with a giant crystal club that looked like it could do some serious fucking damage, especia
lly to my squishy noob ass, but it wasn’t making any move to attack.

  I guess Keli had been right.

  We moved around the edge until we found a perfect hiding spot. It was a small alcove cut into the dungeon wall with columns on either side. Just large enough for the three of us to fit into, and recessed just enough in the dungeon wall that anyone who came into the room from the front entrance wouldn’t see us.

  Of course that meant we also couldn’t see the main entrance from our hiding perch, but whatever.

  “Guess we’re going to have to hide in here,” I said.

  When we were squeezed into the place it gave us a nice view of the dungeon, but I quickly noticed something else that was a bit of a problem as we were wedged in there. Namely that I was wedged into a tight space with two of the most achingly attractive women I’d ever seen in my life. My body didn’t care that this was all a virtual reality playground being generated between my ears. There were two hot women in there with me, and that’s all certain parts of my body gave a fuck about.

  Certain parts of my body that were stirring and starting to take notice of the fact that I was pressed against two hot mages.

  I shifted around, and that earned me some irritated looks from the ladies. Unfortunately that shifting around also meant that I suddenly found myself pressing against Keli in such a way that she could feel my interest.

  I winced and waited for the moment when she’d turn and slap me. I had visions of the three of us spilling out into the room and attracting that half giant’s attention. Maybe the last thing those two players we’d been following would see was me getting squashed under the half giant’s giant club while I was sporting a giant half chub.

  What a way to go.

  Sure it was also a touch irrational if what she said about that thing not attacking unless it was attacked was true, but I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally under the circumstances.

  She turned and looked at me, and that’s when I realized there was something else I was feeling that was underlying all the malevolent anger from the dungeon that was sort of clouding my ability to read thoughts at the moment.

  There was interest there. Her lips quirked up ever so slightly, and I realized it must be happening again.

  Occupational hazard of being a Healer with psionics abilities. I could read other people’s minds, but it turns out I could also broadcast. And if there was a particularly powerful emotion running through my head, say if I was really horny because it’d been awhile in the real world and a fleeting encounter with Sefia in a temple hadn’t been enough to satisfy a bunch of pent up desire, then I could create a feedback loop with someone else who was interested in yours truly which led to some very interesting things happening.

  The last time this happened I’d been broadcasting the horniness so heavily that it’d affected just about every lady I’d run into. And it turns out every lady I’d run into in the game while that was happening was at least sort of interested in me.

  Which made sense. I was no slouch in the real world, but I definitely had it going on in the game with the whole slightly enhanced sexy mage dude thing I had going for myself.

  And now it was happening again. Keli was looking me up and down, and it was clear she didn’t mind what she was feeling. I also got the sense from her thoughts, difficult to sense because of that boss lurking somewhere in this dungeon who was overriding a lot of my ability to read thoughts, that this was the sort of thing she never would’ve done in the real world.

  Lucky for me this was the game world where there weren’t the same consequences as in the real world.

  Also lucky for me? I was also trapped in this tiny space with another woman who’d already made it more than clear she was interested. I still remembered the way her mouth had worked on me, even if it had been just a touch awkward because I had an archnemesis stalking across the temple floor at the time looking like he was ready to seriously fuck my shit up.

  Sefia looked at me and her eyebrows shot up.

  “Here?” she asked, but her smile told me she wasn’t terribly upset that I was getting worked up here. No, her hand moving down towards my robes and then feeling that spot where my hardness pressed against Keli was enough to tell me how she felt about this new development.

  I probably would’ve done something stupid right then, but those two idiots who’d leapfrogged us at the entrance chose that moment to go charging into the room straight at the half giant.

  I wasn’t sure what they were thinking, but the reaction from the half giant was immediate. It was clear the thing had been ignoring us, because it leapt into action and swung its club at the two idiots as soon as the mage fired off a spell at it.

  I guess Keli had been right about the thing not attacking until it’d been attacked.

  Somehow the fighter managed to dodge, but the mage was slammed against a wall and had a good chunk of his hit points taken out in the process. He immediately pulled some potions out and chugged them, and then he was back in the fight hurling fireballs at the half giant.

  I watched the fight for a moment, and then turned my attention to the rest of the room. It was better than focusing on the distraction that was developing where Sefia was doing her best to get me to have a messy accident right up against Keli’s robes.

  Holy shit this was not the kind of complication I needed right now! Even if it was the kind of wonderful complication that had my eyes rolling into the back of my head.

  No. The game. The fight in the room. That’s what I was concentrating on, and not the way that… Holy shit! I jumped as Sefia’s fingers somehow moved inside my robes and I was treated to the always amazing sensation of someone else’s hand wrapping around my dick.

  I didn’t care how many times that happened. I never got tired of that moment. Keli looked down, seemed to realize what was going on, and licked her lips. Then she pressed herself up against me with deliberate action, and my mouth went dry as I realized she’d started grinding against me.

  Against me and Sefia, I guess, considering she was pressing against my dick and Sefia’s hand that was currently wrapped around my dick as she did her best to have me do something monumentally stupid.

  The boss fight. The room in front of us. I’d concentrate on that. Video games were the ultimate in preventing sex for a large chunk of the world’s population, damn it, and that’s how I was going to use video games right now.

  Only who the fuck was I kidding with that line of reasoning?

  The boss room didn’t seem all that different from any other room we’d come across. Sure it was a little bigger, a little more ornate. Sure there was the half giant in a small pit in the center of the room. Other than that, though, it didn’t seem all that different from any of the other rooms.

  Only…

  My eyes were in danger of rolling into the back of my head a couple of times over because of what Sefia was doing to me, and looking up gave me a good view of what was going on up on the ceiling of this room. Particularly it gave me a good view of all the massive crystal stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Crystals that looked like the kind of formation I’d used to kill the original Pig God and the crystalline copy.

  I wondered if it was the same in here.

  The fighter and the mage looked like they weren’t having much luck with the half giant. Sure they were slamming away at the thing with their spells and weapons, but no matter what they did, those spells and weapons weren’t causing the half giant’s hit points to go down by any appreciable fraction.

  Damn.

  It was enough to make me think that this whole thing was a puzzle of some sort, and I needed to figure it out. I got the feeling that the solution to that puzzle was using my psionics abilities to activate those crystals and use them to relieve the half giant of some of his hit points.

  The only problem? It was sort of hard for me to concentrate on what was happening out there with the hands that were making their way into my pants.

  Keli didn’t say anything. No
, she was looking out at the boss fight, but her hand had moved down and into my robes as well. Not that I was complaining, mind you.

  She looked like she was trying very hard to act like nothing was going on here, but the way her hand moved along my dick and met with Sefia’s as the two of them explored me was enough that I was almost doubling over with the sheer effort of holding in the whoop of joy I wanted to let out.

  Oh fuck it. I couldn’t help myself. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a little bit of fun, so I moved my hand down and felt at the curve of Keli’s ass. It was easy enough to figure out where it was considering she was still pressed against me. It was a show of just how tightly packed we were in this little alcove that she could press her ass against me like that and still find a way to contort her hand so it was moving into my robes.

  I couldn’t figure out how to get into her robes, but I did press my hand against the warmth between her legs. She let out a quiet little gasp that made my dick twitch as I pressed against that warmth and moved my hand up and down as I stared at the dungeon.

  Yeah, I might be looking at the dungeon and the fight that was going on in there, but my mind was definitely elsewhere!

  Only as I explored Keli, as I felt the waves of pleasure moving from my mind to hers and then bouncing back as I found a particularly sensitive spot here and there, I realized something else had changed.

  The dungeon. The mental vibes I was getting from the place seemed quieter than before. That rage was gone, and it was replaced with… lust?

  I was surprised I’d missed it. Maybe it was that I was so preoccupied with the two ladies in front of me doing this delightful hand game while we all acted like we were still playing the actual game, but something about that malevolent creature lurking in the depths of the dungeon had turned from pure hatred to a mixture of hatred and lust.