Dungeon Dalliance

by Charles Andrews

  Holy fucking shit. Was the broadcasting I was doing seriously working on that scale and affecting whatever creature was lurking in the dungeon depths?

  8

  Boss Fight

  “Um, I think we might have a problem here,” I said, that lust washing over me and telling me there seriously was something weird going on here.

  Keli turned and looked just a touch irritated. She put her free hand up to her lips. The meaning there was clear. It was time for me to shut the fuck up and enjoy what was going on here without ruining the moment by opening my big mouth.

  That meaning was made all the more clear because I could sense her emotions on the matter, and there was irritation there mixing with lust.

  Meanwhile out in the dungeon proper those two assholes were still fighting the guardian. I decided to do a little experiment to distract me from what was going down in here, and fired a stun off at one of the massive crystals hanging over the fight.

  The reaction was immediate. A spell appeared on my spell bar, and when I targeted the giant and let loose with that spell magic fired out of the crystal and slammed into the giant’s shoulder creating a spectacular explosion of crystals.

  “What was that?” Sefia hissed, her hand stopping what it was doing under my robes and causing me to whimper in frustration.

  The two assholes had also stopped and were staring in astonishment. The mage looked down at his hands as though he was wondering if he’d somehow done that.

  I grinned. I’d been right. That thing could absolutely be killed. The only problem was there was the whole issue of the half giant being so powerful that it could kill us if we tried to take it on directly.

  But there were two patsies out there who were more than willing to act as meat shields while the boss fight went down. The only question was whether or not this was the kind of game where a monster’s hit points reset the moment it was killed, or if we could steal the kill.

  I guess there was only one way to find out.

  I hit another crystal with another stun, then channeled that energy into the half giant. Again it was hit, and again it went down by about five percent. It bellowed in rage and then turned that rage on the only two creatures it could see.

  It was enough to make me wonder if these alcoves had been put in here on purpose. A nice spot where someone could hang out and snipe at that crystal motherfucker without worrying about drawing aggro.

  Had people been playing this dungeon all wrong?

  Unfortunately hitting the giant a second time was enough to completely pull Sefia’s attention away. I whimpered as her hand left what she was doing, and she turned to stare at me. It was an intense stare. The kind of stare that said she was very interested in whatever the fuck it was that was happening with those crystals, and she more than suspected I had something to do with it.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed.

  Keli also stopped her attentions, which was just as frustrating. She looked between the two of us, genuinely confused, and I wanted to tell her to keep going.

  Only I could sense that the moment might be gone. I’d gone and ruined it by trying to solve the mystery of how to kill the big scary giant creature with the tools the game designers had put in place.

  Tools Sefia clearly didn’t approve of if the way she was glaring at me and suddenly refusing to be nice enough to give me a low key handjob.

  Fuck.

  “Um, what do you mean what am I doing?” I asked, trying my best to look innocent.

  From the way her glare only deepened I wasn’t doing a very good job of playing the innocent act. Damn.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” she said, reaching down and grabbing my favorite piece of anatomy again.

  To say that the way she was grabbing that favorite piece of anatomy was a hell of a lot less tender than what she’d been doing half a minute ago would be one hell of an understatement. It took all of my control not to scream out in pain, and even then I let out a quiet little whimper that wasn’t at all manly.

  “Tell me what you did,” she growled. “You’re messing with powers you have no way of understanding.”

  I spared a thought for that malevolent emotion that was pulsing through this place and felt like it could crush all of us with the sheer force of its will if it wanted to. Though of course it wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. Not when the game design told the AI controlling the thing that it needed to stay under wraps until the moment the players entered its sanctum sanctorum and it was time for a good old fashioned boss fight.

  Not to mention there was still a lot of lust mixing in with that malevolent irritation. Almost as though I was projecting and hitting the dungeon boss.

  Which could get very interesting if the thing was as terrifyingly ugly as your typical dungeon boss.

  “I’m using stun spells to power those crystals and use them to fight the monsters!” I said, both screaming internally and remarkably keeping my voice under control at the same time. “There’s something about those crystals that sets them off when I hit them with a psionics spell.”

  Her grip tightened even more and I whimpered again. Hey, I’m sure there’s someone out there who’s into that sort of thing. Show me a bit of human behavior and I’ll show you someone who’s turned on by it, no matter what it is or how gross it is. It’s just that I wasn’t that person, and having someone squeezing my favorite piece of anatomy like that wasn’t my idea of a good time!

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said.

  “It makes sense,” Keli said. “People have been having trouble fighting this dungeon, and yet there had to be a secret to it. The monster outside was difficult to get past, but the monsters inside were easy enough that people who are near the local level cap had no trouble killing them. There’s no reason why the bosses should be any more difficult, unless there’s a trick to it. I think you’ve stumbled across something!”

  “Thanks,” I squeaked. “Now could you help me by letting go of my junk please?”

  Sefia glared at me for another long moment. A moment that stretched out and left me thinking she had no intention of letting go. Then finally, blessedly, she loosened her grip just a little. She also ran her thumb along the tip just to let me know there were no hard feelings.

  Even though there was very much a hard feeling where she’d been grabbing me. Booyah. Maybe I was into that after all. Or maybe it was just that any hot lady’s hand on my junk was a good thing as far as that junk was concerned.

  “This is more of that magic from the world beyond this one, isn’t it?” she asked. “Something the gods have declared for this world that I don’t understand?”

  There was something about her tone that said she didn’t approve of it in addition to not understanding it, but whatever. She was a part of the game world, and I didn’t have time to explain game mechanics to her. Out in the main chamber the fighter and the mage were having a bit of trouble, and it looked like they weren’t going to be long for the world.

  Which meant I didn’t have long to whittle this thing down while it was targeting players it couldn’t take out in one shot.

  “Something like that,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something I need to take care of here.”

  Sefia sniffed, but she let me move past her without trying to grab me in a very sensitive spot again. Thank God for that, though I got the feeling that was going to be hurting like a motherfucker for awhile. There were just parts of a person’s body that weren’t meant to be manhandled, or womanhandled in this case, like that.

  I hit another one of the crystals with a blast. The reaction was interesting, to say the least. There was the usual stuff where a new spell appeared on my spell bar, but more fascinating than that was the angry reaction from the dungeon all around us.

  The whole place shook. That was enough to cause the crystal creature out there to stumble forward and fall. Right on top of the mage who looked up at it with terror for a moment before he was crushe
d under the thing.

  The half giant also lashed out with its club and sent the fighter flying across the room. He slammed into the wall and went down, his hit points completely and totally drained.

  I figured if we were going to do this then this was the moment. I’d hoped my unwitting meat shields might stay alive for a little longer, but whatever. I’d do what I had to with what I had.

  I leapt out of our little alcove and hit crystals overhead with stun spells as fast as they came off their cooldowns. I also tried a mez and was rewarded with a different blueish blast slamming into the giant. A blast that hit it with a bunch of debuffs.

  That wasn’t exactly hurting the thing, but I’d take it if it made fighting the thing easier.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  The voice was disembodied and it threw me for a loop. For a terrified moment I worried that maybe the creature I kept feeling, mentally speaking, lurking in the depths of the dungeon was invading my mind and yelling at me for daring to actually take on one of its guardians.

  Then I realized that voice sounded familiar. It belonged to the mage. I knew it because he’d been yelling at me while we were out fighting crystal Pig God, and now he sounded pissed off that we were fighting and taking on the crystal half giant and actually sort of winning.

  Either the game didn’t care about someone kill stealing, possible, or I’d already done most of the damage in the fight against the bastard so the game was giving us the kill. Which included not resetting the encounter when the first two idiots to take the thing on were knocked out of the fight.

  That must’ve been a private message. I thought about sending a private message back and spoke. I could hear my voice, but from the lack of a reaction from Keli and Sefia they couldn’t hear me. I guess the private messaging system opened a channel that other people couldn’t hear, which was damn convenient since I didn’t really have time to type out a response.

  Not that there’d been much typing, come to think of it.

  “Kicking some ass,” I said. “Have fun playing with yourself while you watch us do what you couldn’t.”

  “We were taking that thing fair and square you kill stealing noob!” the guy shouted. “You’re gonna get reported for this shit!”

  I tuned him out. His voice muted to a low buzz. Now that was an interesting trick. All the game commands seemed to be mental, which totally made sense. The damned thing was wired directly into my brain, after all.

  I concentrated on the fight. If that half giant managed to get up then we were going to be in a world of hurt, but it would seem that hitting the thing over and over again with the spells at my disposal was enough to keep it from turning around and trying to kill my ass.

  Also, the more I hit the thing the more powerful the attacks seemed to get. Like I was hitting it with a combo that built up my attack power. Meanwhile there was that steady thrum in the back of my mind. The feel of the creature lurking in the depths. Whatever the fuck it was. Its thoughts alternated between fury, echoes of that lust I’d felt when I was packed in with my lady friends, and some of the curiosity that’d been there when its presence moved out into the crystals outside the dungeon to have a look at what had defeated the crystal guardian.

  Whatever. I didn’t have time to concentrate on that. I concentrated on hitting the crystals and using this thing’s power against it. I concentrated on firing on the guardian, and…

  Something weird happened. Something I totally didn’t expect.

  Social link created! Teiafa!

  Current level: 1

  You’ve caught the interest of the powerful crystal spirit Teiafa. Proceed with caution.

  Huh. Well that was both interesting and ominous. I figured that meant there was an equal chance that I’d either unlocked something very powerful here, or I’d just discovered something that was going to kill my ass.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to be a net positive in the moment. The crystals pulsed overhead and I felt a presence like what I’d felt outside when the thing came into the crystals and surrounded us. A moment later there was a blast from all the crystals at the same time, and the crystal half giant that’d been guarding the place shattered into thousands of little pieces.

  Seriously. It looked like an ice sculpture that’d been knocked over.

  Damn. Talk about one way to end an encounter!

  9

  Healers Suck

  I figured first things first. I walked over to the half giant and pushed shards of crystals out of the way. It didn’t take long before I found what I was looking for, though it was just a little difficult considering the item I was looking for was only differentiated from all those crystal chunks lying around by the metal attached to it.

  “What do you have there?” Keli asked. “Anything that’d be good for a battlemage?”

  I looked at the thing. It was a metal circlet with an intricate pattern. It looked like silver or white gold or something. Maybe even platinum. Basically it looked way richer than anything I’d be able to afford in the real world.

  I did an inspection on the thing, and realized that Keli was going to be disappointed if she was hoping for loot that would help out a battlemage. It would appear that the game was still rewarding the person who’d done the majority of the killing, and in this case the person doing that killing was me.

  Even if it was indirectly through exploiting a game mechanic and not by directly whacking on the damned thing.

  Psionicists’s Circlet

  Psionicist only.

  10% bonus to duration of all Psionics crowd control abilities.

  5% bonus to mana pool.

  +20 points to Mental Fortitude.

  Huh. Well that looked interesting. I didn’t know enough about the way statistics worked in this game to be able to tell whether or not this was something good, but something told me it was a nice piece of gear that was going to help me out on my journey.

  Especially since the whole Mental Fortitude thing seemed to be the key to me being able to do my thing when I was fighting.

  “Looks like it’s for me,” I said. “Class only.”

  “Damn,” Keli growled. “It’d be nice if this dungeon would throw something my way already.”

  I kept my thoughts on the matter to myself. Something told me she wouldn’t be happy if I started going on about how the dungeon wasn’t throwing things her way because she wasn’t carrying her weight. It’s not like it was her fault she hadn’t figured out the trick.

  “We defeated a second crystal guardian,” Sefia whispered, looking the thing over. “I can’t believe it.”

  I kept walking through the rubble, then realized something weird was going on. There was a faint warmth coming from just over my shoulder. When I looked there I saw the staff I’d completely forgotten about in the middle of battle. It was glowing now, and when I pulled it out a whole new set of spells appeared in my action bar.

  Huh. I probably should’ve spent the time to get to know this bad boy a little better back when I first got it. I’d been understandably distracted at the time, but I could at least make up for lost time.

  In particular the thing had an ability called Levitate that looked like it could be used to move things around. It scaled based on my Mental Fortitude, so I figured it was a good thing I’d just gotten a boost to that stat with my circlet.

  I held the staff out in front of me and commanded it to start moving stuff out of the way. It obeyed the command and the shards of crystal half giant moved out of the way clearing a path.

  Sure it was something that was only sort of useful in one scenario, we’re talking clearing out the remains of crystal versions of whatever the fuck we happened to kill in these crystal dungeons, but I got the feeling that was going to wind up being a pretty useful ability when all was said and done.

  Especially if there were more of these places where “crystal corruption” was seeping into the real world and bending everything to make it into something fucked up.

&nb
sp; “How are you doing that?” Keli asked.

  “The staff has a Levitation command,” I said. “Lots of other nice actions too. With this thing I can actually start maybe not dying against stuff!”

  Though I was starting to wonder if there were maybe more abilities I could use. Sure it had the whole psychic ability to move things around like I was a force user, but that Psionic Blast also looked like it could be very interesting. I thought about the way I’d hit those crystals with psionic abilities and they’d blown up the scary monster real good, and wondered if this was maybe something along those lines.

  “Nice toy to have,” Keli said, a hint of jealousy touching her voice as she looked at me playing with one of the fun new toys I’d gotten on this dungeon run.

  “You’re telling me,” I replied.

  We moved through the sharp half giant shards to the other end of the room, and that’s when I saw them. The bodies of the two assholes who’d been so quick to mock us when they thought they could get around us and get into the dungeon. I frowned.

  “What the fuck are they still doing here?” I asked.

  Sure I hadn’t seen what happened to people when they were killed in-game, but something told me they shouldn’t have been a couple of corpses hanging around. Most games like this had some animation to let you know the player was no longer inhabiting their body, but when I inspected them it showed all of their gear and stats.

  The only thing to indicate there was a problem, other than the fact that they looked like they’d gotten into a fight with a half giant and lost spectacularly, was that their hit points were down to zero.

  “Hey man,” a voice said in my head. Just like earlier when they’d been mocking me in the middle of our fight.

  “What the hell do you want?” I growled, not bothering to look around this time. I knew it had to be one of these two pricks talking to me in a private message.