“We can’t research any of the Magical traps without using up glowyrms,” Minette said.
“Alright. We should be saving those for our Research menu and the spiny lynxes, anyway. What traps are waiting for us in the Other category?”
“We can afford some floor goop. It’ll make them slide across the floor. Other than that, many of them require glowyrms. We’ll also need them for the more advanced versions of the traps.”
“Floor goop might be funny,” Arden said. “We’ve got so many other things on the list to buy first, though.”
“It’s cheap.”
“So is the Basic Net and we’re not rushing to buy that.”
“Be careful, with the way you’re talking, that new leaf you tried to turn is starting to look stale,” Minette said.
Arden withheld her retort. Hold it together, Arden. Rise above her bait. Butting heads wouldn’t help them.
“We can think about it once we have the money and resources to do it,” Arden said, her voice leveled. “Do you think we should go for the spiny lynxes now or try for an upgrade? And, what trap, besides the Basic Net or the goop, do you want to research next? I still like the Snares, but after hearing all of that, I think the Projectiles are screaming at me to buy them.”
“Really? I would’ve thought that you’d want to go with the Blades or Spikes.”
“They look fun, but I’m thinking about the things that we absolutely need right now. We can’t do anything in a ranged fight,” Arden said. “The cattens are good at closing the gap, but we shouldn’t repeat the same strategy as last time. Robin and his friends have probably figured out how to counter us. It’s what I would do if I was them.”
At this point, the adventurers were well-aware of Arden’s “send out cattens en masse” strategy. If Jennifer was smart, then she would figure out a decent way to block them tackling her. Investments in ranged traps would throw her off.
Buff Dude started to slip when the numbers of cattens rose. That weakness could be exploited with some well-placed Hallucination spells. Getting caught in a trap may overwhelm him further.
Robin hadn’t failed as spectacularly as his friends. That didn’t mean he’d be impossible to defeat, though. Him being able to throw his daggers took Arden by surprise the first time. She wouldn’t let that happen again. His vaulting skill was an interesting one. They could take advantage of it through clever trap placement.
“Unless we’re going to research my Projection skill, we should aim for the spiny lynxes first,” Minette decided. “Then we can get the Basic Leghold Snare.”
“You wouldn’t want to focus on Projectiles and skip the spiny lynxes for now? I’m not saying that I dislike your idea. I’m just curious as to your reasoning.”
“I think there are better long-term gains from it. These Basic Traps can’t move around or fight back. Once they’re destroyed, that’s it. We’d have the blueprints to create more Projectiles, but having creatures that can fire at range feels better.” Minette seemed to struggle a bit at the end with her explanation.
“Alright. I like the sound of that.” Even with Minette not sounding completely confident towards the end of her speech, Arden was glad to hear her choice went beyond it sounding like a fun thing to do.
Good. She’s not backsliding. Forward momentum!
“I almost forgot to ask. How did your loot run go?” Minette asked. “What did you pick up?”
The work in the dungeon carried on as Arden and Minette chatted, the former showing the latter her wares. Arden felt like she could breathe easier now.
***
Meanwhile, a certain man by the name of Smokey was going through the opposite. Not the opposite of dungeon work—the human equivalent of which would be strange to describe, let alone imagine—but the opposite of breathing easily.
If anyone asked Smokey how he was feeling, he would claim that he was feeling perfect, if perfect meant sweating buckets while chewing his nails into nothingness.
Hardened sap from the trees clung to the gaps in his teeth. He picked at them with the sharp end of a twig he found. Smokey had taken Arden’s words about cleaning himself to heart. His methods of doing so were questionable, to say the least, but he was willing to do anything to look his best for Minette.
Was it rude to call her something other than Minette the Dungeon Goddess? Smokey grew twice as clammy at the thought. He didn’t want to refer to her incorrectly. If he did, he was prepared to pay for it in skin, nails (not that he had any left), brittle hair, thinning bones, his remaining testicle, his cracked front teeth, anything. She could take anything she wanted from him. Like he said to the Dungeon Pixie, he owed the dungeon his life.
His life wasn’t worth much, admittedly. Smokey was a man who could be measured by his piss. Some people were worth their weight in gold, and others, like dear Smokey, were worth their weight in piss jars. Other than his undying love for the dungeon, he didn’t have much else going for him.
The boss of the mushroom-piss operation surely would send people after Smokey. As soon as Tyson reached the base camp, some sort of “wanted man” bulletin would be put out for him. Bandits would come after him in droves, or so he assumed. It all depended on how much the boss had liked Quinton and Henry.
Smokey had thought he would’ve been terrified seeing them die. At the very least, he expected to lose some of his precious liquid cargo. That was the first time he’d ever seen someone roasted alive. And then, right after that, he got to witness someone mauled to death for the first time. That was a lot of firsts all at once.
But, the Dungeon Pixie’s presence calmed him down. Whatever shock would’ve set in didn’t freeze him. He answered her questions and spoke like he hadn’t seen something that would likely haunt his nightmares for years to come. Would he ever be able to cook without recalling the horrid stench of scorched Quinton?
His recollections hardly mattered in the scheme of things. Smokey wasn’t just a man. He was a vessel, a shell that had been empty until he met the dungeon. Years without his precious dungeon had drained him of his life force. It eked out of him without his realization.
Arden the Endless Terror’s confirmation of Minette’s livelihood renewed him wholly and completely. More than wholly. Holily. The holes in his soul had been wholly holily filled, and that fact granted him so much pep in his step that he might as well have flown to his destination.
It had been years since he had seen Kazzipur. The Kazzipur he left in his teenage years had been a shoddy, run-down place. His hometown was where ennui and malaise congregated to new heights. Smokey half-expected a good portion of Kazzipur’s old citizens to be gone. Then again, knowing its make-up of people, the majority would be too lazy to go anywhere else. Complaining was easier than changing things.
People liked to blame Kazzipur’s failure on the Cagerda attack. Smokey disagreed. To him, Kazzipur’s main issue was its lack of faith. They had no compass, moral or otherwise, to lead them by. Turning away from the light of their dungeon left them in the dark. It only made sense that their lives would be made unfortunate because of it.
With the dungeon’s blessing, Smokey was confident that he could save the people of Kazzipur. It would take time to win them over since they’d drifted so far from Minette’s divine light. Once bathed in it, they’d be cleansed.
The first person he ran into when he entered Kazzipur complained of something similar. “Damn, you dirty son of a bitch, you reek!” she said, holding her nose closed.
“I’m wondering if you know of a man who… Actually, I don’t know what he looks like.”
“You’re going to drive customers away from my stall.” The woman shooed him. She wore a bandanna over her pulled-back hair. Arrangements of biscuits and desserts spanned her cart. Red jelly oozed like a wound out of a smashed donut.
“I could use your help.”
“Sweetheart, look around. Everyone could use some help.”
The town itself looked much more broken than he remembered it
looking in his youth. Chunks were missing out of roofs. Some of the buildings’ walls looked rotten, the distinct smell of mold wafting from them. Smokey could smell it where he stood, it was that strong. It was as if there had been a flood that sogged everything.
Smoke in the sky spelled out the occupied buildings. The broken windows on the smokeless ones suggested they’d been deserted. As Smokey examined his surroundings, townspeople shot him dirty looks. He assumed they were doing so out of defensiveness towards his judgment.
A pair of children ran after a chicken. Their mother chided them, sharply warning them not to kick the chicken lest they want the entire coop to come and peck their eyes out. Smokey would’ve found that warning a tad over the top, but he knew it had its legitimacy.
When he was around their age, Troy J Gibbons, his neighbor, incurred the wrath of a pack of chickens and didn’t live to see another day. Technically, he did live, but he went blind. That was far from the worst chicken versus human tale he knew.
Someone, man or woman, Smokey couldn’t tell, shouted in a shrill voice about a sale on potatoes. Said potatoes looked more like painted rocks. Other merchants in the area took a more laid-back approach. They allowed their wares to do the talking, and, honestly, the wares weren’t saying much.
So many of them sold crafted items that weren’t worth their materials. Their excuses for weaponry looked more like glorified toothpicks, they were so short and small. Nearby, Smokey spotted Kazzipur’s few storefronts, jammed next to one another. They didn’t look any better than the stalls.
It was difficult to see through the grime smeared on the glass, but the blacksmith didn’t have much on his or her racks. Naked mannequins posed in the clothing stores. The general store’s shelves were close to barren.
How Kazzipur still existed was a mystery. Perhaps there was an inborn stubbornness within them that made it so their awful circumstances wouldn’t destroy them. They held on, and even if he was far removed from Kazzipur, he took pride in that steadfast aspect. Their resilience was something to be marveled. It currently took a less than ideal form, but it was still something to be commended.
“Are you going to buy something or are you going to continue to stink up the place?” the biscuit lady asked.
“I need to find a rogue named Robin, a mage named Jennifer, and a warrior named Buff Dude. They’re not from here. Have you seen or heard anything about them?”
“People wander in here from time to time,” she said. “I don’t bother to catch their names.”
“But, foreign adventurers are people that you must notice. Why, when I was a child, we always cheered whenever adventurers showed up. It was an exciting change from the day-to-day struggle. At least, that’s how my father put it.”
“Adventurers are normal people who like wasting their time fighting monsters. Big whoop. Things have changed. If you’re not going to buy anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You smell like boiled broccoli doused in crap.”
Smokey clutched the blanket he had draped around his shoulders. “Why, I never!”
“Do I have to call the guards on you?”
“Kazzipur has guards?”
“I’ll introduce them to you. Guards! Stop this thief!”
“I didn’t take anything!”
The woman kept screaming for attention. Smokey looked around desperately, not seeing anyone that would vouch for him. The people who watched were doing so with rapt attention, like they were hungry for entertainment. He scratched through his beard, the curls catching on his fingers.
His nervous habit calmed him down until a guard finally arrived. A black brimmed hat rested tight to his skull. Tufts of black and silver hair stuck out from under it. The silver hair came as a surprise given the guard’s youthful appearance. He didn’t look a day over 18.
The guard cleared his throat. “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?” He suddenly choked. “What’s that smell? I think something’s gone rotten in your booth.”
“It’s him!” She entirely unnecessarily pointed at Smokey. “He won’t stop bothering me.”
“Hey, I was being nice,” Smokey said. “I was only asking her some questions.”
“I gave him his answers and he wouldn’t leave. He’s getting in the way of my customers.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, what customers?” the guard asked.
“I would have them if he wasn’t here,” the woman said.
“Alright, the easiest solution to this is for you to come with me, sir. Let’s talk.” The guard whistled for Smokey to follow him away from the booth.
Not putting up a fight, Smokey walked after the guard. The baker shot one last insult in his direction. He took the high road, not responding to it. For all he knew, she was suffering from a case of bitchy-itis.
“What’s your name?” the guard asked once they were sufficiently far enough away from the booth and the other people along the street.
They stood in front of an alleyway between some houses in need of repair. A tired-looking woman breast-fed her baby on the stoop. Smokey looked away, avoiding any intrusions on their privacy.
“My old name’s dead. I’m known as Smokey these days.”
“Smokey, as in the cat worshiper?”
“I worship the greatest dungeon there ever is and ever will be.”
The guard’s face lit up with recognition. “It’s you! I can’t believe I recognize you through that beard.” He waved his hand over his face. “Do you remember me? It’s been so long. I think I was a kid the last time you were around. I was in your dungeon fan club.”
“It’s not a fan club. It’s a religion,” Smokey corrected.
“Right, a religion. Heh, those were fun times. We used to run around meowing like cats and drawing on each other’s faces. I got real good at it. Face painting’s how I met my fiancée, believe it or not.”
“Wonderful.”
“D’you think you can guess who I am? I bet you never thought I’d go on to become a town guard.” Nothing about the guard rang any bells for Smokey. “Think hard. I was much shorter back then.”
“George?” He took a stab in the dark.
“Nope.”
“Patrick?”
“Guess again.”
“Joe? Terry? Brandon?”
“Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It starts with an N.”
“Nate? Nelson? Neil?”
“Yes! I knew you couldn’t have forgotten me. I’m the one and only Neil Badman, Kazzipur’s hardest working town guard. How’s everything going for you? You seem to be a lot more pungent these days,” he said.
“After everything fell through, I moved to the forest to be closer to my dungeon.”
“It doesn’t look like the forest has been very kind to you. Here, there’s a public shower near the edge of town you can use. We can catch up with some drinks in the tavern. You look like you could use something to eat. It’ll be my treat.”
“What I’m really here for is—”
“Nonsense! You don’t have to pay me a single thing. We’re old friends.”
“No, what I’m trying to say is—”
“Seriously, Smokey. I’ve got this. Just accept the favor. I owe you after everything.”
“Okay.” The Dungeon Pixie had mentioned something about him needing to get cleaned up a bit. He’d do that, then carry on with the mission.
After a trip to the public shower stall, he and Neil went to Kazzipur’s tavern. The tavern functioned as a hub for information. It was the place that out-of-town adventurers visited first. As a child, Smokey would go to the tavern to spy on any adventurers that may have wandered into Kazzipur. He’d listen in on their stories, collecting a fair amount of entertainment as he did so.
The “adventuring bug” never bit him. He never felt an urge to go on quests or raids or anything like that. Smokey was content with the life he led as a forager’s son. That is until he got lost in the forest, met his dungeon, and was ass-chomped by the “devout worshiping b
ug.” He had been forever changed since then.
A rowdy crowd gathered in the back of the tavern. Seeing Neil, they quieted their conversation to whisper levels. Every so often, the biggest guy in their small group banged the table, trying to do his best to stifle his laughter.
Next to him sat a redheaded girl wearing a pointed hat who looked like she didn’t want to be there, a cherubic blonde boy dressed in all-white, and another woman, older than the rest, who scratched the table with an arrowhead.
“The potatoes here are good,” Neil said. “They’re not as burnt as you would think. Looks can be deceiving.”
“I’ll have them, then.” Smokey couldn’t remember the last time he had a properly cooked meal. “Not as burnt as you would think” was an improvement over his usual fare.
A bunch of WANTED posters hung on the far wall, tacked with darts from a game no one played anymore. The sketches depicted a woman with cat ears, the bottom of the paper denoting that she didn’t always have them. Anyone who captured her would be rewarded handsomely.
A server waddled over to take their order. Neil took care of it.
“Do you know anything about that poster?” Smokey asked. He gestured to it.
“Yes, that. Seems like you’re not the only one obsessed with cats around here. A bunch of adventurers stormed around the town, saying that if anyone saw a girl who looked like that, come and see them. They paid the tavern owner to have those posters strung up.”
“Who?”
“Gertie, the tavern owner,” Neil said.
“No, I’m talking about the ones who stormed around the town. Who were they?”
“See that colorful bunch in the back? The people who stand out like a sore thumb? They’re the ones who did it. They’re going around saying that they’re going to take care of that pesky dungeon for us. We’ve been telling them that no one cares about the dungeon, but they’re not listening.”
“I care about the dungeon.”
The Trash Tier Dungeon Page 16