“Welcome to the dungeon.”

Charlie looked around, then back at the portal leading back to my workshop.

“I uh… I expected that to feel different.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, I guess I watched too much Stargate. I was sort of expecting to get thrown out, or end up covered in frost. Something like that. Not to just walk through.””

“That’s all fair. Speaking of that, I suppose I should tell you about the time dilation.”

“The what now?”

“Time dilation. A singular hour here equals only one minute outside.”

“Sweet Jesus, really? How long have you actually spent here already?”

“Honestly? I haven’t been keeping track of it that well… A few days total I guess?.”

I started walking toward the door with the plan to go down the long hallway toward the two rooms at the end. There I was going to let Charlie dip his toes into fighting monsters for the first time. The lack of footsteps behind me made me turn back. I spun around just in time to see Charlie’s back as he passed through the threshold of the staircase.

“Fuck!”

Ability: Minor Speed activated

In an instant I was behind him. On the back of his plate carrier was a small strap just below the neckline, meant so that an ally could drag you along to safety if you went down. I grabbed onto it and pulled him back. He didn’t even try to reflexively fight me, his body just went limp like a cat grabbed by the scruff of the neck as I pulled him back from the stairs.

The door slammed shut and his body stiffened up as his eyes went from glossed over to focused.

Ability: Minor Speed deactivated

Stamina: 48/50

“Wha— what the fuck just happened? What the hell was that!”

I could hear his heart racing as his body caught up with his sudden fear.

“That’s what I tried to warn you about. This place messes with your head.”

“It… It was like something was calling to me from the top of the stairs, like my mother calling me inside for dinner after a long day playing in the yard. I couldn’t fight it.”

“I couldn’t either. I had that door close behind me.”

“How bad would it have been for me? If you hadn’t grabbed me?”

I helped him stand up straight before answering.

“There are bugs up there, the size of cats with sharp stingers, that are invisible to the human eye. You need thermals to even have a chance of spotting them. Then there are the giant hermit crabs that act like trapdoor spiders with guillotine blades for claws. Those ones can tank half a mag of 7.62x39 to the torso before going down.”

“Christ…”

“Worst part is, you’d be stuck up there until you clear the whole floor.”

“So I’d had been thoroughly fucked.”

“Yep.”

“Is this one of those dedication doors you were talking about?”

“No, just the entrance to the second floor. You still want to stick with it? I’d understand if you want to back out.”

“And leave you in here alone to deal with that? Fuck no!”

“Alright.”

I motioned toward the door leading to the hallway.

“Down that way are two doors. One goes north, the other south. Both rooms have packs of goblins normally, though I cleared one earlier and I don’t think they’ll have respawned yet. We can expect at least four or five goblins, then two side rooms where some orcs hang out.”

“So we’re about to fight real, actual, goblins and orcs?”

“Yep. The goblins are stupid easy to kill, not very smart or durable. A shot or two to the chest is enough to fold them. Their main advantage is in their numbers. Don’t let them swarm you.”

“Roger.”

“The orcs on the other hand? Aim for the head. If you put a few in the torso and let them berserk, they’ll take a ton of rounds before going down.”

“Gotcha, so one of us should take a door while the other watches to make sure we don’t get flanked?”

“Normally I’d say yes, but here its not usually necessary. In general, the mobs don’t leave the rooms that they spawned in. You’d think they’d hear all the noise and come running to help their comrades, but they seem to just ignore me until I’ve either walked into their room, or directly provoked them from outside. They will chase you from one room to another though. They also occasionally try to flee, but that’s rare.”

He nodded along.

“Right… So they have some sort of set aggro conditions.”

“In a way, yeah.”

“Sounds like we could just clear each room by chucking in a grenade.”

“If we had plenty of them to waste, yeah. I think that’d be a waste of firepower though. Also, I think that taking out a mob with excessive firepower destroys their drops, so for now I want to stick with the standard RPG rule of ‘hoard the powerful items for the big boss fights’.”

“Reasonable enough. Grenades are expensive…”

“I think I have a way to make some, but it’ll be resource intensive.”

We came to the end of the hallway and I peeked my head around the south door to confirm that the goblins hadn’t respawned yet.

A spear came flying toward my head.

Ability: Minor Speed activated

I ducked and the spear sailed over my head into the wall behind me. I backed away, leveling my rifle at the door. It had only been a brief moment, but I’d counted four hobgoblins inside, and an orc behind that.

“Back up! Get ready!”

Charlie didn’t question the urgency of it, he calmly stepped back as he brought up his rifle. I heard his safety selector click once. Mine switched to binary as I moved to stand beside him. The two of us backed up in tandem. The hobgoblins came around the corner, shoulder to shoulder, their shields almost perfectly spanning the width of the corridor as they stood three wide. The forth stood behind them, holding its shield up and sideways as if to block incoming arrows.

“Those are goblins?”

“No! Hobgoblins! Those shields can’t stop rifle rounds, but they have deployable smokescreens of darkness, don’t let them use them! Fire!”

At the word his finger squeezed the trigger and his 300 Blackout began to cough. Suppressed weapons are nothing like what you hear in the movies, where two guys can have a shootout in a crowded subway station while the crowd around them doesn’t react. Suppressed weapons are still loud.

That being said, a suppressed 300 blackout running subsonic loads is about as close as it gets to movie quiet. The heavy .30 caliber slugs tore through the wooden shields with little effort. Two of the hobgoblins went down to the controlled pairs of well-placed shots. The other two moved aside, and the orc came sprinting through, axe held high.

I opened fire on his legs to slow down his charge, while I heard Charlie’s safety selector click again. As he fired again I realized he wasn’t running a binary trigger, his rifle was a legit machine gun.

A storm of 200 grain 300 blackout hollow points peppered the orc’s chest, and I saw him slow down from the sheer mass being driven into him.

I brought up my rifle for a final shot to his head, and he fell backward. The other two hobgoblins got a shot each to the chest, and they joined the pile of corpses.

Ability: Minor Speed deactivated

Stamina: 40/50

“Reloading!”

Charlie pulled the nearly empty mag from his gun and replaced it, then waited for me to do the same. He kept his rifle aimed down the hallway as he spoke.

“I take it that wasn’t normal?”

“No, it’s not. Hobgoblins aren’t supposed to show up till the staircase before the dedication room. Even then, just a pair of them.”

“Is it the first time the dungeon has changed something up?”

“No, it changed its layout before, and put in new types of enemies like mimics and elites, but this is the first time its done this much at once.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Maybe it doesn’t like that you’ve brought a friend.”

“Maybe. Be on your toes, we have to assume that we can’t rely on my memory of enemy numbers and locations.”

“Roger.”

He stared at the bodies.

“So uh… How are we supposed to loot them? Cut them open?”

“Nope! Just wait a few seconds, watch the bodies.”

He did, and a moment later the corpses dissolved. I counted five gems.

“Sweet, it looks like we’re able to share loot drops. Those blue crystals there are what I refer to as ‘XP gems’, those let you level up. You’ll need some to initiate the system for the first time, but I’m not sure how many it requires.”

“Gotcha. How are we dividing up the loot?”

“You’ll be taking this first batch wholesale. And probably the rest for this trip. Depends on how many spawn.”

“Alright. How the heck do I use these things?”

He crouched down, while keeping the rifle pointed at the doors, and picked up one of the hobgoblin gems. He rolled it around in his open palm.

“The stuff around here reacts to intent. You just have to hold it and focus on absorbing it. It’ll do the rest.”

The gem disappeared from his hand.

“Anything happen?”

“It felt really weird, but nothing beyond that.”

“Let’s clear the other room, then we’ll have you try more.”

“Right.”

I stepped back down the hall toward the entrance and fished around in my bag for my motion sensors. I stuck them to the wall to cover our backs. With the dungeon making changes again, I was feeling less certain about the previously established rules it had seemed to run on.

I joined Charlie outside the doors.

“We’ll go in the south room together, clear it, then clear the side room.”

I placed another pair of sensors to cover the north door.

“If you hear these things ding, that means they’re coming.”

“Got it.”

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

“Go!”

I stormed into the room and glanced around. I didn’t see any other enemies standing there. I moved to look behind the crates, and found nothing hiding. Charlie kept his gun on the next door.

“Room clear! Through that door is usually another orc.”

“How do you want to handle it? This is a pretty tight space.”

“I’d say a flashbang, given we don’t know what’s in there. But hell, it could be empty now for all I know and we’d just waste it.”

I could send my blade in and see if that provoked it again. Sure, why not? It’d be a good chance to introduce Charlie to some of the magic items we’d be dealing with.

“Idea. I’ve done this before and it worked. We’ll back up and aim at the door while I send in a remote weapon. That should provoke the occupant into coming out.”

“Remote weapon? You got one of those EOD shotgun robots or something?”

“No, nothing like that, at least not yet. Nah, I have the ability to enchant items and I have—”

“Hold up! You’re a fucking enchanter? Dude! How are you just going to gloss over that!”

“Shit, yeah, I guess I should tell you more… Yeah, my class is ‘Artificer’, it lets me enchant stuff, or disenchant to learn more enchantments. I can also make stuff really fast, but it only works on materials from the dungeon.”

“So you can't just enchant my gun?”

“Not directly. I’ve had a bit of luck in making gun parts from the materials in here though.”

“Why not make the whole thing?”

“Tried it with a handgun, but it didn't work. Too complex for the skill I think.”

“Damn.”

“I think I have to do small pieces at a time, I haven’t had the Mana to really try it more, too many other things to do.”

“Mana?”

“Yep. Mana.”

“Figures… How do I get a class?”

“Gotta get to level five first, then we’ll take out the first boss.”

“And then I get my class?”

“Yep.”

“Can’t wait!”

“Anyways! I have a remotely controlled flying dagger.”

“Like Yondu?”

“No, he had an arrow. This is totally different and unique.”

“Right… Look man, if you wanna cosplay, that’s fine by me.”

The Blade left my side and floated in front of me, the tip of it pointed toward the door.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding.”

“I call it my Dancing Blade. This was the first thing I made after learning the Flight enchantment. Well, the second version of it actually.”

“How fast can it go?”

“About thirty miles per hour. It's pretty good for taking out the small fry without wasting ammo on them, or for flushing out the enemy in another room.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? I wanna see it in action!”

Charlie backed up to the opposite wall, and leveled his rifle at the door. I switched to my shotgun and made sure a normal 00 Buck shell was chambered, then stepped through to the small connecting hallway. There I stopped and focused, listening. Faintly, but surely, I could hear it breathing in the other room. The Blade shot in, aiming for where the noises were coming from. I heard it roar, and then took off back out the door.

“Here it comes!”

I dove to the side and took aim with the shotgun, and a split moment later it came charging out with the Blade buried in its ribcage. I fired once, mangling the arm that held its axe. Charlie put five in its chest.

It didn’t slow down. Already berserking, it turned toward me like it knew where I was, and started to step toward me, but another shell to its knee made it drop, and Charlie put another round in its ear. Its body slumped to the floor.

“James, you good over there?”

“Yeah, I was hoping that’d go smoother.”

“I know you said these orcs can be tough bastards, how can anything made of flesh tank that many rounds?”

“The things in here can be unnaturally hardy. The bosses can take multiple mags to the heart or brain without dying. I suspect the dungeon keeps them alive somehow, like they have a health pool that has to be whittled down until they’re allowed to die.”

“Huh…”

I stood up and reloaded, and Charlie kicked at the red gem that was left behind on the floor.

“I recommend you don’t touch that.”

“What? That?”

He pointed at the Berserker Gem.

“Yeah. One-time use consumable, makes you rage like the orcs do. I used one, once, like a sort of magic adrenaline shot.”

“How’d that go?”

“It left me cursed, no idea how to get rid of it yet.”

“Shit, wait, could that be what made you black out and go ape on that guy?”

Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to me before then? It made perfect sense. There was little to no history of berserker fainting in my family, the only times I’d ever blacked out was from drinking or anesthetics before surgery, or blood loss.

“Fuck… You might be right. Double down on that, don’t touch the red gems unless you have no other options.”

“Gotcha. By the way, what’s with the metal pipe mounted to the floor there?”

He pointed at my experiment, still secured to the floor.

“Oh, that? It was a test to see if I could modify the dungeon and how long it’d last. That thing has been there for months here now. I’d consider that experiment a success.”

“So we could potentially wall off a piece of the dungeon?”

“I think so.”

“That’s fucking cool.”

I crossed the room and peaked through the door, sure enough I could see the goblins standing around in the room across the hall. Just as I’d explained, they seemed oblivious to our activities.

I motioned for Charlie to join me in stacking up.

“Alright. No idea if they’ll be trying anything new, so just to play it safe, I’ll take the three closest to us, you take the two furthest, got it?”

“Roger.”

“Entering in three… two… one!”