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Corvayne woke up in a dark bedroom. He could see outlines of most of the room from slices of dim light streaming through gaps where garbage bags didn't quite cover the windows. Seru was next to him, and it smelled like a bottle of perfume she found, with sweat mixed in. Oh yeah. They had slept together. Which meant she would ask how it was, he'd say 'I can't remember', then she'd badger him into sex again. Corvayne wondered when he had changed from the pariah in his village to sleeping with strangers on a bi-weekly basis.
Seru stirred, and opened an eye. “Mmmm, how did it feel?”
“I barely remember, I was tired and just wanted to sleep.” Corvayne shrugged.
He felt Seru should have been upset. Instead she laughed and he felt her warm and wet tongue on his finger. “Who's the dumb one now?” she asked in a breathy growl. Or tried too, it was hard to do that while eating a finger.
“Wait, what?” Corvayne looked at her sucking on his hand. Then looked away. No repeat performance for Seru. No way.
She popped her mouth off his hand for a moment to laugh. “You were really rough last night and called me names while you ravaged me...”
Corvayne didn't want to tell her that the name calling was not entirely role playing at that point. “I'm going back to sleep.” He pulled his hand away and rolled to face away from her.
“Mmm, you sure you don't want to push me down and...”
“I made a mistake.” Corvayne muttered to himself. A big one.
“I'll not tell anyone about your mistake if you fuck me again.” Seru pushed herself against him. Corvayne felt how warm her skin was and tried not to let himself get sidetracked further.
“More blackmail... why did I save you again?”
She was rubbing his back. “Don't be like that! And I think we might have had a shot if you didn't come along. Well, we could probably could have gotten to the village.”
He had an image of those skeletons and scraps of cloth from the first time he had come into the tower. He couldn't tell Seru about it, because blurting out he went back in time would mean Seru writes about it, and he had read a few stories about time loops and understand that letting someone know about a loop was the first step to them joining a loop, which would mean Seru all the time, every time.
The thought of Seru forever made Corvayne bolt out of bed.
“Hey come back! Corvayne, we don't gotta go anywhere!”
He got up and got dressed. What the hell had he been thinking?
“I'm going to go find a chest. Very nice, but not those. I mean the kind that has treasure.”
Seru started pushing the covers off. “Wait! Let me get dressed! I'm coming too!”
Corvayne stepped over a twitching and bleeding undead monster and smiled when he saw a wood chest at the back of the garage they had just broken into. Zig zagging back and forth up and down the street, they kept an eye out for drones or Wick while looting. Seru had stayed back and let Corvayne deal with a variety of zombies prowling the streets. He was feeling more and more that the 'strawberry hell' floor's tree monsters were a massive outlier on difficulty, and perhaps even the first floors goblin packs were too, mostly because the zombies were really, really, really easy to kill. Slow, soft, and he only needed to hit their head and they'd collapse. No need to strain himself or use skills.
He had given Seru a backpack they found in one of the other houses. At his suggestion, she had been loading up on jewelery. He had to consider the sort of things he could sell in some way without leaving a trail. That or find a rich merchant inside of the tower.
He snapped his attention back to the wood chest resting on the concrete floor. First, he did his usual mimic and trap finding routine. In flicking the lid open with his spear he set off a small gas explosion and so they had to wait a few minutes for the garage to ventilate before Corvayne could go back in. He helped the process by using [Storm-Thrust] a few times.
Inside the wood lockbox was a mixed bag of copper and silver pieces, a healing potion, and a jacket with hexagonal patches on it. He handed it to Seru.
“We don't know if it's cursed or not, so consider...”
She put it over the black dress she had taken from the previous house. “Oh check this out!”
She hit an arm with the side of her fist, and the hex patches hardened.
“Ok. Skipping a few steps, but go ahead. You can keep it.”
“Oh you're sweet on me now that you feel guilty for pounding me?” She pushed her cleavage up.
“Use your reporter skills and try to guess what I'm thinking.”
“Tch. I know. You don't like me yet, but you already care enough you want me to be safe. I'm a big girl. I can handle a one night stand. Dice over dollars I bet you're the type of guy who thinks a woman sleeping with you is a commitment.”
Corvayne looked back at her as he checked the street and hill with the entrance. No signs of a party. He strode out into the road and checked the house he had marked. Door was still closed. No one had painted a red X on the door either, which he had put into the note as a way to signify if they came, didn't see him, and were going to look around for him. He spoke as he walked.
“I think sleeping with someone is a commitment. From me to them.”
“Is that why you're so hung up on Wick? Oh did she pop your cherry? Congrats!”
“Maybe.” Where was the next pack of monsters?
“Hey, don't be embarrassed! That's really cute! Hey, she told you that you should sleep with me on like the first day. I thought you guys were both swingers.”
Corvayne moved around the corner of a house and unlocked a white fence. “She said I could. Yes, I know she wants to sleep with different people. But I don't like the idea. I don't want to add more people to our relationship. I've failed once already.”
Corvayne stopped talking and focused on checking for threats. A trio of zombies stood up from behind a bush, but were blocked off by a chain link fence. Corvayne strode forward and stabbed all three in the head, dropping all three in a second flat.
Seru followed him as he used his shadow hands to almost instantly shift his two handed blade into his hands while a spare took his spear. The weird misty limbs had gotten quicker and stronger. [Sundering Blade] with the huge sword blasted a path through the fence. He put it away.
“Hey, if you wanna talk about your relationships, like, I've had a LOT of them since I started school and since I started being an influencer.” Seru followed a little closer then he'd like as he stepped over pieces of broken fence.
“I don't really like talking Seru. I don't mind listening.” He also didn't want to talk with Seru about Wick, and how he always felt he was on thin ice. Nor did he want to talk about how Hari was probably at her home and he might not see her again.
“Oh yeah. Mister stone faced leader. Ya know, I think it's funny when I see the mask crack and you, like, feel something. I love seeing a reaction, you know?”
He used his spear to break an old lock on a garden shed. Opening it, he saw a bunch of dusty gardening tools, and on wire metal shelf was a pair of red potions. Maybe the dungeon expected people to use way more health potions? He pocketed them while not paying her any mind.
Seru couldn't stand thirty seconds of silence it seemed, as she started up again. “You know, I don't just sleep with anyone. I was just teasing you before.”
Corvayne turned and looked at her with as much doubt as he could summon. “Okay.” He then resumed walking through the back yard, dodging around sun-bleached patio furniture and a rusted grill. It was odd that the houses had graffiti covering them, but nothing else did. It was also all exterior. In theory, with the dull amber color of the sky, everything should be in sepia tones too, while he was thinking about how the world of the dungeon didn't quite operate as it should.
Her voice broke his train of thought. “How many of these dungeons have you done? What's the highest floor you've gotten to?”
He considered lying, but decided to just be honest. “Three dungeons. Six floors.”
Seru hurried to walk next to him. “If I don't talk about this, would you let me come along on your next run?”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I thought you want to do journalism.” He turned his head to look her in the face. She was cute when she wasn't making stupid faces, he had to admit.
“It doesn't pay the bills!” She said with a laugh.
“You said your parents are rich.” Corvayne moved to the backdoor into a garage and tried pushing his shadow hand through a lock to open the door from the other side. Didn't work. Worth a shot.
“You were paying attention. Yeah, they are rich. But they only support me because it's safer then me getting into trouble!”
“If you disagree with their thought process then does that mean you really like this?” He gestured to the sky and spotted a far off swarm of drones. Oh they spotted him too. “Hold your thoughts a minute.”
He threw his cloak over her, eliciting a startled squeak, and ran into the street and used [Cross Skill: Whirling Axes]. As soon as the first spear spun out he used it again, sending another projectile out. Both connected and two drones fell out of the sky. As the other drones closed in and started shooting at him, Corvayne ran sideways in a zigzag.
He felt something like a punch to the face but kept moving rather than deal with tearing hot pain in his cheek. He tasted blood and spat it as he rolled then pivoted, the clatter of bullets hitting the pavement behind him. He moved in a serpentine pattern, and after thirty seconds of side lunges the popping noises slowed then stopped, replaced by a few clicks as the robots ran out of ammo. They switched to trying to dive bomb him, and Corvayne turned to meet them.
One [Flows-Like-Water] later the drones were on the ground, broken and sparking. He collected a handful of silver slugs, then felt something hard clink against his teeth and spit a bullet out. He dug around in his pack for a healing potion he had just grabbed, popped it's yellow plastic top, then took a half swig. His cheek burned then started to knit itself back together.
“Are you ok? You just got shot in the face!”
Corvayne tried to talk and it hurt like crazy. He glared at Seru and waited a few more seconds for the potion's effects to finish.
“It hurts, but I'm okay. They are using something a step up from BB guns. Also they are pretty much firing money at me. One man's injury is another man's meals for a day.”
“Oh those are silver bullets? Was there a werewolf problem or something here?”
Corvayne smashed a garage window then pushed his shadow hand through the hole. The maximum range had gone up, he could reach ten feet to the door to unlock it. “Don't say things like that unless you want it to be true. I was asking, do you think you can deal with this lifestyle? Where there's lots of danger?”
“Uh maybe? But my folks, see, they'd be crazy about this. They are both conservative Gygaxians. They think when you die you get teleported to a fantasy world if you've done good in your life. One with level ups and elves and everything. For last rites they even have a priest with a truck bumper on hand because they believe it will get them to heaven.”
This garage had a car parked in it that reminded him of Mister I's truck. There was the usual mix of workbenches, as well as what looked like a loft above the garage for storing things.
“But you also think that you gained... levels? I only read a book that had something like it, and I admit I didn't really get it. Killing monsters gives you invisible energy, and it's not a matter of actually practicing with a weapon, it's just 'killing monsters makes you better at spears' right?”
He opened a few drawers. Mostly old tools. On a hunch he popped the trunk of the lone car in the garage. No treasure, but might be a place the dungeon... the tower would put a chest.
“I don't think I've gained levels.” Seru added as Corvayne jumped up to grab a support above the garage door track, then pulled himself up to look at items piled on plywood boards strung over the otherwise empty garage. He saw old buckets, a broken chair, tomato cages... Oh! Another chest.
“Okay, so you don't think you gained levels, and were just messing with Gary?” He spoke, then grunted and pulled himself up using the metal crossbeams supporting the plywood. “Another chest, stand by the door.”
He craned his neck and saw the woman walk over to the door. She was biting her lip while thinking. “No, I mean I KNOW I gained levels. I'll give away a secret about levels, I can tell my own level.”
“Go ahead and tell me, but we are getting away from talking about your goal of being a journalist.” He sent his shadow hands up to the treasure chest. With the limbs he could move it and try to open it from around a corner. Handy when Hari wasn't around. Holding himself up was digging into his hands, but he needed to stay off the floor to touch the chest with his shadow limbs.
“Like, why do you care? You just sounded like a shrink.” Seru put a lot of derision on the last word.
“A shrink?” Corvayne stopped and turned to look at her. He felt a shadow hand scratch his head.
“Psychologist... you know sometimes you act like you grew up in locked in a box or something. A shrink!”
Oh. Sort of like Mister I. He turned back to letting his shadow limbs feel the chest “Well, it has to do with control. To fight with a weapon? Takes self control. Doing something unpleasant or painful? You have to be in charge of yourself.” He lowered himself down so he was once more hanging three feet above the floor from the beam, then sent his hands up to feel for the latch of the chest.
“So you don't cut loose? Get drunk?” Upside down Seru looked at him with pity. Annoying!
“I've gotten drunk once. It's why I have an elf lover.” It was sort of tiring to try to talk, open the chest, and hang there. He breathed in and out to clear his head, then pushed his shadowy hands far enough to throw the latch. He heard a bang then lots of sounds of something thudding into wood.
“What the fuck!?”
“Trap.”
He pulled himself back up to the wood platform above the garage. Embedded in the triangular beams holding up the roof were a score of sharp spines. Trapped chests were a pain.
Seru seemed to recover and continued to talk. “That you can drop weird lines about elves deadpan is impressive.”
“People can't tell when I'm joking I guess so I'll help you on this. The elf thing isn't a joke.” He looked into the chest. Four items. A few stacks of credits. He counted ten thousands. Good haul. He threw them into his pack. He pulled out a glowing gold stoppered potion. No way in hell he was drinking that without Hari looking at it.
“Elves are real.” He heard doubt.
“Yeah. She's cute. Also is our expert at assessing gear.” There was a large case. Inside was a bow and twenty arrows. All of them looked to be insect parts with veins of what looked like snakeskin running across it's green surface. The arrows had nasty horn like heads and beetle wing fletching. He put the nice black leather quiver on, and strung the bow on his back.
“What did you find?”
He pulled the last object out of a plastic bag. It was a black dress but felt a little heavier then normal cloth. Actually, it looked almost exactly like the one Seru had wore earlier. As he touched the hem to feel the fabric, the interior moved. Corvayne dropped it out of habit. The dress was a mimic? No, it would have attacked. He picked it up again and put part of the lip inside out and saw the interior looked like a mass of red tentacles, most about the size and length of his finger.
“A potion, a bow, some cash, and a dress for perverts.”
“Oh, how so?” Seru perked up at that last part.
“It's full of moist tentacles.” He showed her the interior, it's pink frills arching then curling back up.
“Oh that's fucking gross.”
“Yeah, probably a cursed item. I'll have our elf look at it.” He put it back in the plastic bag, then set that in his second pack. Last thing he wanted to do is be fishing in his main pack for something and become intimate with a magic item.
“You're going to have her wear it.”
“No.” Maybe.
“You guys find a lot of stuff. Who put this there? Does it come back?”
“I think the tower repairs itself over time. You saw how there were lots of armadillos on the last day we patrolled for goblins. The chests refill slowly if they are left alone.” He opened the door into the home they were at. Room by room. “Clear.” He lead the way up the stairs to the closets where the jewelery usually was.
“Ok so, this place is going to be worth a LOT of money.” She had a handful of gold that she dumped into her bag.
“If you can sell any of this without someone tracing it back to you and killing you, yes you can make a lot of money until the second part happens.” Corvayne tapped the bow on his back for emphasis then lead the way back downstairs.
“That's why you tell everyone about it. If ten thousand people know about it, it's much harder to kill all of them without people going 'it must be real'.”
“You still are the first person stepping out to get hammered down.” He walked out the door and scanned for hostiles, then looped back to check the hill. No sign of his friends. Not at the house either.
“I bet if I walked out of here and could look at my PHONE I could pull up a video of some expert gym dude doing a weapon skill thingy like you did, with a billion comments it's fake. If you sent him a PM... a message saying you know it's like, totally real, he'd prob be willing to buy there's a dungeon.”
“... I never thought to do that.” Corvayne put his hand on his chin. She had lead him to a pretty good idea: he might be able to expand his skill set that way.
“So yeah, that's why you get a bunch of people who all have photos and video of a dungeon and have them publish it in a bunch of different spots. Boom. You are just a guy who happens to be suspiciously good at finding stuff and selling it.”
He sighed. “You've made some good points if I wanted money. But our goal is to match Collective members who already have access to supernatural powers.”
“You make them weaker by making everyone else stronger. You have a guy who came after you and killed you all, right? Well gain a few levels and you can handle him. If everyone he normally kills might suddenly be level 10 or whatever...”
Corvayne stopped her. “You keep speaking matter-of-factly about this level buisness. Yes, I'm very strong. Yeah, you got stronger too, but we think it's from eating monster meat.”
“Oh that might be true, but hitting level six I got a big bump in my stats.”
“Did you grab weights or something and figure out you can bench press more or something?”
“No doofus. Status! Ta dah.” She gestured to something he couldn't see. “Just say status.”
“Status.” Nothing happened. Well, there was a tickle on the back of his neck. He looked around. Just houses, the road, Seru looking expectant, teal grass, cloudy amber skies.
“Nothing.”
“Weird. Mine came up. Gary could do it too, after he did some of the prayers for Gygax.”
Seru tugged his arm to a porch then closed her eyes. She put her hands together and shook them, then spoke in a calm, even voice. “I am my numbers. I make my alignment. Show me who I am, and who I shall become. In this life, and the next.”
She cupped her hands together again, then shook them up and down and pulled them apart. Then looked expectantly at Corvayne.
“All right. I am my numbers. I make my alignment. Show me who I am, and who I shall become. In this life and the next.” He put his hands together shook them then pulled them apart.
“If you half-ass it it won't work. You have to have faith.” Seru folded her arms. “I mean like, you're trying to commune with a god! Granted, Gygax was really just a dude who lived in land called Wisconsin, but that's not important. Heh, weird, his first name was also Gary. It's like, watching Mister I do the healing, you know, you have to put weight behind saying it.”
“Whatever. Okay.” Corvayne sighed. He thought about his images of priests in stories. Swinging incense around and chanting. The idea of fervor, of the strongest certainty that there were larger forces looking over him.
“I AM my numbers. I make my alignment! Show me who I am, and who I shall become. In this life, and the next!”
Corvanye cupped his hands, shook them once, and was surprised as he let go that he swore he felt something between them for a moment, and the sound of something hard clattering on wood. Something like a blue glowing piece of paper appeared.
Limited Status Due to Restrictions. ???: 94.5% Arms Master (4) LV 30 HP 565/588 MP 98/98 SP 139/154 Shadow hands Rank 2 Gravity Rank 1
“Oh wow. That worked.” Corvayne was stunned. “I see level 30 Armsmaster. Then there's a four? It also says shadow hands rank 2 then gravity rank 1. What's HP, MP, SP mean?”
“Oh yeah, I guess you don't know the lingo. HP is health. MP is magic power. I assume SP is stamina, because when I run around a lot it goes down.”
“Hmm. So I have... 565 health. What's yours?”
Seru blinked “That's a lot... I'm at 55... I only gained 6 health last level! Hey! How much constitution do you have?”
“It just displayed 'status restricted' then those numbers I said. Nothing else.”
Seru looked at Corvayne like he had just spit in her cereal. “You should have a whole bunch of stats, some skills... nothing?”
He rubbed his chin. “Maybe it's because your faith in Gygax is established, and I only prayed to try to learn what the deal was.”
Seru's eyes narrowed. “It explains why you got shot by drones and just said 'whatever'.”
“No, getting blasted through the cheek just now was pretty painful.” He tapped the side of his mouth.
“Oh yeah, you got blood on your teeth. Eww. Not making out again unless you clean that.” She scrunched up her face.
Corvayne started leading them back to the house. “I'm not interested in making out with you.”
“Oh really? Yet you did it anyway!”
He sighed. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are infuriating?”
“All the time Corvanye baby. I also get told I'm enchanting, insatiable...”
He felt his hackles rise. “Hold up...” He held a hand up for silence. Something was thumping close to the crossroads ahead. Corvayne walked across yard they had been on then pulled Seru with him to creep between the houses. He gestured for silence before she could start berating him for pulling her around, then he lead the way back to an empty home they had looted.
Inside, he shut the door leading from the garage to the back yard. He lead her over to the car and put it between them and any windows. Seru thankfully had picked up he was serious. He spoke quietly.
“I noticed the drones on this floor took a scouting pattern. I think whatever they were doing the looking for decided to send a non-scouting team.”
“Meaning what for Me?”
“We stay hidden or get drawn into fighting something that will be much stronger then the drones. Nothing that shakes the ground like that is going to be a pushover.”
He shut up when he felt the tremors coming closer. Something blotted out the windows of the garage, the car shaking for a step as the light came back and the stomps started getting quieter. Corvanye, cloak on, peeked out the garage window. A machine the size of a house was stomping down the street. It looked like a six legged bug, huge segmented legs supporting a sleek tank frame laden with weapons. Thankfully, unlike the dragon it didn't seem to be destroying houses.
He went back to Seru. “Big robot....”
“Can you beat it?”
“Very unlikely. It's three stories tall.” If he was going to fight something like that, he'd trade his trusty spear for a shock-lance and a bandoleer of EMP grenades. That and at least ten other similarly cloaked warriors.
“Oh. So we'll just hide until it goes away.”
“I would if I could.”
Corvayne had spotted the problem immediately. Okay, the robot was the more obvious 'problem'. He could solve it by sitting in the garage a few days until it had patrolled around and decided the pesky intruders were gone. The issue with playing it safe like that was when Wick and company strolled through the one way entrance and it turned all it's chain guns or rail cannons or whatever the thing was packing on them. He had to act and protect his friends before they arrived. Just like how they had cleared as many goblins as they reasonably could, he would need to get the robot away from the entrance so it didn't mow his friends down.
Or in simpler terms he was about to play cat and mouse with a sixty ton robot.