Chapter 28: The Puzzle of Dimness
Daphne’s friends frantically tried to free her, with the fighter and swordsman striking the mimic while the white mage pulled on Daphne’s legs. After a few blows, the mimic released Daphne and collapsed in on itself. As soon as he landed on his side, the white mage looked up at Alenia’s group and noticed the two elves other than Alenia had their weapons at the ready, not that they had moved a millimeter to assist beyond that. In contrast, Alenia held the exact same relaxed pose throughout the whole incident, bow hanging from her back untouched as she just smirked at the outrageous situation that unfolded before her.
“W—Why didn’t you help!?” the white mage raged at the elves, still pumped up on adrenaline from the battle with the mimic and feeling a protective instinct towards his party leader who was targeted a moment ago. His eyes were directed straight at Alenia as he asked the question due to her inappropriately relaxed demeanor.
“Oh, there was no need,” Alenia replied.
“No need? I was almost eaten!” Daphne shouted back in solidarity with her mage.
“Daphne dear, why aren’t you asking your mage to heal you?”
At Alenia’s question, Daphne looked down at her body and tested moving her arms, legs, and fingers. “Well… I’m not actually injured.”
“Yes. Daphne, you weren’t in danger.”
“Does that mean mimics aren’t actually dangerous?” the fighter interjected.
“Not at all,” Alenia answered. “Mimics are quite dangerous unless you’re at a much higher level.”
“Then—“
“The mimic wasn’t actually trying to hurt Daphne. There’s a reason why she’s uninjured.”
This time, the swordsman from Daphne’s party joined the conversation. “We still must be pretty weak if we can’t even tell that much…”
“Not at all.”
“What?”
“The four of you are not at a level where you can tell something like that. Quickly defeating the mimic and rescuing the victim is exactly the right thing to do. We are different. We could tell Daphne wasn’t in danger. This dungeon is quite unusual, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t sure,” the druid from Alenia’s party admitted.
“Me neither,” the other elf said to Alenia.
“Well, my eyes are a bit special I suppose…”
With the crisis of the moment out of the way, the group resumed their travels. After turning a few more corners they noticed a conspicuous pedestal near the right wall of the hallway. Shortly beyond, the hallways split into a ‘T’ with the option to turn left or turn right, once again. Daphne read aloud the pedestal’s engraved message, which stated:
> Ye who seek the descent into madness,
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> Take a break and stow your great deadliness,
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> And demonstrate all your combined shrewdness.
> Turn to your smartness,
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> not your voluptuousness,
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> To overcome the dungeon’s nothingness.
> You are not in the wilderness,
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> So you won’t find a lioness,
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> Nor will you need to flaunt any fitness.
> Surely, you all will demonstrate wrongness,
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> Despite your attempts at true cautiousness.
> And do not rely on my friendliness,
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> Or expect anything like helpfulness,
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> But in the spirit of pure playfulness,
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> I’ll tell you this:
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> When you screw up, come back here and try again.
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> Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
> Never again,
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> Call into question,
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> My reasonableness.
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> Indebtedness is also a word.
“Wow…” About halfway through, Daphne’s tone had become quite strained.
“Daphne, do you think there are any hidden messages in all that?”
Daphne hesitated to answer Alenia’s question but eventually did. “Probably not. The ‘come back here and try again’ part is probably the only thing that actually matters.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I think the dungeon master is just screwing with us. Me in particular…”
Alenia pointed to the intersection ahead, and specifically a small sign posted on the wall. “Is it because of that sign?”
Daphne’s friends only then noticed the sign and strained to read it. Similar to the sign they encountered earlier in their exploration, the sign here showed two arrows. The first arrow pointed to the right and was titled ‘Humans and Sexy Elves’. The second arrow was pointed up towards the ceiling and was titled ‘Daphne’. The ceiling was nondescript and clearly was not a viable path to take.
At this revelation, the group just shrugged and resumed their march again. At the intersection, they couldn’t see anything different between the two paths, so they decided to bear right, for now.
After plodding for a minute or so, they noticed a narrow hallway to their left, extending perpendicularly from the hallway they were currently in. Deciding to stick with the wider hallway for now, they continued bearing right by proceeding straight at this junction.
Eventually, the hallway made a sharp 90 degree turn to the left. They continued down the hallway and after several minutes noticed another narrow hallway branching off to the left. Once again, they continued straight. As they went, the white mage sketched a rough approximation of their route.
Again, they found their hallway make a sharp left turn. Proceeding for several minutes after the turn, they noticed yet another narrow hallway to the left. Skipping it, they encountered a second narrow hallway, also on the left, a few moments later.
“I wonder what’s to our left…” the white mage muttered as he finished sketching their path so far. They had essentially walked halfway around a big rectangle. Nobody had anything to offer so they just continued on. They weren’t surprised when the hallway eventually turned to the left again.
A couple of minutes later, they found the next narrow hallway branching off to their left. Skipping it, they paused while the white mage performed a few mental calculations. He then explained, “Based on what I’ve got here so far, if this area is symmetric, we’ll probably walk for about three minutes and then turn left.” Even for the elves, the dungeon was too dim for them to see far enough ahead to confirm that prediction.
Three minutes later, the prediction came true. The group turned left, soon passed a narrow hallway on their left, and then returned to the intersection at the beginning where the pedestal and silly sign were located.
“Oh, come on!” Daphne complained when she noticed that the sign now was using a down arrow instead of an up arrow to indicate what path she should take. Needless to say, no downward path existed.
“It seems everything else is located within the big loop we just walked,” said Alenia. Everyone else nodded as they proceeded around the rectangle counterclockwise for a second time. When they encountered the first narrow hallway, this time, they turned left and entered it. Switching to single-file due to the tight quarters, they proceeded with the swordsman in the lead.
After a minute, the group appeared in a medium-sized room. The brightness of the dungeon’s lighting increased slightly as they entered. The group soon noticed a sign on the wall that read ‘Room of the Baroness’. The white mage dutifully jotted it down even though he knew odds were pretty good it was just bullshit.
Assuming they had entered the room from the south, their options were to turn left and proceed west through a wide hallway, continue north through a wide hallway, or walk northwest through a diagonal hallway with many jagged corners along each wall.
“I propose we continue to bear right.” Nobody objected to the white mage’s recommendation, so the group continued in the direction they called north, no longer needing to maintain single-file.
After a minute, the hallway lit up brightly, much more so than the room they were just in. Drawing their weapons and spinning in all directions, they didn’t notice any attacks or other changes. Taking a few moments to calm down, they quietly sheathed their weapons again.
“This must be related to the challenge that strange pedestal alluded to,” the fighter offered.
“I’ll take notes of when the lights change,” said the white mage.
The group continued north, soon finding themselves in another mid-sized room. Once again the lighting increased slightly upon their arrival. The sign on the wall read ‘Room of His Holiness’. Despite the impressive name, the room looked just like the last one.
“The lights in the rooms don’t seem to be as bright,” Daphne observed.
“Maybe we need to do something different with the rooms than the hallways? For now, I’ll just jot down the name of the room.”
The only thing different about this room, compared to the last, was the direction of the adjoining hallways. They had arrived from the south, and now they could proceed southwest, west, or northwest. A narrow hallway also extended to the east, but the white mage was fairly certain that hallway returned to the outer rectangle and was one they had already spotted from the other end previously.
Bearing right again, they walked into the hallway extending to the northwest. To keep away from the jagged walls, the group returned to single-file. About a minute into this leg, the hallway lit up brightly like the previous one had.
“Perhaps we need to light up all the rooms and hallways in this area,” the swordsman suggested. “Maybe in a certain order?”
“That’s probably it,” the white mage agreed. “I’ll continue keeping track of this.”
They emerged in a new room. From this spot, the only exits were either to the southwest or the north. The north wall actually had two narrow hallways to choose from, but that’s exactly what the white mage was expecting, so they knew the group had already been in that direction before. The only option left was to proceed southwest. They gave the nearby sign a check, and it read ‘Room of the Patroness’.
Based on symmetry, the white mage guessed how long this southwesterly leg would take, and he was correct. They ended up in a new room. The sign read ‘Room of the Eyewitness’. Noting no changes to the dungeon’s behavior, other than the lighting effects, they chose to go south, leaving behind the options for southeast and east for now.
Nobody was surprised when they entered a new mid-sized room. According to the sign, it was the ‘Room of the Governess’. As the white mage explained, “Pretty sure if we go east from here we’ll return to the first room, that Room of the Baroness. We could go that way to complete the rectangle, or we could go northeast towards the center. There’s probably one more room in the center.”
“The center it is!” Daphne shouted confidently.
“I kind of want to go east now…” the fighter whispered to the swordsman, but he just smiled wryly.
Daphne led the group northeast with renewed vigor, likely energized by the fact that they had almost finished mapping the area. As expected, they arrived in a mid-sized room that was clearly the central hub of this puzzle or whatever it was. Daphne stepped over to the sign to read it. For some reason, the engraved text was smaller than it had been for the other rooms, so she had to step right up to the wall it was posted on and even rise up on to her toes while squinting.
“It’s a bit faded. It’s the… Room of 100 tentacle monsters? Wait!”