Chapter 8: Dungeon Update
This reminds me of when you buy a console game and lose three hours waiting for it to download a ton of data.
It seemed some of the problems of modern technology couldn’t be avoided even if you went to a medieval fantasy world. At least, if you were a dungeon master.
DM waited patiently for the console to become active again. At one point, the minotaur dungeon master respawned, so DM just killed it again.
Ah, there it is! The screen returned to its normal default display. DM pressed his appendage against the screen again.
>Updates are available. The system must restart.
God dammit! Were these consoles built by the same people who make operating systems back home!?
Mercifully, the problem did not persist a third time after a short wait.
>Foreign dungeon master recognized. Would you like to register as a multi-dungeon operator? Y/N?
DM selected ‘yes’.
>Confirmed. Please select a unique identifier.
Unique identifier? DM assumed that meant it wanted him to input a name for himself now that he had left the tutorial, or whatever. The console enabled him to type in a name. Of course, he typed ‘DM’.
>Error. Unique identifier must be at least three characters. Please select a unique identifier.
Damn it! DM couldn’t use his usual name. For a few moments, he thought about other names he could use, but then he realized he could probably just modify ‘DM’ somehow. ‘DM1’? ‘D_M’? ‘|)/\/\’? After knocking around some ideas, he decided to try the old trick of adding a space after the name: ‘DM ‘.
>Confirmed. Would you like to claim ownership of this dungeon? Y/N?
Hell yeah! Yes.
>Confirmed. Please wait.
DM didn’t appreciate being told to wait again, but it only took a few moments.
>Ownership transferred. Please select a dungeon to be your primary dungeon.
This was interesting. A new menu popped up with the option to select either this dungeon, or DM’s original dungeon back in the Lower Gordu Forest. Whichever he selected, a ton of information would populate, providing all the usual data such as dungeon level, settings, what monsters could be spawned, current floor layouts, and the like.
DM spent a good fifteen minutes navigating all the available information about the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest. Not finding any surprises, he decided his primary dungeon was the more important one. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was losing by not selecting the Upper Gordu Forest dungeon, but he felt it was entirely warranted to take a risk here and finish overwriting his authority on to this new dungeon.
DM selected his original dungeon in the Lower Gordu Forest to be the primary dungeon.
>Confirmed. Please select a unique identifier for each dungeon.
DM wasn’t sure what the consequences of this decision would be. It felt kind of like naming hard drive partitions while building a new computer, honestly. Stretching his creativity to the absolute maximum, he chose the following names, carefully to ensure he didn’t get them swapped.
‘Lower Gordu Dungeon’.
>Confirmed.
‘Upper Gordu Dungeon’.
>Confirmed. Please verify you did not conflate the unique identifiers. Proceed? Y/N?
The screen showed summaries of each dungeon along with their new names. Usually, the console did not warn the operator not to make stupid mistakes. Perhaps this was a design change from long past due to someone stupidly getting the names backwards and whining about it later? DM wasn’t sure when or where intelligent people were actually dungeon masters, but he guessed it had happened at some point in the past.
DM triple-checked he didn’t accidentally name the dungeon in the Lower Gordu Forest the Upper Gordu Dungeon, or vice versa, but everything looked correct so he selected ‘yes’.
>Confirmed. Publishing updates to the dungeon network. Please wait.
More waiting!? DM couldn’t tell if this was futuristic technology at work or not. The console updated after several minutes.
>Process complete. Restarting system.
The dungeon console went through yet another restart. It didn’t take long to return to its default screen. However, there were a few major changes compared to before. First, DM could control either dungeon from this console, and presumably from the console in the other dungeon as well. Second, a new feature appeared in the list titled ‘Dungeon Teleportation’.
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Does that mean what I think it does? In a few minutes, DM would try to teleport back to the other dungeon. How sweet would that be?
First, he browsed the current settings and configuration of the dungeon. It was mostly unchanged from before he seized the entire dungeon for himself. When he entered the menu to change which monsters spawn where, he received a prompt.
>Please choose dungeon master setting for secondary dungeon.
The screen provided DM with several choices. He could choose to leave the settings alone, meaning that same minotaur would continue to spawn as a dungeon master. It wouldn’t have control over the console anymore, but it would still provide a strong enemy in the boss chamber. Alternately, he could erase the minotaur spawn settings, permanently releasing the minotaur from its service. If he did, he could either leave the dungeon master role vacant, or create a new dungeon master within the limitations of the system. It felt like the right thing to do, so DM released the minotaur from its endless service. He spawned a new minotaur dungeon master which seemed to behave like any other normal monster despite its enhanced stats.
Browsing the menu some more, DM learned that there were options for sharing resources between connected dungeons. In theory, he could transfer experience to his primary dungeon. Since the Upper Gordu dungeon was lower level than his primary dungeon, draining even all its levels might not be enough to get the Lower Gordu dungeon to the next level, LVL 9. Also, reducing a dungeon’s level might draw unwanted attention from the Guild and others. Heck, just seizing control of this dungeon might already have that effect, but he’d wait and see.
Prior to leaving, DM wanted to leave a couple of infected monsters behind. Leveraging his experience from the other dungeon, he created some nooks and crannies near the entrance to the dungeon and in the boss chamber to make it easy for monsters to spy on intruders. He stationed the smallest available monsters in those positions after infecting them. This way, he could see who entered the dungeon, even if he was away from any dungeon console. Further, if people started messing with the console, he could either attack them using tentacles or teleport over to that dungeon, hopefully.
Before giving teleportation a try, he checked in on his infect targets again. Kat and Lupy were now up and about, but Vulp and Shiba were settling in for some sleep, fox and cat monsters at the ready. Not seeing any problems, he decided to proceed.
Here goes nothing. He entered the command into the console. With a flash of light, he felt his body shift slightly. Looking around, he was now in the boss chamber of the Lower Gordu Dungeon.
The first thing he did was check the menus on the dungeon console. Similar to what he saw in the other dungeon, the console was now updated with a couple more options, including the ability to teleport to other dungeons. He had limited control over remote dungeons, but it seemed like his best bet was to teleport to a dungeon if he wanted to work on it. Considering how smoothly teleporting went, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Vulp and Lupy noticed DM during their patrol and came to greet him.
“…Get the others,” DM instructed using a morphling. He already knew the other girls hadn’t drifted off to sleep yet. The four were in his chamber a couple of minutes later.
“What happened?” asked Kat.
“…I traveled to the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest and journeyed to the boss chamber. I defeated the minotaur dungeon master and then used the console to take control of the dungeon.
“Wow! Are there going to be two of you now?” Lupy’s question wasn’t that strange, DM felt.
“…No, for now I will just keep a minotaur in the boss chamber. I still plan to use this dungeon as my primary base.”
DM proceeded to walk the girls through what he learned in the other dungeon, although he kept it simple for them. He also reminded them not to explain all this to anyone except for Bandit, and only when they were sure nobody was listening in on them.
Vulp asked, “Are you going to take over more dungeons? We heard there’s one east of the Twin Cities also.”
“…Not yet. For now, I want to see how everyone reacts to what I did. …The Guild might be able to detect the changes, so I need to be prepared to explain everything.”
“How much longer can we stay?” asked Shiba.
“…You should leave first thing in the morning. Bandit got held up by Thaw so she likely won’t be coming here to join you this night anyway.”
As the girls returned to their beds, DM called out to one of them.
“…Lupy…”
Her wolf tail and ears stuck out rigidly as she tensed up. The other girls smiled wryly at her as they left the chamber. She turned to face DM.
“Yes?”
“…Why did you make the morphling into a minotaur?”
Lupy hesitated to answer. The obvious response was that all the girls were given a monster, and a minotaur was what she wanted, but DM had already told her before to pick something else, so she wasn’t sure how to reply. DM broke the silence.
“…Can you at least tell me, why a minotaur?”
“I don’t like cute animals. I liked the minotaur when we fought it in the other dungeon.”
“…Because it’s strong?”
“Yeah! I like you too, but I don’t think you’d like if I asked for another tentacle monster…”
“…You’re right. I wouldn’t have agreed to that. …Too weird.”
Lupy looked at DM hopefully.
“…Even a chickbear is less creepy than a minotaur though.”
“They’re okay,” Lupy acknowledged, clearly not being in love with them.
“…You’re going to separate from the monster either way when you leave in a few hours.”
“I know.”
“…How about I give you a wolf and a minotaur to keep you company until morning?” DM preferred that to just giving her a minotaur, even though he hadn’t witnessed Lupy doing anything that weird with the minotaur while he was away.
“Okay!”
DM took back the morphling from Lupy, spawned a wolf monster and a minotaur, and gave them instructions. The two followed Lupy out of the chamber towards the room where the other girls would be sleeping.
“…I really hope I don’t regret this.”
Just as DM was slithering back over to the console, he received an alert. He noticed that the alert was originating from the Upper Gordu Dungeon.
“…So I can tell where alerts come from? That’s handy.” He pressed his appendage to the console. A few moments later, he learned of a group of intruders in the other dungeon. He switched his focus to the infected monster spying on them.
“…Just looks like a standard adventuring party from the Union. I’m not sure if they’ll be able to make it to the boss chamber or not before they need to retreat…”
Satisfied that the party wasn’t showing any signs of being suspicious of the dungeon’s ownership, he returned his attention back to his local setting.
“…In the morning, the girls will return to the Twin Cities. Until Olivia is ready for the next phase of training adventurers, I should have time to monitor my other friends and learn more about controlling the dungeon. …I’ll need to think carefully about what to share with Olivia among what I learned today. I’ll wait and see if the Guild detects any changes first.”
Despite how much had happened, DM felt like he hadn’t had much time yet to play around with the console and really learn how everything worked. He’d barely scratched the surface of that built-in programming language.