“I feel like we are being watched,” said a lean man dressed entirely in black cloth and leather, so you could hardly see his face. He is pretty obviously the party’s rogue.
Another man, named Marike, with long auburn hair, put his gloved hands out and chanted for a few seconds, then looked thoroughly around the room. “See Invisibility isn’t picking anything up… no one is scrying on us, at least.”
“Just… keep your eyes peeled,” the rogue replied. “Something feels off. I’ve never felt like somebody was watching me while going through dungeons.”
“You’re fine. Probably just drank too much ale last night, eh?” said the last of the three. A large, heavily armored man wielding a mace and shield named Farris. A paladin, Jared guessed. He had seen the man heal a cut on the rogue, although not fully. The amulet he proudly wore looked very religious.
Jared had heard their names through tidbits of conversation they had while traversing his dungeon, although not the rogue’s. He seemed secretive, probably even more so when he felt watched.
The trio continued along the first floor, having made it halfway through with some difficulty. A particularly reckless hobgoblin had dented the paladin’s pauldron and the wizard had a nasty cut from a sneaky goblin, but nothing life-threatening.
Jared noticed how the party seemed familiar with the dungeon. Farris confidently led them through most of the major rooms, taking the shortest path to the floor boss.
The boss fight was pretty rough, but Marike and Farris worked well together. The paladin would dodge an attack, then the wizard would cast a Fire Bolt to blind the enemy while the paladin struck back while the boss was distracted.
The rogue, however, was entirely disconnected from them. He was skilled, definitely more so than the other two, but he obviously didn’t work well in a team. The fight ended abruptly when he managed to sneak up on the hobgoblin and push a dagger through its throat.
After the party had collected whatever meager loot they could find on the boss, the rogue started walking toward the tunnel leading to the second floor. But before he could, Farris put a hand out.
“Going down there isn’t a good idea, lad,” the paladin said sternly. “The second floor is full of spiders and all sorts of unholy abominations,” he said while heaving a sack of usable leather onto his shoulder. “They aren’t too hard to beat, I hear, but they’ve got some nasty poison. And while I can heal most wounds, that stuff is beyond my reach. And as far as I know, everyone in the quaint little town above ground too.”
“We barely got anything worth selling!” the rogue replied.
“We aren’t here for loot, we’re here for experience. I just got out of the academy and I don’t feel like being the subject of a moral tale about greed,” Marike interjected before starting his walk back to the exit, Farris following.
The rogue longingly stared at the tunnel, sighed, then followed the other two.
When the party left, Jared had a sudden feeling of great exhaustion akin to when he used to run 8-hour D&D sessions. He must have had the feeling after modeling the fourth floor but pushed through it just to observe the adventurers.
Even with the Dungeon Core equivalent of heavy eyelids, Jared was chock full of excitement. His first adventuring party! They had been here before; he guessed that rather than being reincarnated as a fresh Dungeon Core, he had taken over an older one. He wondered how it worked but didn’t wonder for long.
There were changes to be made. He wanted to add loot.
Only the third floor having loot just felt wrong. Adventurers should be rewarded for their hardship with more than just experience. So he started adding various valuables around the place. A goblin with a gem here, a stash of gold there. He tried to hide the loot in places where the adventurers hadn’t gone—side rooms that weren’t on the path to the floor boss.
Even as Jared started narrating his gold into existence, his weariness grew. He tried holding it back. He didn’t know when the next party would come, but he had spent so long properly balancing dungeons in his old life that having one without any loot felt like a crime.
He had gotten maybe halfway when he had trouble thinking. His thoughts were a blur, and the only thing he could do was try to resist the temptation to stop. He had to finish at least the first floor, then he could res—
Everything went dark for a second time.
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Luckily for Jared, he didn’t die a second time. He woke up with a similar, although lesser sense of the tiredness before he tried to push his limit and place loot everywhere. Tired, but fully functioning. He wouldn’t do that again.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Jared put his thoughts together and was about to continue placing loot when he felt a familiar itch.
He quickly focused his attention on the area where he felt it: the second floor.
He saw the same roguish man from the adventuring party, alone and dying. He had been stung and was now crawling his way to the first floor.
Jared felt a tad bit of sympathy for the man but swiftly pushed it away. He had chosen to come alone, fully knowing the danger. It was his fault. He did find it rather impressive, though, that the rogue had managed to clear the entire first floor before arriving at the second. He must have had at least 3 or 4 levels in Rogue, but it hadn’t been enough.
The lonely rogue made it halfway across the first floor before succumbing to the venom.
He was thinking about what monsters to put in the caverns on the fourth floor when he saw something very odd happen. The goblins which were slain unraveled, almost like a bundle of cord coming undone. The cord then spread out and arranged itself in a complex weave spanning the entire room before slowly disappearing from his vision. The goblin was gone.
It happened to all the other goblins at the same time. Within seconds, all of them were gone. Then the same thing happened to the rogue, albeit at a much slower pace. Everything except his belongings and his bones disappeared.
And when the rogue ‘unraveled,’ Jared suddenly felt a whole lot less tired. Rejuvenated, even. He had halfway expected it to happen, but he was quite glad his expectations were met.
Before Jared’s very Dungeon Core eyes, the same ‘weave’ appeared once more and formed fresh goblins, then disappeared again. The goblins promptly took the dead rogue’s gear with delight in their eyes.
The skeleton of the rogue abruptly shot to life and began finding its way to the third floor. No monsters attacked it; the opposite actually. They moved their traps and gave it right of way.
When it reached the third floor, it wandered over to the boss chamber and joined the other six Marrow Knights and the Marrow King there.
Jared was surprised; if he had a jaw, it’d be on the floor. He had a system like that in one of his old D&D campaigns, although in a different dungeon.
After having a burst of nostalgia for a few minutes, Jared finished setting loot around the first floor. He didn’t put any on the second, as the venom that could be collected from the giant spiders and the hides from the bears were loot enough in his mind. But he did decide to add something just before the second floor.
In the entrance, he carved a side tunnel leading to a small tavern. It had all the things you’d expect a tavern to have: rooms, ale, and antidotes. Jared didn’t like how fearful the adventurers were about the venom. Fighting enemies was fun; slowly dying to a bug bite wasn’t. Plus, the gold the adventurers spent on antidotes would recycle into the loot, making it easier on him when time came around to replace it. Jared just hoped the adventurers wouldn’t kill the inhabitants of the tavern on sight.
The only question was what to have inhabit the bar. Jared didn’t know if he could make humans, but he didn’t want to try. He didn’t even know if he could make monsters with human-level intelligence. Well, the mermen he spawned on the fourth floor on a whim had pretty good intellect. He actually saw them building small underwater structures before the adventurers delved.
Jared had a hard time deciding, so he made a compromise: a little bit of everything. As long as they were friendly, any monster with some intelligence would do. He made an orc bartender, a roguish goblin in a shadowy corner, a bugbear bouncer, and all sorts of unique monsters.
He tried his best to make them friendly and, hopefully, intelligent. When he made them, he felt it took more energy from him than normal monsters, so he hoped it would work.
He would observe how they acted later, but for now, he wanted to populate the fourth floor’s caverns with monsters, and he had finally decided on which to do it with.
Giant crabs. Specifically, ones with shells made of rock. They would blend in and hopefully give whatever adventurers went down there a not-so-pleasant surprise.
As he narrated the crabs into being, Jared noticed how the mermen had built a lot of structures: houses, streets, even a temple. It interested him greatly.
Jared was always a DM, someone who built a world for others to build stories in. And now, here he was, building a dungeon where monsters built their own stories and, in this case, underwater temples. It was unintentional; he meant for adventurers to build stories
here, but he didn’t complain.
Then, as seems to be tradition when Jared is working on the fourth floor, he felt an itch.
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Karius led his party of four through the first floor, easily slaughtering all the goblins and hobgoblins inhabiting it and following the most efficient path.
They planned to make it halfway through the second floor before falling back. They had been training for weeks on the outskirts of the spider-infested cave, but now they were ready to make a commitment.
He was almost to the hobgoblin boss of the first floor when his rogue rushed up to him.
“Boss, you need to see this,” the rogue said, then showed him a jewel. Karius’s eyes widened. He had been adventuring for years and had handled plenty of valuables. He guessed it was worth around 100 gold. But its value wasn’t what surprised him.
“Where did you find this?” Karius said, picking up the gem and eyeing it closely.
“Sir, I found it on a goblin.”
The first floor was largely thought to be lootless; no one had ever found anything other than the scraps of leather the goblins wore. It couldn’t have been dropped by an adventurer, as only a true idiot would bring loot down into a dungeon, and as far as Karius knew, there weren’t any truly idiotic adventurers. Some cocky ones, sure, but this was unusual.
“Report this to the guild on the topside after our delve. They’ll want to know about this,” Karius told the rogue.
“Yessir!” he replied.
They easily beat the floor boss and were about to continue on to the second floor as planned when Karius noticed a smaller tunnel leading off from the main one. He ordered his party mates behind him and cautiously entered the tunnel.
In his many delves, he had never seen this tunnel. He had thoroughly mapped out the entire dungeon, and he was completely sure this wasn’t there before. Dungeons would change over time, sure, but new tunnels and loot in a matter of days? Something was off.
After a few dozen feet, he reached the end. What he saw caused him to immediately order a retreat.
A building, closely resembling a tavern, full of monsters talking and laughing in fluid common. This would need to be reported to the guild right away.