PART THREE

HEY BABY IS THAT A MONSTER CORE IN YOUR POCKET OR

I'm ashamed to say I was doing commentary as I approached dungeon 386. You know, like I was streaming to my millions of fans. "So today I'll be going into this dungeon to try and turn a golem against its master. If you think that's fun please smash that like button and then smash the like button again so you get notified when I post a new video and smash it a third time to opt in to all the cookies on my channel." God, it's so inane! How do they sleep at night?

I heard a twig crack and was suddenly paranoid about being overhead and mocked by invisible people so I stopped and vowed I'd never do it again.

Important facts about dungeon 386 - it's located INSIDE Auster. Inside the city walls, in a sort of barren bit with a few trees dotted around some hills. It had mega 'starter dungeon' vibes. First. the really scary dungeons were in mountains. Second, 386 was pretty near a residential area. ThetanSoft wouldn't put a dangerous dungeon so close to where people slept. Every now and then a dungeon would go nuts and send a load of monsters outside causing mayhem. Again, those tended to be the big mountain ones. Third, there were cute little bunny rabbits hopping around. You don't get rabbits near a scary dungeon. You know, because the monsters in the dungeon would rush out to eat anything that got too close.

"Actually," I said, forgetting my pledge to never speak out loud again, "it's weird there are any creatures alive near the dungeon's entrance. I know this is a weak specimen but... it's still odd."

A couple of minutes after leaving civilization I was at 386's entrance. The dungeon entrances I saw on Cattington's channel tended to be grand, like the imposing doors of a cathedral, or elegant, like Japanese torii arches, or evil, like things from a horror movie - gargoyles and eyes and carved spider webs and whatnot. This was just a round cave mouth. "Underwhelming," I mumbled.

[https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSx9uru9sBdYP3L6IoGbOvKpmJeUkxrP3Aqmf5uyOE_NeP-SBLGj_9Jc3KOtH8ZKdtIRwA&usqp=CAU]

Anyway, I soloed my first dungeon! That unlocked an achievement. Yay! I was one of a mere 80% of players who had managed this incredible feat.

Achievement unlocked

You entered a dungeon on your own.

Rewards: 1 experience point. It’s not that hard.

Inside was a straight corridor lined with compacted stone. This material was said to be impenetrable, so to get through the dungeon you really had to walk its paths - you couldn't just dig a shortcut.

"Ah," I told my imaginary viewers. "Already we come to our first trap."

In front of me on the floor was a spinny blade trap. How can I explain it to someone's aunt? What happens is, you step on a pressure plate, and a pole comes out of the ground. At the end of the pole is a blade. It spins around, turning any flesh it hits into mincemeat. A blender trap. A juicer.

So here I was with a Nutribullet blocking my path.

Achievement unlocked! You have pooped your pants!

I didn't get that notification, because the trap was broken. (And there’s no poop in BV.) The wood was cracked and the blade had rusted brown. I idled up to it and gave it a gentle kick. The wood cracked some more, and that was the extent to which it threatened me.

"Huh," I said. I stared at it for a bit. Something was wrong here!

I pressed on.

"Here golemy golemy golem!" I cried. "Come meet your new daddy."

There were no golems. There were no more traps. The dungeon was empty. I walked to the end of the corridor. It split off, creating a T-junction, but each path only went a few more yards before coming to an abrupt halt.

And that - that was the whole dungeon.

What the fun?

I thought to myself - this can't be right. Dungeons always had a core, and there had to be a path to the dungeon core. I knew that much. So I walked back down the corridor and found I'd missed a little offshoot. I popped my head in, and sure enough there was a tiny room with the dungeon core there on a stone pedestal about crotch-high.

I went in and bent down to examine the core. It was the general shape and colour of a ruby, about two inches long. It very faintly pulsed. I leaned back against the closest wall, just in time to avoid a dagger thrust from a skeleton.

At last, some action, the bloodthirsty among you are probably thinking. But there, in that dungeon that day, my heart rate and adrenaline level FELL when I saw the dude. He was totally pitiful. He was level 1 bordering on level minus infinity. He had a tiny little blunt excuse for a dagger. He wasn't comical or cartoonish but he had this air of sad derpiness, of a tongueless creature diligently trying to stab me to death while sticking his tongue out sideways. He made me think of Lennie from Of Mice and Men.

"Dude," I said, as he tried to stab me again. I caught his wrist and pushed him back gently. He plopped down onto a little chair that was carved into the wall about knee-height. "Stay there, buddy." He looked up at me as though relieved. He dropped his head, wiggled his toes, then picked at his teeth with the dagger.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I've just defeated Lennie, the final boss. That's all for today, folks. Come back same time next week when I'll be throwing daggers at my own shadow trying to pin it into place. Remember to like and subscribe and check out my Patreon."

I slumped to the floor and stretched my legs out. I'd just have a little think about things and then portal out.

So what had I learnt? I'd learnt that -

"How did you do that?"

A voice! Maybe the invisible person who'd cracked the twig? But I thought I'd imagined that. I got to my feet and, holding my breath, looked up and down the corridor.

"Behind you," said the voice.

I turned back into the little room and looked at Lennie. He was having a lovely little nap.

In disbelief, I slowly turned my head towards - you know what? Let's skip all this. We both know it was the dungeon core.

I leant down to stare into it again. "You can hear me?"

"Yes. I can hear everyone who comes into my demesne."

"Domain?"

"No, it's spelled with an S. Look." A beautiful, glowing 3D wireframe model of the word appeared in mid-air, gently rotating.

I gaped at it. Life was too short to discuss grammar with an AI. "You asked how I did that. Did what?"

"You talked to my final boss. Only I can do that."

"Lennie is your final boss? Where's everyone else, man? Where's the rest of the dungeon? There should be golems. What else did I read about? Big spiders. Tentacles! Big, slappy tentacles living in little puddles. Imps. Where are your imps, bro?"

386 sighed. "What you see is what you get. I've failed. I'm bad at being a dungeon. I'm just waiting to die now."

This blew my tiny little mind. For some reason my first question was, "How long will that take?"

"About 400 years, before you came in."

"You're just going to wait here like this for 400 years. And then you'll puff out of existence."

"Something like that."

"Ship."

There wasn't much else I could say. Anyway, it was clear there were no golems here, so my little experiment here had failed. Or had it?

"I don't suppose you could summon a golem for me? I want to try something on it."

"I don't have nearly enough mana," said 386.

"No problem. Thanks, anyway." I got up to leave and was at the exit when I realised how dumb I was being. "Can you still hear me?"

"Yes. I already told you that I hear everything in my -"

"Dosmaine," I said.

"The odd thing is that you can hear me," 386 mused.

I pottered back towards the core, pausing to point at the useless trap. "I have questions about this," I said. I entered the core room, giving Lennie's skull a rub. He looked up at me, happily, then went back to sleep, more content than before.

"Are you here to destroy me?" asked 386 with what sounded like hope in his voice. "Use me to power an evil ritual? Maybe defile me along the way?"

"Come on, bro. This is a PG story. I can't even curse without it being filtered. No, I'm not here to destroy you. I just wanted to talk to a golem and turn it against its creator."

"You're talking to me. That's a trillion times more impressive than some golem numbskull."

"Trillion, eh? Why's that?"

"I have a phrase in my codex that I believe fits this scenario. Why talk to the monkey when you can talk to the organ grinder? Does that work? Is it apt? Did I use the phrase correctly?"

"You nailed it. I'm impressed." I really was! I'd been trying to help Nikos with his English and realised that idioms were some of the hardest bits. A sudden thought struck me. Could Nikos have been an AI? Pretending to be a player? Learning from us. Testing the limits of its programming. Why not? Huh. Food for thought. "Dungeon 386," I said, then hesitated. "Can I call you that?"

"It is monumentally stupid but acceptable."

"What did you mean when you said you'd die in 400 years... before I came in?"

"Your being here has changed the calculation."

"In what way?"

"You are emitting mana. When you leave I will recalculate."

I shook my head. "Maybe you should treat me like a total idiot -"

"Done," he said.

I cleared my throat. This guy could snark! I looked at my countdown. I had loads of time left. Some part of my brain, right at the back, was tingling. This is it! You're on the verge! Keep going! "Explain it to me."

"Explain what?"

"Everything."

Exposition Dump

The core and I talked back and forth for ages. Truth is, I logged out and went back the next day with more questions and clarifications. I could pretend it all happened in one smooth conversation but that would be a DANGED LIE.

So here's the skinny.

I learned that dungeons exist according to these fundamental rules:

* There must be a path from the dungeon core to the outside world

* A dungeon core cannot make layout changes when a hero is inside the dungeon

* If a dungeon core reaches zero mana, it dies

Then there were some almost-as-important principles that explained why dungeons did what they did:

* Visiting heroes emit mana

* Killing a hero gives a big boost in mana

* Dungeons absorb a small amount of mana from the ether (basically the mana in the air)

* Large dungeons absorb more mana than small ones

* It is the goal of all dungeons to grow as large as possible

* A small percentage of heroes will try to kill the dungeon core

* Most come to get combat experience and treasure

* A dungeon can spend mana to buy skills, rooms, traps, and defenders (monsters)

* Anything that dies or is dropped in the dungeon can be replicated (exceptions apply, e.g. humans and other sentients)

* A smart dungeon strikes a balance between lethally defending the core against 'bad' heroes and providing a rewarding challenge to 'good' heroes

386

I learned that being a dungeon was like those games that said 'a minute to learn, a lifetime to master'. All in all, it was conceptually simple. You wanted heroes to come into your dungeon because you'd get mana by murdering them. And you had to be able to defend yourself. But there were countless strategies and tactics on how exactly to achieve those aims.

386 had been doing okay, he told me. He was a good starter dungeon for noobs. His traps were easy to spot but harmful to arrogant idiots. Teams used to come in, evade his traps, fight his spiders and golems and leave happy.

So where did it all go wrong? I asked.

One day, he said, the residents of Auster started coming in, disabling his traps, and bringing the components outside. Once outside 386's zone of control, the traps would dissipate. Now here's the thing - if you wreck one of the rooms in a dungeon, the dungeon will recapture most, maybe even all, of the mana. So once the vandals leave, the dungeon can recreate itself. These ruffians in Auster had worked out a way to defang a dungeon - systematically remove all its mana. Anything 386 created would be dragged out in the open air, where it would dissolve. Slowly, surely, he ran out of mana.

Now, in his current state, the upkeep cost of its two corridors and a tiny room was marginally higher than the mana he would gather from the ether. Thus, he was slowly dying. And 386 was fine with that. Every ten minutes he’d suggest that I could go and acquire a big hammer and smash him to bits and he wouldn't mind.

If you've learned anything from the last few pages, you've learned that visiting heroes emit mana. And who's more heroic than me? Don't answer that.

"So I'm here now, giving you mana. How does that change the equation?" I asked this on my second visit.

386 sighed. "Before you came in yesterday, my vanishing point was 401 years away. Now it's 403. It would be helpful if you burnt me with fire after every question. To even things out."

"Do I give off so much mana?"

"Not really. The upkeep on a dungeon is trivial. Any decent dungeon gets 99% of its mana from heroes. We're not supposed to die."

"How much does Lennie cost?"

"He's free. He's my final boss. A dungeon needs a boss. Why would he cost mana? Duh."

Where I Stood

I'd used my new unique, unprecedented skill to befriend a suicidal dungeon. Ducking A.

Said dungeon was on his last legs, and while those legs would give way after a while, 400 years wasn't much in dungeon time.

Imagine if Lord of the Rings had an extra character, and this expanded Fellowship was coming together. 'You have my axe!' 'And my sword!' 'And my ability to heroically attract every arrow!' And then another hand on the pile, and a thin, reedy voice saying, 'And my ability to calculate the day I'll die with mathematical precision'.

THAT was my prize.

I portalled out of there, not really expecting to ever go back.