With a much smaller area to encircle, the wall of sharpened logs around the peak of my barrow-mound was almost complete as sunset drew near. It wasn’t the sturdiest fortification ever, but it would hopefully do the trick. We didn’t have any nails, but my control over [Dungeon Domain] was good enough to cut some simple mortise-and-tenon joints that kept the logs in place. The only thing missing… was admittedly pretty important. It didn't have a gate. Without any way to actually close the fort up, it wasn’t very defensible. This was where the experiment I was about to undertake came in.
It wasn’t, scientifically speaking, a very well-designed experiment. I was testing too many things at once. Could I create matter from nothing but azoth with [Dungeon Domain]? Was my mysterious class quest, as I’d hypothesized, about completing my dungeon’s first floor? What, structurally speaking, were the minimum qualifications for something to count as a complete floor? Still, there was an appeal to striking out boldly into the unknown with an idea that might answer all of those questions at once.
As the sun dipped below the treeline, I began. I recalled the specific way that my domain had stirred and moved when I’d transmuted the rock in my first cavern layer. I reached for that same motion… and then, I reached further. Grasped harder. My heart-body thumped with exertion and the air itself shook as I dredged up what I’d imagined onto the shores of reality.
In the open gap in the wall at the top of the single, narrow ramp that led into the fort, a gate began to take shape. First came the frame - wood, like the rest of the wall, but carved. Or, well, “carved,” since it had never known the touch of a chisel. The gate frame was a stylized grotesque of a goblin’s face, its fanged mouth open to snarl at attackers. It flickered in and out of solidity, throwing off sparks of pale azoth, before cohering with a bang and taking a chunk of my azoth meter with it.
Within the frame’s gaping maw, metal nails began to appear, floating in neat rows in midair. I thought of them as iron, ugly and black, but I had no idea what they were actually made of. Next came the planks of the gate, coagulating around the nails. The doorway was high for a goblin, but a human would need to duck. Next came hinges, and more nails, these ones driving themselves into the non-magically-conjured wood with a series of bangs. Could I do oil for the hinges? I could — foul-smelling black slick welled up in their gaps.
Just like that, I’d done it. One functional fortified gate, conjured from thin air — and it had only cost me almost the entire third of my azoth pool I’d managed to refill.
Quest Complete!
Class Quest: Complete Your First Floor (3/3)
* Have a lv. 10+ minion.
* Have 1+ rooms.
* Place a door to separate your first floor from your core chamber or the rest of the dungeon.
System access increased. Dungeon design functions enabled. +100xp.
You have received a heavenly boon! Auto-completing [Floor 1].
Creating boss arena…
Valid boss arena layout confirmed. Boss arena created.
Designating [Floor 1] boss…
Multiple boss candidates identified. Sorting by relevance…
Goblin [Child Snatcher] - Lv.10 designated as [Floor 1] boss.
Whoa, whoa, hey now. Don’t just go auto-completing things without asking me first! What if I was right in the middle of something and you overwrote it? Before I even had time to fully get annoyed, though, another system notification demanded my attention. And I do mean demanded, this time. Rather than the usual chime, a full-on song of celebration played — horns, drums, and tambourine, threaded through with wordless ululating vocals. Accompanying this fanfare, a pop-up window appeared, haloed in white-gold light. Unlike the usual understated, minimalist system interface, this text box had ornate, gilded borders, capped at the corners with intricate knotwork designs. Behind the text, I could see a faintly glowing watermark — a seven-rayed sun.
Congratulations! You have completed your first dungeon floor. With this, you are at last ready to take up the duties of your appointed station in the Great Chain of Being. Strive diligently to make yourself a whetstone of heroes, and joyfully surrender your Heaven-sent bounties to the worthy! In recognition of your merit, your name shall be writ in the Book of Fates, that all the world may know you. Heed always the will of the Heavens, and your loyalty shall be rewarded.
As I read the words of the message, I felt a great sense of rightness — as though I was one with the earth and the stars, a perfect gear in the perfect machine of the world. Something about the sensation was hauntingly familiar…
With the system’s usual, more subdued ding, my status window opened itself. The [????] that stood, tauntingly, in place of my name, began to flash with golden light. As it flashed, the glyphs began to reshape themselves. Wait, holy shit, was this it? Was I going to get my name back? The fancy system notification had said that my name would be written in the Book of Fates, which I had to assume was a literal book or at least a system database somewhere. I watched with bated breath as my name gave one final, bright flash, and the light faded to reveal…
Planter’s Bend Goblin Warren - Dungeon Core Lv. 14
“Motherfucker!!!” I bellowed with tectonic fury. A wave of azoth swept out through my domain, knocking goblins off their feet and shaking the trees. In the empty eye sockets of the face-gate, a pair of crimson flames ignited. “Son of a bitch!” I resisted, with difficulty, the urge to try to pick up my whole hill-fort and throw it at the moon. Oh, gods of this world, your days are so very numbered. I should have known better than to get my hopes up for even a second, but that didn’t make this any less infuriating. I just wanted to be called by my own name! Was that such an unreasonable request?
I opened my [Dungeon] menu, to see what else the system had fucked with while it was messing around in there. The Floors tab showed two entries now. My first floor had been auto-designated Goblin Hillfort. As assigned names went, that at least wasn’t terrible. When I selected it, the entire mound and the surrounding woods out to the edge of my domain became highlighted in my vision. A secondary highlight indicated that the boss arena encompassed the second and third tiers of the mound, and the gate to the fort was considered the door to the as-yet-unfinished second floor. The first-floor highlight extended about a third of the way down my main shaft before coming to a clean stop in midair. The second entry on the floors list was just labelled [Floor 2]. It was greyed-out with an angry red exclamation mark next to it, which I assumed indicated that it wasn’t a valid floor yet.
There didn’t seem to be any kind of map or architectural-blueprint function, but when I thought about it there wasn’t really any need for one. I could see every point in my domain at once, from any angle or zoom distance I pleased: what functionality could the system even add on top of that?
My Minions tab now had a second column, labelled “Bosses,” with a single entry: Goblin [Child Snatcher] - Lv. 10 (Goblin Hillfort). Next to Nar-shesh’s designation, there was another exclamation point. This one was a different shade of red — the dark red-black that the system had used for [Boss] in my skill list, rather than the bright red of its error notifications — and it was pulsing. To the right of the Bosses column, there was a notification box.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
You have unspent Boss Skill points! Select a [Boss] to choose their Boss Skills.
“Hey, what happened? Did it work?” Nar-shesh called. I noted, with momentary amusement, that despite knowing that my true body was beneath his feet and that I could hear him just fine no matter how softly he spoke, he still instinctively looked upwards and raised his voice when talking to me. “I mean, I assume it worked, because I just got some notifications that I’m a floor boss now, whatever that means.”
“Yeah, it worked,” I said. Noticing that all the goblins looked pretty spooked by my outburst, I winced. “Sorry for yelling,” I said, and explained what had happened as concisely as I could. “...So, yeah, it’s not that I object to being associated with you guys, it’s just the indignity of it, y’know?”
“No, yeah, for sure,” Nar-shesh said, nodding. “Plus, like, where the fuck is Planter’s Bend? Why is the most important thing about us the human town we’re close to? It’s bullshit.” He paused for a second, and his brow furrowed in concern. “Oh. Hm.”
“Oh hm what?” I said. From his tone, I didn’t anticipate anything good.
“Well, I can see an area name for this place now,” he said, swiping at some invisible part of his system interface. “And so will anyone who wanders by.”
An area name? Being a stationary creature, I hadn’t encountered such a thing before, so it was news to me that this world’s system mimicked that particular aspect of video games. If the Heavens bothered to enshrine the names of individual dungeons as cosmic fact, though, I suppose it only made sense that somewhere up there was an office of angelic surveyors responsible for cutting the world into bureaucratically-legible chunks.
I tried unfocusing my awareness slightly, looking at my domain as a whole rather than any one part of it. Sure enough, I could see the area name too. I could also see immediately why Nar-shesh had made such a sour face.
“Ah. Hm,” I said.
“Yep. Uh-huh,” Nar-shesh confirmed with a nod and a grimace. “There goes any remaining chance we had of keeping you a secret.”
It was probably foolish of me to think that I’d be able to go stealth for long, especially with the Pacifica hostage-ruse plan, which was sure to accelerate things. Still, I needed every bit of wiggle room I could get, and I resented the loss of this particular bit.
I sighed. “Whatever. Can’t change the past, so we’d better focus on the present. Says here you have a boss skill to pick? Do you know anything about that?”
“Nope. I was about to ask you the same,” Nar-shesh said, pulling up his system interface. I, likewise, opened his character sheet from the boss menu. The system had presented him with three options for his boss skill:
[Chain Backstab]
Prerequisites: [Backstab]
Keywords: Combo, Cooldown (1 hour)
Upon a successful [Backstab], move to target enemy within short range that has not yet been targeted by this skill and immediately make a follow-up [Backstab] attack against them. Very high combo chance. On deathblow, guaranteed combo chance.
Combo: Move to target enemy within short range that has not yet been targeted by this skill and make a [Backstab] attack against them. Very high combo chance. On deathblow, guaranteed combo chance.
[Active Camouflage]
Cost: Moderate
Duration: Until deactivated
Prerequisites: [Camouflage]
You are perfectly camouflaged from sight while this skill is active, even while in motion. You can be detected through other senses as normal.
[Frenzied Undeath]
Prerequisites: [Curse] or [Death] dungeon mythos
Upon death, reanimate after a short delay as an aggressive undead revenant with significant increases to some base stats and to unarmed attack damage. Good chance to manifest up to (floor depth) combat-oriented mutations upon reanimation.
Damn, boss skills were kind of busted! Invisibility with no time limit? Chaining together a bunch of flash-step sneak attacks? A second, more dangerous phase to your boss fight? Even with an assortment of options like this, though, I felt like there was a clear correct choice.
“It’s gotta be [Chain Backstab], right?” I said at the same time as Nar-shesh said “I’m gonna go for [Chain Backstab].” That got a laugh out of me, and a chuckle from him. “No, yeah, [Chain Backstab] for sure,” I said. I’d immediately disregarded [Frenzied Undeath], because if I had anything to say about it Nar-shesh would live forever. [Invisibility] was powerful, and would significantly increase his survivability, but even if he was invisible he was still just himself. [Chain Backstab], however, seemed like it had the ability to instantly turn defeat into victory. The number one way to lose a fight was to be outnumbered, and [Chain Backstab] was a tool purpose-built for correcting that imbalance. It was the most impactful and action-economy-breaking of the options, and I didn’t think it was close either.
A corona of red-black energy swirled around Nar-shesh as he made his selection and the system finalized his evolution into a [Boss]. With a crunching, gristly sound, muscles spasming under his skin, he gained another inch or two in height. He’d looked fit for a goblin before, but now his skin was stretched tight over lean, whipcord muscle. Too thin to look entirely healthy, he nonetheless exuded an aura of unmistakable danger. His right hand was stained black, with smoke-like wisps trailing up his forearm.
“Oof,” he grunted, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders. “That hit like a charging boar.”
“How do you feel?” I asked, curious.
“I feel great,” he said, moving on to a series of stretches. “Like I could hit the boar right back.” He bounced a few times on the balls of his feet before blurring into motion. In an instant, he’d flash-stepped behind Malik, capturing his friend in a headlock and mercilessly noogieing him.
“Ahh! Treachery! You were like a brother to me!” Malik yelled, doing his best to fight free of Nar-shesh’s grasp. His efforts were obviously fruitless, what with the level gap and the grappling buff from [Child Snatcher], but he didn’t let that deter him. Nar-shesh let him squirm for a bit before vanishing again.
Teekas caught his wrist without even flinching, intercepting him midway to poking her cheek. “I’ll bite your fingers off, fucker, don’t think I won’t,” she said, laughing. Her smile, devoid of any rancor, still managed to be menacing thanks to her multiple rows of razor-sharp fangs.
“Hey, I’m a [Boss] now, show a little respect,” Nar-shesh joked back. The two of them traded playful shoves to the shoulder. Any further celebration was cut off, however, by a long trilling whistle — a signal from one of the sentries. The humans were back.
“Alright, places, everyone,” I said. “Hostage team topside, everyone else below.” I switched back to Ploetz to address Pacifica, who’d been sitting by the campfire observing all of this with the blank nervousness one might expect of someone surrounded by strangers speaking another language. “Pacifica, you’re up. Look scared and pathetic.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she muttered as she obediently walked over to join the intimidation team — Nar-shesh, for obvious reasons, plus Kizurra with his crossbow and Harig because they were the tallest and widest of the goblins. Striga I’d instructed to wait out of sight in the treetops. She would drop in, literally, if things started going south. Pacifica offered her wrists to Nar-shesh, who loosely bound them with some of the goblins’ currently-quite-limited supply of rope.
“How’s that, not too tight? You can get out of it if you need to?” I asked. She turned her wrists experimentally, confirming that as a restraint it was purely aesthetic. “Alright, good, let’s go.”
My goblins waited for the humans on the second terrace of the hill, close enough to the ramp up to the fort that they could make a break for it if necessary. As the humans entered my domain, I gave a low whistle. There were substantially more of them than there had been this morning. And oh, was that — yes it was, I could see torches and pitchforks this time. A literal torches-and-pitchforks [Angry Mob]. That would have been scary enough on its own, but their eyes burned with flames no less menacing than the torches, and I could see azoth shimmering like a heat-haze around them. I had no idea what [Angry Mob] actually did, in system terms — for obvious reasons, that wasn’t information the goblins were privy to — but I got the distinct feeling that a mob this size would roll right over my defenses unless I broke their momentum.
Time to wage some psychological warfare.