“What is this stuff? It looks like food but…” Anton trailed off, at a loss to describe what he was tasting.
Kelsey grimaced at her own, mostly untouched, bowl of what was supposed to be stew. “It’s reprocessed mushrooms, basically. We don’t have a lot of use for food around here.”
Anton supposed that was true. The skeletons on this level certainly didn’t need any. “Does ‘reprocessed’ mean take all the taste out? Because I’ve eaten mushrooms before.”
“Not dungeon ones, you haven’t.” Anton blanched and started to gag. Kelsey waved reassuringly in response. “Don’t worry it's perfectly safe. Reprocessing in this case means, first, taking out the poison. After that, it means making them look like food.”
She paused, considering. “I suspect the taste was removed along with the poison, but the rest of it didn’t help. Eat up anyway. It’s filling and healthy, and even hot.”
Anton looked at her suspiciously but continued with his meal. He was hungry — healing demanded a lot from a person’s reserves. Dungeon fungi — in this dungeon anyway — were renowned for their quick-acting and painful poisons. If he had taken one of them, he’d be dead already.
“Um,” he said after a few mouthfuls, another question in mind. “I’ve been to Level Five before, but…”
“It wasn’t like this?” Kelsey asked. He nodded and looked around again. Level Five was skeletons, but not maid skeletons. He’d just been waited on by a pair of them. They curtseyed, they had maid uniforms — right down to the little bonnets tied to their creepily grinning skulls. He’d caught glimpses of cook skeletons working in the kitchen as the meals came out. He’d seen other uniforms on his way in, but he’d been too distracted by the pain to identify them.
Skeletons didn’t normally come with clothes. There were some that had armour, which made for a nasty fight, but a good loot drop. He’d never heard of ordinary clothes being worn.
Kelsey shrugged. “Don’t assume that you’ve seen all of a level, just because you’ve found the way down.”
“I thought the Guild had mapped out all the secret doors, at least down to level 12.”
“They found most of the secret doors,” Kelsey said with a grin. “They haven’t found any of the super secret doors.”
“I see,” Anton lied.
“This area is for hospitality,” Kelsey explained. “I thought I might have a use for it, and eventually I was right, even if it did take forty years.”
“Is that why they’re not attacking me?”
“Well, partly that. Also, you’re with me, and also also you’re bonded to me. I doubt the monsters see you as an outsider anymore.”
Turning away from him, she addressed the empty air. “No we’re not going now, he needs to rest first. We’ll go in the morning.”
“I know I said it was important.”
“Well, we got the important details of what was going on, right?” She glanced at Anton again. “If it’s a raid, they’ll have gone by morning, and if it's something more serious, we can address it during daylight hours.”
Anton slumped, suddenly remembering that this meal hadn’t been the worst part of his day. Going back? I guess I have to, don’t I? He thought to himself.
Kelsey seemed to notice his sudden melancholy. “Girls, I think Anton’s eaten all that he’s going to. Can you get him to bed?”
Anton’s strength seemed to have left him, so the skeleton maids assisted him to his feet, one of them supporting him as he left.
“Oh, don’t let them get into bed with you,” Kelsey called as she left. “They can’t actually have sex, but they find the idea that someone might try hilarious.”
Anton looked over his shoulder, and then incredulously at the maids. The one in front waggled her hips suggestively. The motion made him realise that skeleton bones wouldn’t support a dress that way, so she must have some sort of rigid frame underneath… just to let the dress hang properly.
Too weak to run away screaming, he let them lead him to his room. This part of the level, in contrast to the dusty stone halls that he remembered from Level Five, was lined with wooden floorboards and panels. The maids led him to a room with a bed, and just as Kelsey had predicted they tried to get into it with him. After he pushed them away, they left. Like all skeletons, they were incapable of speaking, but he had the impression they were giggling.
Who knew this dungeon was so strange, was his last thought, before slipping into sleep.
----------------------------------------
The next morning found Anton, after a breakfast that looked like bacon and eggs, but tasted like a saltier version of last night’s stew, headed back to town. Kelsey accompanied him, of course, still dressed in that impractical costume. She had added a pair of equally improbable short red boots to the ensemble — Anton wasn’t sure, but he thought that she’d been barefoot last night.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he protested as they headed down the path. “You don’t look like a Zamaran.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“That’s fine, isn’t it? I can be a traveller from the North,” Kelsey replied. “It’s not like anyone is going to mistake me for an Elitran.”
That was true enough, Anton supposed. Elitran’s humans had a lighter skin colour than the darker brown shades of Zamarans, but Kelsey’s skin was so pale it looked like the colour had been drained out of her.
“Do you know any countries to the North? You’ll need to give a name when people ask.”
“Mel probably does.” There was a pause before she said, “Chela. That should do.”
Anton shrugged. He hadn’t heard of it, but travellers from the north were rare. “Is Mel coming with us?” he asked instead.
“Nah, she has to stay in the dungeon,” Kelsey said.
“Then how are you talking to her?”
Kelsey smiled. “I am the dungeon, remember? I’m in two places at once, so — Whoa!”
The reason for Kelsey’s exclamation was that they had moved out the copse of trees that shielded the dungeon's entrance from sight. Or from their perspective, the trees that had concealed the town that lay a short distance down the steep slope.
“It’s so big!” Kelsey exclaimed. “It was just a village fifty years ago!”
“You visited back then?”
“No, the trees weren’t here back then, I could see it from my entrance. Wow, things sure have changed.”
“That they have,” Anton said grimly. He was noting the breaks in the wall, the razed buildings and the fires that were still going. “Things can change a lot in a day.”
“I guess,” Kelsey said, watching him closely. “You’ve got friends, family, down there?”
He sighed. “My family was on the wall. So was I, but I…” his voice trailed off, but he completed the sentence in his head. Ran.
“You survived,” Kelsey said softly. “Something good is sure to come of that.”
Rather than respond to that, Anton chose to change the subject. “So, you never explained about the skeletons.”
“The skeletons? Which ones?”
“I think you called them the Lazybones?” he clarified.
“Oh right.” Kelsey paused for a bit as they walked downslope. “This is actually a bit embarrassing.”
“Back when I was just a level one dungeon, those guys were my first monsters, guarding my first room. But… it took a while before anyone found me, so I went a long time before my first encounter. Those guys… they were supposed to be patrolling around the room, but they kept skiving off, finding ways out of my orders or outright ignoring them.”
“Monsters can do that?”
“In the early days, I didn’t have quite so tight a hold on things,” Kelsey admitted. “It's easy enough to order monsters around when you’re watching them, but making sure they stick, and that they get interpreted in the right way when you’re not watching is something you have to learn.”
“I see.”
“So eventually I got fed up with them. I told them to fight each other, and not stop under any circumstances.” She kicked at a small pebble on the path, avoiding looking at Anton, who was looking at her in disbelief.
“A while after that, we got our first invader. The first I knew about it was when they entered, of course, but that meant I couldn’t change the orders while they were on that level. They were pretty surprised when they came in and got ignored. They poked at them a bit, but just left them alone and walked straight into the dungeon.”
“I guess they passed the word around, because the next group just gawked at them and walked on by. I’d adjusted the orders by then so that they’d stop if attacked, but no one ever did.”
“They were a bit of a talking point,” Anton said. “People thought that it made our dungeon a bit unique.” There had been a lot of speculation that they weren’t monsters at all, but some kind of animated feature.
“But wait,” he said. “That wasn’t what I meant. How did the skeletons kill those level twenty soldiers? They would have been elites, and the skeletons were level one!”
“Oh that,” Kelsey said dismissively. “Stats aren’t everything.” At his confused look, she explained further. “Levels are based on kills, but skills are based on actual practice.”
“Wait, monsters can get experience too?”
“Oh yeah, it just doesn’t come up much since they lose it when they respawn. It's easier to just pay the cost for the base level you want.”
“I’m still lost,” Anton admitted.
Kelsey shrugged. “So those guys never got killed! They’ve been fighting against an evenly matched opponent, non-stop, for close on fifty years.
“Fifty years…” Anton said, trying to get his head around it.
“Humans get tired and need food and sleep. I doubt they average more than four hours a day of training. Those boys are as good as a human that’s been training for 300 years. Those ‘elites’ never stood a chance.”
“I… skeletons… that’s,” Anton stuttered, trying to get his thoughts under control. Another thought occurred to him, something he should have remarked on at the time. “They weren’t in their usual spot when we came out.”
“No,” Kelsey pouted. “I can’t have them do that just now. Since there were three soldiers, the experience was divided unevenly. Now one is level three, and the other is level four. They’re not matched.”
You could always respawn them, came the involuntary thought. He didn’t waste breath speaking though. Kelsey was odd in many ways, for a person and for a dungeon, but he doubted she’d throw away such a terrifying pair of monsters.
“After we left, I spawned some new skeletons and set them fighting,” Kelsey continued. “They’re pretty crap though, I didn’t want you looking at them. Hopefully, they’ll get better before somebody actually looks at them.”
“You can still do things in the Dungeon when you’re not… there?” Anton asked.
“I am there,” Kelsey explained. “And I’m here as well. Don’t worry too much about it, I get that it’s hard for humans to grasp.”
Anton wanted to object, but they had reached the gate to the city, which meant that they were in earshot of the guards. The gate was open. Yesterday, it had been opened by townsfolk fleeing, so it hadn’t been destroyed like the gate to the west.
“Hey, Anton,” one of the guards said. He knew them, of course, Jasper and Gerald. “You’re looking… well?” Jasper continued.
Anton opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. He knew these two had seen fighting yesterday. Given that they weren’t heavily injured, they’d probably been on the inner walls, but still. They hadn’t run.
“Healing potion,” he eventually managed to mumble. It wasn’t just that though. He had been given new clothes this morning, replacing his blood-soaked rags, and his leathers had been patched up with methodical and precise stitching.
“Lucky,” Jasper said. “Who’s your friend?”
“I’m Kelsey!” Kelsey said brightly. “I’m a traveller from Chela, and I’m afraid I’ve found myself in your mess! Anton here was good enough to help me escape some raiders.”
The guards looked surprised. “You picked a bad time to come south, ma’am. Were you travelling on foot all this way?”
“I wasn’t but… raiders,” Kelsey said with a shrug. “They spoiled everyone’s day yesterday.”
“That they did.” Jasper looked embarrassed. “Uh, Anton’s a resident, so he’s good to enter, but it's a silver to enter for travellers on foot.”
“No problem, I have funds,” Kelsey said, displaying a silver coin. Jasper took it and examined it curiously
“Local currency?” he asked. “Did you get that off Anton?”
“No, it’s quite common in… that town just north of here.”
“Cataca,” Anton supplied, finally finding his tongue. Kelsey smiled at him.
“That’s the one,” she said. “I hear that they’re made by a dungeon around here somewhere.”
“You can talk to Anton about that, he knows it as well as anybody,” the guard observed. “Well, welcome to Kirido. Sorry, it’s not looking its best.”