‘Variety dungeoneer’ Side quest accepted!

Main objective:

   Conquer at least one Intra and one Ether-based dungeon.

Side objectives:

   Complete the Intra-based dungeon in one attempt.

   Complete the Ether-based dungeon without any monsters respawning.

Rewards - 4SP

Penalty for failure - 6SP debt

‘Lost and found’ Side quest accepted!

Main objective:

   Get your items back from the dungeon.

Side objectives:

   Complete the dungeon in one attempt.

Rewards - 2SP

Penalty for failure - 4SP debt

I hummed as I stared at the newly accepted quests.

“As we thought… I need to beat the city dungeon to get my stuff back… But what is that about monsters respawning…? I guess each of the dungeon types has its own mechanics, huh?”

After some discussion with chat, we’d come to the conclusion that while the city and the office building were obviously Intra-based dungeons – based on the whole emotion-flood thing – the crystal crater and the spaceship were likely Ether-based dungeons, since they obviously had something very physical happen at them… and also by the process of elimination.

And since I was planning on conquering both the crystal crater and the city dungeons, and since I’d been offered those two quests again this morning, I thought I might as well accept them.

I had just ‘started’ the stream for the day after my breakfast, a therapy session with Jane, and some light exercise. A lot of people in chat theorized that exercising actually increased my Ether reserves, and while I had no way to easily prove or disprove it since it was hard to tell, I still did it just because… you know, exercising is kinda important in general. But especially if I planned on fighting monsters all day.

Speaking of which, I still felt nervous about trying to conquer another dungeon after that disaster with the city one. I was going to take some precautions this time. I didn’t want to rush into danger like an idiot again.

“Anyone have any better ideas than to melt sand into glass…?” I asked as I made my way to the river both to refresh myself and to gather some water.

Eclipsoon: might not help much anyway

Eclipsoon: glass is brittle

“Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I grouched.

How did one counter a Gorgon gaze without having to lug around a fragile object? The best answer we had right now was for me to use hydrokinesis and create a screen in front of myself using water, in just the right way that it reflected light.

Which, as I found out when I’d tried it, was incredibly difficult with my current hydrokinesis skills.

“...This is not gonna work, chat.”

Not only did it take basically all of my main thought process’ attention to maintain it, but I couldn’t even properly keep it stable. The droplets kept moving around and creating holes in my water shield.

Of course, I didn’t know for sure whether I would have to deal with the classic Gorgon gaze in that dungeon – or its sapphire edition, I guess– but I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance, considering that it could very well end up with me instantly dead, turned into sapphire.

“Hmm, yeah, I guess my best counter would be to not look into their eyes, huh…? I don’t like that, though. It’s too risky.”

Part of me thought I was being too paranoid, since this was a fairly low-level dungeon… but the water park had also been a low-level dungeon and I’d had to deal with a freaking cyber shark in a sextuple mirror room.

So, no. Better to be overprepared than underprepared.

JamieWasTaken3: you can use ur turtle scout

JamieWasTaken3: hide and send him forwrad

I hummed and frowned.

“I guess I could use Gargles that way, yeah… but probably not for long. I don’t have that much more Intra, and I don’t want to run out again.”

But to be honest, I didn’t have a better idea at the moment. Even with all the random stuff I’d gotten from the dungeons, I still had nothing resembling a shield, much less a mirror shield. Obviously, I could make a crappy shield out of wood if I wanted to, but frankly speaking, that was a lot of effort for something that might break in one hit anyway.

“...Well, I guess I’ll just have to take it slow then,” I finally said.

After all, the Variety dungeoneer quest gave me a full sixty days and Lost and found gave me ten. And even then, it wouldn’t be the end of the world even if I failed those quests.

After all, the extra skill points were cool, but the number one priority was to stay alive.

With that in mind, I walked back to the dungeon, pulled out my gun in my left hand, and my frying pan in my right – yeah, laugh it up, jerks – and plopped down Mr. Gargles. I concentrated on our connection and made him enter the dungeon first.

Strangely enough, I still felt the chill-down-my-spine sensation second hand when he stepped over the boundary.

“...Okay, that’s weird. Apparently, Mr. Gargles can feel entering a dungeon too,” I mumbled as I stepped in after him.

JamieWasTaken3: hes a real boi!

“The realest of boys,” I confirmed with a sage nod even as I slowly advanced, feeling the gleaming crystal under my feet.

Even if it was visually very different, it felt very similar to my first jaunt into the spaceship dungeon. A large open area with seemingly no immediate dangers that just invited one to explore it. The hole in the middle especially looked like it was hiding treasures.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Obviously, I knew better than that. As tempting as it was to go straight there, I decided to take things slow and first circle the perimeter to see if I could find anything of interest. All while constantly on the lookout for sudden monsters trying to ambush me and chests hidden in some of the crystalline formations.

A few minutes of carefully prowling forward, Gargles stepped on a particular bump on the crystalline ground and as soon as he did, it began to move.

I immediately made him jump back and held up my gun in anticipation.

Weirdly enough, rather than something digging up through the crystal, it almost looked like it formed directly out of it through mitosis. It was pretty bizarre, but far from the weirdest thing I’d seen in this world.

It took about ten whole seconds for the thing to take the shape of a crab-like creature with glowing eyes – that I pointedly reminded myself not to look into – and then it immediately lunged at me.

I fired my gun using its water setting without any preamble.

The blast hit the crab thing and propelled it across the crystal fields. It bounced once, twice, and then finally landed in a broken heap with a glassy clatter. A few seconds later, it poofed into smoke.

I was about to comment how easy that had been when three more of the same crabs began to form out of the ground where the first one had landed.

“Oh… it’s a minefield. Great.”

I backed up a bit more, just so I could more easily run out of the dungeon if needed, and then began charging my gun on its plasma setting.

Luckily for me, the crabs didn’t seem to be the smartest and instead of spreading out to surround me, they all beelined straight toward me, grouping themselves up perfectly the next shot.

I braced for the recoil and fired at the ground just in front of them with the liquid setting. The boom reverberated around me and the crystal under my feet trembled as the mass of plasma exploded right in front of the crabs and engulfed them all.

A second later, as the plasma settled, I saw the three heaps of crystal submerged inside it. None of them were moving anymore, much less trying to charge me.

They turned into smoke one by one.

“...Yeah, I guess this is a bit of an overkill, isn’t it?” I admitted while glancing at my gun. “Well, better safe than sorry.”

To be fair, firing that gun wasn’t that big of a drain on my Ether these days. I probably had four, maybe five more shots in me still. Although I should maybe still try to preserve it if I could.

With that said, both my Ether and Intra levels still felt fine, so I kept going, with Mr. Gargles up front like before.

I hadn’t yet seen any chests like at the spaceship dungeon, but I was sure I would find some eventually. There weren’t that many places where one could be hidden, after all.

There was a suspicious crystalline overhang right next to a pool of lava that looked like it could be hiding something. Obviously, I was wary of falling into the lava, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t snoop around a little.

As I got closer to it, still on guard from more crabs or other monsters, I got a repeat from before where Gargles stepped on a bump and a crab began to emerge from the ground.

Since I already knew that they weren’t that strong and I wanted to preserve my Ether if possible, I decided to instead charge forward and smack it over the head with my pan before it could finish forming.

The resulting clank deafened me for a brief moment but it did its job, knocking the crab to the ground and sending a few shards of crystal flying.

That might have been dangerous for me with how sharp they looked, but luckily, I barely felt the crystal shards as they slid off my amazing ultimate outfit.

The crab wasn’t dead yet though, so I took it upon myself to smash it with the pan a few more times. It only took five hits in total for the crab to stop struggling and poof into smoke.

In the meantime, chat was laughing and memeing about fighting things with a pan. Someone even informed me that they would go ahead and make a funny gif with me smashing a crystal crab with a pan.

I tried to scoff but failed and it turned into a giggle.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, chat. Pans are perfectly valid weapons. Especially ones that can spew fire.”

Obviously, since I wanted to preserve Ether, I didn’t want to use the fire, but there was always the option if I needed it.

“Hmm? Yeah, I guess this dungeon is quite a bit easier than the spaceship. Assuming that robot was just a common enemy and not a boss, I guess.”

I ran into a couple more of these crystal crabs on my way to the overhang and easily took them all out with my trusty pan.

When I approached the lava lake and took a look under the overhang, my eyes immediately zeroed in on the object innocently sitting on the small piece of land surrounded by lava on one side and cradled by the overhang on the other.

“Chat, look! A mimic!” I yelled and pointed at the cyan-blue crystalline chest.

Jeofffff: nana pls

Jeofffff: just appraise it

I did so.

D-rank dungeon chest

A loot chest containing random dungeon loot.

D-rank. Just as I’d thought…

I hummed and rubbed my chin in an exaggerated way.

“Smart mimic. It can even trick my Appraisal.”

Jeofffff: why are we doing this again

“But damn, how do I even get to it to smack it? I can’t walk on lava!”

I had some heat resistance from the blessing and my clothes, but I wasn’t very eager to test whether it was enough to withstand that.

Chat immediately came up with several solutions. Some maybe viable, some straight up suicidal.

“...Uh, no Brian. I don’t think I can use Aquaport when in lava. And anyway, submerging myself in lava would probably maybe kinda sorta kill me, you know? Gonna shelve that plan, I think.” I shook my head. “Eh, shooting my water gun into the lava and hopping on the resulting obsidian sounds cool, but I don’t think that’s gonna work either. You know, this world doesn’t actually have video game physics, Herald.”

There were a couple more insane plans like these, but I couldn’t answer all of them out loud if I didn’t want to be standing here all day, so I merely had my forks send them DMs and focused on potentially viable plans.

“Lemee look around if there’s an opening in the overhang…”

I approached the structure from the safe side, running into one more crab on the way, and searched for a good few minutes. Unfortunately, there were no openings. I could theoretically climb up and get on top of the overhang, but a drop from up there would land me straight into the lava pool. In theory, I could maybe try some acrobatic swing maneuver to land at the small island under the overhang where the chest was but… if I missed, I was as good as dead.

I sighed.

“Well, I guess I’ll try Trixie’s plan and hope it works.”

Said plan involved me finding a spot from which I could shoot the chest with my water gun and launch it to the other side of the lava lake without snagging on the overhang. There was a spot like that, but it would be pretty tight and the chest might still land in the lava… assuming the water gun had enough oomph to actually launch the chest and the chest wasn’t bolted to the ground.

This might also break whatever was inside the chest but… I honestly didn’t have any better plans that didn’t involve recklessly jumping into danger again.

“I feel like a sniper, chat. Enemy spotted and all that.” I snickered as I lay down and took aim.. “Take this, you filthy mimic!”

I fired.

The shot smacked into the chest with a bang and sent it tumbling through the air… straight into the pool of lava.

It kerplunked into it and disappeared under the surface.

…

I stared at the lava lake for a moment while people cried their woes in the chat, telling me I should have done this or that instead, telling to go fish out the chest, telling me–

“...Mission success,” I announced with a satisfied nod. “Mimic eliminated. No need to worry, chat. I have everything under control.”

Jeofffff: bruh

Jeofffff: don’t pretend you planned that

I ignored Jeoff and my own disappointment at losing the chest and got up again.

“Well, anyway. This dungeon isn’t so bad so far… I’m not even sure if the crabs do actually have Gorgon gaze or whatever. I guess if this was the first dungeon I entered, I might have some trouble with it, but… Eh. Not anymore than the water park.”

A second after I said all of that, I realized that I was probably tempting fate and whatever I found next would make me regret my words.

I shook my head to dismiss the thoughts.

“Let’s keep going then.”