37)

After waiting around patiently for Molly to finish banging on most of the wall with the handle end of her racket in her ongoing attempts to find a secret door. The old woman finally reached down and grabbed a red colored aide for gators.

I had tried a sip of it. It claimed to be a fruit punch.

It lied.

The boy gave Iris a clearly concerned grunt which she somehow failed to understand as she twisted the lid off with a cracking sound. She did at least glance over at him. “What?”

Ernesto looked around. “This place, it likes to play games. That might not be safe to drink.”

Iris looked down at the chilled drink in dismay, but then slowly nodded. Then she handed it to the boy. “I don’t think Tark would try to kill us outright, so anything only strong enough to make me sick at my body weight would hardly affect you.”

The boy took the bottle and sighed. “If you want me to test it I will. But even if nothing happened to me it only means that bottle was good, not the rest.”

The old woman gave him a long cold look. “Drink it and we’re square.”

The boy blinked a few times, then chugged the drink down.

Molly rejoined the group just in time to tell the boy, "Hey, you shouldn't drink that. The dungeon might have done something to it."

Ernesto lowered the empty bottle from his lips, then looked from her to Iris. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Iris grinned. “Yeah, we’ll take it upstairs for now, along with the other stuff.” she reached into the box to pull out the knife, examining it from all sides. “No label on this one either, just the word Afilada on it. That means sharp right?

The boy shrugged, but Molly got a cheerful look on her face. "That's the name of the company I order my stuff from, and it does mean sharp."

She began to almost hop in place. "Which means Tark doesn't just make the magic stuff from what we kill, but from what we bring. We need to haul around more stuff. Do you have a backpack we can make him carry around?" She pointed at Ernesto.

Iris looked the boy in the eye. “That’s up to him Molly. Just because he wronged me in the past is no reason to treat him like a pack mule. Stop being so harsh on the boy.”

Ernesto almost smiled and gave a little nod to the old woman while the healer sputtered in shock and denial. “Me! But, but… you. I...”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

While Molly finally stopped and just glared at the old woman while she loaded up Molly’s shoulder bag with their loot. The boy did offer to carry it out for her, but Molly declined.

As they headed upstairs with Iris in the lead she explained, "We take a two hour break for lunch and to relax. You can either bring your own or I can bake some squirrel or raccoon meat for you. I sure as hell got plenty." She paused on the landing to look back at the boy. "Feel free to take some home with you. But after the second run, we are going to wash your clothes to get the blood stains out. Bring a set to change into next time."

When they go to the basement Kelvin was waiting for them. The boy tensed up, ready for a fight but the old woman just held her hand out as the kobold gave her my note.

She read it and grunted. “Tark is willing to identify one of our unknown items in return for a child sized crossbow and at least one good quarrel… He wants an argument?”

The boy hesitated and then spoke up. “It’s what they call the arrow for a crossbow.”

Iris looked over at him. “Oh.” Then down at the floor. “Hell no, I am not buying you stuff that will be used to hurt me. I already gave in on giving you samples of dangerous animals and I know I’m going to regret it. So no, just no.” Then she stomped her foot a few times for emphasis.

Molly frowned. “Uh… I guess we don’t need to know what exactly the knife does. It will do knifey things, just better. But the skull thing? It might be really useful?"

The two of them stared at each other, both of them unsure, while the boy looked back and forth between the two of them.”

“Am I a part of this enough now to know who Tark is?”

Iris started to talk, stopped, then waved her hand at Molly. “You tell him. I’m pretty sure you understand it better than me anyways. So go ahead, full disclosure.”

Molly nodded and sat down on the couch, waving at Ernesto to take a seat next to her, the boy look a bit nervous and moved the cardboard box from one end of the couch rather than squeeze into the open spot right next to the healer.

I think that is the point I stopped hating the boy for what he had done. Between whatever he had suffered to become a Survivor and his shyness around a girl he stopped being the brutish thug who had broken into an old woman’s home to rob her, and just a stupid young man who had made a mistake.

My world had dungeons for rough boys to go off and do violence for better rewards than robbing their neighbors. Here, young men may have no other choices than to go off and work in a mine.

Now I had another reason to develop this dungeon as quickly as possible. People needed both the opportunities and the chance to level up. After feeling like a useless burden for the last twenty years of my former life, I think I needed something like this.

I just wished I knew what the Fell I was doing.

As Molly explained it. I was the ghost in the machine. A term I was unfamiliar with but dangerously accurate. From there she explained that I was the intelligence that created and operated the dungeon, but that I was not part of the dungeon itself. She told him she guessed that most of the monsters they had fought were automated while others, like the kobolds, were under my direct control but had personalities of their own rather than just being aggressive.

She also explained that while I was out to give them a hard time, it was to force them to be better at fighting and dealing with monsters. Not to try to kill them, but injuring them was on the table.

The boy was a little wide eyed by the time she finished. But he finally nodded and looked down at the floor. "So he's like a dungeon master?"

Molly perked up. “Yes, exactly.”

Ernesto frowned. “He’s pretty cheap with the rewards. I mean, just pennies?” Molly hesitated, then nodded.

At that point, Kelvin threw the envelope labeled "For necessities" at him, then crossed his arms while glaring at both of them.

Iris laughed. I made another secret door in a room Molly had already searched for someone else to find one day since she never rechecked any of the rooms. “Call me cheap.”

The boy slowly opened his envelope to find the five hundred dollar bills inside. He blinked a few times then looked up at Iris. "We should give him the crossbows, and maybe some other stuff. The harder he makes it, I think the quicker we would level up."

Iris started to shake her head, then looked thoughtful before looking at the ground again. “I want the bird skull thing identified and the knife as well. I’m not going to waste a request just to find out that the knife is extra sharp.”

I had Kelvin nod at her, and Big orange run up another note before turning around and heading back into the dungeon.

Iris looked at the note and read it out loud. “The knife has a ten percent penetration bonus which helps get past armor and thick skin. You get the other identification after I get my crossbow.”