WARNING!

Now entering level 12 Challenge Dungeon ‘Dreamland’!

Challenge

‘Wake the Dreamer’

The four of us arrived into the strangest interior I’d yet to see. Actually, to call it an ‘interior’ was wildly misleading, as there were no walls to speak of at all.

“What the hell is this place?” Chris wondered out loud.

“I just received an achievement,” Steve said.

“Me too,” the Backstabber replied.

“They must be talking about the Challenge Dungeon achievement you also got,” Panda explained.

I’d forgotten about ever receiving such a thing, though I did vaguely recall hunting Logan down within such a place.

Still, ‘Dreamland’ was far from anything else I’d ever seen. Below our feet were pillowy clouds suffused with a golden light and arrayed out before us were floating clouds that led upwards like the giant steps of a staircase. Behind where we’d all arrived was just a straight drop down into a white void of nothingness.

As Tina began walking forward, still hugging the Metro Train Brain in her arms, Steve and Chris seemed to be reading their achievements. I knelt down and looked out over the edge.

“I need something to throw at it.”

“Why?” Panda asked.

“I wanna see how far down it actually is, and whether there’s a Dungeon Barrier.”

I tried to pull off a bit of the soft cloud and compact it into a ball, but it just evaporated in my hands.

“Hmm…”

“You still have a screwdriver in your inventory,” Panda told me. “Y’know, the one Steve stabbed you with.”

At his words, the Birthday Brat glanced towards me, worried.

“Don’t worry, Stevie-boy. I already repaid you that by knocking you out. And also by kicking you in the nuts.”

Despite my assurances, Steve didn’t look any less concerned.

I pulled out the screwdriver, and then got back to my feet. While pinching the flat tip between the fingers of my purple balloon gauntlet, I pulled my arm back behind my head, before sending it flying down towards the bottomless white abyss.

It travelled about twenty feet before hitting solid ground with a loud clunk.

“Weird,” I muttered as the impact left no visible damage on the ‘floor’.

Then exactly 3 seconds later an explosion followed, blowing open a hole in the white bottom of the dungeon.

“Oh, right, already forgot I picked that passive.”

“Surprising that, despite having a memory like a sieve, you were somehow still able to complete the Metro Train’s puzzle.”

“I’m a special boy, Panda. My genius cannot be described in simple terms.”

“Sure...”

“What’s that?” Chris asked, as he leaned over the edge of our cloud to look down at the hole I’d made, noticing the screaming tapestry of faces seemingly constructed from woven hair.

“It’s the Dungeon Barrier,” I told him.

“What’s it do?”

“It keeps everyone intact,” Panda said, though, as with the countless times before, Chris couldn’t hear him.

“Don’t look at it too much,” Steve warned him. “It’ll make you go insane.”

Chris immediately pulled back.

“Where’s Tina?” I asked, looking around.

The others looked around as well, before Panda pointed way above, on a cloud platform in the distance. “She’s taking the lead.”

We immediately moved to follow her.

Thanks to my high stats and the passives that boosted my jumping power, I was able to hop from cloud-to-cloud, while Steve lacked far behind, and Chris used some teleportation ability, similar to the one he’d used against the Psychiatrist when we’d reunited earlier.

After reaching the top of the twenty-plus cloud steps, we found Tina standing there, waiting for us. She took off her left high heel and immediately punted the cube brain back down the way we’d come, managing to hit Steve smackdab in the forehead and knocking him flat on his back with a loud grunt.

“Nice kick,” I told her.

“That’s the Temple she was talking about earlier, right?” Chris asked, while Tina and I were watching Steve’s pathetically-slow progress below.

I spun around to see what he was talking about. The cloud we were atop of was way bigger than any of the ones below. At the far end was a structure definitely best described as a ‘temple’. It was like the Greek Parthenon, as it had a large marble base with steps leading up its tall sides and atop of which were towering pillars holding up a roof, which sloped to the left and right with a central ridge down the middle.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“The ‘Brawn won’t save you’ achievement I got when we entered, said that in order to beat this Challenge Dungeon, we have to wake up the Dreamer. He must be in there, right?”

It seemed that they’d received the same notification as me, but in achievement form.

“Do you think the Dreamer is your brother?” I asked him.

He frowned, but then said, “Let’s go check.”

Suddenly a massive serpent of neon-green energy emerged from the air in front of Tina, before slithering down the steps and scooping up Steve, only to return back to where we stood and dumping him on his ass in front of us. Then it disappeared into the air.

“I thought you had a lot of points in Dexterity, so you could always run away from trouble,” I remarked. “This sort of climb should be nothing for you.”

“His Stamina score is low,” Tina said, as though she’d seen Steve’s status screen.

“Isn’t your Class based on Vitality and Wisdom?” Panda asked.

The Birthday Brat hung his head in shame.

Meanwhile, Tina poked her finger into the air and a little metal-and-flesh snake appeared around her neck. It was basically just a miniature version of the Metro Train we’d just defeated.

“Look Gambit! Isn’t it cute?”

“Is that Lil Metro?”

She nodded eagerly.

“She really likes snakes,” Chris commented.

I wanted to warn him against insulting her obsession, but she had pretty good hearing, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Let’s go to the Temple,” Tina urged, before immediately walking off in that direction.

I followed after her, with the other two falling in behind me.

As we reached the large marble steps, I skipped all three by leaping from the cloud.

Tina was quick to follow, but Chris stayed back to help the Birthday Brat get up and over each of them. I wondered why he was being so friendly towards the guy for no reason, especially since he’d exhibited a very strong lone wolf attitude the first time we’d met.

“He’s being influenced by the weird part of Steve’s Class that makes people like him,” Panda said assertively.

“Ugh. Hopefully Immorality’s Curse can break him out of that shit. It’s weird.”

‘Immorality’s Curse’ x

Plugin Passive

With a sufficiently-strong force of personality, you can make anyone agree with you over time, even if they are initially opposed to your point of view.

Players with less Wisdom and Perception combined than your Strength value are slowly turned towards being Morally Evil for every minute they spend in your company.

image [https://i.imgur.com/itoeCoR.png]

After passing the pillars that surrounded the outside of the temple and held up its ceiling, we went through a large opening in the thick marble walls and came into a vast space that was full of sleeping people. Each person had a pillow under their head, although many of them were bloodstained.

“Look!” Panda said, pointing to a group of sleepers with black carapace bodies.

All of them had bloodstained pillows.

I pulled out my broken Looking Glass and appraised one:

Level 30

‘#0068344090’

Collector x

“Keep Wayward Minors safe.”

Job: Minor Collector

Affiliation: Child Protective Services

This Minor Collector of the CPS came to the Dreamland Challenge Dungeon in search of a Wayward Minor rumored to be trapped here.

This Agent is dead.

image [https://i.imgur.com/TspQGlM.png]

“I didn’t know they could enter dungeons…” I muttered. This really raised some uncomfortable questions, since I’d thought for sure that being inside a dungeon meant you were safe, as it might compromise the balance of the Great Game if the Agencies could just pop in whenever.

“Perhaps the CPS follows a different set of rules,” Panda guessed. Although, if you’ll recall, when the Great Game started, you were told to stay put in the Asylum dungeon so they could come investigate you...”

Chris suddenly ran ahead of us, calling out the name of his little brother.

“James! Where are you!?”

I followed after him, weaving between the many sleepers on the floor of the great Dreamland Temple, while scanning the people with my Looking Glass. The majority of them were very low-leveled, and I wondered if perhaps being trapped here had saved them from the first Game Event. There were also some that were level 8, 9, and 10, with a single person at 12.

“Christ in heaven, there must be seventy people in here,” Steve said, his voice echoing through the interior in a way that made me able to hear him even though he was still at the entrance next to Tina.

“About 80% of the people in here are dead,” Panda said. “But if you can complete the Dungeon, you can save a lot of people.”

“I only care about saving Bee. These people will die if they leave anyway.”

“That’s cold, Gambit.”

“It’s the truth. If they’re below level 8, it’ll be really difficult for them to gain enough levels in time for the Second Event that’ll start later today.”

The plushie crossed his arms and frowned.

“Meow?”

“What?? I’m not that evil. Fucking hell, Lordie…”

“Meow…”

“No, that’s messed up.”

“What?” Panda asked, worried.

“He said that, if they’re going to die, I might as well kill them myself and loot their stuff.”

“I think we should be worried about this little psychopath maturing,” Panda commented.

I brought up his stats to see how far along he was, but it wasn’t very impressive.

‘Lordie’

MATURITY

11%

HUNGER

Peckish

FAVORITE FOODS

‘Twizzlers’

‘Canned Cat Food’

image [https://i.imgur.com/TIgtgIr.png]

When I realized he was peckish, I quickly handed him a Twizzler. The hand-spider purred loudly as he slurped it up.

“Are you reinforcing his insane advice!?” Panda scolded me.

“No, he was hungry and I don’t want to die because I forgot to feed him…”

“Oh. Right.”

Just then, Chris dropped to his knees next to a body that lay towards the back of the Temple.

I ran to catch up to him, seeing a smaller version of the Backstabber, with the same pudgy face and dirty-blonde hair, wearing soft blue pajamas and his head on a clean pillow. There was no blood on it. As I looked at the people around him, I realized all of them were Minor Collectors, and all their pillows were red. In fact, in a circle outward from the Wayward Minor were nothing but dead sleepers…

“Don’t touch him!” Panda exclaimed.

But Chris couldn’t hear him.

When he put his hand on his little brother’s shoulder, a pulse went through the interior of the Temple and our surroundings changed to the middle of a cornfield, with green stalks rising high above our heads.

Challenge Updated

‘Find the Dreamer and wake him’

‘Don’t let the Nightmares find you’

“Ah shit,” I muttered.