The dungeon portal transported Ginny into a brown rock tunnel, which was thoughtfully supplied with glowing mage lights. The walls were all rough, as if it was a natural cave, but there wasn’t a single striation line anywhere, as if the rock had no history.
Somewhere in the distance, almost as if it were a recording for ambiance, a drip of water fell with maddening frequency, like a demented metronome.
Ginny’s motorcycle gear insulated her from the damp chill of the place. Her boot treads gave good traction on the uneven ground as she stepped forward.
For the first time all day she wasn’t carrying her bag. The extra chains had seemed like a foolish thing to carry into a dungeon, so she’d stashed the bag in the vape shop, under the table.
A familiar musky smell filled the air as she moved slowly forward. She reacted to it before she even saw the beasts. The wargs looked the same as always, although she was starting to realize they had individual markings and blazes in their fur, or they would if they had a bath.
The chain felt familiar and comforting in her gloved hands. She could practically feel the callouses forming as she spun it up.
Slaying the three wargs that waited for her just down the tunnel was the work of a few seconds. She barely even noticed the dissipating gore splatter as it faded off her chest and cheek.
Every point of strength was making her blows hit that much harder. Every point of dexterity was focusing her swings so she hit exactly what she intended to hit, when she meant to hit it.
Being grossed out by warg blood seemed a thing of the past. It wasn’t like she didn’t already smell of sweat and exertion.
She picked up the coins, which was already getting a little old. Why couldn’t they appear in her pocket or purse? She chuckled at herself. A few hours into the apocalypse and already complaining about inconsequential annoyances.
She was bent over to pick up the last gold piece when she spotted the trip wire. It was nearly invisible in the dim tunnel, but its three shadows from three nearby mage lights were dimly visible from near the floor.
“Trap. Good to know.” She muttered. She also looked carefully for any sign of what it would do, but all she saw was a small hole on the wall at above her eye level. “To trip it or not…”
She stepped back to nearly the entrance and used the unweighted end of her chain to push the wire down. A single straight arrow lodged itself in the wall opposite the hole in the wall, which seemed to have been angled down into the center of the path. The broken wire remained on the ground when she lifted her weapon. The trap did not reset.
“Ouch.” She chuckled. “Better to trip them.”
She inched along the tunnel, sweeping her attention along the walls as well as the floor. She continued to use the chain to trigger anything she found.
Another arrow trip wire here, a row of spikes under a pressure plate there. The traps were well hidden and deadly.
She smelled the greasy, musky beasts before she rounded the corners. The wargs had not gotten any more pleasant with familiarity. Their long toothy snouts reminded her of crocodiles more than wolves, now that they were barely scaring her.
She started her weapon spinning and laughed as the Wargs comically tried to time the spinning as if the weighted knot on the end was a slow moving pendulum on an obstacle course.
They danced forward and back in choppy movements as she gracefully danced with her weapon.
All four of them tried, all four of them failed to get passed her spinning knot, even the last one which had tried to jump past the third one as it died. She got that one with the long tail end of her chain.
That wasn’t a killing blow, but she knocked him back just long enough to bring the weighted end to bear.
These four wargs had been standing oddly in the tunnel, and once they were gone she figured out why. There was a pit trap in the tunnel, a narrow path of solid stone on either side of the central pit allowed the wargs to lay in wait, as if the whole tunnel floor was solid.
Like the trip wires and pressure plates she’d already found, Ginny tripped the trap. The bottom was lined with three rows of thin sharp spikes. It seemed like a lot of people would have missed this one and it looked painful.
She balanced nimbly on the ledge, unconcerned by the revealed trap.
As she left the pit behind her, Ginny wondered how the dungeons were created. Were there sentient cores which earned essence or mana from killing divers? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, so she didn’t try to ask.
Having this well laid dungeon turn out to be laid by a random algorithm would be disappointing.
She advanced slowly, killing any wargs she came across and using her chain to trip pressure plates and wires.
She kept her essence screen open, since it barely impacted her view and she was used to it. Every time her Essence ticked up over 100 she followed her plan to add to her physical stats.
Fifteen or sixteen wargs into the dungeon she was faced with the unwelcome reality that starting at 20, each stat point cost 200 Essence instead of the paltry 100 Essence.
It was disappointing, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have enough Essence. Each warg brought 70 more.
After several turns and curves, the tunnel opened up suddenly in a huge cavern, but the groups of opposing stalagmites and stalactites created a sort of maze which regulated the flow of wargs to her weapon.
The dimly lit cavern sparkled in the mage lights, it seemed to her a cavern of wonders, and the wargs felt out of place. Surely wargs like this would find more prey in a forest or something. They certainly didn’t seem like cave dwellers.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
She rarely stopped swinging as she walked, the monsters kept coming one and two at a time. Her raised strength fueled her energetic motions. Her raised dexterity meant she rarely missed or stumbled.
In short she was enjoying herself a lot.
Ginny had a feeling that this dungeon was not supposed to feel like a pleasant morning stroll. She wondered if it was the Trauma Buffer or something else that kept her so relaxed and calm. She really should consider removing that buff.
Right in the center of the cavern there was a conspicuously elaborate abandoned campsite with a single wagon too large to be wheeled in and out between the mineral deposits.
Once she cleared the wargs from the area she examined the campsite. There had been at least three travelers by the bedrolls. There were a few very old bloodstains here and there.
She wondered if she could take the cast iron soup pot off the cold campfire or if it would disappear when she went through the portal. She didn’t try. The remains of the camp meal was caked and burnt into it. Not that an old meal would stop her from cleaning and conditioning the pot, just that it was too heavy to bother with if she wasn’t even sure she could keep it.
Ginny spent a lot of time in the campsite. She was convinced that it would be a treasure trove, why else would it be there?
She poked in pockets of discarded clothes. She opened every crate of spoiled dry fruit. She examined the straw wrapped broken dishes. She even tore apart the rotting wagon.
That’s where she found the loot. It was just a bag with a ring whose description called it worthless, 100 gold and an Essence Crystal inside. The essence crystal was the true prize.
It wasn’t until she was nearly out of the clearing that she spotted a small pile of bones and refuse. There was something glinting out of the bottom of the pile. She picked up a small pendant on a very thin chain.
Amulet of Luck- Once considered a proper stat, luck is fickle to the point of uselessness. Rogues swear by it, other scoff. This amulet may help you, but it didn’t seem to have helped its former owner.
Ginny read the message several times. “System, how many other stats are not reflected on the stat page?”
That is a misnomer. Many concepts that could be stats like perception or agility are embodied in one or more of the official stats. The Greater Dense System has been in place many billions of years and while it is true that some things like Luck are no longer tracked, all possible stats are accounted for in the stat raising system. If you must know, Luck is embodied under Charisma.
“Oh. Will this amulet affect my Charisma then?” If luck was under Charisma, maybe Charisma wasn’t so neglectable as she’d assumed. If she ever had a few thousand Essence she wasn’t using for something else she might consider leveling it up as well.
Not exactly. It may occasionally tip a saving throw calculation in your favor. Not that the mana physics of chance encounters in the real world should matter to anyone except academy scholars.
The generic system voice sounded almost frantic to be believed. Also Mana Physics sounded a bit like metaphysics, which was also suspicious.
Ginny put the amulet around her neck and tucked it into her jacket.
“I guess it doesn’t hurt to wear it then.”
There is a non zero chance that the amulet could spark a negative outcome where a positive outcome ought to have been more likely to occur.
“I think that’s what the description said.” She agreed mildly.
The voice went silent.
Ginny did not notice any effect of the amulet, positive or negative as she continued to the end of the maze. She soon began to forget she was even wearing it, although she did have a mild notion of selling it later.
She hadn’t encountered a single trap in the open cavern, and didn’t find one after the campsite either. She did find more wargs and killed them just as adroitly as ever.
Ginny began playing with her chain in between fights, trying to get it to conform to the old motions of her ribbon routine. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same at all, but it was fun to try.
Memories of her pageant days were not fun, but the Trauma Buffer made them a lot easier to examine.
Ginny had been an extremely beautiful child, likened to Shirley Temple by more than one pageant judge and that wasn’t just the ringlets Mrs Miller put in her hair.
Mrs Miller coached her endlessly to play up her poor little orphan story. Not that she ever saw her prize money if the pageant had a cash prize. She didn’t even get the toys and gifts, those went to Mrs Miller’s niece.
Ginny was still a beautiful woman. Long limbed, amply curved, graceful, and seductive. She made excellent tips at the club.
She wondered idly if she’d killed whatever interest Mark had in her by showing him up this morning. Not that she had been that anxious to have him, he would have been fun though.
She’d been between boyfriends since before they met. Last winter she’d moved into her own apartment but the winter before she’d spent most of her nights in the bed of one boyfriend or another, mostly to avoid the cold. She hadn’t thought she could afford the apartment, she had just been thinking about her own place for a long time.
Julian was still working out of the studio if she was just looking for a short term romp. Not that she’d want to live with him again. He was a train wreck.
Ginny barely noticed when she killed the boss Warg. The boss was larger than the usual wargs. It was standing in the dead end of the cavern with rock walls behind it.
The boss took two blows of her chain, which was unusual. She delivered the blows automatically, without any tension buildup or angst.
She did notice the three essence crystals generated as drops by the boss. The 3000 essence in the three crystals was more than enough to finish her current stat raising project, but she waited for that. She was distracted by the green trim on the dungeon’s treasure chest and the long notification that she’d completed the task.
Dungeon Report
Wargs killed 37/37
Boss defeated Yes
Traps detected 15/15
Traps disarmed 0
Traps tripped without incident 15
Injuries 0
Deaths 0
Dungeon Clear: Exemplary
First Clear Bonus Awarded: Chest upgraded from Common to Uncommon.
In separate notifications she saw:
Major Perk Awarded (EAI): For regional first clear of any dungeon
Minor Perk Awarded (EAI): For personal first solo run of any dungeon before general awakening
Ginny had a feeling that those perks would prove more valuable than whatever was in the box. She opened the box anyway.
There were exactly three items inside, a purse, a set of throwing knives and a green marble the size of Ginny’s fist. When she touched each item she got a description on a mini pop up screen that resembled the shop screen she’d barely used.
Automatic Gold Collecting Purse- Contains 100,000 gold. Collects monster gold automatically using the Essence retrieval function of the System. Cost 1 Essence per 100 gold.
Bandoleer of Return- the mainstay of rogues everywhere: twelve razor sharp blades enchanted to return to their sheathes when lost, thrown or stolen. 10 mana per return
Safe Base Core- The simplest level of System guaranteed safe spaces. Comfortably houses 6-10 people. Uncomfortably houses up to 100 people. Can be used transiently. When stationary, more features and amenities may be available.
This was something she desperately wanted: the ability to stop chasing coins. Something she ought to want but felt rather ambivalent about: an unfamiliar weapon. Plus something anyone ought to not only want but should want to give to her community.
Probably.
Theoretically.
A safe base would be an enormous boost to the group. At least her first thought wasn’t to run away from the possibility of donating the core to the children’s courtyard.
“System, how rare is a core like this? Will the parents of the children in my neighborhood be able to get something similar?”
Every collection of 100 or more souls will have a facility such as the one that core could stretch out to make at its very largest. After the General Awakening each group will be contacted. For reference, the core in your reward chest would cost 755 gold in the shop.
That definitely sounded like she was supposed to keep it and use it for safety as she wandered around leveling up and killing things.
“Thank you. Was I supposed to ask for clarification of the class system out loud if I wanted any help?”
Of course.
She huffed quietly and slipped the core into her jacket pocket. She put on the bandoleer, which she would absolutely need to practice with, and slid the purse into her pocket on the other side. Her pockets were getting really full. Good thing nobody was likely to touch her bag where it was under the display table.
Ginny spent ten minutes throwing knives at the dungeon wall. She was only ok at throwing the knives, although it was hard to tell with the way they didn’t stick in the stone.
While she was doing that she finished raising Strength, Dexterity and Vitality to 25 points each. Really this scheme of buying stat points with experience points seemed wildly overpowered, almost broken.
She left the dungeon.