“The Blurg was a shock for her,” Lacey commented, she and Colt watching the finishing scene unfold for Kat. “But that’s only because our other rooms in the arena are set so that they fight monsters and then have a clear shot with no opponents until they finish the puzzles.”
“That did make it a bit too easy, but it also made for a good surprise factor on the Blurg,” Colt tapped the desk with his pencil.
Kat was again the last to finish, but that was only because the levels were more challenging than her first run, and she was alone on a level that should have challenged someone several levels higher than her. The NPCs had a better run this time with no full wipes, and fewer casualties. They got 6 groups through without at least one NPC dying, and they were pretty sure that Kat would make that total 7 for this round. They were still having trouble with the Gossowaries, and Lacey had made a note that they were likely overpowered for their levels.
Kat was squishing the blob projectiles that the Blurg spit out, but she hadn’t yet figured out that the cage held all the health points for the monster. The bucket sat on the dirt floor next to the well, the key hidden in the cage of the Blurg which, at level 15, spit out 5 projectiles every round of combat. Kat could crush 4 of them easily per round, but that left her behind the curve.
“We should hide a bag of salt in the room,” Colt suggested. “If those blobs are like slugs, they should be vulnerable to the salt, right?”
“I like it,” Lacey grinned. “That would give them fits too, at least it would for a character like Kat. She’d be wondering what the salt is for.”
“And the well is fresh water, so it ties the story together on that,” Colt agreed.
In the control room, Spark was chasing dust bunnies that Lacey had made into actual monsters, hoping to help Spark level up. The bunnies didn’t do a lot of damage, but when Spark pounced on the little level 1 dust apparitions, the dust would pillow out just a bit and cause Spark to sneeze a tiny bolt of lightning. Ginger disliked the things on principle, but they kept Spark out of mischief, so she didn’t just dispel them with her clean spell. Lacey had programmed the dust bunnies to give out cat treats as loot. The whole thing had been fun to watch for the first half an hour and was good for a distraction now and then, but Lacey and Colt had mostly learned to ignore Spark’s little scuffles, except that when Spark started to cause mischief, they’d resummon a few.
“The blobs don’t do much damage,” Lacey mused, her pencil tapping on her chin.
“They don’t have to,” Colt nudged a little bunny out from under Lacey’s chair, so that Spark perked up from her sniffing in a corner of the room. “Once there are enough of them, they can overwhelm in numbers.”
“It’s a challenge for Kat because she’s alone, but it wouldn’t be at all for a full party,” Lacey worried, all of her attention on Kat kicking the bucket and almost accidentally doing damage to the mob generator. Kat had leveled up to 14 just on this floor, and it was only the first level of the day, but the dungeon was leveling up too. With 10 groups going through, they’d increased by 3 levels this round, not counting whatever experience Kat gave them.
“We should include some mob dynamic where they have increased offense or defense against more opponents,” Colt suggested. While they couldn’t imagine Kat getting defeated by a simple blob making machine, Lacey and Colt were happy that the dungeon had gotten to level 28. For that matter, they had leveled up too since their levels always seemed to mirror the dungeon’s gains.
“That’s a great idea,” Lacey nodded and added the note to her spiral notebook. They had access to all kinds of paper since they’d gone to town. It was one of the things that were cheaper and a little more modern for them here in the dungeon than it was outside the dungeon. Lacey liked ordering the spiral notebook because when she was done with the paper, she could reuse the wire binding material as a spring in trap components. They’d started including the notebooks in treasure chests and were amused by how well people seemed to like them as loot.
“She’s got it now,” Colt tapped the screen with the eraser of his pencil, something he’d learned did not trigger any interaction with it. Kat had figured out that the cage was the real danger and started to hack at it with the pommel of her daggers. It was resistant to slashing damage because of the stiff nature and holes, but blunt attacks shattered it relatively easily.
The mob died, the iron key slipping out of the remains. Kat grabbed the key and applied it to the little hobbit door that opened with a tinkling sound. Kat might have been tempted to pick the lock, but she often seemed a lot more interested in playing the puzzles even when the lock was pickable. A shimmer of airy lights burst from the opening, manifesting a treasure chest into the middle of the room, a new dynamic that Colt had built into his room. Lacey would be using it a lot.
What Kat didn’t know, since she’d opted to do the puzzle instead of picking the lock, was that the door might have opened with the lockpicks, but the treasure wouldn’t have manifested without the use of the key. Kat beamed at the chest like a kid at Christmas. Lacey sneaked a glance at Colt to see he had a similar smile. She rolled her eyes. He was such a goner for this girl. Kat checked it for traps, but the chest wasn’t even locked. The lid eased open, and Kat blushed.
“Why is she blushing?” Lacey gave Colt a suspicious look.
“I’ll change the loot for the box for the next group,” he didn’t answer her question, his attention riveted to Kat as she pulled a single red rose out of the chest.
“There’s other loot in there, right?” Lacey’s mouth twisted in a wry look.
“Yeah,” he had the loopiest grin on his face as Kat took a moment to smell the rose. Their display was only in black and white, at the moment, but Lacey knew it was a red rose. Colt loved a red rose gesture.
“You poor sap,” she muttered under her breath, pushing away from her desk.
“Yep,” he smirked, unapologetically stealing Lacey’s seat. He had his elbows on the tilted desk and his eyes were glued to the screen.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“What else did you do?” Lacey turned back to watch over his shoulder, barely avoiding the dust bunny that was still trying to hide under her desk chair.
“Watch,” he answered as Kat pulled out a journal, beautifully wrapped in decorated leather that Lacey recognized as Colt’s personal handiwork.
“When did you have time to make that?”
“I brought my old leather-working tools back from the apartment,” Colt explained. “I used the tools with ink like stamps and managed to draw something close enough that I like it.”
Kat ran a hand over the front of the journal with her name on it. Was she blinking too fast? If that girl broke out in tears over the leather journal, Lacey would never hear the end of it from Colt. She’d have to peel his heart off the ceiling for a month. Didn’t she know that Colt was the master of romantic gestures? He could do this sort of thing in his sleep. Then again, it wasn’t such a bad trait when he bought Lacey perfect gifts for her birthday or Christmas.
Lacey slid her gaze to the corner where Spark seemed to be playing with a dust bunny. They didn’t normally summon more than one because they liked to multiply quickly. Spark was one of those gifts and Lacey counted herself lucky that Colt was such a good friend.
Kat was tucking a few other things from the chest directly into a dresser that she’d pulled out of her inventory. Those stacked inventories that PCs had were amazing. The dresser held a small chest in one drawer. That chest held a dozen wardrobes, into which disappeared a cloak, a pair of boots, and a belt. Then all the furniture was packed back into the chest that was tucked impossibly back into the drawer of the dresser that was then put away.
“I think she liked them,” Lacey patted Colt on the shoulder.
“She put most of it deep in her inventory,” Colt said with a dopey grin. “That means she’s keeping it rather than selling it in town. So, yeah, she liked it.”
“Where did she put the rose?” Lacey played along with Colt’s romantic scene, putting away her cynicism to not squash his moment.
“She tucked it into the chain on her dagger sheath across her chest,” Colt pointed at the screen, and it automatically zoomed into Kat’s chest. Colt spent a moment fumbling the zoom back out. “Oops.”
Lacey laughed and patted Colt on the shoulder some more. “We should try making more fun loot like that for regular adventurers. Unique loot might be a big draw eventually.”
“You think so?” Colt looked up hopefully.
“Sure,” Lacey shrugged.
“I just thought you’d think it was a waste of time, but I do have some ideas,” Colt rambled a bit. “I mean, we have so much to do and filling out loot tables doesn’t really do a lot for the dungeon as a whole and I was thinking maybe we needed more rooms more than we needed special loot.”
“We don’t really need a back yard either,” Lacey pointed out. “And yet, we’re fighting really hard for that. I think whatever we bring to this is going to make our dungeon unique. That’s important, especially when they decide to bring in more people to make dungeons.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Colt glanced up at Lacey and then back to the screen of Kat, who was placing their coupons on the edge of the well with a stray brick to make sure they stayed put. Now that they’d had over 10 groups go through the dungeon with no wipes, those coupons would likely be for a full day outside. “Things get so pushy about moving forward that I think I get locked into these quests and their timers like it’s the only thing we should be doing, but maybe there’s room to do our own thing too.”
“I think the quests normally just seem to push us into things we already want to do anyway,” Lacey stared at the coupons. “Do you think the quests will pause if we take a day outside?”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to chance it,” Colt shook his head. Kat had started her run back to the surface, a run that was different in the Arenas. Monsters respawned as adventurers went forward. The arenas were always pumping new mobs out into the rooms. The puzzle-locked doors were all now open, but Kat would run into a few mobs here and there who had worked their way out of their training arenas. That had led to 2 NPC deaths in other groups just this time around, but Lacey doubted that Kat would fall to a few surprise mobs. “We’ll try it tonight maybe.”
“We are way ahead on almost all our quests,” Lacey reasoned, but she didn’t want to risk their progress any more than he did.
Inside/Outside Voice: 11/25 (96/120 hours remaining)
Masters of the Hoard: 9/20: 5/100 Rejects, 10/100 Snucks, 0/100 Poillows, 12/100 Dustapps, 1/100 Blurgs, 0/100 Velcrabs, 0/100 Droffles, 0/100 Smugs, 0/100 Burrugs, 0/100 Krettles, 0/100 Krowls, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/100 (96/120 hours remaining)
Back Forty Acres: 81,912/1,000,000 (312/336 hours remaining)
“We can’t afford to take time off of that Back Forty quest,” Colt shook his head. “If that one counts our time outside, we’re sunk and we really need that one for you.”
While they’d done the equivalent of 5 years progress the night before while they’d slept, the levels of the monsters of the dungeon hadn’t counted. Lacey agreed with Colt that if the time dilation for the dungeon hadn’t been useful for pumping up that quest, there was no reason to believe that the time would stop on their quests like they had for their dungeon closure. Maybe if they had more coupons or the Back Forty Quest wasn’t so tight, they could try it out, but Lacey would rather stay put for the full fourteen days.
They’d also gotten a coupon for a trip back to Colt’s mom’s place for Sunday dinner, but they were waiting on that too. It felt irresponsible to both of them to use the coupons before they’d finished this set of quests. Colt and Lacey had talked it out over lunch and decided that they’d clear the board of quests before they did any more excursions.
“And she’s out,” Colt called out as Kat gave her wave at the exit.
“Did Shadow stay in?” Lacey asked when the dungeon didn’t immediately turn green.
“I don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean much,” Colt squinted at the screen, focusing on the room where Shadow generally lounged about until Kat went out.
“It’s not like we could just go down there and chase him out,” Lacey shooed Colt out of her chair and over to the pedestal. “Take these with you.” Lacey waved her 2 new designs for the pedestal at him. It wasn’t much for her normal contribution, but she felt like she had some ample inspiration to sketch out during the next shift.
“Pedestal, are there any adventurers in the dungeon still?” Colt asked out loud, something they only did with direct queries as it was faster than sorting through the help menus.
“There is one adventurer still in the dungeon,” the pedestal answered.
“Pedestal, show adventurer still in dungeon,” Colt commanded, then frowned at whatever he saw on the pedestal. “That can’t be right.”
“What?” Lacey looked up from her monitor where she was watching Shadow’s favorite room, the highest leveled entrance to the Zoo. Adam sat with one of his elites at their desk in the middle of the room, but they were kicked back with their hands behind their heads chatting. They tended to be a bit more skittish around the big cat, though maybe they were just getting used to him.
“The screen shows the control room,” Colt answered her, unpinching on the screen to zoom in. “In fact, it’s focused on Spark. The pedestal doesn’t consider Spark an adventurer, does it?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lacey glanced over at Spark, who was chasing something out of her imagination across the floor toward the door.
“If it isn’t focused on Spark, then someone else would have to be in the room,” Colt insisted, backing away from where Spark was playing.
“If someone other than one of us was in this room, we’d get an imminent wipe notification, wouldn’t we?” Lacey was remembering how the system had responded when Hughe had delved far enough into the dungeon to get to the control room.
“A glitch?” Colt offered as they both watched Spark skitter out the door and then back inside as if she had seen a ghost just past the doorway.