They did 3 checks on the adventurer still in the dungeon, but the pedestal seemed to be picking random rooms, some of which were even behind one-way doors that adventurers didn’t normally get into. By the time the dungeon turned green, Colt and Lacey were just scratching their heads. They retrieved their coupons from Kat’s end-room and were pleasantly surprised by 2 1-hour coupons, 2 full-day coupons, and a quickly scribbled note.
This time when they left, Lacey marked down the exact times on the quest timers, asking the temporary pedestal for minutes and seconds on the quests. Lacey picked up Spark to take out with her, but only after a glare from Ginger. Colt was the one who stayed late to reset a few things for the second run-through of the day, but he didn’t leave Kat waiting more than 5 minutes. Goblins scrambled around to try to quickly reset the 3 levels that hadn’t automatically reset, but Ginger was confident that they’d be ready for the second run within the hour.
“Was that goblin shit?” Kat pointed a finger at Lacey, who was really glad that Kat had obviously gotten a clean spell cast on her. Spark batted at the finger playfully.
“Was what goblin shit?” Lacey tried to act innocent.
“The brown stuff in one of those urns in the first room,” Kat laughed at Lacey’s expression. “It was goblin shit. That’s low. Even for Colt.”
Lacey considered letting Colt take the blame for the puzzle, but Kat cocked her head to the side as Lacey pressed her lips together and looked up.
“You put goblin shit in the dungeon as a puzzle ingredient,” Kat gaped.
“Technically goblin diarrhea, but we’re already considering other substances,” Lacey tried to hold back a grin. “We had so little to work with in the beginning and we haven’t updated some of the puzzles since we now have respectful crawlers.”
Kat gave a shudder. “That aside, good set of puzzles that were good at slowing things down, and the loot was good, but I have to ask how you’re getting the beetles into the rooms at just the right level? Are you summoning new ones every time?”
“We call the levels Arenas because we have a central area where the beetles battle each other,” Lacey explained, not seeing any need for secrecy. “We have incentives for the ones who are strong enough to fight their way into another arena, and escape routes for ones that are running from the more powerful ones.”
“Interesting,” Kat reached out to scritch Spark on the top of the head.
“I was wondering,” Lacey held Spark out until she squirmed to be let down. “We use a lot of one-way doors in the arenas that allow the beetles to populate the puzzle rooms. Can you, as an adventurer, get through those doors?”
“I probably could have at my old levels,” Kat admitted. “I haven’t seen any of them, so I didn’t even know to look.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted it,” Lacey worried, watching as Spark scampered across the grass to where Shadow was lounging near the higher-leveled entrance.
“I wouldn’t want to go through them anyway,” Kat waved a hand at the thought. “I mean, I might sometime, just to see the inner workings and such, but we’re pals. I wouldn’t want to piss you off by going where you obviously don’t want us.”
“What level do you think someone would have to be to bypass a one-way door?” Lacey asked, just as Colt was walking up.
“I guess like 10 or so, but they’d have to notice, and your beetles don’t seem to come out when there are adventurers in the room,” Kat blushed and tried to ignore Colt giving her a bashful smile. “It’s not that I couldn’t bypass it or even notice it if I really wanted to, but it’s more like noticing an employee-only sign. Some of us are just respectful enough to leave those areas alone.”
“Your search for secret doors didn’t reveal them?” Lacey asked.
“No,” Kat looked over Lacey’s head at Colt and then immediately focused back on Lacey. “You almost have to know one’s there or catch something coming out. Then you can kind of pry it open and slip inside the wrong way. Honestly, I just don’t run into a lot of them with system-created dungeons. They’re a lot more straightforward hack-and-slash with a dash of story. Why do you ask?”
“We had a weird glitch happen,” Colt admitted, just as Lacey said, “It’s nothing.”
“Glitch?” Kat quirked an eyebrow.
“Like, was Shadow inside the dungeon longer than you by a bit?” Lacey tried to posit the most logical explanation. “I don’t think of Shadow as a threat or anything with how easy everything’s gone, but the dungeon didn’t clear until a good 6 to 7 minutes after you left.”
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“He was a little slow coming out, but not that slow,” Kat cast a quick glance to Shadow. “Maybe 2 to 3 minutes. He said he sensed something, but it turned into nothing important.”
“The pedestal said that there was an adventurer still in the dungeon,” Colt explained. “We looked for them and the pedestal first showed us our control room.”
“Which is impossible because if a danger was in our control room, it would have been screaming at us that we were in danger,” Lacey put in. “That’s what it did when Hughe came through. It had to have been a glitch or something. Computers glitch.”
“The system isn’t a computer and in my experience it doesn’t glitch,” Kat frowned. “At least not like that. It has an attitude sometimes,” a statement that was met with a light peal of thunder in the distance, “but if something happens, it’s for a purpose.”
“What do you mean it’s not a computer?” Colt asked.
“It’s part machine and part, a bigger part, magic,” Kat lifted one hand higher than the other.
“Like real magic?” Lacey’s forehead creased. “How does that work?”
“The machine part is computer stuff and a typewriter,” Kat explained like she was talking about something normal. Maybe it was normal for her, but it made Lacey feel like she was crazy again.
“Are you saying that the real world, our world, has magic in it?” Lacey scoffed, trying to make it make sense.
“Oh, yeah,” Kat nodded fiercely. “A lot more than you would think and its pretty wrapped up in very few beings in the real world who all give each other a wide berth. This whole thing here is sucking up most of the magic from both Americas, from what we can tell. I’m just glad no one’s dropped by to see why we took over this particular area. Maybe they don’t know or…”
Kat rambled off into a stop at the looks of bafflement on Colt’s face and the look of terror on Lacey’s. Lacey’s fear was that she’d just gone crazy one day and was actually locked up in one of those funny houses that weren’t funny unless you really liked crazy drugs.
“Ah, hem.” Kat cleared her voice and changed the direction of her ramblings a bit. “I mean, how did you think you got in here anyway?”
“A magic door that jumps around in time a lot,” Colt answered. “And it only makes sense the way you put it, but I guess I didn’t really think about what it meant for what I generally believed was how the world worked.”
“You didn’t think a magic door that could transport multiple people in and out of time and a fictional universe was running on some pretty strong magical basis?” Kat looked like she was reevaluating Colt’s perceived intelligence.
“I just didn’t think about it all that much at all,” Colt gave a little half-smile. “Things like this, you think about them too much and they maybe stop working.”
“I’m still trying not to think about it,” Lacey admitted.
“Interesting,” Kat pressed her lips together. “Luckily some really great people are doing all that thinking for us, so we can just enjoy the ride.”
“Yeah,” Lacey thought maybe she’d just been insulted, but Kat was smiling like nothing was wrong.
“Yeah,” Kat patted Lacey’s shoulder. “It’s probably best you don’t think about that stuff too hard.”
“There you are!” Benard interrupted the conversation, a welcome distraction from what couldn’t be real and somehow was. “This round was much better and closer to what our expectations were.”
“I can readily admit that this rounds’ casualties are more your peoples’ faults than ours,” Colt grinned at the man while Lacey was stills staring at Kat. “Though the Gossowaries are not to be taken lightly. Vicious things. Feel free to pass that warning around to see if maybe we can get that death rate down a bit more with a tiny bit of caution.”
“I’ve got an arrogant bastard sitting in a respawn bed that could have used that warning a few more times during his pampered youth,” Bernard laughed at Colt and the two patted shoulders the way men did.
“Then I say little harm was done in a more forceful warning,” Colt laughed with the older man.
“Don’t you think that I won’t be rubbing that little stinger in the wound when he returns for another run,” Bernard’s laugh tinkled with charm that just hit Lacey a little wrong.
“He’s not a bad guy,” Kat whispered to Lacey, pulling her to the side. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah, and this round did go a lot smoother,” Lacey let the topic of magic, and the real world go, reluctantly agreeing with Colt on it being silly to dwell on something they could just enjoy. The quests were more than enough pressure without adding the running of a magical world system. “We’ll bring down the level on the Gossowaries, but only slightly.”
“Don’t do that yet,” Kat steered Lacey away from the boys joking blustering. “If I could manage the herd of Gossowaries in the Aztec Tomb’s first corridor alone, then they can learn a thing or two from getting their asses kicked. Benny will warn a few and the word will spread. That’ll likely do enough to level that out. I’m happy with the results of this last round, but that last room did not look like a Manchester Room. What happened?”
“We replaced it with a room that Colt worked up last night and this morning,” Lacey relaxed more now that she was back on solid mental ground. “We had these fairy tale rooms we were working on, and I think he wanted to show off for you.”
“Oh,” and Lacey felt herself smile at Kat being set back a bit out of her comfort zone. “I just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t nerfed the Manchester Room before I had a chance to try it.”
“We still want to let you get a try at it, but not before you go through the more reasonable ones,” Lacey bumped shoulders with Kat. “Don’t worry. We’ll let you try it after all the others.”
“You think I’m going to wipe,” Kat’s eyes narrowed.
“Maybe,” Lacey’s lips twitched.
“Challenge accepted,” Kat grinned.
“Do not leave me alone with that man for long,” Colt muttered in Lacey and Kat’s ears, draping arms over their shoulders as if he was sharing something very funny. “Benny is such a storyteller!”
Lacey laughed with Colt, always his wingman. Talk turned to how Kat had liked the loot of the final chest and Lacey excused herself to join the cats. With the sun overhead, and the breeze soft, Lacey was ready to take a nap.
“You didn’t happen to sneak down into the control room, did you?” Lacey asked the big cat, marveling that his paw was as big as Spark all curled up.
“Nope,” came the reply in her mind and Lacey jumped like she’d been burned. Lacey didn’t know which was more disconcerting, the fact that cats laughed or that Shadow had gotten Spark to laugh with him.