“It’s torture,” Lacey moaned, her head lolling back.
“I can’t take anymore,” Colt whimpered next to her, his hands limp over the edge of their table. He’d collapsed in a heap, laid out like a sacrifice for their Aztec temple, over the whole table.
“How much longer?” Lacey asked the system, blinking back the grit of her eyes to stare at the latest room the party had reached.
“Dungeon expulsion scheduled for 23 minutes,” the system replied ruthlessly. The party had chosen to try to push through the dungeon, rather than exit before the upper floors were repopulated.
“I’m not going to make it,” Colt’s weak proclamation was almost drowned out by his grumbling stomach. “There should be some kind of exception for using the pedestal to order food. This in inhumane.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but the system was still locked out of any purchases. They had all split the last of Ginger’s stash of cold, dried meat on a stick five hours before and only the little goblin seemed to be not suffering.
“We can do this, Colt,” Lacey reassured him. “It’s not much worse than fast Sunday at your church.”
(Lacey) Constitution +1
“I cheated,” Colt grunted out. “I’ll admit it. I had a stash. This is my punishment for that, isn’t it?”
“We’ll stock up on some energy bars or something for the next one,” Lacey tried to chuckle, but her stomach had past growling and just hurt.
“Maybe they’ll break through and kill us so I can get food,” Colt kicked his feet that hung off the end of the table.
“They haven’t even gotten to the Manchester room,” Lacey shook her head. That room was on level 8. They would time out and everyone but the fighter knew it. It wasn’t that the mobs were hard. The group was well-seasoned and fought as a good team. They were beating level 15 beetles very quickly, but the traps and puzzles were wearing them down. The bard had almost died twice on traps, even though the thief was finding a lot of them.
Colt sat up quickly to look at her. “I have an idea! You can kill me with your dagger. I’ll bring back mom’s apple pie, the one with the crumble crust made with real butter. And a sandwich. You know the ones you like with the thick slices of ham?”
“Oh, stop, Colt, please, I’m dying already here,” Lacey rolled her eyes and plopped down in the chair next to the pedestal so that she could rest her head against the side of it.
“I’d bring you a carton of Chunky Monkey, but it’d melt before I got back for sure,” Colt went on, ignoring her pleas, lost in his fantasy.
“If you don’t stop I really will kill you,” Lacey growled, throwing her dagger at the table only to have it actually stick in the side of it very near Colt’s draped arm.
(Lacey) Dexterity +1
“Lace!” Colt jolted. “I was just kidding, sheesh.”
“Don’t blame me,” Lacey whined out, her temper just as short as his after 10 hours of this dungeon incursion. “I’ve never been able to hit anything before and I wasn’t trying to now.”
“Probably why you hit me,” Colt muttered, laying back down, ignoring the dagger two inches from his growling stomach. “How much longer system?”
“Dungeon expulsion scheduled for 17 minutes,” the system replied, completely unconcerned by the fact that Colt had been asking the question every few minutes for the past 2 hours.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“17 minutes?!?!” Colt complained like he was Lacey on two hours of sleep. Not that either of them had slept either. They were both tired and starving. They hadn’t slept for at least 6 hours before the incursion, and they were wearing thin on tolerance.
“Cripes, Colt!” Lacey struck her fist on the pedestal. “Give it up. The lights will change, and we will both order tons of food and get a good night’s sleep, but if you ask the system again for a time check, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“At least you can draw,” Colt rolled his eyes back toward the floor. “Draw us a meal like mom used to make, will you? So we can order it up the instant the dungeon turns blue.”
“I already did, Colt,” Lacey reminded him, watching the idiot party punch in the wrong number again on the puzzle door of the level they’d been in for half an hour. “Two hours ago, and an hour later, both your favorite meals and mine. We are set to drop those papers and order it no matter the cost, but we still have to wait for the bozos to go away.”
“System,” Colt started again.
“Don’t do it Colt,” Lacey warned him.
“I was going to ask it to read out the rules for monster creation,” Colt lied.
“No you weren’t,” Lacey glared at him.
“The tech tree for rubber bands?” Colt tried.
“No you weren’t,” Lacey repeated.
“The composition subtree of magnets?” Colt teased her, rolling over to stare at her intently.
“Then ask any of those things, but if you ask for the time before expulsion again, I’m going to light your hair on fire in your sleep.”
“You wouldn’t,” he stated, but his frown said he wasn’t sure.
(Lacey) Intimidation +1
“Would,” Lacey raised a brow, wondering where she got the energy.
“Wouldn’t.”
“Would.”
“System, how long would it take to read out the tech tree on magnets and would that be longer than it would take for the bozos to be expelled from the dungeon?” Colt asked, but he was moving before Lacey even got up.
(Colt) Dexterity +1
He launched himself into her bunk and then out of it when she chased him all the way up there. There was only so much space in the control room, but Colt managed to keep out of her reach by dashing around the table until she went over it instead of around as he’d expected. He might have been bigger than Lacey, but he was quick for his size. It was the result of brothers and sisters that resented him being treated so much better than them because he was the youngest. How he ducked under the table as she went over was a mystery, but it did pass the time.
(Colt) Dexterity +2
“Incursion defeated with no casualties,” the system started to say, freezing them both just as Lacey was poised to sink her teeth into Colt’s calf as he dragged her across the room to vault over the table with or without her attached.
(Colt) Strength +1
They didn’t hear what else the system said as they scrambled for the drawings that had floated to the floor sometime during their tussle. They dropped them both at the same time, Lacey’s favorite feast on the bottom by only a centimeter.
“System accepts new drawing,” the system was blathering on again, not that they were listening.
“System, order both sets of food on the papers provided,” they fumbled over each other to say.
Food started materializing, with Lacey and Colt grabbing stuff as fast as their fists could snatch it. They darted each dish to the table, nibbles and moans the only sounds except for the announcement of their awards, which they completely ignored. Ginger, having come out from her hiding place under the bed, quickly darted out of the room to order some worker goblins to retrieve their treasure chest, but she was back so quickly, they almost didn’t know she’d done it.
When they were half done, the table was almost overloaded with their food order. It wasn’t done materializing things when the dungeon pulsed an angry red and the food just materialized in a ring around the pedestal. Colt and Lacey skid to a stop within inches of crashing into it all.
(Lacey) Dexterity +1
(Colt) Dexterity +1
“What the hell now?” Lacey grumbled, quickly swallowing a twice-baked potato skin that she’d stuffed in her mouth. It hadn’t been as good as Colt’s mom’s cooking, but it was good.
“I mm-oh,” Colt didn’t say around a mouth stuffed full of a whole roll that he hadn’t even stopped to butter.
Ginger was moving food from the ring around the pedestal as Lacey was trying to find a path to look at the display so she could find out what had happened. The table was filled up, but somehow Ginger found space for most of it, sniffing it curiously as she moved both feasts worth of food. Colt sat at the table and snagged a handful of fried cheese sticks, alternately biting and blowing on each one.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Lacey said, punctuating it with a whistle. “They walked back into the dungeon.”
Colt swallowed to say, “System, where do the adventurers get expelled to on a time out?”
“Adventurers are expelled to a safe area just outside the dungeon,” the system replied, and Lacey gave out a long groan.
Colt eyed the food on the table, which would normally be enough for his family of ten and still provide some leftovers. “We didn’t order enough.”