Getting out of the dungeon after my latest delve, I went to take a quick nap. I turned on Alexa turn on Sleep Sounds Thunderstorm the white noise that I liked best and curled up around my pillow to sleep. I flipped on my TV and turned on the news.
Nothing exciting seemed to be happening in the world. Politicians were doing politics. Criminals were criming around. Athletes were jumping up and down. And a person dressed as an Inuit had just assassinated Elon Musk….?
I found the grainy security camera footage on YouTube. Musk could clearly be seen coming out of the Twitter headquarters when a guy dressed exactly like the guy in the video I had seen in the adventurer forum walked up to Musk, pulled out a sword from some hidden inventory, and decapitated both of Elon Musks bodyguards, before stabbing Musk through the door of the Tesla he had just jumped into to get away. Blood splattered throughout the interior of his black car. Gut and spilling the bodyguards intestines out all over the parking lot floor, before turning around and walking away. Then the Inuit monster pulled his sword out of the car door, put his car back into his inventory, cast a spell to clean the blood off his body and turned and walked away.
So far, the news had not connected the Eskimo dude who killed the South African Tesla founder with the guy who had stumbled out of the dungeon in Canada. But it would happen inevitably. Journalists had access to all the same [status forums] I had. This was big. I opened my [Status] and checked out the [Forum] to see what my fellow [Adventurers] were saying.
That's fucked, man. The Dungeon Eskimo dude must be really pissed about what Musk is doing to Twitter. The Eskimo Dude probably had to pay for a blue checkmark. Bummer.
🌟Nob Goblin - 125 upvotes, 25 downvotes, Report
Did you see how he pulled his sword out of nowhere and went through those security guards? How his sword cut straight through the Steel Frame of Musk's car. I heard that most bodyguards for celebs and CEOs are like retired Special Forces types trained to spot danger. And Eskimo guy cut through them like they were cheese.
🌟Ring Wraith - 258 upvotes, 75 downvotes, Report
The media haven't seen the connection yet. I can't believe there aren't any reporters reading this Forum. What will the public outcry be when they start talking about this. Will the government try to regulate our dungeons? Delving is how I express myself. I have a 1st amendment right to do this. Freedom! I, for one, opt out of the Federalist and Statist oppression.
🌟Ruby Ridge 4Eva - 25 upvotes, 1202 downvotes, Report
Maybe SpaceX was getting too close to discovering something. Nobody has convincingly explained where all these dungeons came from. They just appeared all of a sudden. Now dungeon monsters have assassinated the world's foremost authority on space travel. I find that mighty suspicious. What else are they planning? Did they cause Covid?
🌟Qanon Paladin - 1257 upvotes, 598 downvotes, Report
Need I remind everyone. There have been hundreds of recorded dungeon breaks that have been recorded. That doesn't include dungeons that have not been found or revealed, or controlled by people who aren't participating in our little gossip forum.
🌟🔷Dante - 12251 upvotes, 1562 downvotes, Report
My buddy has a dungeon he hasn't told anyone about, and a monster stole his car.
🌟Gimly - 1201 upvotes, 745 downvotes, Report
I am going to strangle Sid. Emily was supposed to be keeping him on a short leash.
From there, seeing how great [increase Stamina Recovery] was for keeping sleep away, I wondered if there was an anti [Stamina] debuff. Now that would be better than Melatonin. There was a [Drain: Stamina] and a [Steal: Stamina]. Scratch the [Steal Stamina] Spell since I didn't want someone else's [Stamina]; I just wanted to get rid of my own. [Drain: Stamina] seemed promising. More uses than the straight up [Sleep] spell. And 45xp wasn't too expensive. I made a mental note in the [Notes] section of my [Status].
It did occur to me that maybe I was spreading myself too thin. I was getting too many Utility Spells and too many spells targeting my creature comforts. I summoned a bagel to gosh and thought about it.
The problem was I liked to be a generalist. And I wanted to spoil myself. Now I was only justifying. Wasn't the apocalypse in books supposed to be about a personal quest for power to allow some semblance of human civilization to thrive?
It was either that or all the evangelicals being rapturized so that they could feel schadenfreude about everyone who didn't subscribe to the political extremism of their leaders being miserable for the rest of eternity. It seemed lately that dying for the SBC was just another way to own the libs.
The Evangelicals had all been left behind in this world were pissy about us calling it an Apocalypse, since they had been predicting one for years, and once that apocalypse came the apocalypse was nothing like what they had been predicting. Not that I was planning on burning in hellfire just to make some religious douches happy, not any time soon at least. No matter how much that would please the congregants at the mega church down the street.
The only natural post-apocalyptic choice — if you accepted the framework of online web-fiction rules; which seemed closest to what was going on — was to seize power. I was hunky-dory with that as long as I could do it on my own terms. I was OK with finding my inner ubermensch. I spake Zarathustra and all that. And if becoming a superman meant more [Summon: Smoked Salmon] spells; that was fine by me. The void I stared into was in my guest room, and I was building a wall around it, so it couldn’t gaze back at me too much. Others might think that having a dungeon I could use by myself was wasteful. But to me it meant I could let my freak flag fly free.
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And why the fuck would I give a shit about what other people thought?
This didn't mean I wasn't curious about what the mandatory class choice at Level 10 would offer. Supposedly the best classes were provided then. I had originally thought that you were only offered a class at Level 10, but now I knew that was wrong. If you met the pre-requisite you could get classes at any time. It was amazing how much bullshit was floating around the internet. People without access to the [System] really were clueless.
The doorbell rang and I got out of bed to answer it. The Home Depot delivery van was here with Bricks, concrete, and the tools I'd rented. I asked them to move everything into my living room, so they piled everything up in front of the TV.
One of the Home Depot associates gave me a weird look when he saw the blood spatter on the floor, all the swords, baseball bats, and bits of armor lying around. I shrugged and said, "We got a little too involved in the role-playing parts of our last D&D session last night."
I gave the delivery folks a nice tip so they wouldn't have negative feelings about our interaction.
Then I went into the guest room and started to scrap up the oak floor. I had most of it gone in the area I planned to enclose when I heard a knock on the front door. Checking my doorbell cam, I saw that it was not the cops, and it was just Sid and Em, so I went out and opened the door for them.
"Hey Em, hey Gimly."
I stepped aside so they could come in and closed the door behind them.
"So Gimly, I hear you have a friend with an undiscovered dungeon, and this friend had his car stolen by a dungeon monster," I said. Sid looked embarrassed, he was blushing, and Emily just looked confused.
"Al Sala'am Alaykum Randy, I can explain. I just thought I should provide information without giving anything away. It might help the people who were studying all this stuff out."
"What is going on," said Emily.
I forwarded her the link through the [system] interface.
"Sid." She swatted her husband's head. "You moron. Randy didn't have to invite us into his home and give us a chance at becoming adventurers. Nobody else would have. And if someone figures out who you are and follows you back here, we won't be able to use this dungeon anymore. There goes our only chance to level up. And we are back to the fantasy of finding one everyone missed somewhere out in the wilderness. I really don't want to hike the Appalachian trail anytime soon."
"Em, darling, I didn't mean to screw up."
"I know, Sid. You were just chasing clout. I get it. Now apologize to Randy and never do it again."
"Randy, astaghfirullah -- I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I was being a Chud"
"Dude. I don't think any lasting damage has been done. Just promise me you'll think before you try to flex online again. Now let's get moving bricks. You can fit 3 stacks of 20 cinder blocks in your inventory. Em, would you mind mixing some masonry cement? Sid, could you tear down the drywall in the area where I got rid of the flooring. Also, could you bag the ripped-up hardwood and haul it to the dumpster. Use your inventory; it makes carrying shit easy. You don't feel the weight"
"You seriously want me to stand before your dumpster and pull things out of nowhere? What will your neighbors think?"
"Hmmm… good point. Then pile it up in the living room, and I'll hire a junk hauler when we are ready to have them come and pick it up. Speaking of Junk, Em, my sword broke on my last delve. Any chance you have a better one?"
"I've got a ton. I was thinking about bringing a selection of swords and knives over. So we always have a supply on hand."
"That would be useful. Maybe next time."
Relying on my recently purchased [Masonry] skill and vague memories of the summers in High School, I spent working for a contractor as a part-time job. I began a U-Shaped cinder block wall around the dungeon. The space the cinder blocks would enclose would be 12' by 15'. Easily 2/3rds of my guest room. It helped that the exterior wall was already made of cinderblock behind the drywall. We decided to incorporate the already existing 2x4" studs of the wall frame into the construction to facilitate the inclusion of electrical and plumbing into the enclosed area. If worse came to worse, I could use my [Dig] spell to make trenches and holes in the cement foundation far more accessible and faster than a jackhammer could have.
We had a quick debate over it, and building a room seemed like a better idea than just reinforcing my guest room( I hadn't ordered enough bricks anyway). Eventually we could do that too, if we needed two layers of defense for things like [dungeon breaks].
Storing the cinderblocks and masonry cement in inventory sped up the process immeasurably. And through blasting a steady stream of [Increase Stamina Recovery Spells], we had the rough construction done in a day and a half. Em said she could put up drywall. I ordered enough framing materials, drywall, white paint, and vinyl imitation hardwood flooring to make the interior and exterior look nice. And I spent a few thousand dollars to order a steel security door. And an excellent smart-lock that locks from both directions.
After Em had put up drywall and the flooring was done, and we'd cleaned up a bit, the new room — which we had begun to call the "Dungeon Foyer — looked stunning, and there was no trace of the dungeon. There were CCTV cameras focused both inside the dungeon foyer and my guest room, so anyone with an internet connection or access to the monitors inside the guest room or inside the foyer could see the rest of the house. While there was a video camera on the inside of the foyer so people in the rest of the house could monitor if anything had come out of the dungeon. The lights in both rooms came on by motion sensor.
The foyer was set up really nicely. We had cabinets lining one wall that we had filled with weapons and armor, and the healing potions I had managed to make out of the concentrate from the [intro to Adventuring class]. On the other side of the foyer, we had set up some bathroom cabinets with a working sink, a supply of towels, a toilet, and a shower stall. The CCTV monitor was installed into the drywall with buttons you could use to cycle through the video Channel.