Author's note: I apologize for the late release. I realized that I really need to plan out the story more and have a good idea of the direction and plot. Release speed will pick up once I’m ‘back in the groove’. As a bonus treat I’m also working on getting something special for the series.
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Unlike videogames, real caves are dark and unlighted, we carried our own torches in, but the light from the torch only reached a small area around us. If we walked into a room, we would lose sight of the walls.
It was really difficult trying to make our way through the cave, Sarah was getting very annoyed and yelled out in exasperation. "This dungeon sucks and isn't very fun, I can't see anything. Couldn't they add some lights or something?"
Oddly enough a voice from within answered her
"It's a spooky dungeon, its dark because the dungeon is spooky."
I yelled back, "But if we can't see anything, how do we know if it is spooky or not? This dungeon should be called The Boring Dungeon because the hardest part is not falling asleep."
"Fine" the voice yelled back, and suddenly lights came on illuminating the area.
"Ahhh" we all screamed, clutching our eyes trying to adjust to the change. "Eeeak!" Sarah squeaked, she just noticed that the walls were covered with moss and splattered dried blood.
There were two skeletons on the other side of the room, one held a sign saying 'Welcome to Spooky Dungeon!'
The other skeleton held up a sign saying 'Prepare to be killed! Players killed - 0'
Denise pointed at the players killed sign and laughed. She started making fun of the sign, saying sarcastically "Haha! Players killed 0, must be a really scarry dungeon"
"Comeon, give me a break" the voice continued, clearly embarrassed, "You guys are the first players to test out this dungeon, I'm a new dungeon master AI, will you please die for me?"
Four trap doors appeared on the floor to the right, there was a chain hanging over the top of each of them with a note attached saying 'pull me... pretty please?'
"I'm not interested in dying Mr. Dungeon Master" Gustav yelled back, "You're never going to kill anyone!"
"What if I gave you each a skill crystal?" The Dungeon Master replied. The notes saying 'pull me... pretty please?' were replaced by a white skill crystal.
---
About 10 minutes later we reentered the dungeon.
This time the dungeon master greeted us with a dark and ominous voice, "Are you ready to die in Spooky Dungeon? The dungeon that has claimed the lives of many players?"
It looks like the skeleton's sign has been updated, this time saying 'Prepare to be killed! Players killed - 4'
We just rolled our eyes and unenthusiastically said "ohh so scary" and entered. For our sacrifice we were each able to get a 'power' G ranked skill crystal. In order to level a class skill to level 2, you needed 3 skill crystals. The power skill crystal we each got would improve the effect of the skill.
The first hallway in the dungeon had a rocky floor, however in the middle there was a suspiciously flat area.
On the other side there was a skeleton that was making a weird 'come at me bro' gesture, trying to edge us forward.
"What's wrong with that guy?" Gustav asked.
"I don't know," Sarah replied, notching an arrow into her bow. "Let's find out, Wind Arrow!"
The arrow hit the skeleton straight on the mouth, knocking off a few of its teeth. Angry the skeleton charging straight at us. Sarah was able to pelt it with a few more arrows which make it even angrier.
It was getting closer and closer when suddenly
Rip!
The skeleton disappeared! All that left was a soft cursing sound from within the dungeon. Something about 'boneheaded skeletons’.
We walked forward to investigate, and found the smooth floor was a ripped paper like material. The skeleton was in pieces on the bottom, impaled by the spiked pit.
We carefully walked around the edges of the pit and headed towards the next room.
---
As soon as we entered the second room, the door shut behind us and sealed itself.
Then, on the other side of the room, ropes dropped down from the ceiling and a squad of 5 level 15 goblins slid down them, commando style. They all had a short spear, and quickly spread out in a half-circle formation,
"Come at me!" Gustav yelled! Using Taunt to draw the attentions of the goblins. Sarah fired an entangling arrow at the right most one, causing it to stumble and seperate from the pack.
Denise and I ran forward to attack but soon I heard Gustav shout out in pain. "The goblins have piercing, arggg!! Sweep!"
Gustav hit back the four goblins that were attacking him and took a sip of the healing potion. He took about four attacks and lost almost half of his health.
I had immediately pivoted and ran back to Gustav. With a quick medicate, Gustav was put close to max health, but the Goblins had recovered. The quickly surrounded us and rushed towards Gustav.
Since Goblins all attacked from different directions, Gustav was only able to face one at a time. I blocked the spear of one Goblin, while stepping forward. I was able to grab the spear from its hand, twist it away and store it safely in my item box.
Without a weapon the goblin angrily charged me and pounded me with his fists. However without piercing or any bonuses, I didn’t take any damage at all, my light armor prevented all of it, and it felt like a light massage.
I pounced towards another Goblin, but this time they caught on, the only started attacking with quick short jabs, and would quickly retreat after a strike on Gustav.
Although Gustav was back at half health, we bought the time needed for Denise and Sarah to finish of their Goblin. They just bounced the Goblin back and forth between each other until it died.
My Goblin just pounded his fists on my back a few times. Gave up, walked back to the ropes and just left his comrades to die.
With only three Goblins left, things went smoothly from here. The girls took one Goblin, surrounded it and DPSed it quickly to death. I took one Goblin and distracted it by making grabbing motions towards its spear, and Gustav would use Sweep and then charge forward and attack the disabled Goblin.
A little while later we see the Goblin that ran away drop down from the hole in the ceiling, he looked a little beat up, and was holding a little dinky knife. Resigned to his fate he just sat on the ground and waiting for us to finish him off.
“Congratulations! You killed the cowardly Goblins!” Again we heard the voice from within, “Note to self, replace Goblins with more skeletons, skeletons won’t run away from battle.”
“When’s the dungeon going to get spooky?” I asked, wondering about the name
“Wasn’t the Goblins appearing from nowhere spooky? Or the secret trap?” The dungeon master asked.
“Not really”, Denise complained, “It was a little too generic.”
“Fine… well… you’ll like the next room.”
---
True to his word, the next room was pretty spooky. This room was one long weird winding hallway. The lights of the dungeon were a lot dimmer, and there were strange scratching sounds within the walls.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
We carefully edged forward, Gustav tapped his sword on the ground in front of him, checking for traps.
Tap, Tap, Tap
There was a pause as Gustav was examining something.
Tap, Tap, Tap
“That wasn’t me,” Gustav whispered, his face white as a sheet.
And as if someone was answering him a spooky ‘ooooohhhhh’ could faintly be heard.
Sarah let out a short eek, and hid behind Denise.
We kept on inching though and suddenly Gustav triggered a trap with his sword.
Suddenly a trap door opened on top of him and snakes fell out. “Ahhh!” he shouted out, stamping and flinging the snakes around.
Oddly though the snakes were called “level 1 garden snakes” and they clearly weren’t poisonous so we kept on walking through.
Suddenly right before the last turn, everything went quiet, all of us shivered in anticipation, we just went through 400 yards of strange noises, traps, and jump scares… what was awaiting us at the end?
---
It was a door… to the next room…
“This is the worst dungeon ever!” Sarah screamed. “You kept on building up to a climax and instead of getting one it’s just over?”
“I’m sorry!” The voice from within shouted out. “I spent all the points of the dungeon on the décor and the final boss. I didn’t have enough to place any more monsters in the dungeon.”
We sighed and entered the next room, and as soon as we entered we saw a large humanoid robot with pincers for hands and four spider like blade legs.
The robot make a loud cackling noise and said in a familiar voice! “Hahahaha! That’s right! Your final boss is me!”
Denise put her hands on her hips, tilted her head for a second thinking. And then she looked as if she figured out something important.
“Don’t tell me you spent all the points of the dungeon so you could move around in some giant robot!”
“Gasp” the robot quickly moved its hands to its vocal box near the head. “How did you figure it out?”
I made sense to me, so I added “Well I guess it makes sense for an AI to want a physical body. It must have been pretty expensive.”
“Exactly!” The robot pointed a claw at me. “Unfortunately now that you know my secret you must die! Muhahaha!”
The robot open and closed its claws a few times and charged at us.
Denise, Sarah and I immediately stepped back, getting into formation. Gustav ran forward screaming “Come to me!! Taunt!”
The robot ignored him and just walked past him saying “Hahaha, I’m an intelligent being, I don’t have to pay attention to your silly taunts… uhh oh wait I have to follow the rules of the game now that I’m a robot.”
The robot hurriedly scooted back until Gustav was once again in front of him.
“Time to be irrationally angry at the tanky armored guy, arrggg!”
The robot lifted its right leg up and brought it down with a giant ‘Thud’. Gustav was able to doge in time and the three of us began to make our move.
“Focus damage on the legs!” I called out, hopefully by damaging one or two legs the robot would be unable to use them to attack, and would have to rely on his weak, puny hands.
Swiizp A wind arrow flew by us, knocking at the right leg.
“Hahaha!” The robot laughed “Twigs are not going to bother me … Ow!” Denise slammed the leg with a kick, “Oooch!” Gustav had savagely whacked it his sword. “Owwowwow” I had stabbed it with my short sword.
It immediately started doing some sort of dance using its front two legs to try to stab up and down. However since it could only focus on Gustav, it was pretty easy for him to dodge or mitigate most of the damage. The rest of us were able to get good solid hits on it and its back right leg.
“This isn’t working it complained, and in the center of the body a nozzle popped out and started to spew a long stream of flame.
Although all of us immediately got out of the line of fire of the nozzle as soon as it appeared, the robot began to slowly turn clockwise. Gustav was behind the flames so he was safe, and Denise and I were close to the robot so it was a simple matter of running around him.
However Sarah was on the edge of the room and there was no way she could dodge this attack. Instead she chose to run through the flames taking an enormous amount of damage.
She reappeared on the other side missing a huge chunch of health as well as her eyebrows.
But she was able to run to the center with us, while listening to Denise laugh about her lack of eyebrows. After a potion and a Medicate she was out of the critically low territory and good to fight.
This time all four of us stuck to the center to avoid future AOE attacks.
It didn’t take us very long to break of the first leg of the robot, we were able to damage and then destroy the back left leg.
The robot backed up, made some fake heavy breathing sounds, and then said “Okay, it’s time to get serious… super speed mode.”
The robot suddenly rushed forward and started pummeling Gustav with its two claws. Unable to block himself from this unrelenting force, Gustav’s heath was disappearing at a worrying pace.
The three of us tried to attack the robot’s legs to push it off balance, but with three legs it could still easily slip on one leg without losing any traction.
Denise then grabbed onto one of the legs, and climbed up the robot. She got to the top and yelled out “Skull Crusher!” slamming her elbow into the top of the robot, denting the head.
“Arrggh!” The robot screamed, it raised its two arms and slammed them towards Denise quickly. But Denise had already left so all it did was hit itself quite hard in the head two more times. “Arrrgh!” The robot repeated.
This gave us the opportunity to wail at the robots weakened front right leg. I was also able to give Gustav a quick Medicate.
It didn’t take long for us to break off another leg from the robot. Balancing precariously on two legs, the robot quickly retreated away from us. It then yelled out “Transformation mode!”
The robot dropped down so it was being supported by his claws and two feet, it started readjusting it legs and hands so it didn’t look as awkward. In addition a nozzle started appearing out of its mouth.
Alarmed, we quickly ran forward and just in time. As soon we made it, it spewed a flame that reached across the room and waved it back and forth. We were safely on top of it, standing on its perfectly smooth back.
“Well it looks like your transformation sucked!” I remarked as we proceeded to make its back a lot less smooth by pounding it.
Unable to reach its blind spot on the back, the robot howled and tried to transform back. But whenever it tried Gustav would knock it back down with a sweep.
All the robot could do is spew a few useless flames and try to shake us off. But without an effect means of dealing with us, all it could do was resign itself to its fate.
[Giant Robot level 22 killed]
[Leveled up to 16! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
[Leveled up to 17! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
Gustav started calling out “Loot! Loot! Loot! Loot!” and we joined him, eager to see what the prize for beating the dungeon was.