Part Three: The Game Of The Gods

~Run 5, Treacherous Treasury, Floor 2, The Fallen Merchant City of Aerlyn~

As soon as I stepped into the room, I took a giant breath and sighed in relief. I had begun to think I would never leave. Rellum, his minions, and I had spent a good hour sketching out the basis of a plan. It stank to high heavens and frustrated me, but we couldn't win this run.

Beating the Djinn required a series of relics, and their 'Shortcut' was why they had never come close to winning. Self-sabotaging in the worst way. An exercise in abject failure. But Rellum didn't let an ounce of contempt leak through his demeanor. He was kind and gentle with his charges, optimistic that we could handle the boss of the floor on my next run. Additionally, we planned out the skeleton of a plan to address Aurentum by accepting his help and agreeing to assist him.

My mercenary tag had changed to something called a "reformed." Apparently, it happened to all people who changed their allegiance to a different deity once they moved on through penance. Rellum even had the means to obscure my new status from Aurentum until we were ready to reveal the truth to him. I was not the first, nor even the only active mercenary Aurentum employed in the dungeon. And here I was, thinking I was special. I was a little worried that I would lose access to my death boons and the extreme power-up of 100 boons I had earned from my suicidal rush in the previous room. I was on board with helping, but I'd be dead in the water if I lost the death boons.

Rellum assured me that I wouldn't lose my death boons. Buffs, once given out, could not be taken away.

The room was practically a repeat of the first treasure room I stepped into. Mountains of gold, weapons, and treasures filled the room to bursting. I gave a wary glance at the room banner as I continued forward. I looked down and sighed. I had been about to step on a pressure plate and sidestepped at the last second before falling over and landing hard on a mountain of gold coins.

[Yay! Character development! I'm so proud of you, Roddy.]

My companions followed me a few moments later, content to let me take the lead. I scrambled to my feet and pushed them out of the trap.

"Watch your feet as we move through here; traps are everywhere."

"We know. You didn't have to shove us; we were about to walk around," Klericho said, an odd tone in his voice. I don't imagine he enjoyed being dressed down by his boss or my helpful shove.

"Oh." I looked at my companion for a second, thinking about how to respond to his tone before thinking better of it. "Alright, have you two been here before? I assume we just have to avoid the traps and fight any enemies that might appear."

"There's a couple of goblins? No big deal, really," Thomas said, glancing at his partner as if asking for permission to talk to me. It was like even though the god practically scolded them, they still wanted to mistreat me.

I felt a pressure building behind my eyes. I didn't want any of this. I didn't want their anger. I didn't want their god's attention or any other god's focus, for that matter. I just wanted to scream in anger and frustration, but I couldn't let myself be the villain they accused me of being.

"Alright, let's hop to it," I said, walking forward. My hands twitched at my side as I took in the treasure troves around me. I squeezed my palm, letting my nails dig in deep as I took a deep breath. I recentered myself and looked away from the obvious traps. The fleeting gold was scarcely worth the time it would take to pick it all up.

"Hey, I know you're new, but we must pick up the pace. The treasure here isn't even real. It's marked as treacherous when you pick it up. It even infects other treasures. Best just to ignore it."

"Infects other treasures?" I asked, eyebrows raising in surprise.

"If you pick up even one coin, you'll have to throw out all the gold you have. It all becomes infected and rots away outside of this room."

"Well, that's all kinds of insidious. I figure that's happened to you at least once?" I said, trying to lighten the mood.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Instead of replying, Thomas nodded and took off with a charge as time froze. It felt like days since the last time I'd been in real combat. I still wasn't sure how my charge got past the turn-based battles, but I just chalked it up to yet another oddity. The more time I spent in the dungeon, the more I felt like someone was making up the rules as I went along.

The goblin trickster was diminutive for an already small race. He stood just over 3 feet tall and held some sort of potion or something in his hands. Instead of drinking the potion, he lobbed it through the air, splashing it on top of Thomas. I had already cast a long summon as I was taking to calling this overpowered spell.

Only this time, something was different. It was still the same spell, but the energy felt infested and darker, somehow. I bit down on my cheek to keep from stressing.

Dark tendrils like octopus tentacles reached out of my hands as the spell unleashed itself. And it seemed my simile was apt as the many-limbed and shadowy octopuses slinked into existence through my hands and out into the open.

The battle had already ended as my three new pets squelched onto the ground with horrifying wet sounds. As their suckers attached to and detached from the ground, my stomach felt queasy. The octopus was inky purple and black with dark blue spots. While torch light was almost always a poor illumination source, the flickering flames showcased Otto's (my new name for the pet) spots, which barely contrasted against the pitch black of his skin.

The Ottos approached me, and then I almost lost my lunch as they jumped up and onto me in three different positions. Each one weighed at least 10 pounds, but I soon relaxed as their weight felt quite comfortable.

"What are those? I was okay with your other pets…" Klericho shuddered. "But octopi? Really?"

"You know I have no control over what's summoned, right? It's just like everything else in this place: It's summoned through a roll of a die. Anyway, what's the deal with this room? Is there anything I should know besides the traps? Or was that the only fight here?"

"Oh, this room is a cakewalk. That was it. Just avoid the colored tiles; gray tiles are safe. It's kind of silly how easy this room is compared to the previous one."

[It's a breather room,] Thomas's crystal broke in. He hadn't talked in a while, so having a new voice participate in the conversations was nice! [When Penance was constructed, The Designer built this prison to punish, teach, and heal. And nonstop torture is not suitable for any soul. Even the penitent need to rest.]

The crystal went dark and ceased talking.

I shrugged my shoulders and felt myself relaxing for the first time this run. I needed a pause after the absolute marathon of the previous room. I needed to rest my head from the headache I had been nursing, so I looked down instead of staring at the gold and the temptation it brought. And I was so thrilled that I did.

They were right that there were a bunch of gray tiles mixed with colored ones, but they weren't right about the traps.

I felt a weird sense of déjà vu as I looked at the colors. The patterns were the same as those lit up in the textiles room: red, blue, blue. Red, green, green. Green, blue, green. "Crystal, do you remember the pattern of the carpet colors from back in the textiles room? Is that something you can keep track of?"

[What do you take me for? If we have the exact guess, you're looking for the 14th pattern. Green, purple, red.]

I moved happily along the rows until I came upon the 14th pattern. It was the first purple tile I'd seen, and I didn't hesitate to press the plate. As I expected, it wasn't a trap. Instead, a sound much like grates falling reverberated throughout the room. Some of the piles of gold shifted, and I worried for half a second about an avalanche—err, well, coinvalanche? But the coins settled, and they tried looking around for the noise source. Klericho reacted before Thomas did, his question sounding accusatory rather than curious.

"What did you do?"

He turned around from his vantage point a few rows of tiles ahead of me.

"I pressed the purple tile here. The patterns are set up just like the carpets in the textiles room…" I paused for a second as realization hit me. Squawk had been trying to tell me the entire time that a secret key was hidden below. I had already destroyed everything by grabbing the Aerlynt orb when I did, so there was no way to backtrack and find out if my hunch was correct. I would have to backtrack one more time to clear the floor. No matter, I shook my head, "Did anybody see the door that opened? The key to removing the floor is in or at least part of it.

“You idiots destroyed the first one with your fireball stunt, and I bet I accidentally destroyed the path to the other one when I revived y'all with the Aerlynt orb.”

"We were stupid when we destroyed one, but it's an accident for you? How charitable." Klericho irritably commented.

"Of course," I said, owning my words with no shame. He reeked of hypocrisy. He dared to get mad at me in front of his god, and now he was taking that anger out on me after his god had rebuked him. I wanted to scream, but again, I held my tongue and bit my cheek to keep from crying; the wound was already an ulcer, but it didn't make me any less mad.

I walked forward and climbed a gold mountain for the height. From my new vantage point, I could make out the whole room. And because of that, I could see the exit easily from my perspective.

There were two exits, but one had been closed, I assumed because of hitting the treasure lock. I assumed it was there to funnel you to the right place, but it would also be a sick twist if, instead of leading to the key to exit this place, it led to a dead end, and we couldn't progress any further.