When Victor saw the insides of the portal chamber come to life, he was already contemplating just turning around and going back home. It wasn't just big; it was gigantic. Sleek columns stretched towards the sky, supporting walls riddled with thousands upon thousands of dungeon portals. They varied in size, with the biggest one on the ground floor wide enough to easily accommodate dragons and other high-ranking monsters. Each floor above hosted subsequently smaller portals. In the middle of the atrium stood six square glass columns, each holding six magically levitated elevators which in turn held six people. As Victor watched, one of them shot upward, depositing its passengers less than five seconds later at a floor so high Victor couldn’t even count. Artistically placed plants did an excellent job of making the place feel even more airy, and there were several seating areas for people to wait for their colleagues, so they could enter their respective dungeons together.
Victor stepped aside, letting an important-looking troll pass him by. He wore armor covered in the kind of rust that told people you’re dangerous, if the dozens of human skulls adorning it didn’t get the message across. Over his shoulder, he had a giant mace that was thicker than Victor’s waist. Hundreds of rusty and bent nails were driven through it, probably to make sure he nailed the look. When the troll caught the catboy staring up at him with a grin, the he grinned back, and didn't seem offended. Probably thought Victor was impressed, which was fair, because he kind of was. So when the troll gave him the kind of nod that was both encouraging and challenging, Victor nodded back, which made the bigger monster laugh as he went on his way.
The troll went for the elevator, not one of the ground-floor dungeons. He also didn’t get off at any floor Victor could still see.
So despite feeling oddly excited, all Victor could think was, "What in the devil have I gotten us into?"
Waverly’s tail slapped him in the leg, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy taking it all in with huge eyes and an amazed smile, because she was Waverly. And when he followed her gaze, suddenly the chamber didn't look as intimidating anymore. Daunting, yes, but the way the light glinted off the brass was also oddly promising.
Still, if Waverly weren’t here, he would slip into stealth and wait for a while, just to scope out what the hell was going on. Despite her infectious enthusiasm, the portal chamber was a lot to take in.
“Ohmydevs! This is, like, so exciting! Where do you think our dungeon entrance is? It has to be kind of high up, right? But how do we know which floor? I mean, we can’t just try them all out one by one, right? We’d be here until the end of next week, for sure! Oh, wait, obviously, they have an information desk over there!” And with that, she was already off.
When she noticed Victor wasn’t immediately following her, she spun around, grabbed him by the wrist, and pulled him with her, still talking excitedly. Victor didn’t so much let it happen as he was grateful for her momentum. This woman had no off switch, and he would never stop being grateful for that.
So when they arrived at the information desk, a large circular counter made of polished onyx which occupied a large part of the foyer, he decided to take a page out of Waverly's book and spoke up first. The clerk—a Kobold of the furred kind—seemed to be one of those people who was so relaxed, they wouldn’t interrupt Waverly even if she talked for hours.
"Yo! We are looking for dungeon 127VD-E-1."
The Kobold gave him a pleasant smile that extended to the tips of her large ears. "First day, huh? Welcome! I’m sure you’ll like working in the dungeons, everyone tells me it’s quite fun."
Waverly’s tail wagged even harder at that, but she managed to contain her enthusiasm while the clerk started typing into her desktop computer. It was one of those old ones with the heavy, square monitors, but it fit the place well with its sleek white and gold design.
“Ah,” the Kobold said, “sorry that took me a second, I didn’t know it was an outdoor zone.”
She gave Victor and Waverly a look that could have been pity, embarrassment, or even an apology. Maybe it was all three.
So the Dungeon had degraded past the point of being instanced. Hopefully, it at least had its altar.
“Don't worry though,” she said. “You might die way more often in outdoor zones, but advancement in there is pretty quick, and you will surely get promoted out of there before you know it.”
Victor had taken that last bit as just a polite thing to say, an attempt to quell the rising unease in his stomach, for which the Kobold might feel responsible. Waverly, being Waverly, however, took it at face value.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Oh! Like, thank you so much! But what makes you say that?” she asked, sounding painfully sincere.
To Victor’s surprise, the clerk answered with the same amount of sincerity. “You get a feeling for this kind of thing. Also, you asked when you didn't know where to go. You wouldn’t believe how many people are either too arrogant, scared, or maybe just too lazy to come up here and ask for help. I mean, they all do, eventually. Anyway, your dungeon entrance is in sub-basement 499, in the north wing. Just follow the corridor to the very end, and then it will be on the left.”
“The basement?! This place has a basement?!” Waverly asked, loud enough to make Victor flinch and offer the clerk an apologetic grin. But the Kobold didn’t seem to mind, just answered Waverly’s question with a smile and a nod.
“Yes, that's where the portals to all the outdoor zones are, as well as all the various mini-games and loot dimensions"
“Whoa!” Waverly said. That she didn’t follow up with anything was a testament to the scale of this place, and inwardly Victor had to agree. Still, it didn’t really bode well for their new place of work to have its entrance in the basement.
“Thanks,” Victor said with a nod as friendly as he could manage. It wasn’t the clerk’s fault they’d pulled the shortest straw. He turned to leave, but before he did, he looked back and asked, “Just out of curiosity, how many sub-basements are there?”
Perhaps it wasn’t that bad. If the most important dungeons were the ones that were the easiest and/or fastest to reach, being at sublevel 499 could be better than having a dungeon entrance at floor 800.
“Five hundred,” the clerk said, the smile on her face freezing a little, as if to match temperature with the lump that kept growing in Victor’s stomach.
The elevators going down weren’t the same as the ones going up, but they weren’t hard to find if you knew where to look. It wasn’t exactly crowded in the foyer of the portal chamber, but Victor found himself relaxing noticeably when they stepped into the much smaller, darker, and quieter elevator lobby that housed the downwards elevators.
Unlike the main portal chamber in its soaring glory, this room was much more utilitarian. Lots of concrete and fluorescent light. There were fewer monsters too, and Waverly and he managed to grab one of the elevators for themselves.
Two things stood out immediately. One, the elevator was built to accommodate at least 20 monsters, and two, it had seats. Waverly punched in their floor number on a chrome or aluminum pad on one of the walls, and then, as the doors began to shut behind them, she flung herself into one of the ragged, but comfy-looking seats.
When the elevator began moving, and he saw the flickering red numbers on the floor counter decrease at a glacial pace, Victor sat down next to her. He'd just sunk into the cushions when Waverly poked him on the arm.
“Hmm?” Victor said, ears flicking.
“You're doing the face,” Waverly said in that precise and succinct manner that she only used when she really cared about something.
“What face?”
“That face you make when you’re super grumpy because you actually kind of want to take a nap, but have to do some sort of test instead, and you’re actually thinking about how to get out of that test without getting a bad grade,” she said, proving that he wasn’t the only one who could see through their friend like they were made of glass.
Still, he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. What was he supposed to say? Yeah, actually, I really want to go back upstairs and kind of forget about the entire thing, and sorry about the fact that I promised you would be a dungeon boss, but I’ll have to rescind that offer? Yeah, no. It wasn't like he'd never do that, just that he’d never do this to Waverly. Still, he didn’t like it at all. But why?
“But, like, why?” Waverly asked, leaning just a little bit closer. Her tail stood up behind her, swaying slowly. Friendly, and alert.
“Divine now,” Victor mumbled, proving Waverly right about being grumpy. “OK, actually, that’s not true. It’s just this place.”
“Yeah, what about it? I mean, it’s super cool, but it's also kind of big.”
“Yeah, it is, and we’re at the very bottom of it.”
“So what?” Waverly asked, and there was absolutely no cynicism in her voice. Her posture and eyes only showed innocent confusion. It made sense. Victor often forgot that Waverly’s experience was completely different from his own. It was a weird thing to think of his best friend as being used to being at the very bottom of something. It felt mean, in a way, and Victor fought with himself for a bit until he realized that it was just a statement of fact, and not a judgment call. He was determined to remember that she deserved better, most of all.
Shrugging to give himself some time to clear his mind, he said, “I don’t know. I just expected it to be easier than this.”
“Yeah, that tracks,” Waverly said, and that momentary look of confusion that hushed over her features like a storm cloud over the moon told him that she was probably thinking much along his lines.
But when she spoke again, it was with the full enthusiasm that made Waverly Waverly. “But that would have been super boring though, right? This way it’s going to be a really cool underdog story—or under-cat, I guess—where we have to fight our way from the very bottom all the way to the top, and it's going to be super amazing in the end because we'll have earned it, you know!?” Her tail was wagging wildly, thumping against the seat cushions.
Victor laughed out loud at that. He couldn’t help himself. “Yeah, I guess I don’t know what this hard work is that you speak of.”
“Oh, don’t worry, hard work is super easy! You just have to not not do it!” Waverly laughed, and the rest of their way down was filled with teasing, jokes, and laughter.
By the time that the elevator dinged, and the doors ground open, revealing a long concrete tunnel lit by those flickering fluorescent tubes, Victor had almost forgotten what he had been so worried about.