The two didn’t spend too much time fooling around, aware of the danger that some lone adventurer might spot two monsters taking selfies, and reporting it back to town. Of course, usually Terrence and his crew could have returned and respawned, catching them in the act, but in this case, the bugs that plagued the dungeon were working out in their favor. Victor didn’t know exactly how high their levels had been, but the rogue mentioned something about mage, Whirlwhisper having to wait days for her respawn. That suggested they’d been very high level indeed, possibly even max level, which was rare, but not unheard of as far as the catboy knew.
In any case, as long as they were dead, they couldn’t see what was going on in the world of the living. That much, Victor was sure of.
“Should we just, uh, leave them laying around here?” Waverly asked, her tail twitching as she looked over the adventurer’s corpses.
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot!” Victor replied, jogging over to each dead body and rummaging through their belongings.
“What are you doing?” Waverly asked as she followed him. As usual, she sounded more curious than concerned.
“Looting their bodies!” Victor replied. He was kneeling next to Terrence and looked up at the werewolf, big grin plastered on his face. “I have SO been looking forward to this!”
“Wait, wait, we loot them, too?” Waverly asked, eyes going wide.
“Sure,” Victor said, turning back to the rogue and patting him down. “Ohhhh, so that’s how that works!” he said as his hands wafted through several items as if they weren’t even there, while others stayed solid.
Waverly still looked a bit skeptical, but when Victor suggested she try it out, she knelt over the mage and gingerly touched her. Then her eyebrows went up.
“Wait, why isn’t she like, all cold and gross and stuff? I mean, what happened to the “Clammy Hands of Death?”
“Death Inc. made it so that they don’t really die,” Victor said. “Overheard it during some fancy dinner, I think. If they really died, it would have caused problems with St. Peter and some of the more strict angels, you know? Instead, they separate the soul from the body, teleport it to the next graveyard, and slap on a timer until the soul can inhabit the body again.”
“Ohhhh, and the body regenerates some Health in the meantime, and that closes all the wounds…” Waverly said as she, too, began opening pockets with gusto. “That’s, like, super smart.”
“Everyone at the party was certainly impressed,” Victor said, pulling a few unstable-looking vials from the dead rogue’s belt. There was a black fluid inside, and when he shook the vial a little, the mass behaved more like smoke than water. “Yo. Smoke bombs!”
Waverly scrunched her nose with the effort of going through Whirlwhisper’s items. “And we can only touch the items the system allows us to take?” she asked. “There isn’t some trick?”
“No, why?” Victor asked, getting up and looking over at her as she knelt over the robed woman’s form.
“Nothing,” Waverly said, looking wistfully at Whirlwhisper’s shoes before getting up, holding something that looked like a stick. “Some sort of wand, I guess,” she explained. “I don’t know anything about enchanting, so… hey actually, what do we need this stuff for, anyway? We can just make our own, right?”
“Sure,” Victor said. “But there’s two reasons to gather items, anyway. One, you can use them in bossfights, if you like.”
Waverly looked at the wand with a healthy amount of skepticism. “Yeah, uh, maybe! What about the other reason?”
“Templates,” Victor said, waiting for Waverly to fall in beside him. The sun had completely set by now, and the moon was rising. She looked at it for a second, tail wagging, before she turned back to him.
“Huh?”
“You can feed items into the Assembler, to teach it to create new things,” Victor explained.
“But wait, if Assemblers need items to make items, who made the first items?”
Victor frowned, then shrugged. “Bit of a dragon and egg problem, isn’t it?”
“Yeah!” Waverly said as they arrived by Terrence’s corpse. She knelt down eagerly and was definitely looking mighty disappointed when her hands passed through Terrence’s armor. Then she went for his pouches and opened them one after the other, while Victor sat down on the other side of the body, and did the same.
“Look at this,” he said. “Three more healing potions and I’m pretty sure this is an immunity bracelet.” He opened the bag a bit more so Waverly could see inside, revealing three potions that glowed with a red light so bright it almost stung his eyes. The bracelet next to them shone with the same intensity, just in gold.
"I'd be kinda embarrassed to die while I still had that sort of gear on me, right?"
"Oh yeah, that would suck," Victor agreed, and after a short pause, they both snickered.
“Ohhhh!” Waverly said, tail wagging. “Actually, can we get those? I mean, are they lootable? Because that would be, like, super dope!”
“Nah,” Victor said, reaching out to show his hand passed through the potions and bracelet. On a hunch, he tried to just steal the entire bag, since he could clearly touch it to open it, but found it stuck to the tank’s body.
“Awwwww,” Waverly sighed. “Man, it looks like he didn’t drop anything! That’s super dumb. I mean, sure, he wasn’t the hardest one to kill by far, but I really wanted to take something of his, like a keepsake, you know, so we could put it in the crowbar and kinda gloat whenever we looked at it, hanging between all the other trophies like the helmets and the signs and the swords and…” she trailed off, looking at Victor.
“Hey, Vic? Where did you leave the sword?”
----------------------------------------
Shortly after, they were heading back into the Dungeon.
“I’m just saying,” Waverly was saying, “That this seems like, a major hassle. I mean, how does your mom do it when they have like forty or fifty adventurers coming in at once, and they all die and then they respawn like a minute or so later?”
Victor frowned in thought, but eventually, he said, “Dunno. Maybe they have people for it?”
“Just seems weird,” Waverly said. “Oh and also we gotta find you a sheath or something for that.”
Victor shrugged, making the massive blade he balanced on his shoulder shift precariously. It almost scratched against the rough stone walls. Again. Victor had already knocked down one of those wall-torch-sconce-things, and they both had to repair that and it had been a major hassle.
Victor grinned. “True.” He struck a badass figure, though, carrying around a blade almost twice his size with relative ease. “But maybe we should wait with that until I can actually carry it around without using [Vampiric Hunger].”
Waverly nodded and was about to offer to carry the sword for him for a while when they came around the corner and came across the dead healer.
They both went quiet for a while, and it took Waverly to say: “Should we, uh…” before Victor could reply: “Yeah, I mean we probably should, but…” and then Waverly said: “No, no, it’s fine, I’ll do it,” and knelt down next to the elf.
And stared at his corpse.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
And stared.
And stared.
And then Victor said: “Yo listen, we don’t have to…”
And at the same time, Waverly said: “This is, like, so dumb, because…”
As usual, Victor motioned for Waverly to go first.
“I mean, like, this totally wasn’t his fault, and Terrence was such a big dick that I didn’t even learn his name, and now looting his corpse kinda feels like adding insult to injury, you know?”
“Yeah,” Victor said. “Agreed.”
“And that’s why I think we should really do this because at least it will kinda make up for everything, even though maybe not really.”
“Wait, what?” Victor asked, and only then saw that Waverly had pulled out her [Scroll of Dark Resurrection] and was holding it over the dead elf’s body.
“Waverly, I think we should wait…”
But Waverly had already dropped the scroll onto the elf’s body.
“Huh?” She asked, looking up at Victor. Then she immediately looked down at the elf, because his corpse simply designated, leaving behind a small pile of coins and a pair of linen trousers.
After a long, awkward, and very quiet pause, Waverly asked, “He’s not supposed to do that, is he?”
“I don’t know, but I really don’t think so, yeah…” Victor replied, letting his voice trail off.
“So, um… What happens now?” Waverly asked, hesitantly reaching out to prod first the trousers and then the coins, neither of which did anything.
“You’re the straight A-student, you tell me,” Victor replied, more hopeful than mocking.
Waverly got up, smacking her lips like someone who really didn’t know what the heck was going on, what should be going on, and what to do about it either way. “Well, all I know is that I really shouldn’t be doing that ever again.”
“We really shouldn’t,” Victor agreed. Then he took a deep breath, shook himself, and focused. “Okay, so! For all we know the Scroll did exactly what it should. It took him back to the place where he last woke up, or the next resurrection circle. That may just be the adventurer graveyard in his case, right?”
Waverly nodded, eager to follow the line of Logic he’d cast out for her. “Yeah! And I mean like, what are we even worried about? It’s just a glitch, right? The scroll just thought he was a monster, dropped some of his coins, and let him get back up… right?”
“Oh yeah,” Victor said.
Then the two looked at each other until they both cleared their throat and said, at the same time,
“We should totally, like, check with Debbie-Corinne just to make sure she didn’t notice anything, and he’s not in the registry and…”
“Let’s check with Debbie. If she didn’t notice anything…”
They both trailed off and immediately spun the way that would take them to the Dungeon core.
Actually, Waverly turned back the way they came until Victor grabbed her by the sleeve and nodded toward the tunnel leading in the opposite direction.
She turned with a blush, and they both got going.
----------------------------------------
A few minutes and only a couple of wrong turns later, Victor and Waverly placed their hands on the hidden Dungeon altar. For anyone not in the know, it would have looked like they just knelt in the middle of a gigantic cavern, both touching the same unremarkable, if very flat, piece of rock. It was a clever design, Victor had to say, even though he didn’t like the idea of an adventurer accidentally stepping on the triggering rune and contacting the Dungeon Core.
As it was, it took a few heartbeats before the image of the crystal manifested in their minds, and Victor got the impression of someone vaguely humanoid turning around from a very large stack of papers on a very messy desk, sitting in a very worn chair in a very cramped office. The catboy couldn’t quite tell the age, gender, or even race of the person he was talking to. It was like a dream as if he forgot the details the second he saw them. The only feature he caught was that the person was relatively tall and slim. Perhaps an elf? He’d thought he caught that before, but couldn’t be quite sure.
That must be very frustrating for Debbie-Corinne, Victor thought. He certainly wouldn’t love it if no one was ever able to see the real him.
“Oh hey, it’s the newbies. Sorry guys, I’m super busy, or I would have toured you around myself. The books, you know. They gotta be ready before the new bigwigs arrive, to at least make it look as if we’re trying to do our jobs. Not that we aren’t, of course, but yeah, you know how it is. I mean, you saw. Anyway. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Oh, like,” Waverly began, clearly not half as stunned by the barrage of words as Victor was, “We were just wondering if we could maybe get registered with the Dungeon, because…”
The werewolf was interrupted by the mental image of someone slapping their palm into their face. “Of course! Registry! Sorry, that’s really my bad. Let me just see, I checked it just a minute ago, it should be right under… Hmm, no. How about…”
The dreamlike non-figure that was the “real” Debbie-Corinne kept rummaging through her stack of paper, becoming increasingly frantic as time went on. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh, crap, I gotta check that, too! Oh man, oh man! And I can’t forget about this one, either!”
She kept going on, more frantic by the second, until she groaned and buried her face in her palms. “I just wanna quit…”
“Oh, are you, like, okay?” Waverly asked, leaning a bit closer to the Dungeon Altar.
“Oh yeah,” Debbie-Corinne said with a deep sigh. “Sorry about that, please don’t worry about it. It’s just… a lot of work that I have to get done asap.”
In the mental image of her cramped office, she slumped back in her chair, rubbing her palms over her face first, then dragging them through her hair. It felt practiced, ritualistic almost. She finished it by rubbing her cheeks while staring over the stacks of paper that covered her desk like blood on an altar. The old school kind, offal included.
Then she seemed to get herself together and sat up straighter. There was the impression of a tired smile, even though Victor’s eyes still couldn’t find any traction on her face.
“At least the Boss and DM are late. How about that?” Debbie-Corinne said. “Maybe they’ll be like the last guys, only show up once, demand a lot of changes, and then go play golf in Elysium.”
Victor smiled back, as did Waverly after a subtle nudge with his elbow. It looked a little wooden, but that was okay.
“Um, the registry…?” Victor asked, hesitantly.
“Right…” Debbie-Corinne groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. For a second, there was the impression of her eyes sweeping over the bureaucratic extinction event that was her office, but then she just gave up.
“Look, can we just do this tomorrow? We’ll get you registered first thing in the morning, and I’ll pay you out of pocket, I swear.”
“Sure,” Waverly said, tail wagging softly. “Don’t, like, stress yourself out too much, alright? It’s just a job, and um… I mean the people here seem to like you a lot.”
There was the impression of a smile, and the idea of a head tilted. “Awwww, you’re sweet!”
“We’ll come back tom—“ Again, Victor elbowed her as subtly as he could, interrupting her. Waverly shot him a look, first confused, but then understanding dawned.
“Actually, we were wondering… you mentioned you looked at the registry a few minutes before we came and um, we were wondering if there happened to be another new employee today?”
To his side, Waverly perked up almost imperceptibly, but Victor knew she understood now. She seemed a bit annoyed at herself for almost forgetting the main objective, so Victor nudged her again, reassuring her it wasn’t a big deal.
Debbie-Corinne didn’t seem to notice anything of what happened between Werewolf and Catboy. She leaned back further, thinking for a brief moment, but then shook her head. “Not that I know, no. I didn’t notice any newcomers either, but I mean, I’m not a Dungeon Master. I only notice so much.”
Then, there was a shift, giving Victor the impression she was struggling between curiosity and the desire to finish her work. For a second, it felt as if she wanted to ask why Victor wanted to know, but in the end, she just put one arm on the stack of papers and sighed once again.
“Anyway, like I said, I gotta get this done, though. It was so nice to meet you, um…”
“You too, Debbie! Bye!” Victor said, gently tugging Waverly away from the altar as he let go himself, breaking the connection. The sensation of being in the office faded as soon as his fingers left the cool stone.
“Hey, I didn’t even get to say goodbye!” Waverly complained. Luckily, she trusted him enough to not even ask why he had just broken her connection to the Dungeon Core because she was sure he would explain.
So he did because that was the kind of guy he was.
“I just felt like she was going to ask for our names, and then you would have told her, and she would have…” he looked at the few Monsters still putting in a token effort to get the room up to snuff.
“She would have maybe drawn the wrong conclusions, you know?”
“Oh, right!" Waverly said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Victor wondered if she even realized she was imitating Debbie-Corinne. "Sorry, it’s kinda been a long day, you know?”
“True. So let’s go, then,” Victor said, getting up. He was also about ready to call it quits in favor of a nice, warm bed. Then again, he was almost always ready to call it quits in favor of a nice, warm bed.
“What about the elf?” Waverly asked as quietly as she could.
“You heard her. No one’s in the books, and she didn’t notice anyone,” Victor whispered back.
“But you know that doesn’t really prove anything, right? Obviously, he wouldn’t have registered himself, and she even said that she doesn’t know everything that’s going on,” Waverly said, a bit louder than she may have wanted. The worst part was that she was also right. So right that it made Victor freeze in his tracks.
For a second, Victor thought about just agreeing with Waverly and going home. Then his shoulders slumped in defeat. “You’re right… we should check the circle outside the entrance to see if he could have respawned there, then go through the entire Dungeon and ask everyone, just to be sure.”
Waverly’s head snapped toward him with obvious alarm, which immediately melted into a grimace of annoyance and defeat.
“You didn’t notice you were digging that hole for us to jump into, did you?” Victor asked, corner of his mouth curling up.
“No, I didn’t…” Waverly groaned. When she noticed Victor’s smirk, she scratched her forehead, ears drooping slightly with exhaustion. “Give me a break, okay? It’s getting late.”
Victor shrugged as if to say I wasn’t the one to bring it up, but then he flicked his ears, took a deep breath, and straightened his posture. It was surprisingly easy, he found, to push on despite every fiber of his body begging for a nap. He didn’t understand why, but it felt nice, anyhow.
Beside him, Waverly went through much the same transformation. “Well, I guess it needs doing.”
“It does,” Victor agreed with a quiet smile.
And then they were off.