The dungeon’s layouts shouldn’t be much different from what they’d seen in-game. Along with the status window and inventory, they’d also gotten a mini-map function that they can call up with a single thought. But just like in the games, only the rooms and paths they’d been to would display on the screen.
It didn’t take long for them to encounter their first enemy. Since Ruelle was at the front, she quickly yanked Silas to the nearest boulder. “…Black-armored spiders?”
Rez became just as confused. He peeked his head around just enough to see several giant spiders roaming around the cave. They were about the size of an average horse, with obsidian-like exoskeletons and round eyes glimmering like the gemstones littering their habitat. Deep caverns are where they live, so it wasn’t unusual for them to be there…
”…Silas faced goblins before…and Ruelle’s were kobalts, right?” RetiZn swallowed an unknown lump down his throat, retreating back into his hiding spot. “It’s randomized, there’s a chance for it to be black-armored spiders. We just got unlucky.”
Black-armored spiders were considered beginner-level enemies, though the players were guaranteed to pass the Tutorial Dungeon no matter what they got anyway, so ultimately it didn’t matter what the game put for them.
But this was reality, and even if those spiders were at a beatable tier, they were still considered a difficult monster to deal with due to their tough armor and the access to venom attacks.
“…It’s possible…They’re first-stage monsters.” Silas gave a smile, but obviously Ruelle didn’t buy his fake confidence.
”You want to beat them with these tiny daggers?” She was practically shoving the weapon in his face, emphasizing her words. How could he disagree with her when the blade was barely bigger than his hand? “We should go find the Weapon Room.”
The dungeons in Dungeon Regime have a similar layout to most dungeon-crawler games. There are rest stops, shops, puzzles, with some of the seemingly safe rooms that are not rest stops or shops being booby trapped as well. Crowfest wanted them to find the Weapon Room, a place that has a chance of being rigged with hidden mechanisms that may or may not kill them instantly.
Since they were playing co-op, the chance of the Weapon Room giving two weapons instead of one increases significantly from the usual 50% to 90%. The beta versions of Dungeon Regime didn’t have such a luxury, and many friendships soured due to the unfair distribution of weapons.
Either way, the risks were already calculated, and Rez agreed with Crow’s plan. “Alright,” he whispered with a nod. “We’ll sneak past them and find the Weapon Room.”
This time, Silas took the lead. He moved from one boulder to another, making sure to wait patiently for a spider to turn its head elsewhere before making his move. Ruelle followed closely behind him, it was a miracle that her heels didn’t make too much noise on the stone floors. She was being just as careful, placing her foot slowly to minimize the sound.
“I should have insisted I wear pants…” Because the servants didn’t even think she would be going into a dungeon, they dressed Ruelle up in a typical dress, a white one tied together by a violet ribbon that matched well with her eyes.
There were only four enemies in the room, the exact same amount as the game, and they’d managed to make it to the other side without much issue. Silas let out a long sigh, no longer afraid that the spiders might hear him. “They shouldn’t be able to leave their block.”
“But what if they can?” Ruelle didn’t want to take any chances. She quickly moved away, wandering deeper into the tunnel in front of them. “If it still follows the layout of the Tutorial Dungeon, this corridor is trapped.” Her feet didn’t carry her too far.
”It’s a simple trap from the floor and ceiling, right? We just need to quickly rush over it.” Silas joined her by her side.
”We can’t be so sure…” Crowfest picked up a nearby rock on the ground before hurling it as far as she could in front of her.
The illuminated mineshaft tunnel didn’t respond to her provocation at first, but then several steel spikes suddenly protruded from the ground and pushed the innocent pebble to the roof, crushing it mercilessly.
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As if nothing had ever happened, the ruthless spears retreated into the ground.
RetiZn’s eyes had gone wide, mostly from how unexpectedly loud the traps were when it went off. “…Alright, so it’s pressure-trapped.”
Crowfest didn’t answer him, instead she threw another rock. This time, the strength behind her fling sent it flying further than before. It did not touch the expected pressure point…
WHAM!
And yet the trap activated anyway, precisely skewering the rock in half. “No, not pressure. It detects motion.” Ruelle took several steps forward. “We have to jump over it when it starts to retreat.”
“…Woah,” Silas seemed impressed. His widened eyes remained as round as before, though for an entirely different reason this time. He followed her without hesitation. “You know a lot about this…or are you just naturally cautious?”
Ruelle scoffed, but she didn’t do it out of arrogance. “I learned from my mistakes.” This time, she kicked another rock into the trap, and as she watched it go off, she readied her posture, lifting her skirt slightly. When the spikes began to retreat, she leaped over them and landed on the outer side with poise expected from a noble lady. “I go into dungeons a lot when I play, if death from traps were a grindable statistic, I would’ve been top one on the leaderboard.”
Since Ruelle had already demonstrated, Silas was able to cross over without any issue. They continued their move. “I wouldn’t have expected you to die so many times to traps. Your instinct for traps is good.”
“Instead of instinct, I would call it…pattern recognition,” Ruelle chuckled, the distant look in her eyes telling him that she must’ve been thinking of the past. “When you play so much of this game and see so many different types of traps, you start to know where or when they would appear.”
“Are you good at puzzles too, then?”
”I can solve them but…” She scrunched up her face. “I don’t like solving puzzles, they give me a headache, and I don’t have a lot of patience.”
Rez laughed. “I know, you kept messaging me online, telling me to hurry up and get on and such.”
Crow avoided his eyes, letting out a nervous laugh. He swore he saw a hint of pink on her cheeks. “That…! I’m still very sorry about that. I didn’t know at the time that you had a problem with your hand.” She turned to face him, but her eyes were fixated on his arms. “I guess this is sort of a blessing in disguise. They don’t hurt anymore, right?”
Rez subconsciously looked at his hands as well. “Now that I think about it…Yeah,” He smiled. It was a painful memory for him, both the moment of the car crash and his retirement from competitive play. Daily life became a struggle with how painful it was to move in the way he did before, even playing the fps game casually was troublesome. “…Actually, I’m ambidextrous now too. I was left-handed, but since Silas is right-handed, I can use both of them to write.”
Their arrival into the next room cut their conversation short. They’d been carefree enough to talk since they already knew what the next block was going to be. Ruelle brought a hand to her chest and gave a dramatic gesture to the room in front of them. “After you, Lord Silas, ain’t no way I’m doing the puzzle.”
Rez frowned, though still couldn’t help but smile at her choice of words. He walked in first. The cave opening had a different environment compared to the corridor or the room before. It was a cubical room with walls made of white marble. At the center, a podium rose from the ground, supporting a lone floating book.
“Puzzle Room, it’s your absolute favorite Crowfest.” Rez chuckled. He didn’t need to check behind him to know that she’d most likely crossed her arms and rolled her eyes in the most dramatic way possible.
He picked up the book, and immediately words began to form on the pages as if someone was typing on it. “…Solve the following—Oh what the fuck?” Silas’ expression turned dark the moment the letters stopped manifesting. The Tutorial Dungeon’s puzzle room only gives easy riddles that even a four year old would know the answer to, but what he was currently reading was way beyond appropriate for a beginner puzzle.
“What in the world is that?” Ruelle made the mistake of peering her head over to look.
“It’s a function question.”
“A what question?”
“Math, it’s asking me to solve a goddamn math equation.” As his sentence ended, a quill rose from the empty podium. Rez yanked it from its place in frustration as he sank to the floor, leaning his back against the smooth surface. He flipped the book to an empty page. “…I don’t suppose you happen to have a degree in math in real life?”
“No, I still haven’t even finished college.” Crowfest sat beside him, having a full view of what he was writing. “I’m also an English major.”
“Well, I’m not that good at math either,” Rez’s brows arched downwards as he scribbled down chicken scratches that could barely be made out as numbers, letters, and math symbols. “We might have to fight a spider here if I get this wrong.”
“You seem to be doing well so far.” Crowfest raised an eyebrow. They weren’t as nervous about failing the puzzle simply because the punishment for the Tutorial Dungeon’s puzzle room only involved having to fight one basic enemy.
”Unlike you, I’m not even in college,” Rez paused for a moment. “My best subject is biology, and that’s way back in high school.”
There was a moment of silence as he went back to writing.
”Ah! It’s -18!” Silas exclaimed as he drew a large circle over his answer. He then began to write a few more things at the bottom of the page before hashing the second -18. “It should be the answer…it’s not that hard when I actually begin solving it.”
He turned the page back to where the question was written and inputted his answer below. Both of them rose from the ground. Silas placed the book back where it belonged and the number -18 slowly dissipated from the paper. Eventually, the gates on the other side of the room slide open.
“I knew you were a nerd.” Ruelle gave him a friendly slap on the back. Before she could hear him dispute her words, she was already walking down the next corridor.
He will let it slide for today. For some reason, being called a nerd wasn’t so bad.