Sorry I haven't been updating much. School started up again, and I don't quite know my writing schedule yet.
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By the way the labyrinth creaked and groaned, Necro could tell that Gregory hungered.
Walking, in the light off his headlamp, Necro could see feral flashes of a cat’s eyes, prowling. These hungry, cowering, watching beasties followed him in the dark. If he were to die down here, his corpse would stripped to the bones. Nibbled and chewed upon by legions of cats, the slithery alligators, the shit-caked rats, and other less savory terrors of the darkness.
Necrobump had had been down here for six days now. This morning he hadn’t prepared for a solo dungeon dive. The raid at the research lab was supposed to have been a cake-walk. Instead at least three other parties of adventurers had been paid to ambush them as soon as they’d finished. It sounded like they had been waiting for them for at least a week, and had been paid to burn their gear and drops after his friends had been assassinated.
To pay someone to sit in waiting simply for the moment a group of adventurers were done, boggled the mind. It had to be the people who’d hired them to pull off this job. Nobody else knew their target. He’d worked with his team enough to trust each and every one of them.
No, the people who’d hired them for the job had set them up. It had to be them didn’t it. Corporations were notoriously cheap, and paying for at least four teams, was expensive, but it still had to be the corporation that hired him. Who else would be interested?
Which meant that the data he’d recovered and encrypted was suddenly extremely valuable. If he’d grabbed the right information. He needed to get out of this maze, to figure out what he had. And that was going to be hard, because frankly, and Necrobump hated admitting this to himself, he was lost.
This dungeon crawl had started off fairly easily. The area he fell into was one of Gregor’s more widely travelled sections. The kiddy pool part of the dungeon. Easy low level monsters. Plenty of manhole covers, and sewage grates to climb in and out from. Lighting. Every part of this instance had was out there in tourist guides and internet blogs; mapped and bosses stats and weaknesses documented. The top level of Gregor between Van Ness and Silver Springs was a predictable newbie location. A great place to get experience, forage for resources, and kill low level stuff.
Necrobump had run for six blocks, down a well-lit path of familiar sewage system, killing random mobs and even a floor boss that was about to wipe a party of drunk teenager adventurers. Necro’s goal was to choose a path that was easy to follow with lots of eye witnesses. He’d left a trail even a citizen or an eggplant could follow.
It was then he found another manhole cover opened it up left ample evidence that he was leaving Gregor and then he slunk back into the dungeon. This time he moved with stealth. He knew this level of Gregor, knew the places where newbies and even powerful groups of adventurers were not supposed to go.
Necro knew that people were following him. Even in the brief time he’d surfaced, trying to leave a false trail out of Gregor, he’d been pinged by five more of his personal safe-houses indicating they too had been breached.
As a paranoid, he could accept that they might find two or three safe houses – but five? The level of hacking, observation, and scrying they’d needed to have done, well it baffled his mind. And if they’d found five did that mean that they had found all of them?
Whoever was hunting down him and his team had obviously done their research. Every secret and hidden stash he’d set up over the past twenty-five years had been taken. One of the locations he had never even told anybody about. The other four houses were places he’d had Big Mike, Mike-Mike, and Lauren hide under a false trail of paperwork. All had been discovered.
His only real hope was that, so far it didn’t seem like they had discovered any of his hidden secrets, from the time before he had taken on his Necrobump persona. True these were, low level hidey-holes, filled with the simple basics a paranoid might need to get away, entire end of the world off the grid setups, but not the extravagant stocked fortresses he’d used in these later years. But if they were clear, and Necro would make absolutely sure they were clear, they might be able to provide home base to get organized.
After leaving a false trail out of the sewers, Necrobump had headed back into the darkness of Gregor. This time he’d prioritized stealth, slinking deeper and deeper into Greogor’s uncharted and hidden depths. There were places where no adventurers went, they were simply too dangerous, or had bad experience point offerings, or just smelt funny. Places where even parties of well-balanced high leveled wannabe heroes passed through with caution, if at all.
Then, deep inside the foreboding murk of Gregor, he’d waited for four days, hidden down a cul-de-sac of darkness, surrounded by his extravagant and powerful wards. Gregor himself would probably block most divination spells and database queries, Necro’s work was probably overkill. But one could never be too careful.
The problem now was getting out. Necro had been wandering, lost, for just about two days now.
Holing a silenced handgun out in front of him while keeping, in his mind the form of custom fireball spell at the ready. Necro was pretty sure he was no longer on the second level. His mini-map UI had proved all but useless, but Necro was pretty sure that Gregor had moved hallways around in an effort to trap him.
Necro quietly turned a corner. Lurking in the darkness up ahead there was yet another Alligator. It was the seventh Alligator yet today. Shit snappers he’d started calling them. Necro could see it in flow of the filth and muck and shit. A bullet from his tiny little silenced berretta probably wouldn’t have enough stopping force. He mainly had it out to take pot shots at the rats that scampered in the darkness.
Instead Necro used the mana he’d been storing to let 6 quick golf ball sized balls of fire flash into existence about two feet in front of him. A tiny drain on his stored Mana, but most of it came from the surrounding dungeon. All monster based dungeons were high mana zones, though Necro had heard of a science fiction dungeon, and he was sure there were others. Still Dungeons didn’t have his particular skill.
One after the other, quick like a bullet each ball of flames shot towards and through the alligator. These were not fireballs in the traditional sense, more like kiwi sized meteors. They had a burning solidness to them. And when combined with their speed, extreme heat, and accuracy, they were more than a match for any shit snapper.
For a couple of seconds, the ‘gator thrashed. The small amount of accumulated methane flashed blue and orange, then disappeared. Then the body of the reptile sunk into the central stream of darkness and disappeared.
Necro walked on a bit further. He had a friend who did this for a living. There was a bounty on sewage alligators in New York City. But then New York didn’t have the same problem with having a massive self-aware dungeon under its streets, that was purely a DC thing, but the big apple’s septic system had its own issues.
Necro started to walk forward again. Lost in thought he almost missed a school of tiny vampiric flying goldfish-bats that must have awakened from the noise of the dying gator and came hurtling out of the darkness at Necro. Tiny gold and white bodies, covered in scales and fins, big fat bulgy goldfish eyes, and massive fruit bat wings out of their backs, plus fangs. Necro could not forget the blood-seeking, thirsting fangs.
Necro immolated them with yet another fireball, this time one that filled the room. Not much experience down here. It was a shame. And the random drops sucked.
His friend, Benny Profane the gator hunter, had taken his name from some late 20th century novel. Necro couldn’t remember which one, something to do with Britain, head-slapping, and cleavage maybe.
Necrobump had been along with him on a couple of hunts to see how it was done. Hunting alligators was an entirely different process than what Necro was doing. The idea was to stack the killed reptile in your inventory, not let them wash their way to rot and clog the sewers. Profane would probably faint. Each the bounty on each shit snapper skin was $100. More if you didn’t take them to the city, but instead had an in with a froofroo shoe or purse manufacturer.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Civs didn’t want them shimmying up the pipes and crawling out of the toilet when they were going to the bathroom. They might bite inappropriate places at inappropriate times.
As Necro walked along in the darkness, lost and lost in his thoughts, he almost missed the light coming from up ahead. It was faint at first. Hard to distinguish between the light from his head lamp and from the deep blackness of everything.
He slowed down. Dimmed his head lamp so that it was barely enough to see by. Then cautious step after cautious step Necro moved forward. The monsters down here were midlevel, between level 75-100, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
The source of the light was a strange creature sitting along the septic shore warming itself by the light of a camp fire flickering, fed by a fuel of broken garbage. The creature had a cat’s body, human arms, legs, a human head, and bird wings sprouting from its back. More specifically the creature had Magnolia warbler wings.
It was then that Necro did as any solo adventurer would do when confronted by an unknown and possibly hostile entity in a malevolent dungeon. He tried to kill it. The same six tiny superheated superfast meteors shot out towards the cat, human, warbler hybrid. The fire crackled and fizzled as it shot forward only to stop when it struck and invisible wall.
Necro tried again. This time with much a much more powerful fire assault. Six cannon ball sized balls of flame hurtling through space at the figure still casually warming itself at the fire, pretending as if it hadn’t seen the hot flaming death bearing down upon it.
This fire did nothing. Now Necro was pissed off. This must be some kind of Boss Monster, but nothing should be this difficult on this low a level. Unless Gregor had really been shuffling the floors and hallways around, at worst this should be the third floor of the dungeon. There should be modernly powerful alligators here, the occasional upper level cat or rat creature, swarms of vampiric goldfish bats, naked mole hounds, gelatinous cubes, poisonous slimes, some low ranking demonic entities, and that is about it.
Still Necro began to gather the spell together. Six Basket Ball sized balls of fire, slowly came into being.
Then the cat, human, bird held up one human hand, looked over at Necro and said in a voice that sounded breathless and tweety. “Hold off Sir Necrobump. I have been waiting here to talk to you.”
“Fuck you, Demon spawn. I’m not going to fall for that twice.” Yelled Necro, unleashing fiery hell yet again upon the strange figure in the dungeon. The cat-bird-man still remained unaffected.
“Sir Necrobump, this is getting tiresome. If you were your friend Shrike you might have a chance against me. But right now. Your balls of fire are far too weak. I am one of Gregor’s supreme bosses. He sent me to talk to you. I hope we can remain diplomatic.”
Pretending as if he didn’t have any choice, Necro sat down and conjured a small fire elemental trying to act as casual and chill as possible while pretending that warming fire was actually warming him, and that he wasn’t trying to figure out an angle that would ensure that he, Necro bump would come out on top of any fight.
“So, what do you want? What does Gregor want? And how do you know about me and my friends.”
“We’ve seen you down here before. You and your friends together have come on eight raids with noobs from your guild. You yourself, sir Necrobump have been down here sixteen times as a PUG, in your fire mage persona. As to what Gregor wants? He would like your loyalty of course. Swear your eternal self to Gregor and he will let you out. Be one of his minions and you will have more power than anybody in Washington DC. All the secrets in this city flow down here into the sewers eventually.” The cat creature said in the voice of Gregor.
“You came all the way over here ask me to become a Dungeon spawn? Are you kidding? That’s one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while.
“I know exactly where I am, I can leave at any time. I just like killing gators. It’s fun. And shooting rats… well it brings up memories of watching movies like Bill and Ted’s Dumb and Dumber a century ago… what was that famous quote ‘I used to bulls-eye Wamp Rats in my TRS-80 back home. They’re not much bigger than six inches.’ Who says I’m not enjoying myself,” said Necro.
“You are lost.” Said the cat thing again in an emphatic voice. “Gregor has made it so. In his infinite might and majesty he has shifted the boundries and the paths of this labyrinth so that the place where you stand is unmapped. There are no entrance and exit teleport portals, and the exit keeps on changing based on where you stand. There is no way out.
“Gregor would also like to point out that if you kill yourself, the ones that you flee from have taken eight of your respawn points. Take his offer. Living in a sewage system for eternity and sharing your seed with its creations is not such a bad life. As a prized specimen and boss monster, you would live a fairly luxurious life. There is much treasure down here and many unexplored wonders.”
“No. Tell your boss no. If I die, I will simply respawn in one of my other locations. Gregor says that whomever is after me has taken 8 of my respawn points. Well I have over 25 points.” Actually he had 19, but that didn’t matter “I might drop some stuff, but I can still get out of here. And I can always log off into the neutral territory of a starter zone in the hallway.”
“Gregor has no way to enforce my obedience unless I swear to enslave myself to him, and even then there are limitations.”
“I see.” Said the cat-human-bird. “You do indeed know your rights. Yes unless you swear yourself to him there is nothing that he can do to you. You are free to leave.”
“So then how about this. Sir Necrobump, you are a mercenary are you not? Gregor is extremely interested in the information that you hold from this raid you were on. It appears as if Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems is behind a massive scheme, but Gregor does not believe that they are the ones behind things. Nor can Gregor fathom the why.
“The all mighty Dungeon of Washington DC had thought that if you became a servant to his lordship Gregor, you would willingly give him this data. But you are a mercenary, true? Gregor would like to offer you your freedom from this place in exchange for the Data you hold in your head. Why not simply walk out of here, with no worries. And if it is gold that you want, Gregor has plenty of gold and items to give you. Quench your desire for treasure, save your life, gain some experience points. Is that not what you adventurers seek the most?”
“Why”
“Why do you care? You had a contract, it was rendered invalid by one of the parties involved. Enter into a new contract. Gregor tells you that on his word as a foul creature of evil, and as a creator of chaos and discord, that he can be trusted.”
Necrobump thought about it for a while. “Just how much treasure.”
“Gregor offers 1,000,000 coins of gold, in the exchange medium of the hallway.”
“This information must be worth an incredible amount if people are willing to go the lengths they’ve been going to get it. I will ask you again. What’s in the data?”
“Gregor doesn’t know. But he has a suspicion. You humans think that you are the center of the Universe. That this new digital life has made you the most powerful creatures in the universe. To a certain extent you are correct.
“But these world servers are much more than that and humans have ceased to be as central a role as you think yourselves to be. Instead, many people believe that each world has become like a cell. Government and the rules of the of the world functioning like the nucleus of this cell, its institutions are organelle and enzymes and channels and vesicles. And the hallway has become simply another channel to pass nutrients between each cell. Humans in this are nothing more than necessary chemicals like ATP. But many people in this world believe that at some point, the organism that has spread its branches across our solar system will wake up and become aware.
“Gregor believes that what you have in your hands is either a program to wake up this great organism. Or to kill it, and make sure it never awakens.”
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Oh yeah, since I have been mocked for my naming conventions, I offer this as proof
http://www.sadanduseless.com/2016/06/internet-names-animals/