Frickin' Owlbears!

Kai

Kai slammed the door between him and the owlbear. He stood without moving in the Admin Room, lit by the wall screen, listening to the sound of the fierce creature outside screeching and pounding on the stone wall. A little bit of pee came out. He may have had a mild heart attack. That would explain why it took a few minutes to come back to himself from the deep state of near-frozen panic he’d been in and for his brain to kick back in.

He took a shaky step back away from the door with the nightmare on the other side of it. He felt wetness on his foot, but while he took care not to step in the yellow puddle again, he was still too traumatized to feel ashamed. Maybe later. Yeah, later would work. He’d do that. He was too busy freaking out.

At the system console, he figured out that the owlbear, having chased the stupid adventurers into the dungeon, had followed, only for the automatic door to drop down behind the owlbear, trapping it in the first-floor room. It had somehow avoided the pit trap. It was very, very pissed off.

Kai could barely compute that. He stared at the huge, deadly, rampaging beast trying to find a way out of the room. Thankfully, it was too large to get down the spiral staircase to the second floor and then murder and eat everything in sight. But it was not a happy camper. “No one else is going to be able to enter the dungeon now.” Another thought hit him. “The kobolds won’t be able to leave!”

He turned to the console, hoping it could help. His first thought was to drop every bear trap in existence on the thing’s terrifying head. Or find a way to get it into that pit trap, if it would even fit. But before his fingers went down that path on the console, he started to rethink.

Did he really want to kill it? First, it was just a wild animal, here because they’d lured it, and it did not deserve to die just because it was dangerous. Second…it was already in the dungeon. That seemed like it might be a really good stroke of good fortune. He’d totally lucked out and had a really high-level creature that would be a great addition to the dungeon. That thing would tear through baby adventurers like Kai tore through pizza.

Pizza.

Beautiful, tasty, glorious, delicious pizza in all its tomato and golden dough and cheezy goodness. The pepperoni. The mozza. The spicy sausage. Overflowing oregano. Juicy pineapple and savory onions. Back bacon and barbecue sauce. So many options…

Kai wiped away some drool. “I gotta find a way to make pizza. No way I’m going the rest of my life in this world without pizza. No way.” This world had better have ham and pineapple, or he was gonna be really upset.

He saw the owlbear listed under Creatures and felt a surge of excitement. He gleefully pictured the scene in his mind:

The owlbear leaped out of the shadows at an unsuspecting party of adventurers, crushing their stupid tank beneath its awesome weight before slicing their arrogant warrior to ribbons. The haughty wizard who thinks he’s better than everyone because he can cast magic throws fireballs that only tick the owlbear off. The owlbear’s hooked beak tears the wizard’s face off; then it hoots in triumph and dances on the corpses of the dead.

The wizard’s twin, mangled in a horrible accident as a child, whose only friend in the world had been the other twin, now dead, plots revenge. He sneaks into a museum, murdering the guards guarding the treasures there and stealing all kinds of precious artifacts. Arming himself with his new magical gear, he storms the dungeon, bent on killing the owl bear.

The owlbear, having levelled up and gained ninja skills, drops out of a hole in the ceiling, raking its claws down the twin’s back. The two engage in a fierce battle, swords versus claws, magic flying everywhere, battering the dungeon until the owlbear swipes its claws across the twin’s neck, blood fountaining out. The twin attempts to curse the creature but only sputters as he dies, teaching us all that murder and revenge only lead to pain and death.

It made Kai chuckle, “Heh heh heh.”

Unfortunately, the owlbear could not be accessed in the system. An error message came up when he tried.

The selected creature is too high-level and extremely resistant to being tamed. You can force the creature to submit to captivity by breaking its will or you can try to find a way to entice it into wanting to stay of its own free will.

Break its will? Kai could starve the thing until it had no choice but to submit or die. Kai snorted. “Like hell, I will. Screw that noise. Animal abuse is for idiots.” Kai wasn’t even one of those people who tried to take pics with wild animals for their social media, like the morons who would pick up a young dolphin or baby bear and hold it up to the camera for likes, stressing the animal right out.

He took a deep breath, feeling more like himself after putting some emotional distance between himself and the terrifying creature outside his door. “Hmm. So how do I get it to want to stay? That thing is freakin’ angry.” He tried to imagine what he’d do if it were a hostile dog. How would he win it over? Probably with food. He looked around the room. He had the pie, bread, and jerky. Oh, and the dead adventurer in the pit outside the kobold room. If the kobolds hadn’t plucked it from the pit and eaten it yet.

Too bad he didn’t have any more pie.

An image in his mind struck him of something he hadn’t properly registered earlier. Kai frowned.

He went over to the pie that was sitting on the floor next to the barrel of jerky. The pie that he’d been eating a lot of. The pie that had somehow not gone bad and that he’d eaten the last of the other day, going so far as to lick the plate clean. The delicious apple-type pie with golden crust and sugary-white icing.

The pie that was still there. Whole. Untouched.

Kai’s jaw slowly fell open. It began to water. He swallowed hard, then breathed, “It’s a never-ending magical pie…” With reverence, he knelt by the pie plate, which again was the size of a bathtub to him, and plucked a piece of crust. He put it into his mouth. It was as good as the day he’d gotten it. He reached in, took a handful of baked apple goodness and held it up like an offering to the divine. “My precious…” Then he took a bite. Heavenly flavours of fruit and cinnamon and golden-brown crust melted over his tastebuds. “Oh yeah. This is still so good.”

An enraged roar brought him back to the issue at hand.

“Right. Owlbear.” He finished the pie in his hand, washed under the cistern, which had no drain and just made a mess on the floor, and made a mental note to build some kind of wash basin. What kind of magical dungeon didn’t come with plumbing auto-installed? “Cheap piece of crap. I thought this was supposed to be a legendary dungeon. Psh.”

The cistern tap creaked. Water jetted out horizontally in defiance of gravity and physics, spraying Kai right in the face.

“Oi!” He scrambled to duck out of the way, but the water unerringly came for him no matter which way he attempted to dodge. Finally, he pushed his way forward, got a hand on the tap, and closed it again.

The water stopped blasting.

Kai stared at the tap. That had been a highly unnatural way for water to act. Then he whipped his head around and stared at the console. Then back at the tap. Then the console. His eyes narrowed with suspicion. He slowly let go of the tap.

The tap spun open, and water sprayed him in the face again.

“Glug!” Kai sputtered and got a hand on the tap, closing it and cutting off the flow. Water dripping down his face, he held the tap closed for a long minute, then cautiously released it again.

No more water sprayed.

He slowly took a step back, watching the console with one eye and the tap with the other. Nothing happened. He grunted. The console didn’t react at all. No messages appeared in his vision. “Hmph. Weird.” Probably just some freak accident.

When he returned to the wall screen, Kai found a group of worried kobolds at the foot of the stairs leading up to the first floor. They were all armed with their new weapons, half-cowering around the corner, obviously discussing whether they should go up and investigate. Kai panicked. He couldn’t allow them to get hurt. He ran out of the room and down to the second floor. He burst into the kobolds’ room, waving his hands. “Wait! Don’t go up!”