Private Rooms

A yellow and brown kobold with a stone-bladed hatchet gripped tight in both hands, hunched with grim determination, and rounded the corner for the stairs.

Kai dashed past the others and grabbed the kobold by the shoulder, halting progress. “Wait! It’s dangerous.”

The yellow-brown kobold was quick to stop, obviously not wanting to go up those stairs any more than the folks hovering behind in the hallway. It pointed up the curving staircase. “Bad?”

Kai allowed himself to relax now that none of them were marching to certain death. “Yeah. The owlbear is trapped in the first room. Sorry about that.”

The yellow-brown kobold’s brow creased with worry. “Fight?”

Kai threw up his hands. “No! Heck no. We’d all die.”

The kobold cocked his head to the side in question. “What?”

“Uhh…good question. I don’t know yet. I was thinking maybe trying to feed it. Make friends?”

The yellow-brown kobold turned back to the rest of the group and spoke in their language. The others reacted in various ways, from skepticism to derision to outright laughter.

Kai allowed, “Ok, I get it. Crazy idea. Maybe. But the dungeon system says that if we can befriend it, then it can live here and help protect everyone and eat adventurers.”

It was evident that most of the kobolds didn’t speak whatever language Kai was speaking to them. To him, it was English, but since other people understood him in this world, he assumed he’d been given a new language, something common enough that even kobolds living in the wilds knew a few words. Not enough, though, so one of them ran to fetch Spear, who was still resting.

Spear trudged over in visible pain. “What problem?”

Kai was about to launch into it but paused. “Say, what’s your name?” It felt stupid calling him Spear in his mind all the time and not knowing his real name. Even as he asked, he recalled certain slime anime and others where this kind of situation happened.

The kobold made it known that he sadly had no name. No monster did for that was something only for proper ‘people’ like humans. Oh, the injustice! Everyone broke out in tears and sad faces. Kai, formerly human and therefore superior for some reason, bestowed upon the noble little monster a name. Low and behold, great magic occurred. As Kai was drained of all his energy, the proud kobold glowed with brilliant rainbow light. He grew and transformed, for human-centric reasons becoming even more human-like and more attractive in human terms, taller, stronger, and granted ridiculous skills that now made him better than humans. Over the next weeks, Kai gave names to every kobold, even the babies, creating a tribe of superpowered people monsters that were going to shock and overwhelm any adventure stupid enough to look down on them. The female kobolds grew sexy human bodies, and the babies became super babies capable of punching through stone walls. The elderly became younger and stronger. They all bowed in worship and called him master before dedicating their entire existence to his happiness.

Kai hoped that wouldn’t be the case here. He didn’t want to be anyone’s master. He was also beginning to realize that there was a strong streak of selfishness in a lot of anime and other stories.

The kobold formerly known as Spear replied, “Name Rush.”

“Rush. Ok. I’ve been calling you Spear in my head.”

Rush held up his weapon and pointed to it with a talon. “No. This spear. I Rush.”

“Yeah, I— Nevermind. Got it.” Kai smiled. “Nice to meet you, Rush.” He held out his hand.

Rush looked at his hand. He did nothing else.

“Uh, right. Maybe not every culture shakes hands in greeting.” Kai retracted the limb. “Anyway, uh, yeah, the owl bear got trapped in the dungeon upstairs. I was telling them that the dungeon system will let the owlbear live here, too, and help protect the dungeon. But we have to make friends with it first.”

Rush looked at Kai like he was nuts. “It owl bear.”

“Yeah.”

“No make friends.”

“Well, we can, like, tame it, maybe. Give it food?”

“You food.”

“No! Give it jerky or bread or something. Maybe the other dead adventurer in the pit?”

The group of kobolds all gasped.

Kai hesitated and side-eyed them. “Ok…I guess we can keep the adventurer for the kobolds to eat?”

The kobolds let out the collective breath they’d been holding.

Kai figured they must really like the taste of humans. He was not going to be weirded out by that. Not right now. Maybe later in private when they weren’t all staring at him. He cleared his throat. “What do you think?”

Rush arched a brow. “Have bows. Kill owl bear. Safe.”

“I’d really like to try taming it first. I tamed two slimes. That went well. They’re really happy here.”

“Owl bear not slime.” Rush squinted. “You hit head?”

“My head is fine.”

“Too hungry? Not think clear?” He half turned and waved at the room where kobolds were still carving up the first adventurer. He shouted in his language, probably calling for food.

Kai waved his hands. “No, no! I’m good. Uh, I ate already.” He hurried ahead before anyone could foist human sushi on him. “Look, maybe it’s crazy, but I’m gonna try. Maybe it likes bread. Or jerky. Or maybe there’s a river somewhere, and I can get fish. Just make sure nobody goes upstairs for now, ok? I’ll figure something out.” Seeing Rush’s mom hustling toward him with one of those looks a mom gets when she’s eager to fill you with home-cooking, which was a handful of fried Kenny, Kai fought back his gag reflex and ran past, thanking her as he went but refusing the food.

He returned to the admin area and stood before the console in thought. “Ok. How to do this?” If he opened the door to try to feed the owlbear, it would just storm in and kill him, wouldn’t it? Curious, he looked for help info in the menu.

The Admin Room can only be accessed by the Dungeon Master.

He read that and thought it was kind of ambiguous. Did it mean that he was the only one who could open the doors, or did it mean that, even if the door was open, he was the only one who could pass through the opening? He could test it by opening the door and seeing if the owl bear could come through.

Or not. He wasn’t that stupid.

He used the back stairs to go down to the kobold room. Rush was injured, so he didn’t want to ask the warrior to climb stairs. Kai motioned to a blue kobold feeding a child. “Hey. Sorry. Can you help me? Just come upstairs for a moment?” He beckoned and pointed up the back staircase.

The blue kobold looked up at his speech, then looked around. They pointed at themselves.

“Yes, you. Help? Please?” He pointed again.

Blue hesitatingly stood and motioned as if asking if she should follow him.

He smiled. “Yes!”

They nodded, patted the child, and motioned for it to stay, then followed Kai up the stairs. Kai was able to pass through to the Admin room, but when Blue tried, it was as if they’d run into an invisible wall, causing surprise. They rubbed their bruised snout.

He winced. Probably should have warned them. “Oh! Sorry about that.” At least it confirmed that not even residents could get into the room. It did prove that they could enter the back stairs, though, and maybe any back rooms. He thanked Blue, and to show his appreciation, he scooped a handful of apple pie onto a torn piece of bread because he had no plates and escorted her back downstairs before returning to the Admin room. He felt bad about not having a proper plate, and he was probably worrying for nothing because Blue and the others had eaten raw adventurer off a dungeon floor, but he still felt like a heel. He mentally added plates and cutlery to a mental list of things to get. Number one on that list was toilet paper. Number two was a toilet. But somewhere down the line would be things to eat off of.

Kai stood at the console. He’d started the dungeon with one front-facing or public room and one admin room. After levelling up, he’d gained the ability to form two public rooms on Floor 2, and more space thereafter with each level up. Playing with the console, he was able to build two more rooms on Floor 2 that were accessible only via the back stairs and admin door. Only the dungeon master and residents could access private areas. Visitors would be barred, probably the same way that Blue hadn’t been able to enter the Admin room. He grinned. “We can build a whole private section of the dungeon for residents! The kobolds can live there, and no one will be able to hurt them.”

Looking at the 3D map on the screen, it was as if two halves of a pyramid were standing next to each other, with a column between them for a private staircase. One half of the pyramid was the public dungeon; the other was the private living area, with the Admin Room at the top.

Kai and his dungeon were currently Level 5, the top five floors of a growing pyramid that added a floor down every time he levelled up. He quickly built out public levels for Floors 3, 4, and 5 just to get something visible on the architectural map. Playing around, he saw that he could combine rooms to make them bigger. The owlbear was very large and would need a lot of space. Kai made one huge room on Floor 5 for it. To make things easier, he turned Floors 3 and 4 into single spaces as well for now. No traps. He wanted the owlbear to be able to pass through easily on the way down to 5. In the private pyramid, Kai created two private rooms next to each other on Floor 2 for the kobolds. He was able to put cisterns in each for water. He also built back stairs all the way through, connecting all floors in each pyramid.

Excited to show off the new safe area, Kai returned to the kobolds. With Rush’s help, he explained about the public and private areas, then showed them to the new safe area where only residents could enter. They were universally ecstatic. While they allowed their fallen people to remain where they were for now, they enthusiastically moved everyone still living into the new rooms, exclaiming over the water supply and the safety to be had.

Kai looked around at the bare walls and floors, again embarrassed at the lack of hospitality. It looked more like a prison cell than anything. He spoke aloud, not really to anyone in particular, “Sorry, it’s not much. Maybe we can build some beds and furniture? Oh, crap. We still don’t have toilets. That…could be messy.”

Rush’s mom patted him on the shoulder, grinning with a snout of sharp teeth. “Good, good! We make. We build good!” She asked Rush something, and he translated.

“She ask, can go outside? We get grass, tree. Make things. Kobolds good makers.”

Kai nodded. “Yeah. Just give me a minute. I’m going to try to get the owlbear down to a lower floor. Then we can come and go easily.” The residents couldn’t access the Admin room, so they couldn’t use the back entrance. Unless…he could move the access to the back entrance? He’d check.

Kai returned to the Admin room in thought. He checked the system console and could, indeed, give the residents access to the secret entrance to the dungeon by connecting it to the stairwell in the private side of the dungeon. That would allow the kobolds free passage to come and go as they pleased, doing their business out in the woods while collecting wood and grass to build things with. That was great because he did not have indoor toilets nor enough slimes to take care of such things. Maybe if he had acid flies, he could use those to make acid to disintegrate waste, but they did not exist here, which was likely a good thing because one would land on him, and he would instinctively slap it, releasing the acid, which would melt him into gremlin goo. Still, the area outside the secret exit was going to get stinky fast if they kept expelling waste all over the nearby forest. They could dig latrines, but that would give away the secret exit.

Kai muttered, “Users have taken a poll. Dungeon without indoor plumbing found lacking and gross. Approval rating bound to fall the more poo piles up.”

A stench of something nasty wafted through the room.

Kai actually tasted it and gagged in disgust. Slapping a hand over his nose and nearly taking an eye out with the claws he still wasn’t familiar with, he looked around.

The room was empty but for him. The doors were closed.

“What the heck is that?” He gave the console a suspicious look. “Did my dungeon just fart? And what the hell have you been eating?” Then he recalled the rotting human corpses in the spike pits. And that he’d done his own business in one a few times. “Oh, right.”

The awful, paint-peeling smell drifted away as swiftly as it had come, for which Kai was thankful. He shrugged. Must be air circulating from other rooms. He wasn’t sure how the magical dungeon took care of that, but without fans and a duct system, it must be doing something to keep the air fresh in here. Most of the time.

He turned his attention back to the owlbear. He rearranged the public dungeon so that each floor had one room with straight stairs going from Floor 2 to 5. He left the spiral stairs in place for the moment to keep the owlbear bottled up. Gathering armloads of bread and jerky, he laid a trail from Floor 2 down to 5. Returning to Admin, he changed the Floor 1 stairs from spiral to straight.

The wall screen showed Floor 1 and how the owlbear filled much of the small room. It noticed the stairs changing right away, likely because of the grinding sound of stone on stone as it transformed. Curious, it investigated. Seeing that it was now able to squeeze into the wider space, it immediately began climbing down. No doubt, it could smell the cooked human meat and kobolds and was eager to eat.

Clapping his hands, Kai smiled in success as the owlbear found the first piece of jerky on the floor and devoured it, then waddled forward to pick up and eat the next offering, a piece of bread. Looking somewhat bemused, the owlbear stuffed its hooked beak as it made its way all the way down to Floor 5. As soon as it was in the room, Kai added a door, the kind that locked, not the drop-down type. The big creature was now safely ensconced in the big room.

He burst with triumph. “Sweet! We can drag down some bedding. Maybe build a scratching post. We’ll have to figure out what owlbears like.” It was like he was building a zoo enclosure. If he did it well enough, maybe the owlbear would enjoy living here, and he could make it a formal Creature.

Even as he thought that, he realized that living in a stone room underground might not be the best thing for it. The animal was used to roaming the wilds and probably had a fair bit of territory outside. Was it cruel to make it live down here in the dark? Dark.

Kai facepalmed. “Lights!” It hadn’t occurred to him yet to make lights. He, the kobolds, and even the owlbear could see in the dark. It was so natural that Kai had been taking it for granted. Between that and the torch the adventurers had been carrying, Kai hadn’t thought about light sources. He dove into the menu and found two lighting options: wall torch and artificial sun/moon. The torches were the same type of wooden torch the adventurer had carried, just a wooden stick about a meter long with oiled cloth on the end that sat in a metal ring and cup on the wall and seemed to burn indefinitely. It was removable, and when taken out of its place, it operated like a regular torch, slowly burning down until the fuel was spent. The artificial sun/moon was a meter-wide disc that sat in the ceiling. It emitted the exact same light from outside the dungeon, mirroring the sky above. As the sun rose, the dungeon light would brighten and mimic the sun’s tint, bluer in the morning and redder in the evening. As the sun waned and the moon rose, the light would soften and changed to mimic the moon instead. It was awesome.

Kai placed the artificial sun/moon in Floor 5. When the space still seemed dark, he added two more. The room took on a patio feel, as if it were a stone room outdoors with skylights in the roof. Since there didn’t seem to be a cost to how many objects he placed, he shrugged and covered the entire ceiling in lights. That made it look like there was no ceiling at all, and the room was exposed to open sky.

He crowed, “Fantastic! I love this!” It was a huge improvement. Maybe he could even introduce plants, and they would grow under the magic light. He could give the owlbear a nature space to live in. He’d have to experiment. Still, it remained a cage. He’d give it a shot, trying to tempt the owlbear into making its home here, but if the owlbear wasn’t happy, he’d release it back into the wild. He wouldn’t force it to live here if it didn’t want to. Which reminded him that it would be fighting any adventurers or whoever came along. That was also cruel.

He sagged, his thoughts drifting. The ethics of creating your own dungeon were kind of hard. Something to think about.

Someone’s voice came from behind him, “Excuse me!”

Kai jumped so hard in surprise that his feet left the ground.