Chapter Thirty-Five - Silly people run around

“Did one of you talk to Chloe about what exactly awaits us in there?” I asked, pointing at the door with an ominous “Level 1” sign next to it.

“Nope,” Geri said.

“When?” Sam asked.

“A square room with a checkered floor, each square having another trap, many of them very lethal,” Livia said. “The first one ahead of the untrapped one at the entrance is mostly harmless; the next two are hot enough to melt iron and cold enough to freeze air, respectively. Oh, and exit is left, ahead are goblins and right is a boss.”

“Good to know. First order of business, don’t wander around, got it,” Sam remarked. “There must be a safe passage. The first level is rated for players of levels one and two. Those traps sound way out of their league.”

“Hell, they sound out of our league,” Geri added.

“Sounds plausible,” I said. “Shall we?”

When nobody protested, I opened the door and stepped into the room, which was just as Chloe had described, careful not to leave the entrance square. It was big enough for four people, but they would have to stand pretty close. The moment Livia was through, the door slammed shut and disappeared.

“One-way door? That wasn’t in the prospect; we should sue the travel provider,” Geri joked. What more awaited us that Chloe had brushed over?

“The first one was harmless?” I asked. Livia confirmed with a noncommittal noise, and I put a foot on it. Something scratched the sole of my foot, drawing blood and then shattered with a metallic crush. I looked down and saw the tile peppered with short blades sticking out of it. I lifted my foot, then put it on my knee with the sole upwards and pulled out the bent and broken blade.

“That’s another 20 quid,” I commented drily. “We need a subscription for single-use clothing…”

“We could just go naked,” Geri said. I suspected her to be serious. But then, she did have a point. All system areas were out of sight of norms, the dungeon even more so.

“Let’s hope for armour drops instead,” Sam said.

“Who wants to check the other two directions?” I asked, not wanting to waste time on that topic. We only had two and a half hours left, and that included time for lunch.

“Give me a sec, love,” Livia said and grabbed my shoulder with one hand. With the other, she pulled off one shoe and sock. Then she put her naked foot on the square to the right. Nothing happened.

“Is it safe for people or just feet?” I mused.

Livia shrugged and stepped full on it. I held my breath, but still nothing happened.

“Now, where next? Any ideas on the pattern yet?” I asked.

“This is level one, so the most trivial one, I’d say,” Sam said. “The ones at the walls are safe?” That would be trivially easy, indeed.

“Let’s find out,” Livia said and tested the next one. Again, nothing happened. “Yes, newbie level easy,” she announced when we had reached the corner. “It’s a training room, teaching you about traps and that there are ways around them. And that brute-forcing your way through is a bad idea. I bet the outer ring of traps is harmless, and the further in you go, the more it hurts.”

To demonstrate, she put her foot onto the square next to her. A squadron of darts dropped out of the ceiling, embedding themselves into the bricks and her foot. “Ouch, that stings.”

“Yes, looks like it,” I said, suppressing the desire to facepalm. “Carry on, let’s see how nasty Chloe’s husband is,” I said.

🙚⚜🙘

We threw open the door to the hobgoblin room and peered in. As promised, a huge green guy, the level boss, stood there. What Chloe hadn’t mentioned was that he was hung like a horse. Although, that might be the wrong comparison. His length matched his size, but his little friend was thicker than my fist. Chloe had taken that as a human? How?

He looked at the door but didn’t otherwise react. “I think we need to go in,” I said.

“Genius,” Geri said. “Who’d have thought that?”

Still, nobody moved, so I did. The moment I did so, the hobgoblin growled and raised his club. The wooden one. Then, to my surprise, he spoke. “Fun or fight?” he asked with a heavy tooth-related accent.

“I’m not—“ I started, but Geri interrupted me.

“I can take that,” she said.

“What?” we asked in unison.

“I can take that dick. I’ve got an ability to have sex with anything I’m feeding on, no matter how big or small they are. Also, I need to feed soon and that guy is free food.”

“I’m not stopping you,” I said. “But you have to have sex with a showerhead before you can expect my mouth down there again.”

“Um, self-cleaning ability?”

“Not good enough,” Livia backed me up while Sam nodded emphatically.

Geri shrugged, walked into the chamber and stripped. She actually stripped and didn’t just undress. It was hot, and I was on the wrong side of the display. What followed wasn’t nearly as hot, but Geri did seem to enjoy it anyway. The hobgoblin, Mister Manstomper, did.

He seemed surprised when Geri stood up and gave him a peck on the lips afterwards. “Need heal?” he asked.

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” Geri answered.

The troll then pointed to the chest at the back wall. “Reward,” he said.

Geri walked up to the chest and touched the lid to lift it up. A second later, she turned around, grinning. “Inventory!” she shouted and ran back to us.

“Get dressed first,” I reminded her, as her clothes still lay…nowhere. Shit, they were gone? Only her cell phone lay where she had undressed.

“Where?” she asked, looking around, too.

“Seems the dungeon eats unattended objects,” Livia said. “Another lesson learned…”

“At least it doesn’t like electronics,” I mused.

Geri walked over and picked up her phone. “Oh, I got a notification. That was a one-time courtesy, it says. In the future, irreplaceable items will also be eaten.”

“What’s irreplaceable about that? Sam asked.

“I’ve run out of data for the month; today’s pics are not backed up yet,” Geri explained.

“It’s only the sixteenth. What kind of plan do you have?” Livia asked. “We should upgrade that.”

“Prepaid, I just haven’t topped it up in a while, and the last days were kinda hectic,” Geri explained.

“Still, I’d prefer to transfer you over to our corporate plan. Unlimited minutes, unlimited data, unlimited texts, and worldwide roaming.” It was a good one; I could attest to that.

“Corporate? Whorehouses Ltd. Or what?” Sam joked.

“Merseyside Security and Protection Services. It’s actually a real business with real customers. Super handy to make things look legal.” Oh, that was the one Greg had used to intimidate Peter.

“Can we maybe leave the business talk out of the dungeon?” I asked. “We’re uncoordinated enough without digressing into that.”

“Fine,” Geri said. “Goblins next?”

“What else?”

The goblins provided no challenge at all. I didn’t even drop my glamour to get access to my claws; one hit by either of us was enough to kill these low-level creatures. This time, I grabbed the treasure chest reward.

🖹

You have looted a common treasure chest, level 1. You receive: 6 coins, 1 eternal condom (self-cleaning, indestructible), 1 pants (white, male, medium, mendable/stamina)

🖹

Your inventory has been unlocked. 3 out of 8 slots used. Note: System inventories can only hold System items.

“Nice?” I said. “I got the inventory unlock, a condom and some boy pants. Geri, what did you get from the sex dungeon room?”

After giggling about my pun—success!—Geri replied, “A universal bra and self-sizing shorts with some armour value.”

“Then, why are you still naked?” Sam piped up.

“Who’s not absent-minded shall throw the first stone,” Geri said with a shrug. Then, the two items in question materialised on her body. The bra was quite nice, black with lace trim and a red bow in the front, but the shorts looked like something out of an 80s movie. They were baby blue with a curtain seam at the bottom and neon stripes printed across it at an angle.

“Yuck!” Livia said. “We need a system shop to dump that as trader trash…”

“We could gift it to Rune,” Sam said. “Under her robe, nobody would have to see it.”

“Or drop it in some volcano,” I added, not being able to come up with a better line. Those neon stripes must be burning my brains out.

🙚⚜🙘

"So that was level one, interesting. Down or up?” Sam asked when we stood back on the staircase. Chloe had told us about the dimensional shenanigans it had going, which was weird but not worse than what else the system did. Lately, I had realised that the office wing and storage room of the guild hall had to exist in some folded space, as from the outside, there was no part of the building those could have been in. From the inside, one couldn’t tell; even the view out of the windows made spatial sense.

“We’ve still got time. Mister Manstomper is a quick little fucker,” Livia said with a devious note. Was she planning to try him, too? She had a “tissue stretchiness” ability that was better than mine, and mine had given me the feeling it could handle him. Not that I wanted to; that monster was…yuck!

“Then down it is,” I said and led the parade down the stairs. This time, it only was one revolution until we reached the bottom of the shaft. I knew that was just the impression we got and that there actually were stairs further down that would be usable for people who had cleared level two, but it looked fully realistic. It also looked identical to the first level’s entrance, just that the enamel sign read “Level 2”.

Not knowing what was expecting us, I opened the door carefully and peeked through. Behind it was a room…but I couldn’t perceive any details. Suppressing my RDSF fully, something I hadn’t done for days, I noticed I didn’t actually see anything at all. “The dungeon prevents us from peeking in,” I said. “It just makes us think we see something.”

“It does that very well,” Sam noted. “Even clued in, I could swear I see a room there.”

“Same here,” Livia added. Geri probably nodded enthusiastically, as she tended to do, but I didn’t turn to look.

“Yes, it is good. But my racial senses are unaffected, and they say there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing, not even space.” I was stretching it a bit, but it sounded nice, didn’t it?

“Makes sense. Spatial trickery, maybe a teleport, and such. The topology in here makes no sense,” Livia analysed.

I shrugged and stepped in. There was no other way to see what awaited us. Before me lay a mining tunnel, no, a railway tunnel under construction. A cart track lay in its centre, and every dozen metres or so, a skeletal worker swung a pickaxe at the walls. Maybe a hundred metres ahead of us, I could see the tunnel ending in a not yet excavated wall, an iron door in the centre.

“Eight skeleton workers and a skeleton foreman at the end, all in single combat, it seems,” Livia analysed the situation. “Still easy, but these enemies have weapons and are immune to a whole lot of skills that need brains or flesh.”

“Yeah, my daggers are pretty useless here,” Geri added.

“Brute force will do,” I said and dropped my glamour. “Let me try this one alone.”

I stormed the first skeleton, aiming my fist at its head, remembering the satisfying crunch Sam’s mom’s skull had made. Did she already know about her parents? It had slipped my mind. But unlike that woman, the skeleton noticed me and reacted. It ducked out of my way and swung his pickaxe around, hitting me in the back with the sharp end.

I tried to catch myself, but my legs didn’t want to obey, and I saw the ground approaching me quickly. Then I noticed the bloody point of the pickaxe retracting back into my belly, just below my ribcage. Retracing its way through my body, I knew why I couldn’t move my legs—that sucker had driven it right through my spine.

As I hit the ground hard, I tried to roll away to the side, but the dead weight of my lower body disagreed and won. I only managed to take the initial hit on one shoulder before the other and my face hit the sharp gravel. I turned my head, trying again to roll over, but it turned out that doing so with just your shoulders and arms was next to impossible.

But I now saw the monster again. It stood there, taking a high swing with the pickaxe in both hands, aiming…at my head. I scrambled as the heavy chunk of iron accelerated towards me, trying to crawl out of the danger zone, but it followed the slow movement.

I already saw my death incoming when a sword intercepted the pickaxe, severing the wooden shaft and throwing the head off course. It hit the ground next to me with force, bounced up and then dropped flat on my head, cracking my cheekbone painfully. In the second that took, a forceball obliterated its head, turning it into a harmless scattering of bones that rained down on me.

“Bloody fuckballs, what shite was that?” I cursed, spitting out small pieces of gravel. At least, I hoped it was just gravel. I wasn’t sure I could heal teeth—they don’t usually regrow.

“Another lesson, I’d say,” Livia said. “Enemies who know how to fight are dangerous.”

“You look tasty, um, bloodied,” Geri said as she lifted the pickaxe head off of me.

“You just ate, you glutton,” I said, the fear of death turning into humorous relief.

🙚⚜🙘

Spine injuries are no joke. It took me over an hour to be able to move my legs again. Feeling, for some reason, set in at the 20-minute mark, the time I needed to heal minor injuries. That made the “Can you feel that?” game the others were playing with me a less one-sided fun activity.

We decided not to provoke a repetition and use our brains for the remaining skeletons. This meant that Livia would try to blast them from outside their ‘aggro range’, and when she missed the moving targets, which was about half the time, Sam and I would greet the slowly charging monsters with swinging fists and swords.

Geri once tried to attack one, too, but as she had expected, her knives were utterly useless. They only produced inconsequential scratches on the skeleton's bones. And while she was stronger and faster than a human, she didn’t have the raw might I could put into my fists. At best, she’d be able to take these skeletons apart bone by bone. With lunchtime drawing closer and me already ravenous from expending so much of my energy on healing, we weren’t in the mood to have her try that.

The foreman at the end of the tunnel was about twice as massive as the workers, but he stood still, pretending to watch over his workers, so Livia had no issues turning its head into small splinters in one shot. That was a bit anti-climactic, but we were still overlevelled for this storey of the dungeon.

A single treasure chest, uncommon as the system called it, bronze as Livia and Geri agreed on, yielded us a pair of white knee socks, a women’s tee in small with a vampire bunny print, and another eternal condom. Not great loot overall, but the tee looked great on Geri. It was just big enough that she would fit in when equipping it from her inventory, showing off her perfect shape.

But the best thing about it was that it also could be repaired by feeding it stamina, just like the bra and shorts we had looted earlier. It seemed to be a standard feature for system-provided clothing.

🙚⚜🙘

In the end, the dungeon boosted our levels considerably. There wasn’t that much from the monsters, although Manstomper had yielded Geri one and all the skeletons Livia two level-ups, but there also was a flat reward from clearing each level. All in all, Geri reached level 8, Livia and I seven, and Sam six, bringing our group level to 28, matching what I had estimated group two was at earlier.

The biggest drawback of the way we had cleared level two was that Livia’s attacks from outside the aggro range hadn’t counted as fighting, so she didn’t get skill XP for her magic attack but for her killing/humanoids skill. That is, if you considered levelling up that skill as a drawback. I did, as it only helped with finishing moves, and we would soon face enemies we couldn’t obliterate in one hit.

We hadn’t brought the car to the dungeon—it was literally a 5-minute stroll from the hall—so my shirt’s condition presented an issue. Geri solved that one nicely when she suggested pretending this was just a weird shirt design, a Halloween one I was wearing two months early. When I pointed out that the blood visible on me through the holes would make that look a bit less convincing, she offered to lick me clean. I let her.