Dungeon at the End of the Universe

“I can answer that,” came the sudden voice of Faellen, who they had completely forgotten about in the heat of combat.

“It’s actually pretty simple, you still suck as adventurers,” before any of them could complain, it continued, “Yes, that Boss was way too strong for your level and for that you handled yourself admirably. But you’re just simply not strong enough. And in addition to that, you didn’t have any equipment to take proper advantage of your abilities.
So I had to help you. I healed and energized you two, and I directly manipulated his mana bolt to be an actually useful attack. And any assistance from outside parties greatly lowers your score.”

A brief silence reigned, before the fairy hammered its point home.

“In short, you would’ve died.”

The moment of silence from before returned, now much more intense. For Prshky and Ram, this revelation mostly just forced them realized the reality of their new circumstances. That this was not a game.

For Dittillapp though, or Ditti as Ram had called them, it brought on feelings of inadequacy more than anything else.

Seeing this, the fairy smiled. Good, it though, now we can start properly teaching them.

“Luckily for you, I am here.” The three looked up at it, confused. Up until now, they’d only known the small being as their Tutorial guide and hadn’t paid more attention to it beyond that, especially after it refused to answer any of the interesting questions.

“I’ll be training you into proper adventurers now, ones who can take on unexplored Dungeons without someone holding their hands through it. And we’ll be starting right here, right now,” the grin that spread across its face could be described as demonic, “I won’t allow any of you to leave, not even to move, until you can sense mana.”

At hearing Faellen’s proclamation I quickly refocused back onto my Core Room, just in time to see it arriving back.

“Soooo,” I opened, “You have control over the their Dungeon experience for now. What now?”

“Now,” that unsettling grin once more plastered its face, “we make a proper Dungeon, one that isn’t just boring combat encounter after boring combat encounter.”

I gulped, which is a strange thing to do without a mouth or neck but the fairy managed to make me do it regardless. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to those terms if its.

Ah, yes, hello. I can finally speak to you properly again.

While those two are preparing their little challenges, and the other three are stuck in place, let us see what was happening down on planet Lapis all this time.

For you see, while the teleportation to transport poor Prshky, Ram, and Ditti was successful, it did have some shortcomings. Like, for example, that it was visible to others, and not just the recipient.

Oh yes, that’s right.

You can probably imagine the chaos that unfolded when, out of nowhere, three bright pillars of light descended from the Light. Naturally, people investigated. And for a while, not much could be found.

But if remember back to those previous chapters, only Ram and Ditti were kidnapped in the night. For Prshky, it happened in the middle of the day. At work, even!

The moment news spread that after the beam of light from the Light* hit the P.I.S.S. building an employee had vanished, a hunt was on.

(*terrible, I know. ‘the light from the Light’ who came up with that? This is just another example of why you shouldn’t name strange things after normal stuff, because otherwise you’ll get sentences like this.)

People scoured the areas surrounding the other impact sites, searching for any and all missing persons. Which is how they found out about Ram and Ditti.

Everyone tried to figure out what connected the three, what connected the locations hit by the beams, and what was the purpose behind it all.

And most importantly, the theories about what the Light could actually be became even more of a hot topic. It was clear it wasn’t just a simple moon. While before almost everyone had heard at least one theory, now most people were coming up with their own personal ones.

As for organizations like P.I.S.S.*? Well, their efforts to research the Light became much more intense.

(*remember, it stands for Protected Imperial Space System, there’s nothing naughty about it)

There were even talks of trying to reach it, even if only in their beginning stages.

Simply put, there was chaos. And nobody back on the Dungeon moon knew about it. The people there were much more relaxed, some more than others.

Mostly Faellen. The others were forced or tricked into working hard. Not that that weren’t showing results as a consequence, but forced improvement hardly feels as good as natural one.

Let’s take the adventurers for example. The first one to complete the fairy’s challenge was, naturally, Prshky the wizard.

He did have some advantages, mainly in his class and in his ability which allowed him to actively move mana and look for those disturbances.

Not long after him came Ditti. They actually managed it surprisingly fast for a non-caster. Specifically exactly a dozen minutes after Prshky. Suspicious? Definitely, but I shan’t spoil it.

It then took almost another day, as well as the advice of the others, for Ram to manage it as well.

And just like that, all of them had their metaphorical third eye opened.

Which was very lucky for the Dungeon Core, as Faellen’s demands for the ideal training Dungeon continued to grow day by day. It was a great relief when it was called away towards the trio of Sipalians.

Then again, the fairy did cash in its favour it had extorted out of the Dungeon, which meant work was not quite over yet.