DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate watched George leave, his entire body aching from the recent healing session. He had no doubt that when he checked the info screen on his wrist computer later, his stats would have improved again.

His parents came up behind him. “Come on, why don’t you finish the last of your homework before going to bed? Then in the morning you can call that Angelica girl and let her know what he said. That is, of course, assuming George hasn’t already talked to them.” Niall suggested, gently pushing his son towards the stairs.

That was right, George had wanted him to take Angelica’s deal. Which still struck him as odd. The entire point of the deal was the keep the man interested in coming over and spending time with them. Which by telling him, he had pretty much already agreed that he was going to do anyway.

Did that mean the deal was moot, or that he had already fulfilled his obligation in advance?

It was a question he had no answer for. Since his homework was already done, all that was left was getting ready for bed. He took a quick shower and changed into his pajamas.

Laying down, he activated the computer on his wrist and saw his updated stats.

They had increased again, well decreased depending on how you looked at it. Not a lot, but it was there. At their current rate of improvement, he would need at least another fifteen or so sessions, give or take a couple.

He could see why George would want him to use the medicine. There was no guarantee how long getting to that number would take. Besides, who knew if he would even maintain a constant rate of improvement? The alchemical potion was simply a better and faster method if he could get his hands on it.

If not, well, he had already waited two months just to begin healing. He could wait a little longer for it to be completed.

Without waiting any longer, he donned his avatar, sending his regular body to sleep.

Inside the dungeon, Nate took a moment to remember what he wanted to do. Right now, he wanted to perfect a few more of the traps, and better secure the core.

Creating new ones could wait until later. He was having a hard time coming up with different traps to place. There was nothing preventing him from creating an entire dungeon of pitfall or acid traps, except himself. It was boring, and wouldn’t work on all the monsters, not to mention the humans that were coming.

He had to take those annoyances into account with what new additions he made. Maybe he’d find out in the next couple of days how people reacted to the dungeon. They might leave well enough alone or decide to explore it.

Personally, he thought they would be stupid to explore something that was slowing down the appearance of monsters. However, people were curious creatures, and he doubted they would leave well enough alone.

They rarely did, after all; humans had a terrible track record in that regard.

Nate looked around the large empty room that housed the core and pulled up his menu. Surely there was something he could do to make it more secure while in this form. He already knew he couldn’t hide it completely. But that didn’t mean he needed to let it remain out in the open and completely visible, either. Did it?

He checked his available resources and then thought about the traps he needed to modify. Everything was so expensive when he did it this way, but he thought he might be able to at least do something.

Nothing extravagant, but a simple wall with a tiny hole might be possible. If nothing else, it would help hide the core from sight.

Nate looked down at the ground, making sure he took note of where he had appeared. He didn’t want to get trapped inside the room the next time he appeared.

Pulling up the menu, he began working on the construction of the wall, pushing it as far back as he could. It was nearly touching the pedestal that the core sat on when he finished. It still wouldn’t let him send through the order to build it though, until he created an opening at the top in the corner. Hopefully, in a spot where no one would notice.

The wall was fairly thick, and expensive to create. However, it was the last line of defense for his precious core. He deemed it necessary. So, while he hadn’t planned on spending anywhere near as much as he was about to. Nate was alright with it.

He would simply do one less trap for now is all.

With the room ready, he sent through the order and the dungeon shutdown.

The lights went out, and the air grew cold and lifeless.

Alarmed at the sudden change, Nate pulled up the viewing screens and saw all the monsters that had been stuck at the entrance suddenly leave. All of the traps throughout the entire dungeon had been turned off.

He moaned and sat down. He knew that doing construction on a trap made everything in the room inert for the duration. He hadn’t expected the same thing to happen with the core, since it controlled everything. That had been a bad miscalculation on his part.

He kept the screens up as the wall continued to build behind him. Whether by a stroke of luck or something else, no monster wandered his way. In fact, they almost all took the same path for the exit. That was one theory confirmed, at least. The dungeon was doing something to actively hide scent trails.

He wished it worked on the smell of the acid in the traps he used, but you couldn’t have everything.

It took nearly an hour and a half for the wall to build itself. Longer than most traps, that was for sure. He didn’t know if that was because of how thick the wall was, or if it was because it was in the core room. Either way, it had taken a lot longer than he had expected.

When he got his next dungeon, he wouldn’t be making this mistake again. That was for sure.

Finally, the lights came back on. The air took on the same quality of freshness it had before, and the traps started working again. The dungeon was back in business.

Nate stood with a shiver and began jogging towards the entrance and the first trap on his list to modify. He was freezing after sitting on the floor in the dark for so long. He only had a pair of pants on, for heaven’s sake. No shoes, no shirt, nothing.

He needed to get his blood flowing.

Nate made sure to take an alternate route to the entrance. Avoiding the two monsters that had still been inside the dungeon when it restarted. If he was lucky, he might be able to trick them into one of the traps and get some more gear out of them after he was finished.

He would need to be careful with how he approached and handled them. He couldn’t risk another set of odd bruises appearing like the last time. The guild master would only brush them aside so many times. Not to mention, as his core and meridians healed, he couldn’t continue to use them as an excuse for everything.

Of course, it wasn’t like he wanted to get captured and torn to shreds a second time anyway. Once was more than enough for him.

Nate made his way past the newest monster without a problem, but got stuck on the second one. In the short time he had been jogging, it had progressed through another two rooms and cut off the route he had planned on taking.

To get around it now, he would have to backtrack several minutes.

Pulling up the traps in the room ahead of him, he saw it was a mix of fire floors and arrow walls. It would have to do. Before he lost his nerve, he rushed into the room and whistled at the hairy boar-looking thing. Large tusks that could gore him in a second extended up from its mouth. Its rear haunches were abnormally large with rippling muscles, and its eyes gleamed with an inner red-light.

It was not the kind of monster Nate would have picked a fight with under normal circumstances. It was big; it was ugly, and quite frankly, just looking at it, made him shiver in fright as he remembered what had happened last time.

Still, this was something he felt he needed to do, if for no other reason than to face his fears. He wanted those items though. The promise of a shirt or boots, maybe even a weapon, was too much to pass up at the moment.

A cloven hoof scraped against the stone floor of the dungeon as the boar prepared to charge at him.

Nate swallowed, suddenly not sure how this was going to work out. The last time, the beast had at least stayed still for a moment so he could run away and let the traps activate. That might not be the case this time.

It was too late for second thoughts and regrets as it charged through the room it had been in and through a short corridor towards him.

Nate scrambled back out of the range of the trap, praying that it would activate in time. If not, all he could do is dive to the side and hope that it was enough to save his avatar. He didn’t want to waste time doing this all again in the morning.

The boar was completely focused on him, its red eyes unwavering. The first of the arrows barely penetrated through its thick layer of protective hide. Until one of them lodged just right in its rear leg and sent it tumbling to the ground.

The fire floor trap activated and burned the beast to death while Nate watched from the opening of the room. He had backed up when he saw the first of the arrows fly free.

The fire continued to rage for several long minutes before finally guttering out.

Nate stepped carefully, unsure if the floor would be hot, only to find that it was already cool to the touch. In front of him, the remains of the beast sank into the floor, leaving behind two glowing orbs. One was blue, and about the same size as the one he had gotten before. The second orb was smaller, around the size of a marble, and looked like it contained the rainbow inside its crystalline interior.

“Please be a shirt, please be a shirt,” He muttered as he reached down and touched the glowing blue orb. It broke apart with a flash of light, leaving a pair of long knives that curved towards the front.

He vaguely remembered them being called ‘Kukris’ from a story he had read years before. A crazy princess had been given them by a boy from another world after appearing in hers with his house. It had been an odd but enjoyable story that tied into a much larger universe by the same author.

They weren’t a shirt, but getting a weapon wasn’t a bad thing either, not that he had any training in how to use them. Not that he could remember anyway. If the original Nate of this world had received any weapons training, no one had said anything to him about it.

It was one more thing that he was going to have to start concentrating on. Whether that training involved knives or bows or some other weapon, would be determined later. Just because he had gotten the kukris from the dungeon didn’t mean they were the perfect weapon for him to use.

It didn’t mean he wouldn’t use them until he figured out what that weapon was though either.

Picking them up, Nate saw a pair of sheathes appear on his thighs. Sliding the blades into their new homes. He looked at the multi-colored marble.