DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

The cultivator stepped hesitantly into the room, a shiver running up his arms as a cold draft wafted past. This entire expedition had been cursed from the start. Now, even after seeing those signs, they were forcing everyone to go inside and explore. He was the lucky one who had been chosen to go first.

Lucky him.

He shouldn’t even have been on this trip; his cultivation level was too low. It was a miracle that he had managed to survive as long as he had already. He should have done the same thing as those accursed Holmes, and simply refused. With how many people the expedition had already lost, there was no way their probation would stick.

It was too late for that now. All he could depend on was his finely honed senses to get him through this.

***

Nate watched as the man took a second and then a slow third step into the room. It was clear to see his eyes were raking every corner of the room for hidden dangers. It was also plainly obvious he had already missed the dangers he was stepping on at that precise moment.

Suddenly, he wished he had found some way to deactivate the first trap. It would be better if the entire group entered instead of just one person. On the other hand, if they saw this fellow get skewered by the spear traps, he doubted the rest of them would be all that eager to come inside.

It was a decision he needed to make; did he want to eliminate the entire party? Or simply send a message to everyone about what was going on inside the mysterious structure?

More than that, was he really alright with watching them all die? It was easy enough to turn off the screens, but at the same time, he felt as though this was something he needed to see. This was a part of the world he had found himself in.

Nate had been treating parts of his new life in a half-serious manner ever since he woke up months ago. Once he watched these people die, he wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. He would have to acknowledge that there were real-life consequences to what he was doing.

That people had, and would die because of the dungeon.

He wasn’t stupid enough to even think about taking responsibility for their deaths. After all, people were responsible for their own actions. He had placed signs telling them not to enter, and that they were trespassing on private property.

They were breaking into his proverbial house. Why should he feel responsible after all that? Uncomfortable, sure. He still had a conscience, but he couldn’t control what others did.

He decided not to change the first trap for the moment. That would be going a little too far, he decided.

The man took another step into the room and pivoted to look at the others waiting by the entrance. He shrugged and took a step back. A spear shot up and pierced straight through him at the point of least resistance. He never had a chance.

Nate felt his butt clench uncomfortably in sympathetic pain and winced as the spear tore through the man’s stomach. It held that position for a heartbeat and then ripped him down to the ground. The barbed spearhead tore his insides out as it retreated.

Despite himself, Nate found himself looking at the resource counter. He wanted to see how much energy the man’s death had given the dungeon. On-screen, the cultivator slowly sank into the floor and vanished.

The counters all jumped as the dungeon began digesting his equipment along with the body.

The amount of energy the dungeon had gotten had been even worse than some of the monsters it had killed. However, the equipment had more than made up for that. The other resources always lagged behind energy since beasts simply didn’t have much other material, either in or on them.

That wasn’t the case for humans.

The other cultivators by the entrance had been about to step inside the dungeon when they saw him die. Now they had no idea what to do.

Was the entire room trapped, or had the scout simply gotten supremely unlucky?

Nate watched as they turned to the man at the back with pleading expressions.

This was clearly the man in charge of their group, possibly the entire expedition. A flicker of something akin to fear and uncertainty flashed across his face as he took in the room before them. Finally, he came to a decision and pushed the next person forward.

Nate watched in disgust as the man killed off the last member of their group before deciding that was enough. All told, the expedition had just fed three people to the dungeon with differing results.

He wasn’t sure if they were in the right mental space to understand at the moment. However, later they would realize what they had seen. The traps weren’t especially strong. The second cultivator had nearly survived her first clash with the spear traps. The third person had even been able to avoid them shooting up entirely at the last second, only to get gored through by another set.

The point was, if they were smart, they would realize that they still had a chance of getting inside. It was information that they would undoubtedly send back to people in the city.

More importantly, at least to Nate, it had answered his question of how strong the beasts he had been dealing with actually were. The answer was not very. With a couple of exceptions, most of the beasts might even have been weaker than the group of cultivators.

Cultivators that shouldn’t have even been there because they were too weak.

That meant most of the beasts that were coming through were gaining strength after they arrived. He wasn’t sure what it meant, if anything, but it was interesting to note, regardless.

The sole remaining person took one last look at the inside of the room and then backed out. He hadn’t even bothered to photograph anything.

Nate watched him leave with a frown. He hadn’t particularly cared about the other people dying. He couldn’t do anything in any case, however, just watching this man walk away without a care rubbed him wrong. All he could do is hope that the monsters in the dimensional zone got him on his way back to the city.

Being eaten alive was still too good a punishment for trash like that.

Nate wasn’t going to get involved with anyone about his own moral uprightness. The dungeon was his, after all, but he also couldn’t control people. They decided their own actions and fates. The most he could do is steer those he cared about away from it.

Which is exactly what he had already done.

However, no matter what, he also wasn’t forcing people to enter a death trap. That was simply too much.

He waited another moment and then closed the screens for the dungeon. He would start deconstructing a portion of the dungeon that night and upgrade some of the traps as well. Until then, he had some time to burn before dinner and then sleep.

He might as well get some more cultivating done while he waited. Unlike the other nights, there was little chance that George would be coming by that night. With all the excitement that the expedition was causing with their video, he doubted the man would be able to get away.

Which simply meant that he needed to find other ways to occupy his time and make progress instead.

***

“I haven’t seen you doing that in a long time now,” His mother was leaning against the door of his room watching him when he opened his eyes sometime later. “I thought you might have forgotten how.”

“I did, at least in part. I had to read up on the technique at the school in order to understand what I needed to do. After that…” Nate shrugged. “My body still remembered, even if my mind had forgotten. It’s slow going since normally all the energy is stored in your core or meridians, but it’s working.”

Nina looked into the hall and stepped fully into the room, shutting the door behind her. “Nate, can I ask you something possibly strange and odd?” Her voice shook, and her eyes looked everywhere but at him.

“I guess?” He replied, having no idea why his mother was suddenly acting like this. All he knew was he didn’t like it, and it set his nerves on edge.

“Are you really my son?” She whispered.

Nate closed his eyes, dozens of different possible answers and their possible consequences springing to mind. It would be so easy to lie or say nothing.

In the end, he couldn’t do it. This was his mother, and at the same time, she wasn’t. His real mother had died in a different universe in a car accident on the way to the hospital to see him, along with his father. The woman standing in front of him looked like her and acted like her. She had even given birth to the body he now inhabited. But when you got right down to it, she wasn’t here, not unless they shared a soul or something he would never know the answer to.

“I… How can you ask something like that, mom? What answer do you expect me to give? If I say yes, you’re going to keep being suspicious. If I say no, who knows how you’ll react?” He sighed and patted the edge of the bed. “Come here. Tell me why you think I’m not your son?”

“That’s not what I said, but that reaction right there was just too level-headed. You’ve changed so much since the attack.” She gingerly sat down on the bed and looked at him. “It’s confusing. Sometimes you act the same, and other times you act as though you’ve already experienced so much. It’s just… it’s confusing to me.

“I know it’s wrong to even think that you might not be my son. But I can’t help but have these small doubts that something is off. That you’ve changed too much. I’ve tried to explain it away with the amnesia caused by your destroyed core, and that worked for a while. Then the doubts came back. Your common sense seemed off, little things like that, that I couldn’t explain away with memory loss.” She swallowed and stared at the person who might not be her son.

Nate wiped her tears with his thumb, using the moment to think. Did he want to tell her the truth, or keep living this warm lie? If he did lie though, he knew his mother wouldn’t look at him in the same way as before. Some of that warmth would be gone. That alone answered the question for him.

“It’d been so long since I last saw you and dad, you have no idea how happy I was to see you again when I opened my eyes that first day.” Nate made his decision and began to tell her the truth. He shifted around on his bed so he could sit facing her. “I am your son, but at the same time, I’m not the son you knew…”

***

Nina blew out a wet, disbelieving breath. The story she had just been told was so fantastical it bordered on unrealistic. Yet, at the same time, Nate had been so serious the entire time he’d been speaking. There was little doubt in her mind that he believed what he was saying was true.

But could she believe him? That was a harder question to answer, and one she didn’t have an answer to at the moment.

Stiffly, Nina got up from the bed and walked towards the door. “Not a word of this to your father. Until I decide what to believe and how I feel on the matter, I don’t want him to hear about any of this. Is that understood?”

Nate stared forlornly at the carpet and nodded. He wasn’t sure what he had been hoping for by telling her the truth, instant recognition, loving acceptance? But more suspicion certainly wasn’t it.

The door closed behind her with a solemn click.