DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate didn’t go down for dinner. Instead, as soon as his mother left, he decided to change and hop into the dungeon with his avatar. He desperately needed something to distract him from what might have possibly been a colossal mistake.

It had seemed like the right choice at the time, but now, looking back, he wasn’t so sure. So, for the moment, he was going to do something that would keep his mind off everything, while also being productive.

He was going to start removing parts of the dungeon labyrinth that had never seen use. At this point, there were entire sections of the complex that were entirely redundant.

Nate walked out of the core room and began walking to the first area he had marked as needing to go. In total, he figured around twenty rooms would be taken away, along with all the accompanying corridors. That was a lot of materials and resources he had wasted in their initial construction and putting traps in them.

He would get some of that back, but not all of it. Of course, by getting rid of those areas, he was also eliminating an easy path for him to get around the monsters. He would need to see if he could create another, more appropriate one for his use only later. For the time being, he would have to accept this lesson for what it was and move on.

For the next little while, he removed each trap and section of the dungeon he no longer wanted. There were easier, faster ways he could have done it, but he was trying to keep his mind occupied and this was perfect for that.

Finally, however, the lower third of the dungeon was gone, and he was once more overflowing with resources. It was time to start working on the design of the dungeon properly and the various traps within. If he could snag himself a shirt, then so much the better.

He had made the dungeon too large the first time around. It was still large, but at least it was approaching something manageable.

He opened the screens, showing him the various areas of the dungeon, and leaned against the wall as he took everything in. The entire dungeon was calm and quiet. If there had been a monster or beast inside, he had just missed seeing it.

That meant it was the perfect time to go to work on the traps. There was no better time than when he didn’t have to worry about something attacking him while he was working.

With that in mind, he hurried towards the portal, and the three rooms connected to it. The first one he was going to work on was the one at the top. The monsters seemed to go through it more often than the others.

This room was still basic, and really only had a single trap in it. It was a spiked trap ceiling that unfortunately fell too slowly most of the time. The first thing he needed to do was to expand the trap to encompass the entire ceiling. Then, after that, he needed to find a way to make it fall faster.

The last step was to gum up the floor and make it sticky, something that would slow the monsters even more. It was all about trying to increase how effective he could make the traps in the room. Ensuring the beasts stayed in there longer was an easy way of doing that.

He finished the room just as another beast appeared from the portal and he took off at a run. A bad feeling burned through his chest as he remembered why he had chosen this specific room.

It was another boar with red, demon-like eyes. It burst through the door behind him and tore through the deactivated trap room.

True to form, it had chosen the most common path and then spotted him right away.

With a scream of frustration, he ran into the next room, desperately trying to steer the infernal beast into a trap.

It wasn’t to be; it was too fast, and he was too slow. The traps wouldn’t activate with him in the way.

Nate dove to the side at the last moment and reached for his kukri’s. He might not know how to best use them, but he could still try to cut the monster with them, regardless. Anything was better than just letting it kill him without putting up any kind of fight.

Being torn apart had opened his eyes in a way. He was afraid, yes, more than he had been before, but he was more scared of dying like that again. So, he would fight to ensure it didn’t happen again. He never wanted to experience something like that again, though he knew in all likelihood he would.

At least he had the opportunity to learn from his mistakes, unlike other people.

The long kukri blades were sharp and wicked looking with their traditional curve. The boar turned to face him and charged again. Nate swung both blades as he skipped to the side. Only one blade even touched the beast, enraging it further, and he slid the second one back into its sheathe with disgust.

What was he even doing playing around with two blades, when he didn’t even know how to properly use one?

The line he had scored on the side of the giant boar, was exactly that, a line. It was a scratch at most that had served to enrage his opponent and nothing more. He was too weak and untrained to do anything more to it.

With kukri in hand, he took off at a run, desperate to get away from this monster. The only chance he has at surviving was to use the traps. Which meant he needed to get away from it somehow.

There were only so many times he could get lucky dodging something like that. He would get gored through by its giant tusks if he wasn’t careful, or bitten in half, or stomped to death. Really, there were lots of ways it could kill him, and all of them were painful.

He could feel the boar thundering after him as it bore down on his fleeing form. At the last possible moment, he dove away from the doorway. His shoulder crashed into the wall even as he felt one of his feet get completely ripped off by the passing monster.

It screamed in frustration as it ran into the next room and slowed, turning around to come around for its final charge.

Nate flipped it off as jets of fire burst up from the floor and roasted it alive. Adding insult to injury, arrows shot out from the wall and peppered it continuously as well. He wasn’t actually sure if they were doing anything, seeing as the wooden shafts kept lighting on fire mid-flight. That had been a bad mix on his part, and something he’d need to fix in the future.

He groaned and promptly threw up as he reached for the kukri he had dropped when he ran into the wall. His shoulder was likely dislocated, possibly broken, and he was missing a foot and bleeding all over the floor.

It looked like his session inside the dungeon would be coming to an end fairly soon. Hopefully, he would at least get something from the beast’s corpse. If not, he wanted to at least recover his boot. He had no idea if it was possible to lose one of his items and wasn’t particularly eager to learn. From his experience of getting torn apart, he wanted to say no, but again, each item was precious.

He didn’t want to test it out and lose something he wanted or, worse, needed.

Carefully, he pushed and pulled himself across the floor, only puking one more time when he accidentally scraped something with his raw stump. It was hard and slow, he only had one good arm and leg to work with, and blood loss was creeping in fast.

Ahead of him, he could see two glowing orbs and the precious boot.

One of the orbs was small, around the size of a marble, with a multi-colored interior. The last time he had seen one of those, he had gotten some energy from it. The second orb was yellow, a color he hadn’t seen before.

Since he thought he knew what to expect with it, he reached for the rainbow-colored marble first. Slapping his hand down weakly on top of it.

Just like before, it slowly sank into his skin. That was followed a moment later by a rush of heat that spread throughout his entire body as the energy entered his empty body. He knew most of it would be lost again, same as the last time, but every little bit helped.

Regardless, that sudden burst of energy was like a shot of caffeine mainlined into his system. It was enough of a boost that it gave him enough time to grab his boot and weakly smack the other, yellow orb.

He passed out before seeing what the yellow-colored orbs gave out.

***

Nate’s dreams were restless after that filled with monsters chasing him and his mother turning him over to the city authorities. When he awoke the next morning, it was with a feeling of relief, and to a sweat-soaked bed.

With a grunt of disgust, he peeled himself off the sheets, nearly stumbling as his ankle refused to hold his weight. He had a nice bruise circling where it had been torn off, and to a much lesser degree, he had some light bruising around his shoulder as well.

He took a moment to wrap his ankle and hobble his way toward the shower. There was no way he was going to mess with taking the sheets off his bed until after he was clean.

Wafts of steam were still coming off his skin when he returned a few minutes later and pulled everything off his bed. He had thoroughly soaked everything through with his nightmare, if you could even rightly call it that.

He placed the bundle to the side for later and collapsed onto his desk chair.

Tapping the computer on his wrist, he pulled up the dungeon information. He wanted to see what he had gained the night before and if he had lost his boot.

His energy had increased again, this time by point three points. He was now at four-point-eight total. He’d had a feeling that the boar was stronger than the last monster he’d gotten energy from. Or maybe he had simply gotten lucky. It wasn’t like he actually knew how the dungeon worked, after all.

He flicked over to his equipment screen and was immediately relieved to find both of his boots and knives still there. There wasn’t, however, anything new.

Backing out of that screen, he selected storage and saw a bracelet sitting in one of the many open slots. Tapping on it pulled up some basic information for the item, along with a couple of options. ‘Bracelet of Basic Health Recovery – Recovers a small amount of health over time.’ Then he was given the option to either equip it to the avatar or withdraw it from storage.

Nate could barely keep the grin from his face as he chose to withdraw the bracelet. A constant chant of ‘Yes, let this be real,’ was going through his head the entire time. A moment later, the bracelet vanished from the storage box and appeared on his lap.

He could officially bring items he had gotten with his avatar and use them in the real world. He had no idea if he could put them back in, but that was a matter for later.

This was already big news for him.

He could feel his hand shaking as he slipped the bracelet onto his wrist. The cool metal clamped down on his wrist, conforming to his size. There was no way it would accidentally fall off and get lost now.

Now if only the healing effect would also help with his core and meridians, though, he imagined it wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to do something like that. It was enough that it would help heal the bruises he got from his adventures inside the dungeon.

Asking for more than that at the moment was simply being greedy.