DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate quickly dressed the avatar in his new clothes and armor. The chill from the stone inside the dungeon had already begun to press uncomfortably on his skin. It wasn’t as bad as before he had possessed a core, but it was still uncomfortable.

The last thing he needed to do before leaving the room he always appeared in was check out the odd gun he’d gotten.

Using it wasn’t going to be his focus. That would be the kukris, which he would also be using over the weekend. He couldn’t use the gun out in the open, so the focus couldn’t be on training with it at the moment.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about how it worked and its overall power though.

His fingers ran over its lines, the comparison between an old matchlock and flintlock even more pronounced. It obviously didn’t have the components from which either of those derived their names, but they had a certain style to them that this also had. Well, as long as you ignored the hopper-like object on the side. He still thought that vaguely resembled a paintball gun part.

It was odd, heavy, unwieldy, and by no means a sleek device.

Yet, it possessed a certain charm to it at the same time.

Without thinking, Nate took a random energy core from the duffel bag inside his storage and placed it in the hopper.

There was no whirring noise or vibrations or other signs of life. Only two things changed. A bar appeared on the side of the hopper, filled with boxed increments like a battery meter. The second was the static image of a snowflake next to the meter.

It was also right after that when he realized this unfamiliar weapon didn’t have a safety switch on it. Well, not one outside of the hammer at the back anyway, which might not even be needed. He knew some revolvers could pull it back on their own. Cocking the hammer beforehand simply made it easier to fire.

He also didn’t have a convenient holster to carry it around in. The only thing he could do was keep it in his hand or put it back in storage.

Opening all his usual screens for the dungeon, he saw where the cultivators were, along with the beasts that had made it to the floor and set out. Setting off at a run, he began heading towards where the nearest monster was struggling with a trap.

He wasn’t exactly eager to head back to the second floor just yet and wanted to try out his new toy first.

The nearest beast ended up being the one that came through the portal a minute before he approached that room. Holding the odd gun at the ready, he stood outside the room and took aim at a particularly hairy haunch.

He cocked the hammer and gently pulled the trigger, being careful not to yank on it. He had gone shooting a few times before he’d gotten sick in his past life. It had been a long time by this point, but the basics of the process had stuck around. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. Always keep the muzzle pointed down or up. Whichever direction was safest, and when firing, gently pull the trigger instead of yanking on it. The latter would throw off your aim.

There had been a few others, but they didn’t really apply to his current weapon or circumstances.

There was no loud gunpowder explosion, but there was a crack of displaced air as the projectile went supersonic. A bullet made of hardened ice hit the haunch and drilled into it, creating a layer of ice that grew as he watched.

Nate paused for a moment to watch before trying to pull the trigger again. The trigger wouldn’t move. He cocked the hammer and took aim again and stepped into the room so he could shoot a different place. This time, the gun fired.

That answered one question. It did have a safety, after a fashion. The gun was interesting, and it seemed like the bullets it fired would change depending on the energy core he fed it. It wasn’t the most powerful weapon. However, that might be because of the strength of the core than the gun itself. That said, it had worked great to disable the beast even with the basic core it was currently using.

The freezing shots had frozen the entire backside of the monster and left it vulnerable to him. At this point, he could simply walk up to it and stab it with his kukris.

With the current elemental core that was inside the gun, it was a simple matter of getting a shot anywhere that would freeze the beast. From there, it was a simple matter of hitting it while it couldn’t move.

Nate couldn’t be sure, but this might have actually been the first kill he’d gotten through his own efforts. Every other time, he had only participated by tricking them into the traps. The few times he’d had a chance to use the kukris, he’d been too weak to do anything with them at the time.

After the dungeon finished eating, the body, a familiar rainbow energy orb, was left. He grabbed hold of it, letting the energy sink beneath his skin, and cycle into his body in a rush. After a few seconds of adjusting to the new qi, he returned to the portal and stood in front of it, silently tapping his foot.

He hadn’t planned on going to the second so soon, or at all, if he was being honest with himself. However, using the gun had given him a little more confidence.

Biting his lip, Nate pulled out a handful of different elemental cores to try with the gun. The freezing effect was nice, but he wanted something a little more deadly, just in case.

He pulled the current orb from the hopper and put it in the pocket of his pants before trying each of the ones he had grabbed in turn. He was looking for something that would do more than what the freezing shots had.

There were a couple of worthy contenders. The first one was a poison shot that acted like a water gun, which made him giggle at the sheer ridiculousness of it. The second one was a metal element that launched a marble-sized ball at high speeds. The last one was a bit of an oddity. It was a cutting wind, strong enough that it gouged the wall of the dungeon.

There was an argument to be made for the effectiveness of each of them. Despite that, in the end, he went with the cutting wind shot.

By this point, Nate had forgotten that he wanted to get some more practice in with the kukris and was focused on getting more rainbow energy orbs.

Increasing his overall cultivation was the fastest way to increase a person’s strength. Eventually, he would need to shore up his weaknesses, but right now, his cultivation was one of those weaknesses.

Nate put the spare elemental energy cores into his storage and checked the energy meter on the side of the hopper. That one shot he had fired to test it had used a single box, leaving it with nineteen left. Which meant that the basic cores he had taken from Jace would each only give around twenty shots.

It was a terribly uneconomical weapon. One of those cores was valuable and useful as a cultivation item on its own. However, if he could get even one or two of the rainbow orbs for the price of an energy orb, it would be worth it. The rainbow orbs were more energy dense, easier to absorb, and just overall better than the basic ones he had stolen from Jace.

It still hurt the wallet a little, but he would have to ignore that.

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Nate checked the screens monitoring the second floor before he approached the portal. As soon as he saw what was on them, he skipped to the side, settled into a crouch, and aimed the gun.

A few seconds later, the world’s largest and ugliest rabbit jumped through the portal. It was missing tufts of fur, and its two front teeth had been chipped in such a way that they were now serrated. Bone spurs stuck out from the back of its feet like a reverse claw.

It was the first time he had seen this particular beastly bunny, for which he was grateful. There was something creepy about seeing something that was usually so tame and docile turned into a ravenous bloodthirsty beast.

Pulling the trigger on it was the easiest thing he had ever done. The cutting wind tore through its side and left a gaping wound that had its entrails dribbling out of it. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t far off either. The blood and guts that had promptly covered the stone floor got trampled as it stumbled about in pain.

The result was the mindless beast painfully pulling out more of its own insides.

The shot hadn’t initially been enough to kill it, but it still got the job done in the end.

It took a minute for it to stop thrashing around and the dungeon to swallow the corpse. A small rainbow energy orb was left behind in its wake. He had only been inside for a little while and had already managed to snag two of them.

After taking the time to process it, he stepped through the portal and entered the second floor.

The bridge stretched out of the small room he found himself in and extended out over the acid moat. There was another beast preparing to cross the bridge as he watched. Unfortunately, it was too far for the wind shot to reach. The shots had a tendency to stretch and get weaker the farther out they went. However, if he shot it once it was on the bridge, then it could fall into the moat, and he would lose whatever it dropped.

That left him with three options. Changing out the element that he was firing, waiting until they were inside the room with him, or running across the bridge and going to them.

If he wanted the most orbs he could possibly get his hands on, going across the bridge would be his best choice. Doing that would potentially lead to a similar outcome that had led to his demise last time. Thanks to the few traps that he and the Dungeon Core had put in earlier, they were being whittled down before they reached this area.

There was nothing once they reached this area but the moat and the slides that dropped into the acid. Which meant their numbers were continually increasing. The only thing that was holding them back was how narrow the bridge was.

That meant running across was an easy death sentence.

Nate thought about the different cores he had just experimented with before shaking his head. This was a marathon, not a sprint. There was no reason for him to rush any of this. Taking things slow and getting more potential loot and rainbow orbs was far more important.

During any downtime, he could use the screens to plan out traps to install the next chance he got. Or failing that, he could think about where to put the second dungeon. It was a topic he had been dancing around for a couple of days now. He had been making slow progress because he hadn’t been concentrating on the topic. He was getting pulled in too many different directions all of a sudden.

When the wrist computer first appeared, things had been simpler. All he had to do was try to fix his body, go to school, and work on the dungeon. Now he had to cultivate, go to school, work on the dungeon, practice with his weapons, hang out with the girls, do the expeditions, and avoid people like Jace.

His life was getting messy, and it was hard to find time to do it all, but it was fulfilling. More than that, he was enjoying it. There was so much going on that he had never gotten to do in his first life or hadn’t appreciated at the time.

Like all the time he now got to spend with his parents. He knew eventually the feeling would fade; he was only human in that regard. After years of being alone though, finally having people by his side again was nice.