DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

After they had finished speaking with his mother, Nate and the girls separated for the tents. It only took him a few seconds to enter the dungeon through his avatar, too tired to even check the screens for danger first.

He got lucky, but as soon as he entered, his tiredness vanished and he regretted the impulsive action. Pulling up all the usual screens, he began his inspection of the dungeon.

The current floor was completely empty at the moment. There weren’t any beasts or cultivators inside the first floor of the dungeon. It was almost spooky. He couldn’t remember the last time the place had been completely empty like this.

Moving down to the second floor, he saw where all the beasts were being held up. The bridge that led to the portal room had been modified by his companion beast slash wannabe furry dungeon fairy. A series of long-range arrow traps now hit anyone, or rather anything, that stepped onto the bridge. The beasts either died on the spot, kept pushing, and died somewhere along the way. Or they were pushed into the acid moat below by the force of the arrows.

Either way, they all ended up dying.

In the few minutes he had been watching, none of them had made it over the bridge. It sucked that he had lost an easy way to collect some items and rainbow orbs, but it was probably better this way. He needed to focus on getting that second dungeon up and running. It would be easier if he didn’t need to worry about everything over at this one all the time.

Now that he had Aura to help, that was going to become even more the case.

He made his way to the portal and entered the second floor, where she was waiting for him.

“You said you had some news for me about what the purpose of this dungeon actually is.” He waved the arm with the wrist computer at her, unsure if she would be able to see it. “None of this exactly came with a manual or a guide. I’ve been guessing and doing what felt right with pretty much all of it. So please, if you learned something when you connected to the dungeon, clue me in.”

Aura looked up from where she was lying on the ground watching the beasts trying to cross the bridge one after another. “The dungeon is taking control of the portal. It began as soon as it formed, but it accelerated when you created the second layer and started to push them all back. In that same vein, you actually lost progress when the cultivators entered, and it was forced to allow more beasts through to push them back.”

He sat down next to her with a thump. “What happens when it takes complete control?”

“That is up to you. I think you’ll be presented with a couple of different options. One would erase the portal entirely, another…” She shrugged. “Only that first option is known to me at this time, but there will be others.”

“How long until that happens?” He asked, reaching out to scratch behind her ear. Something in how she was talking to him at the moment told him she was feeling a little down.

“It changes with how often they cross through the portal. However, at the moment, we are looking at one month’s time and ticking down.”

“I guess I should probably get that other dungeon site selected soon, then.” He muttered while continuing to scratch her.

She batted his hand away and stood up to glare at him, the hair on all four of her tails standing up straight. “You don’t get it, do you? I am your companion beast now! But I am also tied to this stupid dungeon. What happens when it is over?”

Nate resisted the urge to shrug. He knew this was important to her. To him, it barely felt real. She had only just told him what was going to happen; he hadn’t even had a chance to process it yet.

“Aura, we have some time before any of that even becomes a serious concern. However, if you are actually tied to the dungeon in some serious way, then I’m sure it will be mentioned when the options get presented.” He turned to look at the latest beast, trying their ineffectual paws at crossing the bridge.

“Besides, I’m not sure I want to close the portal entirely, even if that was an option. For all that everyone, on my side likes to complain about the dimensional zones. I don’t think they would know how to live if they vanished. We are dependent on the massive amount of meat and other materials we can harvest from the beasts that attack. Then there are the herbs that have been changed. All of that and more would go away if the dimensional zone vanished.”

“It sounds like you have a hard decision coming up,” She sent to him, as she relaxed back onto the ground, her tails returning to normal.

“Well, if I’m not going to be getting any orbs from this session, why don’t you tell me the rest of your ideas? After that, I’ll start cultivating for whatever time I have left.”

He could just cross the bridge and throw himself into the fray. Except he didn’t want to wake with new wounds that needed to be healed. There was also the option of using the gun again and taking them out at a distance. He wasn’t really interested in doing that either; he wanted the rainbow orbs now, not after he woke up.

Cultivating this time around would be the best choice.

Either way, it seemed like their work with this dungeon was almost coming to an end.

For the next few minutes, Aura laid out her ideas. She had spent most of the day communing with the Dungeon Core, learning from it, and then making a few small modifications to the dungeon as experiments. It was only after she was done with all of that she had started paying attention to what was going on with Nate.

As a companion beast and quasi-dungeon fairy, she was allowed to make some changes, just nothing major. Creating new traps was already pushing it, however, repurposing what was already there was something she could do. That was what she had done for the arrow traps, though even she admitted it was a stretch in that case. She had repurposed part of the acid moat next to the wall for their creation.

It had worked, though it seemed more like a glitch in Nate’s opinion than anything else. One that could likely be replicated, but still a glitch. At least her modifications didn’t require the entire floor to be shut down.

In order to use her knowledge of the beasts to its fullest, Nate had to give her material to work with. In this case, that meant he needed to finish loading out the second-floor dungeon with as much crap as possible.

With variety being the key.

While Aura had been able to change the acid trap into an arrow trap, it had also come at around three times the normal cost of what it would have cost the Dungeon Core. Everything the Dungeon Core did was already more expensive than when Nate did it. Having it be three times more expensive on top of that was a rather nasty shock, to say the least.

Granted, they weren’t hurting for more energy or other materials at the moment. However, with the creation of a new dungeon looming, they needed to tighten the proverbial belt loops and start budgeting everything.

While they were messing around with the second floor, the Dungeon Core was modifying the traps on the first floor. Now that it was becoming increasingly unlikely that the beasts were going to be a major concern on that floor again, they were shifting to focus against the cultivators. With no beasts or cultivators currently on the floor, the Dungeon Core was free to make as many modifications as it pleased.

Nate had just finished creating the last of the major traps Aura wanted in a storage corner and was about to start on the minor ones when he was shaken awake.

His mother was leaning over him with her bow in one hand. “Come on, we just got word from your father that he’s on his way back. Unfortunately, the first of the bodies just started to release its smell into the air. Pack up your tent and sleeping bag while we wait for the first of the beasts to arrive. There won’t be any more sleeping on this trip.

It took a few minutes for him to pack everything and put on a fresh pair of clothes. He hadn’t managed to accomplish as much as he would have liked, but it was still better than nothing. Originally, he hadn’t even intended on going inside the dungeon while on the expedition. That had changed after his father had woken him up the night before.

If someone else could wake him up, then his original worries were moot.

Nate set his tent and pack to the side while he finished strapping on his armor and weapons. The last thing he did was tighten the laces on his boots and then tuck them underneath the Velcro straps that would keep them out of the way.

A yawning Lindsay and slightly bleary-eyed Angie were waiting for him when he had finished. They had finished getting ready a few seconds before him and were sipping on a steaming hot drink in an effort to wake up.

They mumbled a greeting and pointed to a mug and pot of tea beside the fire. He wasn’t doing as badly as they were at the moment, but he also knew he could start crashing at any time. Physically, his body was still tired, his mind was just wired from being woken the way he had. Once the fighting started, all of that would go away, but he needed to stay alert until then.

His mother had mixed in some of the extra fresh herbs they had picked the day before with the tea. It gave the steaming liquid a nice zing that served to wake each of them up faster than caffeine ever could have dreamed of.

By the time each of them had finished half a mug of the liquid, they were wide awake. When they finished their mugs, it felt as though they had gotten a refreshing night’s sleep. There was no feeling of being wired, or jittery, it felt natural, and frankly, better than the sleep they were used to getting.

“Mom, what did you put in this?” Nate asked her while holding up his empty mug.

She walked over from where she had been ensuring the tarps covering the mountain of beast corpses were secure. The tarps would help to contain some of the smell they had started to put out. A tent or something else that would have isolated them would have been better.

Unfortunately, she and her husband hadn’t been expecting the first wave to be quite so large. Nina would love to say this was all training for the kids, but it was also a valuable experience for them as well. There was only so much you could learn by watching others do something. They had been part of companies with large tents for years, and never questioned their existence. Yet when it came time to buy one, they had hesitated and gone with tarps instead. It was a mistake on their part that was better to make in a lower-tiered area like this, versus where they would have normally gone.

“It’s a mixture of the herbs we found yesterday. Each of them has a slight restorative effect on the mind and body on their own. However, the real trick is the tea itself. When they all get mixed together with a completely normal tea, in this case mint, it binds them together.”

Lindsay stared at the pot of tea and then looked at Nina. “Mrs. Holmes, that sounds an awful lot like an alchemy potion.”

Nate nodded. “I agree mom, that does kind of sound like how you might make a beginner’s potion or something.”

She shrugged. “I never said it wasn’t a potion, but it’s such a weak one in this case that calling it a tea is more appropriate.”

“How did you learn to make something like this?” Angie asked as Nina poured herself a cup of the mixture.

“Oh, I learned it a few years ago. The company Niall and I were with at the time was escorting an alchemist. I had helped her pick some herbs and in return, she taught me how to make this tea with a few different variations of herbs.”

The radio on her hip came to life before anyone could ask her more questions. “Honey, someone seems to be following us. The bodies have been dropped off at the holding center and we are currently empty and heading your way. No raiders would follow someone going the wrong direction.”

“How far out are you?”

“Um, ten, maybe fifteen minutes, I think. It’s hard to say in the dark, all the landmarks sort of look the same.” This time, it was the guard who had gone with him that answered.