DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate bit his lip, before deciding to mention the matter of his kukris before he lost his nerve. “Um, not to pressure you two, but I still need to get a new pair of kukris for this weekend as well. Unless, of course, you want me to just use the crossbow the entire time, which would be fine. Just let me know.”

He knew his parents were hurting for money and didn’t want to add to their worries more than he needed to.

Nina ran a hand through her hair and locked eyes with her husband. “About that, we’ve already got a pair set aside for you. They’re not paid for yet though, that’s part of why we need to go on this expedition now. I know it’s tradition and proper to let you pick out your own weapon. It’s just-”

“We don’t have a lot of money at the moment, and the one we picked out is the best one we could afford. Sorry.” His father said, finishing for his wife. “We understand how it will look to Angie and Lindsay though, who have properly been able to shop through channels we could never even dream of.”

“It’s fine, really. I know we don’t have a lot of money. I was more worried you would simply forget, and I wouldn’t have anything at all. I don’t care about shopping around. I mean, maybe if we had the same amount of money those two do, it would be fun. Right now, it would be more depressing and remind me of what I can’t have. It’s better this way.”

His parents both frowned at his words. No provider wanted to admit or hear they weren’t doing as good of a job as someone else. That wasn’t what he had intended in the slightest. All Nate was doing was being realistic. His parents weren’t millionaires or whatever Angie and Lindsay’s parents could be considered in this world. It was better to be content with what you had than to salivate over what you couldn’t.

Sure, you could chase those items if you wanted, but if you let it consume you, then you would never be happy. He had seen that happen to far too many people on O.E. during his past life. Everyone always seemed to be following the latest influencers on social media and becoming more depressed with their own life as a result.

That was one thing he was glad didn’t seem to be a thing this time around. He had enjoyed the social aspects of the sites when he was younger, when they were just starting out. As he had gotten older, and the tech had matured, everything had changed. The sites lost their charm and became almost predatory in nature.

Nate dismissed the random tangent of thoughts and focused on his parents. “Don’t take what I said the wrong way. I like what we have, and you both are doing great. We don’t need to compare ourselves to anyone else. Besides, you just started your own company. Money will start coming in eventually.”

They kept talking as they put everything away, letting Nate know where they were going to be heading for their expedition.

For the next while, Nate spent some time with his parents, helping them get everything ready, and bringing their equipment out to the car. With what he had learned upon their return from the weekend expedition, he was actually able to retrieve most of the items himself.

It was enough to make him wonder for a brief moment if the original Nate of this world had ever helped his parents in this manner.

There was no way he was going to ask them that though.

Later that night, after he had already told them goodbye, so they wouldn’t feel the need to wake him up when they left, he entered the dungeon. It was still a couple of hours too early for Aura to come back to life. Until that happened, he was on his own, just like usual.

However, unlike the last few times, he wouldn’t be using his gun at all this time around. Tonight, would be a blade training experience in nothing but the kukris, and possibly the kriegsmesser. Just letting it sit there in his inventory felt wrong. It was about time that it actually got some use.

He needed to figure out if he even liked the blades or not. They had a lot going for them, but there were also a few things going against them. The main problem was the lack of a pommel on the hilt. Which was by design, and where part of the blade's name came from. It was a knife’s handle. In other words, it was never meant to have a pommel on it.

Thankfully, the larger messer blades came with larger hilts that could fit two hands. So, he wouldn’t need to worry about that particular problem at least. Nate didn’t believe for a minute that he would be nearly as successful at using a one-handed sword as Angie had proven to be. Despite how heavy and long the blade was, with cultivation strengthening his body, using it wouldn’t be a problem.

The biggest positive of the sword, or rather the large knife, at least in his opinion, was the shape of the crossguard. It had all the benefits of the weeb-loving katanas but was better. They could be found in somewhat similar styles, except the messer blades used better steel.

He had nothing against katanas, outside of people talking them up to a rather annoying degree. In his previous life, he had never had the opportunity to even get up close with one, outside of one time at a renaissance festival. The overexuberance they had shown towards the sword had ruined it for him. It was a sort of wake-up call that made him start actually researching things himself.

It had led to him forming his own opinions, based on data, if not experience.

He would get that soon enough though.

Opening up all the different cameras for the first floor of the dungeon, he made sure to scan the interior before doing anything else. Near the entrance of the dungeon, just outside it, he spotted a lone cultivator leaning against one of the signs he had put up.

Either a group had come through earlier, or one would be coming through in the morning.

That was all he could spot on the first floor. The second floor had a bit more action going on. The beasts down there had finally started to work together. Even as he watched through the cameras, he saw groups deftly move through the trapped rooms and go back to the beginning. Once there, they showed the new group how to make it through each room.

There were still casualties obviously, however, they had gone down by a shockingly large amount.

In the meantime, the crowd in front of the bridge was growing ever larger.

It was a sight that brought him up short. He couldn’t exactly just run into that mob swinging his weapons around. Or rather, he could. It just wouldn’t do him a lot of good. With how quickly he would die, it wouldn’t even be worth the effort.

What was worse was none of the beasts were even trying to cross the bridge anymore either.

That left him with only a few options, leave for the night and get some proper sleep. Stay and watch over them while doing some work on his meditation art until Aura came back to life. Say screw it and use the gun and the rest of the elemental orbs he had to eliminate those he could from a distance.

The last option was also the best. He could simply modify the traps. Unlike with the Dungeon Core, or Aura, -actually, he wasn’t sure about how it worked for her- the changes he made were instantaneous, or at least that was the case normally. Things were different while he was inside his avatar form. However, a little nudging at the back of his brain was telling him that was only the case if he was working on something that was on the same floor as him.

In other words, the second floor was fair game.

Nate found a spot against the wall and sat down. Pulling up the ‘Dungeon Interface’ for the second floor, he began to go through each of the traps. He really wanted to create some sort of system that actively modified or switched out the traps occasionally in each room. Unfortunately, doing something like that was currently beyond him at the moment and would likely need the Dungeon Core to manage.

It was a thought for later, in any case.

Right now, he had traps to change and the first one he began to work on was a room halfway between the entrance and the portal. He didn’t change much in that first room. He actually left all the traps the same, instead, he simply changed their trajectories some.

The next group that came through expecting to follow the old path would meet with an unwelcome surprise.

From there, he moved on to the second room, away from the bridge. He figured it provided enough distance that the main group wouldn’t hear any noises the beasts who went back to act as escorts made.

In this room, he did a far more thorough job of changing out the traps. He removed everything that had been there before and created an oil-slick floor. It was first layered in smooth silky wax and then covered in slick, slippery oil. The icing on top of the proverbial cake was the arrows of fire that would shoot out when someone reached the halfway point. He didn’t even bother having them aim where the beasts might be. Instead, each arrow was pointed to a specific area of the room, where the flames would spread the fastest.

Anything that stepped into that room would be getting covered in oil. There was little chance they would be able to escape without touching the flames.

A terrible way to go, yes. Did he care? A little, but not enough to stop what he was doing. These things were invading his world for some reason and killing humans. He wouldn’t exactly protest if the roles were reversed.

Actually, now that he thought about it, wasn’t he also doing the exact same thing to cultivators who entered the dungeon?

Nate let that thought roll around in his mind for a moment before shrugging. The original reason he had given still stood. They were uninvited guests and had been warned very clearly by the signs outside. It was stupid to not expect someone to attack those who entered another’s home without invitation.

He realized his thinking was a little off, but that was what happened when you spent so much time facing your own mortality. It skewed your perceptions of things a little and made you understand what was important to you. For Nate, that was his parents, his friends, and being able to enjoy the life he was deprived of for so long.

The cultivators who entered the dungeon against the clear warnings he had posted had made their decisions, and he wasn’t going to get in their way. If the search for power or riches was so important to you that you would risk your own life in such a manner, then… Well, all he could do was wish them the best and turn a blind eye to their endeavors. He wasn’t going to tweak the traps against them at least, not anymore anyway.

Shaking free of that dark train of thought, he continued to quietly modify each of the traps he came across on the second floor. Most of them he left largely alone, only changing small things that would ruin whatever knowledge they had of the room’s pattern.

After a point though, he realized that he no longer even needed to do that. He had eliminated all the guides that were going back with that information. All the patterns would need to be relearned anyway.

With that thought in mind, he focused on the traps around the bridge and the growing crowd in front of it. He needed something there that would take care of them when they charged across. Something more than what Aura had implemented earlier. It didn’t happen often, but there were beasts that did occasionally make it across.

Even now, looking at the dungeon timer, he could see that it had been reset within the last twelve hours. Which meant a beast had made it across the bridge and through the portal to the first floor.