Soulforged Dungeoneer

Six months into my prison sentence, I was more or less content with my lot in life. A lot of things that were going on were weird, but nothing was really awful, not here. They could have been, should have been, and maybe would be, but they weren't right now.

It was a medium security prison, but might as well have been a low-security prison, because it wasn't designed to hold a Dungeoneer, much less someone with a self-created class like mine. Oh, they had asked me a few questions when deciding my fate--my favorite was asking whether or not I thought I could break out of prison if I chose to, which I answered "yes"--but they really didn't seem to understand. They knew I used weapons, and they knew that they needed to ask me to empty my inventory, but... well, that doesn't help much.

They did, at least, ask to see my Dungeon card. Level 21 Soulforged, entered one dungeon one time, cleared one dungeon, no guild affiliation. That would have raised a few eyebrows among Dungeoneers, but the people processing my paperwork didn't understand, notice, or care.

And it didn't matter to me; I wasn't interested in breaking out of prison. I had come to regret my killings as short-sighted, pretty much as soon as I came to realize I was ahead of the curve. I'd entered the dungeon a lost man, and well, maybe found myself, or maybe not, but there was no sense in saying that those things weren't crimes, weren't wrong.

Prison life agreed with me, except for the piss-poor food. Although in the beginning, I chafed at the misbehavior of most guards, we very easily hit a plateau where as long as I didn't cause trouble, I didn't receive trouble.

That was never going to last forever.

Ham-hands Joe was a toughie, and he liked to beat people up. For a while, there had been a kind of stigma around me, enough to make people like Joe keep their distance, but soon enough he got bored of waiting for me to be interesting and started trying to pick a fight.

"Yo, fucker," he said one afternoon in the yard, and I realized that there was a lot more attention on my head than usual. "Heard you one of those dungeon-playin' sissies. Why don't you show me some of your moves, fuckin' crack-whore creep."

I looked over at Ham-hands Joe and felt no small amount of pity for a man that honestly thought I was going to be scared of him. There was a lot wrong with the man--his vile tongue as much as anything--but the way he talked underscored something very simple, very primitive about his mindset: he'd been put up to it, and he just wanted it to be over.

"Go wash your dick out with bleach," I suggested in return, content to return his verbal abuse in kind, although it wasn't something I was all that good at. "Cause if you try for my asshole, the violence I'm gonna do to your balls will make that look like fucking Christmas."

Joe's face blanked for a long moment, and then rage took him over. "Motherfucker, you don't know shit about me, and you don't know how this shit works. I'm in charge here, and my boys and I are going to fuck you up, unless you get down on your fucking knees and worship the ground I walk on."

I couldn't help but laugh, and got up from the bench I'd been sitting on. "You do know I'm here for killing people, right, motherfucker? You think I'm scared of you? Dungeoneers kill, motherfucker. We kill every day, all day, for months on end. And you think I'm scared of a guy who calls himself 'Ham-hands' like it's a goddamn threat?"

Joe took a step back, but he backed into one of his boys, and apparently took that to mean that they were going to back him, would have his back for this encounter--which, since I could see their faces, I knew they wouldn't. But he stepped back up, did his best to get into my face, tried to summon up the courage to see if I was bluffing. "Motherfucker, I will kick your ass today, and tomorrow I'm gonna rape you, and the guards will be holding you down to make sure you get enough of my goddamn dick."

Somewhere above and to my right, I could hear what I was vaguely sure was a radio squawking--and the call that came on said, "If he uses powers, you have authorization to fire." There was some mumbling, but when I glanced up and around, there were three towers with guns trained on me.

Three fixed locations--not a big threat.

"I'm only going to warn you one more time, little man," I said, looking up at the significantly heavier, more muscular man that was trying to scare me. "You start this fight and I will kill you."

Joe swung at my face, and I stepped to the side. For all my insistence that I should not have killed in the dungeon, somehow, this came naturally. A blade of blue energy appeared in midair and cut Joe's head off in one clean swing, and I gestured quickly, a translucent blue riot shield appeared in each hand, the overlap of the two more than enough to cover my vitals from gunfire.

I needn't have hurried. The guards froze at the sudden violence, and didn't actually pull the trigger until a radio call reminded them, "Fire at will! Fire at will!"

Their bullets hit but couldn't quite pierce the shields I'd put up. Instead of panicking or trying to make a run for it, as the siren started to wail, I turned and marched easily back to my cell.

People gave me plenty of elbow room along the way.

The first time the Warden tried to force his way into my cell to berate me for killing the psychopath prisoner Joe, I did my best to very quietly impress on him that he was an idiot. It didn't go well, but it was fun.

I had a riot shield ready to throw up if the guards looked trigger-happy, but not one of them really wanted to get close. I also had jammed the mechanism on the door, though subtly enough that the Warden very obligingly screamed not two or three times, but about five times for someone to open the damn door, without really understanding that nobody could.

Finally, he ordered that someone dump a can of teargas into the cell. That went about as well as one could expect--I used telekinesis to grab it, marched up to the guard who had fired the thing, pulled him closer, grabbed his mask, and then flung the teargas can straight at the back of the Warden's head. The sound it made against his skull was music to my ears, and they left me alone for the rest of the day and tried to think of some other way to deal with me.

The second time the Warden tried to force his way into my cell, he had at least a modicum of sense. He hired a Dungeoneer, a big lunk of a man that looked like a pudgy redneck's ideal of a brawler. The warden could have kept me in suspense, but he shouted at me (from around the corner) that the man was level 29, significantly more powerful than me, and he had more experience in the dungeon than me.

I could only look at the man that the Warden had sent me with pity.

The guy had some sense, though he didn't show it right away. He was high on being asked to do violence in an official capacity, and crossed his arms over his chest with a self-assured grin as he stepped up to the bars of my cell (which again, I wouldn't let open) and stared in at me, his head lolling back with an eager look to his eyes.

"Hey there, slick, I heard you've been causing trouble for the Warden, here," he said, trying to sound sweet and innocent, in the way that guys do when trying to give you rope in the hopes you'll hang yourself. "You seem to think you're in charge, is that it?"

"Not at all," I returned, sitting on my bed and leaning against the wall as casually as I could. "The Warden and his guards didn't protect me from a violent inmate, so I took care of the problem, and went back to my cell. After that they wanted to beat me, and, well," I gave him a look. "He really underestimates Dungeoneers. He wants me to be afraid of them. Honestly, it's like nobody here understands anything."

The brawler put an interested look on his face, but I also detected just a flicker of worry on him, like he thought something didn't add up. "So, what, you killed an inmate and expect to get away with it? Maybe you don't understand your place, here."

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. "Jesus Christ, man. You know I could escape from this place, right? The security they have here is nothing."

I wasn't looking, but there was a pause of several seconds. "So, what, you a magic man? You think you can block bullets on your way out?"

"Already did, and yeah, my MP would hold out. But I'm not exactly a mage, either." I opened my eyes and looked at him. "Did the Warden show you my Dungeon card?"

"Didn't seem important." The bruiser puffed up his chest again. "And honestly, I don't buy your shit, man. You need to recognize where you stand in the big scheme of things."

In response, I pulled up my interface, toggled my Dungeon Card to visible, and spun it around to face the man. He studied it for a moment, and then thought about it for a minute. Then, he studied it some more.

"Are you... a fucking solo diver?"

"Yeah."

"Holy shit, dude, that's so cool!" All of a sudden, it was like a dam burst in the guy. "In what dungeon, Pearland? That's the only newbie dungeon in the area. How the hell did you survive the Devil's phase-change attack?"

"I have a magic item," I activated an ability, and a translucent blue cloak appeared over my shoulders, radiating an aura that was at once both violent blackness and translucent blue, "which gives me immunity to Death attacks." That was a little deceptive, but under the circumstances, it hardly mattered.

"So you solo'd the Devil? Man, that's so cool."

"Technically, I solo'd him four times." The first time barely counted--it had been a nerfed version on a lower floor--but there was no need to bring that up. "Otherwise my level would be even lower."

"Oh man, I can't imagine getting through that guy without grinding up a storm. Man, that's crazy."

It took long enough, but finally, the Warden's voice cut into our conversation from around the corner. "What in the hell are you doing? I told you to put him in his place!"

The bruiser and I exchanged looks, and then he relaxed, and turned and walked out of my sight, although I could still hear him. "Nah, man, you don't understand. This guy is a lot stronger than me. Solo divers are crazy. He--what," I heard him turn back to me. "were you, like, suicidal, man?"

"I was." No point in keeping that to myself.

"Yeah. He faced death constantly and was always facing things way stronger than himself. It's one thing to say that I'm stronger than him, and I am, but he's like, just not gonna be scared of me. I'd say probably... I dunno, what do you think, man? Someone three, four times your level, before you'd really get scared?"

That was an odd question to have to answer, but as I sat and thought about it, I couldn't help remembering that at the end of the day, the Devil had been a level 50 boss monster. And I was scared to face him--but also, by that point, I'd run out of other options. After beating him, I went back twice more just to get more swords from him. "I'd get pretty nervous fighting someone twice my level. At four, yeah, I'd be scared."

"Yeah, four times. So, like, you can try to get me to intimidate the guy, but at the end of the day, if he's a solo driver, you have to really be willing to fucking drown a person in power if you want to scare them. And this guy, he's faced worse than two of me. Honestly dude, like, talk to the Dungeoneers Administration, have them send someone, but when you do, like, actually tell them that he's a solo diver, and he fucking solo cleared a dungeon on his first dive. You'll see. They'll send someone who's like, level 80 to deal with him. And that guy? I fucking bet you, man, he'll bring backup."

I leaned back against the wall, this time smiling to myself, but all I really felt was tired. In all likelihood, the Warden was gonna try at least one more time, and who knows what was going to come of that.