Soulforged Dungeoneer

Aside from the entirely inappropriate doom-themed restaurant, the doomsday biome stayed mostly on brand as it moved on towards the boss fight. It didn't conform to physics, and indeed got worse about that as time went on; on the next floor, for example, I was skydiving in between rocks instead of hopping from one to the next. In my inexpert understanding of gravity, falling faster than meteors seemed improbable if not downright impossible, but that wasn't what was really happening. The jumping sections were difficult in their own way (more for others than me, or other telekinetics), as large clouds of burning ash would be in your way if you weren't able to stay in the corridor to the next It was more of a doomsday theme park with psychotic clowns and priests as staff than anything else.

For some reason, though, the Administrator didn't ramp up the combat on this floor, or at least, not the standard fights. There were a bunch of flying demon-dogs, termed Galactic Doomsday Infernal Mutts, but it was a long while before I spotted the second added monster type. It was on the downward-facing, burning side of a large meteor, and it was a large wooden structure--a roof and wooden supports shielding what was otherwise just a seating area that was slightly elevated over the rocky surface. I realized, belatedly, that there was an illusory cloud of smoke over it that should have hidden it from view, but didn't. And even without that, all things considered, it blended in well enough that I could easily have missed it.

Its position, size, and rarity told me that it had to be a challenge boss of some kind, but that made little sense to me for a long moment. I stared at it, spent time considering the system species type above it, "Galactic Doomsday Infernal Hut," and only when I was preparing to just ignore it and move on did my brain make a connection to exactly what kind of hut didn't have any walls on it. Merry, in her usual way, didn't seem particularly impressed by the joke once she understood it, but I couldn't help smiling widely as I fixed the structure with my gaze and spoke under my breath.

"Oh no, Administrator," I said. "Did you really create a Dread Gazebo?"

There was, mostly, no response, although after a moment I felt like there was a muted sense of amusement from nowhere in particular.

It took a little work, since this level's gravity didn't hold me to the underside of the meteor, but I approached the flaming wooden structure on its own terms, upside-down and blasted by uncomfortably hot wind, the rock underfoot even more uncomfortably toasty and radiating enough heat that I felt it on the underside of my arms. It was my intention to awaken the beast with a stab and fight whatever encounter emerged, but since the roof was shielding the sitting area from the heat I just couldn't help walking up the two small steps and standing on the monster's lacquered pine floor.

As soon as I passed that boundary, gravity righted itself, and things that had not been there appeared.

The most obvious addition was a set of six wooden chairs, or to be specific, a set of Barbarian Chairians that were arranged in a circle around a small circular coffee table as though for a conference, with one on the other side being a shining golden copy of the Lord of All Chairs. In the various chairs were monsters from the previous biomes, all sitting around drinking tea--a miniature and humanized trapdoor giant boar, a Hurricane Harpy but with arms, a Marionette but with a painted-on face, and a giant four-armed flaming monster that I assumed was this biome's boss, all took the four seats on the sides between me and the Lord of All Chairs. On the far side of the Gazebo, a place that would have been tucked neatly out of the way if there were walls, were the Harpsichord Harpy and the Synth Harpy providing ambient music that I couldn't immediately place, mostly because of the wind and fire noise that had gotten a lot quieter but not gone away. To my right, standing there politely but sternly, was a Caesar, keeping his eyes fixed on me.

And of course, slouched sideways on top of the Lord of All Chairs was an unmistakable avatar of this Dungeon's Administrator. She was the same as when I'd seen her in the white space, except not standing at attention--she was maybe 300 pounds, long straight black hair with blue fringes that hung in front of her face, painted nails, and floral-pattern clothes. When she lifted her teacup to sip, she had to shift the thick curtain of hair in front of her face, giving me just the smallest glimpse of her eyes, which were bloodshot and mad-looking. It reminded me of the brief glance I'd gotten of her when she had spouted some exposition about the deal underlying the whole Dungeon system. She looked... less stressed now, maybe, than she did then, but I could still tell even from a glance that there was a giant reservoir of crazy behind those eyes.

Not that I needed to be told that, since she was lounging on the Lord of All Chairs in a Dread Gazebo on a meteor about to crash into a giant city, having tea with a bunch of boss mobs, and clearly inviting me to join them.

Nobody moved or said anything, leaving me standing there awkwardly, confused. After a moment, my "fuck it" reflex kicked in, and I moved forward and took the teacup closest to the empty chair and sat. I sniffed the tea, finding that it was peach, and took a sip. As everyone else was still being silent, I glanced around, finding the Marionette staring at me while the others all seemed otherwise neutral.

So, to break the ice, I turned to the regular-sized gigantic monster puppet and said, "Sorry about earlier."

The Marionette turned away from me and raised the teacup to its face, spilling tea all over the painted-on mouth and down its neck, which I suppose is what you do when you have no mouth and must drink tea. Fortunately, it couldn't be burned by the hot liquid, either, even if the paint perhaps ran a little bit around the edges.

The Administrator's voice cut into my musings. "You don't have to apologize," she said, from somewhere behind her face-covering bangs. "Maybe if you weren't already on a Full Clear quest, but you can't take two, for obvious reasons."

"I'm just being polite," I said, and tried the tea. It was fine.

"Polite." The shut-in across from me handed her teacup to the Harpy, who took it graciously, and then--instead of standing--rolled off the Chair and started crawling underneath the table towards me. "Very good, Mr. Applebee, be polite to the Queen of Monsters. Be polite to the enemy that created you, to the hell that is stalking you." When she stuck her head out from under the table, it was upside-down, like she was actually crawling on the underside of the table, but as far as I could tell, she actually was doing that Exorcist full neck twist thing. "What makes you think that I'm on your side at all, Mr. Applebee? Tell me."

Now, let's be fucking clear here--inside, I was freaking the fuck out. She was giving me clear and present horror-movie vibes, and I already knew that the beanpole had also been basically born from horror stories and memes. Since she had all the boss monsters and challenge bosses that I'd faced in this dungeon present, if things went sideways, they would go sideways fucking hard. And she was abusing all of that power just to fuck with me, whether she intended to actually kill me or not.

"Well," I responded, trying to think of a good answer, but the only thing that pierced the haze of terror was the smell. "You could have poisoned the tea. Or had anyone here attack me. Or had the Synth Harpy disable my abilities. Or a lot of things, really." I paused.

Not to mention that she's the one who set us up in the first place, Merry noted, and I nodded. I glanced at the Avatar, whose face, currently mostly exposed with only some sticky bits of hair randomly scattered on her face, was definitely insane, and maybe violently so. Merry seemed to glance around, but for some reason, she was a lot less nervous than I was. They're not here to fight, she said, with more certainty than I felt, for sure.

"It's true," the Administrator said after a moment, crawling out from under the table, letting her neck rotate back to face forward and hair fall in front again, and then suddenly jumping back onto the coffee table, knocking the teapot at its center out of the way and spilling its contents everywhere. "I could cheat. I could destroy. I could ruin you in any number of ways. I enjoyed seeing you fight my impossible monsters, Mr. Applebee." An invisible upswell of wind pushed the hair away from her mouth so that I could see it was twisted in a very monster-movie smile. "I would enjoy seeing you do the impossible one more time."

I grunted. "If it would turn out like the Slenderman/Dracula fight," I said, not really believing that she knew anything about my fight with Pearland's administrator, "maybe don't. It was interesting fighting something so high over my level, again, but it was so clear that he was pulling his punches that it just felt incredibly fake."

Somehow, something that I said there seemed to take her aback, or maybe took the wind out of her sails a little. She cocked her head, in a way that you would kind of expect a crazed but repressed monster would, and asked a question I wasn't expecting. "What would it take for you to accept my offer?"

That was an odd question. "What offer? Of a boss fight, a duel?"

In retrospect, Merry and I would agree that the Administrator literally didn't cross the distance between us when she slammed her hands down on the arms of my chair and stared me right in the eyes, though we didn't sense a teleport of any kind, either. I felt a wave of something roll through the chair beneath me, but it quieted instantly. "Of seeing you go through hell," she said, and I couldn't help but think that there was something in her eyes that I pitied more than I was afraid of. She pulled her head back only a little and glanced away, as though distracted by a thought. "...for a reward, of course."

I felt like I really wanted to step away, but I was trapped in between her and the Barbarian Chair. In the end, when she looked back at me, I couldn't help but meet those eyes, and again I was struck by something. Maybe it was a feeling, a psychic whatever, because certainly it wasn't my Telepathy skill acting up. I spoke right to her face almost without thinking.

"Nobody knows you," I said, and she flinched back.

From that point on, the power dynamic seemed to shift, even though I wasn't trying to turn it against her. She backed off a step, and I, mostly because I didn't want to be trapped like that again, stood up. Still, I tried to fix that thought in my mind, of the impression I'd gotten of her when she was trying to intimidate me--or maybe, she was trying to do something else. "You're trying to say that you want to be friends," I said, and she stepped back again, her foot basically incinerating the coffee table as she got close to it, a black aura of something nasty flickering around her. "But you really have no idea how. You are completely alone, and you don't know what you need to do to be normal."

She stepped back again, the motion destroying the table in ways that didn't make physical sense, causing the shards to fly outwards at the guests for her teaparty, all of whom were... sitting stoically, all holding their tea just below their faces in identical fashion. "I am... I am not normal," she said, sounding strangely... intrigued? As though what I was saying wasn't so much causing her to be afraid of me as it was causing her to struggle with something inside that was completely controlling her. "There is no reason why I should be friends, not with the very people I'm supposed to kill." That word, when it came out of her mouth, blew the hair out of her face again, and there was a look of excitement on it--or possibly stress and pain. It was, somehow, a very alive expression. "That's why the only people worth my time--"

I didn't need to be told that much. "...are the people you can't kill," I said. "The ones who could reach you. The ones who gain power and aren't destroyed by it."

For some reason, she took one more step back, breaking through the other end of the table so that it just fell over, collapsing outwards instead of inwards, as its weight would normally make it do. That left a more or less clear path in between us, largely irrelevant except for the fact that her black aura suddenly exploded outwards in waves, like she was doing a very Anime-inspired powerup sequence. She extended her hands to either side, fingers up, like they were supposed to end in claws, and the aura blew the hair out of her face completely, letting me see her manic eyes and smile clearly, as she tilted her head so she was looking down on me. I thought I could tell that there were thick, ropey black tendrils behind the surface of reality, thick cords of mana all eager to explode into death spells of one kind or another.

To my left, the boar sipped his tea. I turned and glared at him, feeling like he'd spoiled the moment somehow. He turned to look at me, and then--for whatever reason--actually kind of ducked its head and looked sheepish.

The Administrator brought my attention back to her with a word. "So what will it take?" I could feel more corrosive mana pouring out, as the barefoot woman in a classic evil witch pose grinned at me. "To see you go through hell."

I studied her, and I felt Merry actually becoming kind of worried. I dunno, Jerry, she said. I'm not sure we can trust her to--

I silenced Merry in my head with a mental wave. Unlike her, I was in a completely different headspace. I stepped forward, and the witch's smile faltered slightly in obvious confusion. "I said all of that," I said, "because you and I aren't that different." Honestly, seeing the young Kenshi, Michelle, fight through a similar twisted gauntlet to what I'd gone through had been its own kind of thrill, too--I wasn't willing to call it sadistic, because I didn't want to see her fail, or even hurt, but it had come with a weird sense that she was becoming one of the few people who would ever really understand me. It was kind of a nasty feeling, and I wasn't sure I wanted to embrace it, but I could also understand how the Administrator hadn't had any other choice.

I took a deep breath, and let it out, and materialized my sword, but point down, and I rested it against the floor.

"Honestly," I said, tiredly, "I don't even want a reward. I've been advancing so much that I'm not even sure what I'd ask for. Just promise me you won't let me die or keep me trapped, and we can talk or fight or whatever the hell else you want."

The black-haired witch of an Administrator looked at me, dumbfounded, and I had only a weird moment's worth of premonition before I found her lips on mine, her arms so tight around me that for all my strength I couldn't have escaped. I realized two things instantly--that I should have been a lot more specific, and that Louise was not going to be happy with me.

Even so... well, let's just say that things continued on from there, in ways I'd rather not describe.