Dungeons Are Bad Business

Back in the office, Vee shook his head and started resetting the dungeon. He was sad to see Alisanne’s run end so early; he liked the [Fighter] and thought she’d improved tremendously since first coming to challenge Crestheart. Long gone was the girl who could barely keep her clubs up in the middle of a melee, and the [Dungeon Master] had zero doubts that she’d just keep on getting better if she stuck with it.

Alas, there wasn’t more time for thoughts, Vee had to prepare himself for the next challenge, which was coming from a [Potbellied Pitmaster] originally from Shontsdale. The man looked like something out of a children’s book, with short stubby legs and a stomach that was big enough to be its own person. As soon as he took his first steps into the dungeon, his skin turned bright red, and spirals of smoke floated off his shoulders.

He fought with various fire attacks that came out of a small device on his shoulder and a large bludgeon that looked like a chunk of meat from a kid’s comic book – a cylinder of red with a single bone sticking out from the bottom – but wasn’t particularly nimble. His stomach was an easy target, the dungeon’s traps hindered his progress. Ultimately, he failed to dodge any of the wrecking balls at the end of the dungeon’s final first floor hallway. The repeated strikes from the heavy ectoplasm spheres knocked him to the ground, and after three failed attempts at passing through, the [Potbellied Pitmaster] abandoned his run.

Vee reset the dungeon again, this time reaching through his bond to the [Dungeon Maintainers] and ordering one of them to come and quickly replace one of the [Frost Vent] traps that the adventurer had destroyed. Mi appeared a few seconds later, swapping out the broken crystal for a fresh one, and in less than two minutes the dungeon was good to go once more.

The next adventurer was a [Beetleguard], whose body was covered in shimmering plated armor that made her look like a bug. She hovered in the air, bypassing most of the dungeon’s tricks and traps, and fought with a spear that was shaped like a pair of horns.

She made it down to the second floor, but was taken out near instantly by Nock, whose [Laughing Arrows] passed through her armor with ease.

“That’s a heck of a guardian,” one of the agents behind Vee said. “Way stronger than a dungeon like this would normally have. How’d you find him?”

Vee thought for a moment, picking his words carefully. He didn’t know if it’d be a big deal, but just in case, he didn’t want anyone to know that Nock had been working with the bandits if he could avoid it.

“A friend introduced us,” he said. “It was a rather lucky break.”

“Indeed,” the agent said, his eyes twinkling. “You have quite the affinity for the old martial souls, eh Mister Vales? A weaponsoul haunting the hallways, and an armorsoul [Dungeon Champion]. That’s not something you see every day.”

Vee shrugged, and the conversation ended there because the next run was starting.

Neil the [Bellwether] [Heavy-handed Swordsman] was up next. He’d put on a form-fitting black shirt, covered one shoulder with a piece of armor, and styled his hair so that it was as spiky as could be. Vee couldn’t help but think that while the adventurer looked impressive, there was something oddly soulless about his appearance too. The [Dungeon Master] couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was – and certainly the gaggle of starry-eyed women surrounding the [Bellwether] as he approached Crestheart’s door didn’t see any issues – but it bothered him as Neil brought up his sword and started cutting his way through Crestheart’s first floor.

The [Bellwether] was like an entirely different person, moving with so much fluidity and grace that Vee had to double check his application to make sure that his primary class level wasn’t actually in the forties or fifties.

True to his party’s brand, Neil cleared the first floor without taking a single hit, and moved down to the second with his sword raised high. He slowed his pace a bit under Nock’s attacks, carefully sweeping the arrows out of the air with steady strokes of his blade. When he was finally out of the weaponsoul’s range, he sped right back up again, leaping over pits, solving puzzles in the blink of an eye, and fighting off every minion that he came across. Vee was grateful he’d gone ahead and used a charge of [Boost Drops] before the [Bellwether]’s run started; by his count Neil had already picked up five shards of chaos and there were still plenty of Marked minions left in the dungeon.

Twisting some of the dials in front of him, Vee did his best to throw off the [Bellwether]’s groove. However, none of the traps he activated found their mark, and Neil wasn’t bothered in the slightest by the variance in the speed of his platforms. He didn’t blink when Vee used [Walking Walls], or respond in any way when Reginald started trying to insult him through the magnifying crystal. Instead, he soldiered on gamely, his eyes blazing like small stars and his sword never stopping for more than a few seconds.

The rest of Neil’s run was uneventful, if brutal for Crestheart. None of the minions, traps, puzzles, or other obstacles hindered the [Bellwether] in any way. Vee winced. Even expecting the [Heavy Handed Swordsman] to clear with ease didn’t do much to soften the blow.

“Keep your chin up, boss. We’ve got a lot more runs to do today,” Reginald said.

Nodding, Vee went ahead and reset the dungeon once more.

For the most part, the afternoon’s runs were simple and straightforward. There weren’t many adventurers who managed to get past Nock, but almost all of those who did managed to make it down to Alforde’s arena as well. The [Dungeon Champion] did his best – summoning his domain and working gauntlet in gauntlet with Shadowforde – but had a losing record as the day approached its end. He’d lost six fights and won four.

Considering the fact that there’d been twenty four runs already with only a few left, Vee didn’t think that performance was too bad. Certainly the dungeon was still making money on the day. Only two of the winning adventurers managed to complete their runs while possessing the small reward boosting statue, so in terms of payouts it was really like eight adventurers had beat the dungeon already. That was definitely better than Vee’s expectations.

He looked down at the next application. It was for an elkin named Yensin Duvocik.

Yensin lay panting on the floor of the second floor of the dungeon. His chest ached with every breath, as did his stomach, his left knee, both of his shoulders, and his right ear. Why had he been so eager to throw himself into this? So far, his dungeon challenge had been nothing more than a string of infuriating injuries inflicted by an insignificant minion that he should have had no trouble defeating. He’d finally driven the stupid [Hunter] – or maybe [Ranger], or [Archer] or whatever – away for the time being, though he wasn’t sure that was actually a good thing as it meant that he had no choice but to carry on.

Then, as if to prove that the universe sometimes has a sense of humor, the voice of the dungeon [Announcer] cut into the room from somewhere in the ceiling.

“Um, excuse me? Mister adventurer? Are you capable of continuing your run, or would you like to quit? I’m afraid that our schedule is quite full today and —“

“Shut up, I’m fine. Just give me a second,” Yensin snapped, sitting up and looking around for his spear. It was on the floor near the door, and the elkin cursed quietly under his breath when he got up to his feet. Why did his entire body hurt so much? Worse, why was he so calm about it?

While most people wouldn’t think that a tranquil mind would be something to worry about, most people weren’t [Incandescent Spearmen]. A pool of boiling rage had sloshed around his stomach almost perpetually since taking the class, and its sudden absence was worrying for a multitude of reasons. The biggest of these was the fact that he needed it to activate his two most potent skills – [Furious Thrusts] and [Raging Sweep] – and would be little more than a normal person with a spear without it. However, a close second issue was that the fresh sense of quietude in his thoughts allowed the tiny voice he’d worked so hard to suppress lately to make itself heard once again.

This isn’t what I was supposed to do. I’m just as lost with this spear as I was with the sword.

Snarling, Yensin did his best to refocus and get his head straight. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself right now, there was still the contest with his other peers to become the old man’s [Handpicked Protege]. Jeimok had made it down to the third level of the dungeon, and Paige had taken two stocks from the [Dungeon Champion] before being defeated. This was Yensin’s chance to get ahead of his rivals, and he did not want to squander it.

Leaning on his spear for support, the elkin entered the next room and looked up at the sound of clanging above his head. A quartet of bats – no wait, those weren’t wings they were horns…actually, were those helmets? – dropped down from the ceiling and struck him, making a strange whistling sound that sounded all too much like mocking laughter as they did so. Yensin batted them away to the best of his ability, but the helmets bounced off the ground each time they hit it and continued attacking him. None of the blows were all that painful, but given the elkin’s other injuries, they were starting to add up.

Finally, Yensin managed to strike one of the helmets from below and destroyed the core of the slime hiding inside. WIthout the creature keeping it afloat, the helmet crashed on the ground and stayed there.

“Good riddance,” the elkin snarled, catching helmet after helmet like a ball and destroying the slime inside. When all the helmets were defeated, he heard the now-familiar sound of the door ahead of him unlocking and carried himself deeper into the dungeon.

The next rooms were relatively easy to manage, but the list of Yensin’s injuries grew even longer thanks to a few well placed traps. The worst were the ones that sprayed the elkin with a chilling mist and caused him to slow down enough for more minions to hit him, but the ones that shot a stream of jagged icicles into the air was also a pain to deal with.

Breathing hard but still oddly calm, Yensin found himself in front of a pair of ornate doors. They were sealed with a large lock that contained several moving pieces. Yensin tried to open it, only to realize that the lock was a puzzle that needed to be solved first.

He slid a few pieces back and forth, until he got the shapes to line up in the way they were intended, and then pulled the lock of the doors with ease. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the room and jumped a little bit when the lights went dim immediately.

His surprise passed quickly, and Yensin tightened his hands around his spear. He had a dim idea of what to expect; Jeimok had complained about a “stupid armored snowman” after losing his run, but had seen Yensin looking and had refrained from giving any details.

The floor of the room shook, and after making sure that there weren’t any traps about to spring beneath his feet – this dungeon was extremely fond of such tactics – he noticed the hulking figure that’d appeared out of thin air on the far side of the room.

“Congratulations on your progress so far,” the [Announcer]’s voice said from up above. “But how will you fare against Crestheart’s miniboss Mister Chills?”

Mister Chills? That was kind of a stupid name, Yensin thought, but he was more confident that this was the snowman Jeimok had been complaining about. Man, if he could beat this mini boss he’d have done better than the stupid salamander, and that was definitely something Yensin was interested in.

Alright, time to focus up, Yensin told himself. He quickened his breath, trying to turn the physical discomfort doing so produced into rage he could use for his skills, only to find that it was still nowhere to be found. No matter how he tried, Yensin couldn’t find his anger, couldn’t bring himself to the place that would let him utilize his class.

The lights came back up, giving Yensin a better look at the dungeon miniboss. It was a strange creature, well over ten feet tall and it looked like it’d been split down the middle. The side that was to the elkin’s left looked like a regular snowman: three orbs of varying size stacked atop each other. The other side was covered in jagged, ill-fitting armor, and the only feature that matched between the two were the monster’s pair of crimson eyes.

With a roar, the miniboss slid – or rolled maybe? – forward, its arms moving behind its body like it was a stretchy pirate about to punch the ever-living daylights out of some unfortunate soul. A loud clang from the floor -- like the sound of trapdoors opening -- followed. However, instead of delivering a pair of open-handed slaps, when its arms returned to normal it was holding a pair of snowballs almost as big as Yensin himself. The miniboss threw both of them at Yensin at the same time, and only a well timed leap and roll kept the adventurer from being flattened like a pancake.

Or maybe not…the snowballs popped like bubbles when they hit the ground. They were hollow, Yensin realized, but what was the point of throwing hollow snowballs? It didn’t make sense.

An all too familiar clattering sound filled the air and Yensin swore. Two skeleton knights and a lone skeleton mage were standing up where the snowballs had landed, readying their chintzy weapons and moving toward him.

Swearing under his breath, Yensin leapt forward and raised his spear. He swept one skeleton’s head off its shoulders, but missed the second one and had to trade a few blows with it before he managed to knock it to pieces with a well placed [Thrust]. The mage went down with a single blow.

As soon as the skeletons were dealt with, the miniboss roared again and this time three snowballs came toward him. Smirking, Yensin didn’t bother dodging the first one and –

WHUMP!

– found himself on the ground a second later, groaning. The miniboss made a strange, quaking sound that had to be laughter, and Yensin decided then and there that he hated this stupid miniboss. Another flicker of his anger came and went

Worse, before he even had time to get up, the floor beneath him started to hum and glow, and six pillars of blue ice shot out of the ground to form a circular cage that reached up all the way to the ceiling.

“Oh no!” The [Announcer] cried. “Looks like our challenger is in a bit of a tight spot! How will he get free without his weapon?”

The last of those words got Yensin’s attention, and the elkin snapped his gaze around to look for his spear. It was on the ground about ten feet from where he’d landed, and well outside the bounds of the cage.

A panel in the ceiling opened up, and what looked like hundreds of slimes tumbled down. They were surprisingly – and unpleasantly – heavy and cold, and Yensin felt like he’d plunged into a weird sort of reverse ice bath. An ice shower, maybe? Icy rain? A stupid trap that he needed to break out of as quickly as possible?

Definitely yes to that last one, and so Yensin lowered his head and activated [Antler Slam]. [Horn Slam] was an elkin-specific skill – the way [Fire Breath] was for salamanders or [Thrill of the Hunt] was for kitrekins – that didn’t have any class requirements. It delivered a powerful blow, and unlike most headbutts didn’t leave the user Dizzy or Stunned afterwards.

Struggling to keep his balance amidst an ever-growing pile of slimes, Yensin ran forward and hit one of the pillars as hard as he could. There was a satisfying snap, and the elkin managed to break free of the stupid cage and retrieve his spear.

“Enough defense,” he muttered, running toward Mister Chills and making sure to dodge every freaking snowball that headed his direction. Having seen more, he was pretty confident that the bigger ones were hollow and contained minions while the smaller ones were more solid, but that wasn’t something he felt much like testing.

When he got close enough to do so, Yensin raised his spear and tried to stab the miniboss. However, before his weapon found its mark, Mister Chills vanished into thin air. He heard the sound of something scraping along the floor and looked around frantically, but saw no signs of the miniboss anywhere. That ended up not mattering much, because a hand almost as big as Yensin’s torso wrapped around the elkin’s stomach and lifted him up into the air.

Yensin turned around and found himself staring into one of those gleaming red eyes. He had a few heartbeats to panic before he was flying through the room once again and landing hard on the ground. Something inside the elkin snapped, but it wasn’t any part of his body. Instead, it was his desire to keep going. This wasn’t what he wanted to do. This wasn’t who he wanted to be. This was…wrong.

There was something oddly freeing about coming to that conclusion, and Yensin’s heart was light as he looked up at the ceiling. Raising his hands, he said, “That’s it for me, I give up.”

The miniboss slumped immediately, and the [Announcer]’s voice filled the room.

“Another one falls to the minboss! Better luck next time, adventurer!”

Yensin smirked. He wasn’t so sure that there’d be a next time. He’d heard from plenty of other adventurers that dungeons were where a person might come to really know themselves, to find out what truly made them tick or how they wanted to go through life. None of them had mentioned the idea of getting to the second floor of a dungeon and deciding to give up the activity entirely. He looked down at his spear. When he’d first got the weapon, he’d thought that it was going to give him what he wanted. It hadn’t, so Yensin closed his eyes and accessed his soul’s mirror.

Take this away from me, he thought. I don’t want it the way I thought I did.

A notification was waiting for him when he opened his eyes.

[Would you like to renounce your Incandescent Spearman class?]

Yensin hit yes, and was barraged with a series of messages.

[You are no longer an Incandescent Spearman!]

[Might - 2]

[Ambition -1]

[Hunger For Victory - 2]

[Aggression - 4]

Sighing, Yensin dismissed the notifications and exited the dungeon. He wasn’t sure where he was going from here, but that was probably okay.

Not everything in life was supposed to be a nice straight shot.

Main Character Sheets (Unchanged from chapter 107):

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 32

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 24

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 6

Might: 15

Wit: 40

Faith: 25

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 16

Plotting: 19

Charisma: 17

Devious Mind: 28

Leadership: 21

Guts: 14

Intimidating Presence: 11

Citizenship: 24

Public Relations: 8

Determination: 6

Persuasiveness: 6

Bargaining: 4

Patience: 3

Competitive Spirit: 1

Pragmatism: 1

<3<3 Infatuation <3<3

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Specialist (Self), Level 6

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 18

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 18

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 11

Might: 58

Wit: 15

Faith: 28

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Endurance: 33

Intimidating Presence: 15

Heart of a Champion: 14

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Vigilance: 11

Vanity: 2

Single-Mindedness: 1

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

#$&Q#$)(@#$#@#$%!@#$##%#%()@#$**@@##

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 43

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 21

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 13

Additional Class: Hyperthymesiac (Self), Level 5

Might: 1

Wit: 37

Faith: 17

Ambition: 28

Greed: 24

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 42

$#&*!@!!: !!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 11

Irritability: 25

Remorsefulness: 17

Expository Prowess: 23

#%$Pragmatism*#$: @#61$5

Hop@#!! @#$@!@#

@#$@%%^

#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Bonus: Yensin's Character Sheet:

Yensin Duvocik:

Primary Class: Training Apprentice (Moonrose Gym and Adventuring Training Center), Level 12

Secondary Class: None

Might: 16 (-2)

Wit: 11

Faith: 10

Ambition: 8 (-1)

Endurance: 13

Focus: 8

Persistence: 9

Temper Control: 5

Hunger For Victory: 2 (-2)

Charisma: 2

Aggression: 0 (-3) Warning: Due to the loss of the Incandescent Spearman Class, the ability to earn points in this stat will soon disappear.