[ 15 ]
Time to Level Collapse: Three Days and Two Hours
“WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE,” DONUT SAID AS WE TURNED DOWN THE MAIN corridor. “This is where we came into the dungeon.”
After having explored much of the area, I was starting to see a distinctive pattern to the hallways. My apartment had been a little more than a half mile from the coast of the Puget Sound. The entrance I’d gone through appeared to be the very western edge of the map. The whole area was a giant grid of equal-sized squares, with the large, wide passages acting as the borders.
While the interior halls and tunnels were twisty and maze-like, each section was still a perfect, giant square. And within each square, there appeared to be four neighborhoods.
The Hoarder neighborhood was in the southeast corner of one of those squares. Directly west of that was the goblin neighborhood, right where we’d entered the dungeon. Across the hall was the domain of the llamas. Mordecai had said these first few floors weren’t really covering the entire planet, and I could see now that he was correct, at least here. The dungeon was really just a condensed version of the city directly above, but more organized. I wondered what it was like in the more rural areas, if there were any entrances at all.
It appeared mobs didn’t respawn in a particular neighborhood once you
killed the boss, though mobs from adjacent neighborhoods had started to creep their way in. Also, the level two rats were just everywhere, though I never saw one in the main hall. They were nothing but a nuisance now.
They’d see us, charge, and I’d either kick them or stomp them, killing them with a single blow.
Near the northern edge of the Hoarder’s neighborhood, we started to run across a new type of mob: slimes.
After our first encounter with those things, we had to turn back. I couldn’t fight them, not without any sort of protection for my hands. The first one we came across was a simple level two green slime. Donut and I had both already hit level seven by this point, and I figured it’d be simple as killing the bugs.
Kicking the green slime did nothing but burn my feet. I made the mistake of trying to punch the pig-sized blob, and it almost ate my arm off. As it was, I sunk elbow deep into it, and my right fingerless glove dissolved right off my hand. The right arm of my leather jacket melted away.
It ended up killing itself thanks to my Damage Reflect ability. My arm was red and bubbling and screaming with pain by the time I pulled it out of the green, gelatin mass.
I received an It burns, dunnit? achievement for that one.
Thankfully, the steel chain wrapped around my knuckles remained intact.
In fact, the links appeared to gleam after the fight, as if they’d been cleaned.
I waited to heal, and we turned around, giving that neighborhood a wide berth.
It was then, as I gazed upon the next neighborhood over, that I got an idea on how to cover more ground as quickly as possible.
I pointed to the neon sign that remained blinking off the main corridor.
“Da Tutorial Guild.” It looked as it had when we first arrived. “We are headed in there.”
Donut: YES O.K. THERE WILL BE MONSTERS IN THERE.
“Stop,” I said. “Please stop.”
I’d made the mistake of showing Donut the chat feature of the party menu. One could click on the party’s name, and a chat option appeared at the end of the list. For me, a virtual keyboard materialized floating before me, but after spending some time with it, I figured out how to just think the words while focusing on the chat window. Apparently Donut, as a quadruped, had a completely different interface.
When the messages came, they popped up with a haptic buzz in my brain, and it startled me every time. Donut spent a good ten minutes sending me message after nonsensical message until I finally told her to stop. She had, until now.
“Using the chat is quite enjoyable to me,” Donut said. “Now I understand why Miss Beatrice was always on her phone. I wish it was connected to the internet. I think I'd have a lot of fun on the internet.”
“It’s good to have,” I said. “But you don’t need to do it when I’m right here. It hurts my head. Also, don’t type in all caps. It makes it sound like you’re shouting.”
“Okay, fine. Be a grump,” she said as we approached the alleyway.
Thanks to Donut’s Torch spell, we didn’t need to carry a light when we entered the pitch-black corridor.
I was expecting another goblin machine to be waiting for us, but the alley was abandoned. The place smelled of machines, oil, and pineapple.
“I’m okay with killing goblins,” Donut said as we walked. “But I don’t think there’ll be stairs this close to the edge of the map. Remember what it looked like on the show? Each floor was smaller. I think we need to head east before we start seeing stairs.”
“We’re not going to kill the goblins,” I said, indicating the tattoo on my forearm, which still appeared on the exterior of my intact left jacket arm.
“Not if we don’t have to.” We eased our way down the alley, keeping an eye out for red dots.
It didn’t take long. We turned a corner, and three level two goblins approached, all brandishing pineapple sticks.
“What is with the goblins and their fruit?” Donut asked as they
approached, screeching.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s weird.”
Before they got too close, I lifted my arm, showing the tattoo. “I have free passage through this area!”
The goblins all stopped at that. The moment I showed them the mark, their dots turned from red to white. They lowered their weapons and looked at one another, as if confused about what to do next. They started gibbering in their language. Finally, one turned toward me.
“Where you get that mark, human?”
I had a carefully-prepared answer. Hopefully they would… “He blew up one of your filthy tractors and smeared three of your friends
all over the cobblestones,” Donut declared. She pointed daintily south.
“They’re in that next neighborhood over if you want to scoop ‘em up.”
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I whispered. The goblins stared at us with a slack- jawed gaze of incredulity. “Let me do the talking. I’m the one with the brand.”
“And I’m the one with the 37 in charisma,” said Donut. “They’re not going to care. Watch this.” She started walking toward one of three goblins.
“You, sweetheart,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Uh, I don’t…” the goblin began. “I don’t think I have a name.”
“Most unfortunate,” Donut said. “Hmm. I’m going to call you B.A.” She looked at the other two goblins. “And you guys are Face and Murdock.” She looked back at me. “Remind me why we’re here again?”
“I want to talk to some of the goblin engineers,” I said.
“B.A., be a love and show us to some of your engineers. I do believe they’re the gentlemen who wear culinary items upon their heads.”
“Uh, okay. Yes, ma’am,” B.A. the goblin said.
“Wait,” Donut said.
“Yeah?” B.A. said.
Donut indicated the tiara on her head. “It’s not ma’am. It’s Princess Donut. You got that, B.A.?”
“Um, okay. Okay, Princess Donut.” He turned and started marching further north into the dungeon.
“What the actual fuck?” I hissed at the cat. “How… Did you know that was going to happen?”
“It’s simple,” Donut said as we walked. “Mordecai told me that the higher my charisma is, the easier it will be to get them to do what I want. As long as they can speak and their dots aren’t red and they aren’t a boss or a really high level, I can control them just like I control you. Mordecai says for the first four or five floors, I can talk anybody into anything. How do you think I’ve been getting Tally to give me five plates of salmon this whole time?”
As we walked, we passed several groups of level two goblins. We also
saw a few types I hadn’t seen before: Goblin Bomb Bard. Level 5.
These bastards are more unhinged and sadistic than those guys who couldn’t pass the psych exam to join the military. Bomb Bards are experts with explosives, and they strike with a variety of ranged attacks
that’ll blow your socks off. If the one you’re looking at right now has more than half of his fingers, then he’s probably very, very dangerous.
One of the bomb bards glared at us as we passed. The goblin, indeed, had all of his fingers. He tossed a small, glass ball up in the air, catching it absently as we marched past. Each of the level twos on either side of him cringed each time the glass ball went up in the air.
We turned another corner, and we entered a large workshop. At the end of this room was a wooden door, and based on the minimap, I immediately determined beyond that door was the lair of yet another neighborhood boss. It appeared this next room over was almost identical in shape to that of the Hoarder.
I looked about the expansive workshop. We were surrounded by about 25 of the engineers and a smattering of others, including two level seven “shamankas” who stood guarding the far wall. The engineers all wore something odd on their heads, but it wasn’t always pots and pans. One wore what appeared to be a hockey helmet. Another sported one of those padded helmets worn by boxers.
A massive steam engine dominated the western wall, and the engineers crawled about it like ants. Wheels and cogs whirled and chugged away. On the opposite side of the room stood a line of six parked goblin murder dozers.
These also crawled with goblin engineers. Multiple tables covered with tools and giant, greasy parts lay scattered about the room. A vast pile of coal stood in the far corner near the boss room.
One of the level sevens glanced in our direction and approached.
She was a female goblin, standing about five and a quarter feet tall, making her tower over the others. She had well-defined muscles and wore a jet-black robe. She carried a wooden staff that, oddly, also held a pineapple at the top, but this one was actually made of wood, a part of the carving.
The goblin’s face was filled with piercings. There had to be fifty of them.
She looked like one of those body modification people who would appear on Ripley’s Believe It or Not! It was hard to look at until you got used to it. The woman sneered, revealing sharpened teeth and a forked, pierced tongue.
Goblin Shamanka. Level 7.
In case you’re wondering, Shamanka is just a fancy way of saying female shaman. Goblin Shamans are the leader class of all goblin clans, second only to the War Chieftain or, more rarely, the Goblin Warlord.
They are without humor and are said, as part of their training, to have to
pick two of the following three actions in order to graduate Shamanka University: they have to fuck, cook, and/or eat their own parents. Most don’t pick cook. And if that wasn’t messed up enough, they specialize in Anguish Magic, a dark magic school designed to focus and enhance damage from other attacks.
“You may have a pass, but you are not welcome here, human,” the goblin said. “Not in this place.”
I took a deep breath. “I want to buy a vehicle from you guys. Or have you make me one really quick. Preferably something that I can negotiate down stairs, but I’ll take what I can get. We have a lot of ground to cover, and I figured you guys could help.”
The goblin looked at me as if I’d just asked her to eat a Twinkie out of my ass.
“You stupid, ugly, excuse for a monkey. Do you really think you can just…”
“Oh, honey, can we discuss what’s going on here?” Donut asked, interrupting the goblin. She waved a paw, indicating the jewelry in the goblin’s face. “Is it like some sort of performance art? Do you wear all that metal because they made you eat your parents?”
The shaman looked at Donut, a mask of utter outrage on her face that started to melt the moment she met the cat’s eyes. It was the weirdest thing. I realized the cat was casting a spell of sorts on the goblin, some sort of automatic charm effect.
“What?” the goblin asked, her voice totally changed. She, to everyone’s complete surprise, sat cross-legged on the ground and leaned forward. She discarded her pineapple staff. “What did you say?”
“I mean, I guess I can see what you were going for. You have exquisite cheekbones,” Donut said. “But your face looks like an overenthusiastic brillo pad. That other lady shaman down there, she doesn’t have nearly as many things in her face. Though, my word, she does have that unfortunate necklace made of bones, doesn’t she? But we’ll get to her later. So, tell me. Is it a daddy thing?”
The goblin didn’t say anything for several moments, but then she put her face into her hands, and she burst into tears. “Yes,” the goblin cried. “It’s true.” Donut walked forward and sat in her lap.
The other shamanka, alarmed at this new development, came running forward. But a moment later, the two magic users were on the ground,
sobbing, clutching onto each other. The one with the bone necklace had a line of snot running down her face as she ugly cried about having to eat her father raw.
Donut named the one with the facial piercings Rory and the other Lorelai.
“So, Rory,” Donut asked after a few minutes of the goblins sniveling, “how about that vehicle my friend asked for? Is there something you can do for us?”
Rory wiped her face. “We cannot part with a murder dozer. They are much too valuable, and the chieftain would literally kill us. But I will have them make a human-sized chopper. One with a sidecar.” She indicated a line of two-wheeled contraptions leaning up against the wall near the bulldozers.
They appeared to be steam-powered bicycles. “But we can’t do it for free.
You gotta trade something.”
“I have all sorts of stuff,” I said. I pulled up my inventory. I selected the satchel of gunpowder, and it appeared in my hands. It was a heavy leather sack. I wanted to keep the stuff, but I wanted the transport more.
Rory thumbed over her shoulder, indicating a line of barrels right next to the giant machine. “We got funpowder.” I hadn’t noticed the barrels before.
They all had XXX marked on them. Sparks were constantly showering off the giant steam engine. If one of those sparks landed on a barrel… “To offer goblins funpowder is like offering water to a piranha,” she added.
This went on for a bit. I offered torches. Healing potions. Antidote potions. Both the pet biscuits and the crawler biscuits. All of it rejected.
My eyes caught something else on my list.
“How about this?” I asked, offering up the two baggies of meth.
Rory snatched them away. “Is this all you have? Two hits?”
Lorelai scrabbled at Rory’s hand, coming away with one of the bags. The goblin opened the baggie, stuck a pinky in, and had a quick taste. Her eyes grew wide. “This is dungeon made,” Lorelai said. “He didn’t bring it with him from the outside.” She looked at me. “Where did you get it? Did they have more?”
“I’ll tell you where to get more in exchange for that machine—one that won’t blow up on us—plus coal or whatever you need to run it, and some of those grenade things your Bomb Bards carry.”
“I don’t know,” Lorelai began, looking uncertainly at the other shaman.
“Do it,” Donut said.
“Deal,” Rory said.
Lorelai got up and started screaming orders at the engineers, who looked at her as if she had gone insane. The shamanka sent a blue bolt into the backside of one of the engineers, and they scrambled to work.
“Do you… do you want to come with us?” Donut asked Rory, her voice surprisingly gentle.
Donut still sat in the Rory’s lap, and she purred as the green monster stroked her hair.
The pierced goblin sighed. “I cannot. I can’t leave the chieftain. He’s terrible, soft even, but he’s still leader of my clan. My family. And even if I could go with you, I wouldn’t be able to leave this floor. If we climb down the stairs, we die. You get halfway down, and your body just dissolves. I’ve seen it myself.”
“So you know how this works? You know what’s happening here?” I asked.
The goblin nodded. Her face jingled when she moved. “I know enough. I know we are on the first floor. There are smart mobs, like us, and there are not-so-smart mobs. The deeper you get into the dungeon, the more are smart.
In this borough, we are king. Us and the gnolls and the rat-kin and a few others. Most of the monsters aren’t so smart.”
“But do you know what happens in a couple days?” I asked.
“The floor collapses,” she said. “Yes. But it is only you who dies when this happens. For us we go to sleep until the next dungeon opens. We will open our eyes, and it will be the same as it has been. Just another day. But one of these days, one of these days we will wake up, and we will be deeper.
That’s what they tell us. Kill the crawlers, get better at killing, and you get to go deeper. And one day, eventually, we will be so deep that crawlers will never come, and we will finally have peace. We will have peace and a place to live and breed and have our little ones run free and not worry about killing for survival.”
