Timeskip (Day 7)

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 2]

[You have gained the skill: Detect Wish]

[Detect Wish: No barrier, physical or otherwise, will block your senses. Know the location of all nearby wishes at all times.]

[Experience requirements met for Level 3. Wish requirements not met for Level 3. You must cast one hundred more wishes before you may advance in level.]

[Congratulations! For your achievement in the devastation of an entire enemy species, you have received the 23rd card!]

Ben was alone in his new, temporary, one bedroom apartment. It was the first real alone time he’d received since getting forced into working for The Bank. His hand was outstretched, and he plucked a large, thick card out of mid-air. It was half as long again as a dollar bill, and proportionally wider. One side was white, the other side was black. On both faces of the card was Ben, dressed like a joker, resting on an upside down scythe against the inside border of the card. On the white face, Ben was dressed in black and on the black face, white. Every time Ben flipped the card, it showed a different white or black face. It was a bit disturbing, especially how the joker-bens were always staring at him from the card, so he put it away in his Utility Pocket.

Just another bit of random junk to go into the infinite inventory.

[System Warning!]

[You are a Questor! You must make tangible action towards completing your quest within eight hours, or you will die!]

The reason Ben was at ‘home’ rather than at work, was that four hours ago he’d gotten a notification letting him know that if he didn’t start working on his quest, he was going to die. He’d told his supervisor, who passed it up the chain. It was determined that Ben dying of not doing his quest wasn’t the most profitable course of action, and that he would need to be released from work to meet up with his party and make some token gesture to satisfy the requirements of [Questing].

Apparently there was a whole team of high leveled [Lawyers] trying to get him out of his [Quest], or at least trying to find a way to keep him from ever leaving The Vault.

“At least they equipped me on my way out,” Ben muttered, adjusting his clothing and glancing down at the single, barely visible spark on his ring. A [Nothing Wish], a wish so small it could barely move a glass of water across a kitchen table, yet still a wish, none the less. Still enough to trigger [Boom] and bring Ben’s powers back to normal. The [Nothing Wish] would, in time, grow more powerful under Ben’s control and care.

In addition to the wish, which was the most important part, Ben had been outfitted in proper royal class gear for what could be considered the first, proper, time. He wore a platinum crown tastefully set with rubies. None of the materials were magical, so his crown couldn’t be considered high end. . . but Ben had been perfectly happy wearing some of the shittiest crowns to ever disgrace a royal’s head. He’d take platinum and rubies.

He had a scepter, also platinum and rubies. And a cape, which was silver and red. His boots and pants and shirt and gloves were all within the same color scheme, which incidentally was the color scheme of The Vault employees. Platinum and red. Ben didn’t know it, but it was actually only the color scheme of the lowest level of Vault employees. A big deal, true, but nobody important was going to take you seriously. Ben examined himself in the mirror, sighed, then yelled out to his ‘escort’ that he was ready.

Two Sunlets, one [Bodyguard] and one [Asset Retrieval Specialist], were Ben’s new constant companions whenever he was allowed to set foot outside of The Vault. One of them was there to keep Ben safe, and the other was there to make sure he couldn’t run away. He needn't have bothered, because Ben wasn’t ever going to run away.

He had plans for The Vault. Big plans.

But first, Questing.

--

A hundred stories up, on top of a Bank owned Crystal Stack, Ben reunited with his party. Short Bus practically crushed him with a hug, Vivi talked his ear off about ‘potential group synergy’, Red surprised him by giving him a pat on the shoulder before walking back over to Charles and chatting quietly with the blind paladin. The Dark City girls, also known as ‘The Girls’ were standing meekly behind Red, apparently waiting for her to tell them to do something.

Ghost Ears was sleeping on a tiny little bed, [Dreaming].

“. . . and so I started digging into the Easy Mode settings and you know what I found?” Vivi asked, then continued on without waiting to see if Ben was listening or not, “I found out that most of the features have to be manually activated! Oh there are some passive benefits like tool-tips and warnings- I think you’ve noticed now that your level-ups contain more information than normal? Yes I’m sure you have,”

“Vivi,” Ben interrupted, “hold on, just hold on. What are we doing here today?”

“Well,” Vivi said, taking a calming breath, “Ghost Ears got a new skill for his [Dreamer] class. [Dream: Dungeon]. It allows him to, well, to dream of dungeons. What we’ve found is that he can take his dream, and actually create the dungeon he dreamed about with his relic.”

“With the dew-drop?” Ben asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Vivi said, “furthermore, he can create Easy Mode dungeons, which are normally only randomly generated- or bought specifically from The System-”

Vivi was interrupted by Ghost Ears chuckling and sitting up, shaking his head.

“Oh, you’re all going to just hate this one,” Ghost Ears said, grinning from ear to ear. He flew up from his tiny bed, raised his arms, and shouted. “[Create Easy Mode Dungeon of Dreams: The Dishes!]”

In front of him the air distorted, forming an opaque oval of distorted space that Short Bus could have easily walked through.

“Ben,” Vivi said, slugging his way over, “you can’t die in an Easy Mode dungeon.”

“Seriously?” Ben asked, raising both eyebrows now and looking at Vivi.

“Seriously,” Vivi confirmed, “well, you can die in there, but you’ll just appear at the entrance in the exact same condition you entered the dungeon. What I should say is, you can die in there as many times as you like, and gain experience and treasure. True, easy mode dungeons are more difficult,” Vivi said, “owing to the fact that you can’t really die in there. And, true, the odds of finding a legendary relic in an easy mode dungeon is quite low. But what you can do in there is train. Real combat, real monsters, without the risk of real death. Plus, you can disable Easy Mode if you want to actually conquer the dungeon.”

“I’m the most popular man in Solas right now,” Ghost Ears chortled, “because I can make these dungeons,” he snapped his [Extremely Tiny] fingers, “like that. The Vault even offered to hire me on, can you believe it-”

“Take the offer,” Ben said immediately, “and get good terms.”

“What?” Ghost Ears said suddenly, completely de-railed.

“I’m throwing in one-hundred percent with The Bank,” Ben said, his face completely serious, and telling the absolute truth. “In fact, if any of you are able to get a job with The Bank, do it.”

Ben’s escorts looked at one another, then shrugged and relaxed. This job, they thought, might not be as hard as it was made out to be.

“Ok,” Ben continued, “My shift starts back up in twelve hours, so let’s make this count. What the fuck is ‘The Dishes?”

--

Imagine for a moment, if you’ll indulge me, a sud-scape of total cleanliness. A strange dimension of building sized kitchen sinks made from stainless steel or gleaming white porcelain, each floating in an infinite void, connected to each other by a thin, but sturdy, walkway. The infinite void was white and well lit. Each sink was set into an enormous kitchen counter, on which sat, well, dishes.

Plates, cups, forks and knives; pots and pans and cutting boards and kitchen tools of every kind, each one of them alive, very clean, very happy looking, and deadly.

The entire place had the smell of the best smelling cleaning solution, in the exact right strength to just make you want to take a big whiff of it.

Ben’s party, which was Ben, Short Bus, Vivi, Ghost Ears and Red, were currently fighting some [Suds] on the first sink. [Suds] were large masses of white bubbly foam, and seemed to be the dungeons equivalent of slimes.

They were getting their collective asses kicked. The meta-knowledge reason for why they were getting their asses kicked was that The Ring of Sacrifice saw no reason to help them in an Easy Mode dungeon! They were in no real danger, and so, Ben’s party was for the first time, fighting without being the luckiest sons of bitches in the universe.

Ben slipped on a slick of soap, fell backwards and cracked his head on the polished marble countertop. Before he had time to start swearing, the water from the enormous kitchen sink overflowed in a big rushing wave. The Faucet, which was some sort of mini boss, giggles and waved cartoony arms at him.

“Bye Bye!” it said in a chipper, high pitched voice, and Ben was carried away by the water over the edge. He fell into the infinite void, and then his body literally exploded when he was a certain distance away.

Ben gasped, suddenly at the dungeon entrance, breathing hard, and unharmed. Moments later, Vivi appeared with a pop, also breathing hard. Ghost Ears next, then Red, and finally Short Bus. They were all freaked out.

It had taken less than five minutes for their entire party to wipe in The Dishes.

“Again!” Red yelled, having gotten over her shock the fastest and replaced it with anger. They re-entered The Dishes and lasted a bit longer before suffering another full party wipe. They had a group huddle which accomplished nothing except giving them the false belief that they had a strategy, and then dove right back into the dungeon. Another full party wipe.

Twelve hours and over twenty attempts later, and Ben’s party had not even managed to clear the first room. Ben at one point described the place as ‘Dark Souls but in the kitchen.’

Nobody got the reference, but everybody agreed with him anyways.

Despite all that, Ben was still fifteen minutes early to his shift at The Vault. His manager had grilled him for a full half an hour, trying to figure out why Ben had arrived before his shift started. Ben, completely honest, said he did it to show respect. The manager didn’t seem totally convinced, but eventually conceded that Ben wasn’t lying, and arriving early wasn’t a plot to rob The Vault.

Ben spent the entire day working as hard as he possibly could to learn his new job. He sought out his co-workers for help and listened to what they had to say. He worked slowly, carefully, avoiding making any mistakes. By the end of the day, his new co-workers had a funny, good feeling about Ben. He took his job seriously, and he was competent.

They’d almost forgotten by the end of it that he was a prisoner.