I woke the next day excited for how it would turn out. Before I logged in though, I made a sausage and cheese omelet. Something simple just sounded right for my second to last day in the dungeon. I cleaned up the kitchen and headed straight to the Oblivion door.

Sitting up in my bunk, I looked over to find Khaliss. By now I figured he was more or less in charge, and I wanted to see if he would offer any more quests. “Good morning Khaliss, how are we looking for today?”

“Good morning Angus. The Gods are letting us hear whispers of the difficulty of our dungeon, and how the adventurers are unable to conquer us. This is excellent news for us, we will get great rewards back in the city.”

“I’m glad to hear this. Perhaps we shall get a group of adventurers that isn’t. . . lacking.”

“You don’t approve of any of the adventurers so far?”

“No, there was one group led by a warrior named Zena. She listened to her group, planned accordingly, and did the best they could. They were just outmatched. Of all the adventurers, I think she would be the best.”

Khaliss merely nodded and walked on. I headed over to the rations area and ate until my character was full, then headed out to the trap I had been building yesterday. The first thing I did was whittle down the bench area so that it was a bar connecting the pillar that was still standing. I left the pillar wide at the base, but cut it down up top so that it was just a straight column about a foot in diameter. I tunneled through the ceiling below the arm that was the bench, and also around the head of my trap hammer so the only thing holding it up was the column I left earlier. I went down to the other end, and carved an axle so that it could rotate. Right now the head of the hammer would swing down and cover the middle 2/3 of the hallway and hit anything from knees to chest. I had no doubt that it would be absolutely devastating, even though it would only be a one use trap.

I spent the majority of the rest of the time connecting tunnels through the ceiling, and then started on one final trap. I started with a column nearly ten feet in diameter, and let it go from the ceiling to about my waist. I cut a small ring around the outside of it so that it was merely hanging from above, and slowly whittled down the column until it was barely able to support the nearly ton of rock that would hang above the adventurer’s heads. I was only planning to use this if Steele broke down and figured out a way to cheat the system.

I also made one more of the massive basketball sized stones and filled it with mana, then headed to the giant hammer before the start of the day.

Invaders have entered the dungeon

“OK guys, let’s get this damn undead taken care of. We will head straight to his hallway and tear him a new one. Nobody messes with the Steele Legion!” Well well well, it looks like my good buddy Steele decided they were going to be the first ones through. I guess I get to use my hammer sooner than I thought. I looked through the hole in the ceiling underneath the arm of the hammer, and saw a group of five making their way down the hall, Steele in the lead. I guess this time he went with four warriors and a healer, with the healer in the middle of a diamond formation. I let them get into the area where my hammer would do the most damage, and tossed a pebble down the hall behind them.

“What the Hell?” Everyone turned at Steele’s exclamation, and I slashed through the support column letting the hammer go. The results were spectacular! All five of the party was pulped, the forces literally ripping their bodies to shreds. I just stood there wide eyed, until a new popup filled my vision.

All intruders defeated. Forty five minutes until a new wave of adventurers may appear.

HA, HA, HAHAHAHAHAHA! That had to be the fastest defeat in the history of dungeon diving! Oh, this was fantastic! I decided that I needed to both memorialize this and needle Steele just a bit. I headed down to where the hammer came to rest, and off to the side I wrote a small ode to the ill-fated party.

Here lies the remains of the Steele Legion,

Who came to kill kobolds out of season.

The leader a sap,

Fell into the trap,

Now all that remains

Are the bloodstains.

I didn’t really care how petty it was, it was sure to infuriate someone as egotistical as Steele, and that would lead to mistakes. Looking things over, I really wanted to use that hammer again. I cut out a long stone pole, and went and to Khaliss and Shrik. “Hey guys, think you can help me out with something really quick?”

“Perhaps, let’s go see. We have the time” Khaliss responded. We made the quick trip to the hanging hammer, and both stopped at the odd trap. “Angus, what is that and where did it come from?”

“That is what I need help with Khaliss. I carved it out of the ceiling, and it swings around. What I need is your help pushing it back up into the ceiling so that I can reset the trap.”

“Yes, but how did you set it off the first time?”

“Manually, but I think I have a way to make it a proper trap. First I’m going to carve a small notch in the floor here for this pole to rest in. The pole is going to hold the hammer in the ceiling, and hopefully there will be an adventurer that isn’t paying enough attention and breaks the pole, releasing the hammer.”

“Hmmm, that will work, but it might help if you notched the pole after it was set up so that it is a little weaker.” Shrik pointed out.

“Great idea Shrik, now let’s see if we can pull it off.” Working together, we started the arduous process of resetting the hammer. After much swearing, and a good bit of muscling it around, we managed to get everything seated properly. I had to cut a notch in the hammer to make sure the pillar held, but it was fairly shallow so that an unsuspecting adventurer might knock it out of alignment. Just to tempt fate, I decided to leave a message to adventurers. With the final fifteen minutes, I cut out a stone sign and placed it next to the pillar. “Danger, do not strike the pillar.” Heh, yeah. Don’t press the big red button adventurers. I spent the scant few minutes I had left sitting in the ceiling resting by my hammer.

Invaders have entered the dungeon

Only three this time, and Steele wasn’t among them. He was probably trying to figure out how his party managed to wipe only 50 feet or so into a level one dungeon.

“HA! Hey guys, look at this. Someone wrote an ode to those Legion dicks, I guess they didn’t make it very far this time.” The rogue who was in the lead said as he laughed at my present for Steele. He was standing right next to the wall, and that was the only thing that saved him.

“I don’t remember a pillar being here before, or a sign saying not to hit it” The party’s warrior said. “Well, let’s see what happens.”

“NO DON’T!”

“[Shield Bash]” With a clang, the pillar shattered and the hammer swung down and obliterated the mage and warrior.

“Whoah” the rogue whistled as he beheld the carnage. “No wonder the Steele Legion didn’t make it too far, that trap is fantastic.” I was rather glad he saw it and was impressed. It was my favorite trap so far, and it was definitely lethal. While he was admiring it, I crawled down and waited in one of my hidden niches. As he walked past, I lashed out with a hammer and caught him in the knee. The surprise strike took out his mobility, and after exchanging a few blows his life ended.

All intruders defeated. Forty five minutes until a new wave of adventurers may appear.

Well, that was a fantastic start to day 4. Two groups down with very little danger to anyone in the dungeon. Khaliss and Shrik helped me to reset my hammer again, and I decided that I really needed to identify it, just to see what kind of damage it did.

Swinging giant granite hammer trap

This ingenious trap is crafted entirely from granite, making it incredibly heavy. Gravity gives it a fantastic speed boost, and the impact force is tremendous. It would be best to avoid this if at all possible.

Damage: 3000-4000

Durability: 19,982/20,000

That damage was absolutely insane! When you leveled, you got five attribute points to spend. For each point put into constitution, you would get 10 health. If a warrior put all of those points into constitution for every level, he could have a maximum of 300 health before entering this dungeon. It wouldn’t matter if you had a glancing blow or they managed to try and block it, that hammer was going to kill whatever it touched.

Finding myself with a lot of time to kill, I decided first to reset the trap, then go and replace all the torches in my hall of darkness. I wasn’t going to use the undead hall, at least not for this next trip through the dungeon. I did head back to the main entryway so that I could be ready in case Steele showed up again.

Invaders have entered the dungeon

This time it was only a pair of adventurers, one warrior and one rogue. Oh, the fools must be underestimating me. I headed back to one of my halls with a bunch of writing on the walls, and waited in my hidden room behind the drawing of the man with the third eye. I really hoped that they would also be seeking additional attribute points. I pulled out my starter spear and settled in for a long wait.

Waiting for them to reach me was incredibly boring, but about a half hour later I heard them traipsing down the hall. “Wait a second Governator, look at the floor. This is probably trapped six ways from Sunday.”

“Ridiculous Peeking, this is a level one dungeon. There aren’t any traps here.”

“Give me just a second. [Detect trap]. You know what? You are obviously right. Don’t trust the rogue with the trap detecting skill. Tell you what, just step on that large X over there.”

“AAAH! DAMNIT PEEKING, THAT WAS A TRAP!”

“Of course it was you idiot, maybe next time you will listen to the ROGUE WITH THE TRAP DETECTING SKILL! Serious, this is probably one of the dungeons with a player in it, and the first thing I would do in their shoes would be to start laying traps for unsuspecting adventurers like yourself.”

“Great, now I have a hole in my foot and limited mobility for the next hour. Remember that when you start complaining about how long this is taking.”

“Just follow me down the hallway, I won’t let you get any more traps.” I had to admire the rogue, he taught that warrior a very valuable lesson.

“Hey, Peeking, what about that picture over there. Is it a trap?”

“Let me see, [Detect trap]. Nope, looks clear.” Looks like I might get a use out of this after all. I heard scraping as the warrior limped over, and I was looking out around my spearhead to see when he put his eye up to the hole. As soon as he did, I thrust my spear through stabbing him in the eye, and gave it a vicious twirl inside his head before bringing it back. I heard a dull clunk as he fell over in death.

“What the? Damn, it must be a higher level trap than what my skill can detect. Maybe I can disassemble it and get some parts.”

Seriously? Oh this is too good to be true! He doesn’t realize that this isn’t a trap, but a player behind a wall. I let the rogue get close and start poking around with some lock picks, before I altered the angle of the spear and stabbed him in the face as well. A twist of the spearhead for good measure and another player was sent to respawn.

All intruders defeated. Forty five minutes until a new wave of adventurers may appear.

I went and replaced the broken trap plate, then headed over and redid my tunnel of darkness. I think the next group would get to experience the unknown undead monster. After arranging it to my satisfaction, I noticed the expired torch that I couldn’t pick up due to a bug. I bent over to give it a shot, and was easily able to pick it up. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t go into my inventory, as the system still wasn’t recognizing it as a torch and thus wouldn’t let it stack with the others. I went over and picked up a new torch, and it would stack with the others just fine. I replaced the one on the wall with the one that wouldn’t stack, and fired off another mail to Emily.

Emily,

I tried picking up the torch from yesterday’s bug report. The good news is that I was able to. Sadly, it won’t stack in my inventory with the other torches. I checked with a torch that was on the wall, and was able to add it to the stack of other torches in my inventory with no issues.

Thanks,

Marty

With that taken care of, I headed back to my hammer alcove. With no real plans for the day, that forty five minutes was really boring. I spent about half of it just making spheres before even that got too much for me. I needed something to do, and I had no materials to work with. I cut out a decently large chunk of stone and stared at it for a bit. At first I had some grand plans to start carving it, but I had no idea what to make. I really wasn’t an artsy type of person to begin with. I was much more comfortable in a kitchen. Sadly, granite wasn’t the best for making kitchenware.

Intruders have entered the dungeon

“I don’t care what they say, someone is in this dungeon and they are cheating. Everyone who dies in here with me under unusual circumstances will fill out a support ticket and will also post things on the message boards, understood?”

“Look Steele, I know you are upset. I would be too if I died so many times in a level one dungeon, but this is getting out of hand. Look at yourself, if you keep this up you are going to drive the newbies away from the guild and get them banned from the message boards just like you did.”

“Shove it, Grimlet. I only asked you along this time because I need your racial ability. That stone pillar up there is where I died last time, though the pillar is new. Arctus said he saw something swing from the ceiling, but he only caught a glimpse out of his eye. I’m betting the pillar has something to do with it, and you’ll help me figure this all out.”

As I looked down on the two characters conversing, I saw one was a dwarf. If he was going to use his racial ability he needed to be at least level five, so that explained why Steele was rather short on lackeys. I reached over and picked up one of the uncharged spheres, it would work perfectly to foil Steele’s plan. The dwarf racial ability was called [Roots of the Mountain], and it was an exceptional ability for tank type fighters. As long as they didn’t move, the next attack would not be able to trigger any knockback effects. In fact, it was known to stop massive objects right in their tracks, and that was what Steele was looking to do to get around my trap. I watched as they set up, with the dwarf right in front of the pillar as Steele was beside it.

“Ready?”

“Yeah. [Roots of the Mountain]” Grimlet spoke, and a golden glow grew from his feet, climbing up his body like a living network of vines. In under a second, the dwarf was completely enveloped and his ability fully activated. I cocked my arm back ready to throw, and as soon as Steele started his skill I let my rock fly towards the dwarf’s shield.

“[Shield bash]!”

“NO WAIT!” Too late the dwarf cried. Steele’s shield shattered the pillar a fraction of a second before the dull clang of the rock hitting Grimlet’s shield. The rock had no knockback effect, but it didn’t matter as the skill only worked on one attack. I locked eyes and smiled at Grimlet as he saw his impending doom. The hammer swung down and obliterated both warriors.

All intruders defeated. Forty five minutes until a new wave of adventurers may appear.

Poor Steele, he never learns. Oh well, not my problem. The first thing I had to do was get Khaliss and Shrik to help me reset this trap again. I went back up into my alcove and rested for a bit. I killed quite a bit of time trying to make a miniature kobold statue, but all of them just came out as lifeless bits. Of course, the first twenty or so ended up crumbling in my hands as I shaved off too much stone in certain areas.

Something was wrong though. I checked the time, and I had been carving for over two and a half hours at this point. This drop in challengers was concerning, and I had no doubt it had something to do with Steele. Of course, as soon as I thought of this, Steele showed up in the dungeon but was oddly all by himself.

“I know you are nearby you little bastard, and this is where I finally get my revenge. DO YOU HEAR ME?!”

Well, that didn’t bode well, he obviously had some sort of cheating plan. “Excellent, party added. [Guild teleport], target Steele Legion Guildmaster!” As soon as he finished his sentence, there was a flash of golden light and a new character that filled me with dread appeared. It was a dwarf paladin with high level armor. It was obviously a matching set, white silver with a golden trim. His shield was a golden lion rampant. By his gear alone, this guy had to be in the upper 60s for a level. I was so screwed.

“Seriously Steele? A level one dungeon?”

“Look Rycran, the player in here is cheating somehow and I need you to figure it out. Seriously, he’s gotten me several times. Plus, we will be the first to conquer one of the champion dungeons, there’s gotta be a title or achievement for that somewhere.”

“Fine, but this is the last time you waste my time like this. I’ve got a lot more going on with my guild than you think, and this is a very bad time. So, that pillar there is where you died the last few times? Let’s go. I’ll stop the trap, just make sure you are behind me.”

As soon as he passed the pillar, he took a defensive stance and said, “[Roots of the Mountain].” The golden light covered him much faster than the previous dwarf, and I readied myself for a replay of what happened last time. As soon as Steele started his [Shield bash], I had thrown a rock at Rycran. He waited for the rock to take out his skill, then called out, “[Golden Aegis].” My blood went cold, as that was a level 75 paladin skill that reduced incoming damage by 90% for 15 seconds, and prevented any knockback effects from taking place. A golden replica of his shield appeared in front of him and absorbed the shock from the hammer, eliciting a minor grunt from the dwarf.

“Not bad. That hit me for almost a hundred HP (hit points). I wouldn’t be surprised if the devs added a trap like this in some of the higher tier dungeons.” As he walked around my ineffective hammer, I scampered back to the ceiling alcove in the darkened hallway. Before they could get there, I fired off a frantic email to Emily.

Emily!

Emergency! Somehow there is a level 75+ character in the dungeon as we speak. His character is Rycran, and he teleported in using [Guild teleport] to lock on to character Steele.

In my panic, I forgot to sign my email. I had no idea whether my final trap would be enough to take out Rycran, as the system added massive penalties for trying to fight characters that were much higher level than you were. You would only do a fraction of the damage, your critical chance would plummet, and the enemy would gain a massive boost to their own damage. The general rule of thumb was that five levels had no effect, 5-10 levels would be extremely tough but possible, 10-20 levels was entering one in a million territory, and anything beyond 20 levels was impossible. In fact, the Scholars guild set up a battle between a level 55 mage and a level 35 warrior. The mage stood there and let the warrior hit him as much as he wanted, no skills were banned. No matter what that warrior tried, he couldn’t overcome the mage’s health regeneration.

“Here we are, the hall of darkness. Now, let’s see what we have going on here. [Detect Undead].” Crap, crap, crap they were here and Emily hasn’t gotten back to me yet. Well, they now know that there are no undead in this hallway, as a paladin Rycran would be well suited to not only battle them but also detect any hiding spots. “I told you Steele, there are no undead here. I guarantee that I’m strong enough to detect anything that might be hiding, and there’s nothing showing up on my skill. Let’s go home.”

“NO! Wait, just head down the hallway for me? Please?”

“Fine, but there’s nothing down here.”

Nothing to do now but trust in my trap. That and the fact that he has already used his two powerful damage reducing skills, and they had a day for a cooldown timer. I watched as he strolled down the hall, switching from looking right and left every few steps. He didn’t bother with a torch, as dwarfs also had the racial ability darkvision. I was sitting on the top portion of my trap right next to the support column, as I didn’t trust myself to have the reach to cut all the way through it from the side. As soon as I lost sight of the dwarf underneath the trap, I gave a second and a half count then slashed through the support column and squeezed my eyes shut. I plummeted down with the stone, and lost almost a quarter of my life from the slamming stop at the end. Stone dust billowed out and upward, but the noise from slamming into the ground precluded me from hearing whether or not I managed to squish Rycran underneath.

“No, no no no NO NONONONONOOOOOOOO!” The wailing was coming from Steele, although I couldn’t see him through the dust that was still hanging in the air. I stood up and started walking towards him, stopping when I was about ten feet away. He was obviously in shock, face pale as he stared at where his brother used to be. His mouth was moving up and down, but nothing was coming out. This bastard, he couldn’t just accept that he was bested by a dungeon, could he? He had to cheat, go running to his big brother. Well, I had enough of this. I pulled out the basketball sized sphere, holding it in front of my chest so that I would be partially lit by its glow.

“Steeeeeeelllllleeee, sooooooon steeeeeeeellleeee, a few more deathssssss and you will join ussssss!” I hissed as I overcharged the stone with every bit of mana I had. Frozen in terror, Steele could only shake his hands impotently as I launched the stone right at his chest. The resulting explosion knocked me backwards and my world went white.

My health bar was an angrily flashing red sliver, my mana bar was equally flashing blue, and my stamina was slightly better off but still down to about 10%. Several status effects were scrolling across my field of vision. First was a closed eye with an X on it, letting me know I was blinded for the next three minutes. I tried switching to darkvision and got a new error message.

You are blinded!

You have been blinded by an intense flash of light. Due to these circumstances, your eyes have been damaged until you can heal yourself either through natural regeneration or yourself or an ally casting a major healing spell on yourself.

Vision impaired: 2 min 45 sec

Darkvision impaired: 5 min 30 sec

Well, that sucked. The next icon was an ear with an X through it, that explained the high pitched wine I was hearing. Damn, being shell-shocked sucks. The hearing would take another three and a half minutes. The next icon was a red exclamation point, and I had to try a lot harder to focus on it and see what it meant.

Silenced!

An explosion caused you to bite through your tongue. As such, you are unable to make coherent sounds for the duration. Spells and party chat options have been disabled until you are healed.

Duration: 5 min 12 sec

Damn, that was annoying. The last icon was a head with stars orbiting it. This should be good.

Dazed!

You have been dazed by an explosion. You are unable to move, use skills, cast spells, or check notifications. There are no spells or potions that can fix this status.

Duration: 2 min

Well, I guess that flashing blue cross icon in the corner for my notifications will just have to wait for a bit. I tried to move my arms, but all I could do was wiggle my extremities for a bit. Thankfully the dazed status was very rare to come across in gameplay, as it could be absolutely devastating. Imagine you are in a battle where you can’t move for two minutes. Every attack from the enemy would be a critical hit, and you would die rather swiftly.

All intruders eliminated. Insufficient time remaining for dungeon reset, day finished.

Well, at least I got them. As I was heading towards the barracks, I got a chime of an incoming email.

Marty,

Sorry for taking so long, but I was ordered by my boss to let it play out. We do have an emergency meeting, so please hurry and logout. You will be transported to an admin area, where we have Steele, Rycran, my own avatar and my boss’ avatar. He will be leading it as he is impartial, and you will be in avatar form but your name will be blocked.

Regards,

Emily

Well, I guess this will be handled rather swiftly. As I entered, I pulled Khaliss aside. “Hey, I’ve got an issue. I’ve been summoned to deal with the Heralds of the Gods.”

“Then why are you wasting time talking to me? Eat and go!”

That simplified things a lot. I shoved a ration down my throat, swallowed, and laid down to logout.