Gamer Guild’s Dungeon (Second Floor): Kobold’s Keep

--- Maya ---

“Load the unpatched version.”

“Alright, thanks for doing this.” Decker told him as the whispers became agitated by something.

(Wonder what’s up?)

(Perhaps we’re picking up the shift in Madness?) Her inner reason offered.

(Could be.)

“Okay, and everything should be loaded up.” Decker said just as the whispers began to die down. “And just a tip, you might not want to bother with the chests on this floor now. Given the spike in difficulty the few coins and trinkets they drop probably aren’t going to be worth it in the long run, so a straight shot to the boss is probably your best bet.”

“I’ll remember that.” She nodded, before pushing the stone doors open to reveal a large cave chamber with brickwork flooring, the usual torches on the wall, and (is that a rabbit trap?)

(I… believe so.) Her inner logic reluctantly admitted as they stared at a box propped up by a stick connected to a little rope loop.

(Maybe this is supposed to be the first dungeon trap?) Her inner madness suggested.

“Yeah, but… they can’t expect anyone to actually fall for this can they?” She frowned, easily walking around the ‘trap’.

(Well it is the first trap so… let’s just keep our eyes open for worse.) Her inner reason told her.

“Right…” Shaking her head she moved to open the doors to the next room when-

(Wait, do you think this is one of those systems where we get bonus points for disabling the traps?) Her inner child asked.

She stayed frozen in front of the door for a good minute before turning on her heel walking behind the box, picking it up, and flipping it over so that it couldn’t trap anything else.

A little blue screen appeared in front of her face saying, [Hidden Objective Cleared: Disable The Clever Kobold Trap. Bonus points will be rewarded at the end of the dungeon.]

“Huh, neat.”

With that taken care of she made her way back to the door and pushed it open to find a short hall leading to the next room.

“So, I know this floor is supposed to be a higher difficulty than normal, but what do you think this floor’s monster is?” She idly asked, figuring that if the last room was a trap room then this next one had to have some monsters to fight in it.

(Since they’re doing classic dungeon monsters… goblins maybe? Or bandits?) Her inner Madness suggested. (Both would fit having traps on their floor depending on what game their based off of.)

(I doubt it’ll be bandits, given how they’d be too human for most people to handle fighting and killing.) Her inner reason pointed out.

“Yeah, it’d be a fucked up level if they made us fight and kill people.” She had to agree.

Opening the next set of doors she found three small humanoid lizard creatures sitting around a small campfire.

“Uh, what are these things supposed to be?” She frowned, not actually able to recognize these creatures from her vast video game knowledge.

(I’m not sure but they must fit the ‘fantasy dungeon’ theme somehow.)

(Maybe they’re like a tabletop monster or something?) Her inner madness suggested.

“But I don’t recognize them from Deviant’s Masquerade’s handbook?”

(You do remember that there are tabletop games other than ours don’t you?)

“Mm, I guess if they were willing to make a ‘gamer’ gang these guys would be bigger nerds than me.” She admitted after a moment of thought before shaking her head. “Either way we’ve got monsters to kill.”

Stepping into the room she raised her Hand Cannon, ready to shoot the dungeon creatures and quickly clear this room, before something stabbed her in the back.

“Fuck!” She cursed spinning as she elbowed a fourth creature that had been hiding behind the door before blasting it into pixels with her cannons.

Putting a hand to her back she was relieved to find that despite how much it had hurt there wasn’t any blood from where the lizard had stabbed her.

A couple rocks caught her in the shoulder and she remembered that she wasn’t quite safe yet as she turned back to the remaining kobolds and unloaded the rest of her Hand Cannons clips as she zapped them into oblivion.

Glancing around to make sure she was really alone she eventually let out a shaky breath as the adrenaline left her. “Fuck, was not expecting that.”

(Well I suppose that the trap in the first room should’ve warned us that this floor was going to be… trickier than the first.) Her inner reason pointed out. (And of course that’s before we take into account the fact that this floor is of a higher difficulty than it’s supposed to be.)

“Right, just… just going to have to keep my eyes open I guess.” She sighed before collecting all of her loot as she tried to stop the faint shaking in her hands.

(...)

Once her spoils of war were gathered she took note of the fact that this room had two doors to it other than the entrance. “So based on what Decker said one of these must lead to a treasure chest and one of them must lead to the actual way we’re supposed to go.”

(He also said the wise thing is to go straight for the floor boss as without the patch the chests aren’t worth the difficulty of their fights.) Her inner logic reminded her.

(Yeah, but it’s treasure!) Her inner greed giggled with just a touch of mania. (Are we really going to ignore it because of a fight?)

“My head says I shouldn’t, but my heart says I should.” She considered for a moment before walking towards the side room. “Well it’s not like I actually know which door leads towards the boss room.”

(True.)

Walking through the short hall between rooms she couldn’t help but pause as she stood in front of the door to the next room, a faint ache coming from where that lizard person had stabbed her earlier.

(Maya?)

She shook her head before sighing. “It’s nothing.”

Pushing the door open ever so slightly she peeked through to make sure nothing was hiding behind it, before sticking her head through just enough to check the other side. Upon seeing that she was relatively safe she instead shifted her attention to the three lizards messing with the treasure chest.

Carefully raising her Hand Cannon and switching it to Burst fire she inched ever closer, hoping that they’d remain distracted with trying to open the chest.

“You sure this is going to work?” One of the lizards- (Holy shit these fuckers can talk!)

(Yeah, that’s uh… That’s a thing…) She agreed.

It took her a moment before she creeped out of the room and back into the hall.

“Uh, Decker?” She called, hoping he was listening.

“Yes, kind of in the middle of something, what do you need?” The gang lieutenant asked in a hurried tone.

“Um, these monsters aren’t sapient right? Because I heard them talking, and I’m not sure if that was programmed or if I’ve killed a group of living creatures.” She explained with just a hint of delayed trauma.

“For a given definition of sapient, yeah, but don’t worry about killing them; they’re all pretty much immortal and will respawn later.” Decker assured her. “Though be careful with that, they’re smarter than they look. Like a lot smarter than they should be for a second floor monster, which is part of what I’m looking into so if there’s nothing else…”

“I’ll let you get back to it.” She nodded, before taking a moment to calm herself down from that abyss she almost walked into.

(Eh, it’s not that big of a deal.) Her inner madness told her. (I mean they won’t be the first monsters we killed.)

“Yeah, but… that’s different.” She argued. “That Bloodhound was trying to kill us, and Decker’s summons were all hard light constructs.”

(See that’s what I mean, are these things any different?)

“Well they talk for one.”

(Meh, everything talks, it's just they don’t speak English or Spanish, so we don’t understand them.) Her inner sociopath pointed out.

(Look this isn’t really something we need to worry about right now.) Her inner logic told them. (What matters right now is getting to the next safe room so we can leave the dungeon. The monsters are immortal similar to the DMs so let’s just knock this out as quickly as possible.)

“Right, right.” She agreed half-heartedly, before slowly pushing the door open once more. “Let’s do this then…”

With the lizard people in sight, and still with their backs turned towards her, she crept into the room as quietly as she could before running forward and unleashing a one-two burst of electricity at them. And though this wasn’t enough to shatter them it was enough to scatter them while causing the middle most one to topple into the chest.

She quickly changed her firing mode and zapped the two that had been thrown to the sides before they could get back up, shattering both of them before delivering a kick to the one in front of her.

With the other two dead, and forced onto the ground the last lizard began whimpering as it put its arms over its head, causing her to freeze before she could deliver the last fatal blow.

“Pwease no mores!” The lizard cried curling into a ball.

“Ah, shit…” (This is just like with Elizabeth…) She realized, knowing without a doubt that she was in the wrong here.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry I-” The lizard grabbed her outstretched hand before pulling her into a headbut and then tackling her onto the ground.

“Shit- fucking- hell!” She cursed, just barely managing to catch the lizard’s hands before it could drive a knife through her neck.

Struggling not to let her arms give out she eventually managed to shift the angle of the lizard’s stab so that it would impact the ground next to her head instead of her. Thus leaving her free to give it an elbow to the face, knocking it off of her and just far enough that she didn’t actually care if it wasn’t far enough to safely zap.

One bolt of lightning later and she was all alone without anything else trying to kill her.

“Fuck…” She gasped falling on her back. “That was… fuck…”

Both of the voices in her head were quiet and she was extremely grateful for that as she slowly got her pounding heart under control. Eventually though, by mustering up what determination she had left, she did manage to pick herself off of the ground. “Right, so… the lizard people are assholes who can’t be trusted… Noted…”

Figuring that she didn’t want to leave the room empty handed she made her way to the treasure chest and opened it to find another lizard inside.

“Shit!” She gasped, leaping back as fast as she could before zapping the chest with the last bolt in her clip on one hand and then every bolt in the other clip after it finished reloading. “Is… is it dead?”

Carefully creeping up to the chest she found it empty save for a small pile of gold coins and a large tooth of some kind.

“Fuck this floor…” She groaned, leaning against the chest.

With no small amount of exhaustion she went through the room and gathered whatever bits and bobbles the lizards had dropped as well as the chest’s contents before making her way back to the room where she first encountered the lizards.

Briefly she eyed the door leading her back to the break room before shaking her head and continuing ever deeper into the dungeon as she reloaded both of her Hand Cannons and checking her COMP. “Damn, down to sixteen power already… thought it’d last a bit longer than that…”

(Well we did spam it on that one pretending to be a mimic.) Her inner madness reminded her.

(Mm, even then at the rate we’re going we’re spending about a point of power for every two lizards we… deal with.) Her inner reason pointed out. (Assuming we keep up at that rate, we’ll likely be in the single digits by the end of this floor. Which likely means this is the only floor we’re going to be able to clear…)

“Fuck, I thought we’d get further than that…” She frowned.

(No we never did direct resources into really fixing our power issues since we put so much more effort into building our COMP’s memory capacity.) Her inner logic explained.

(Hey, that memory will come in handy when we’re upgrading all of our programs and shit.) Her inner passion argued.

(Perhaps but we didn’t put much effort in making our Hand Cannons efficient enough to last the short term, nor did we build a backup weapon for if we run out of power mid fight.) Her inner reason continued. (Both of which are likely to bite us given how much power we’re burning so close to Halloween.)

She couldn’t help but grimace at that point. “Right, and given where we’re at now, we might just barely be at full power by then if we left the dungeon now, but that’s only if we quit mid-floor. Which would probably screw Decker over enough that he won’t want to owe us that favor…”

(Well, if worst comes to worst we’ve got our power armor back at base and all of our sweet fighting skills from Izzy and Ying.) Her inner Madness pointed out optimistically.

(...)

“Izzy can kick our ass.” She admitted, stopping in front of the door to the next room. “Meaning if our power armor and hand cannons both run out mid-fight we’re fucked, since I doubt she can go round for round with a dozen of those Bloodhound things.”

(Right… so… melee dakka?)

“Add it to the list.” She sighed, as she pushed the doors open just enough to peek through and then immediately pulling her head back before the lizards could hit her with the stones they were throwing.

“Okay, so they know I’m here.” She nodded, switching one of her hand cannons to Sonic and immediately regretting the extra unit of power the switch caused. “Why again does switching ammo cost power?”

(The bits that let us project different elements get a slight power surge whenever we switch between them, so to avoid having the whole thing blow it’s rigged to drain whatever is left in the chamber to keep from overfilling the battery.) Her inner (Idiot)/(genius) explained. (It’s honestly an easy fix that we could probably knock out in a few hours.)

“Good to know.” She told herself before kicking the door open and immediately firing a sonic blast to stop any of the stones they were throwing before following up with a couple bolts of lighting thus sending the quartet of lizards scattering. Or rather sending the three who weren’t stunned by the bolt that hit them scattering.

She quickly fired the last bolt from the Hand Cannon set to electric, shattering the lizard as her cannon began the reloading process.

While this happened two of the kobolds rushed her, and she raised her sound cannon to blast them both, only for one of the kobolds to jump and use the other as a springboard to leap at her.

Reacting more on reflex than intent she managed to catch the flying lizard with a quick shot of her cannon, sending it flying in the opposite direction. Unfortunately because she’d been aiming high this did nothing to stop the lizard who’d gone low as it stabbed her in the thigh with a knife.

“Fuck!” She cursed before shattering it with a freshly loaded bolt of lightning. “¡Pinche largarto!”

Hearing footsteps clattering behind her, she glanced over her shoulder before aiming at the lizard trying to kick her while she was down and zapping it in the face, causing the dungeon monster to explode into a swarm of pixels.

Frowning her eyes darted to the last lizard as it picked itself off of the ground, before shooting it as quickly as she had the one before it.

“Shit…” She cursed looking down at her leg and the knife still sticking out of it. “That can’t be good…”

(It isn’t but at the very least it doesn’t seem to be bleeding so, despite being the worst idea in any other scenario in the current one your best bet might be to…)

Nodding in understanding she gripped the knife before taking a couple of quick breaths and yanking it out as quick as she could while looking in the opposite direction.

She bit her lip as she glanced at where her wound should be before sighing in relief as again despite the sharp pain still emitting from the spot there was no actual blood or cut.

“I guess we should be thankful they don’t do bleed damage…” She tried to laugh, while suppressing just how badly that could’ve gone if she hadn’t shot the airborne lizard first.

(While these injuries may hurt, they aren’t causing any long-term physical damage.) Her inner logic pointed out. (Given how bad any deaths would look on them, in all likelihood injuries in the dungeon cause an increasing amount of pain until eventually knocking you out and then ceasing upon our exit.)

“If we’re lucky.” She frowned, rubbing at the spot where she could still feel a phantom pain if not anywhere near as badly as when the knife was actually in her leg.

With her mobility restored and only a series of faint aches to show for the damage she’d taken, she took a few moments to collect the loot dropped by the various lizard monsters before making her way through the exit and on to the next room.

(Have you guys noticed we aren’t getting any mana potions?) Her inner madness asked after a moment.

“Yeah, we’ve got like five health potions but no blue ones.” She nodded, taking one of the red vials out. “I guess it’s because aside from our COMP we don’t really have a resource bar for them to fill. And even if they did I’m not really willing to pour a random power infused liquid onto the core piece of our entire kit.”

(Yes, as is I’m more than a little on the fence about drinking the healing potions regardless of how much they’re supposed to help.) Her inner caution admitted.

“Which is why I haven’t taken one, despite the surplus probably fixing all of these aches and pains.” She agreed, rubbing at the pain in her leg and glad that it wasn’t growing worse with each step on the leg. (Making it easier to ignore.)

(Meh, if we take many more hits we’re going to have to suck it up and down a vial.) Her inner madness warned her. (Well, that or run away, which… I’d rather not do when Decker says he’ll owe us a favor.)

“Yeah…” She sighed, considering the gang lieutenant’s favor. “Depending on what we use it for, we might be able to get back up at the hospital, help finding Tommy’s attacker, or who knows what else.”

(Money?) Her inner greed suggested. (Money would be good, and don’t even have to tell him anything about us.)

(A plus to be sure.) Her inner logic agreed. (But let’s actually see how far we go before we start counting on that favor.)

“Yeah, we’ve still got… however many rooms are left on this floor.” She nodded, before slowly pushing the door open and then even slower looking out from it.

(Alright, so three lizards…) She remembered the other three rooms, and how in each one she’d come across four of the dungeon creatures. (Meaning there’s a fourth one hiding somewhere.) A quick glance assured her that it wasn’t hiding behind the door. (Then where is it?)

(Perhaps it’s hiding in one of those odd pits at the edge of the room.)

(Yeah, that makes sense, but which one are they hiding in?)

Remembering her COMP’s scanner she readied it before firing off a pulse.

“What was that?” One of the lizards asked, looking around as it somehow detected the Scanner.

Slowly closing the door before they could notice it was open she glanced down at her COMP and saw that one of the room’s corners had a blip that was more than likely one of the lizard things.

“Alright, now we know where the last one is.” She nodded. “Just got to keep an eye on that corner to make sure it doesn’t get the drop on us.”

She moved to put her COMP away, before remembering something and double checking her programs on the little machine as a plan came together in her head. “Yeah, that might cost a bit of power, but it should make sure we get through the next room uninjured.”

Once more she pushed the door open before checking to see how far the lizards were from the door. (Mm, dammit they’re just out of range, so I can’t attack them directly… Going to have to go for a distraction instead.)

She rapped her knuckles against the door to get the lizards’ attention, causing all three of them to turn towards her just in time to use her headset’s eye function to set off an Energy Burst (Light) just a few feet in front of them.

All three lizards screamed as the flash of light caught them all in the face blinding them, and she rushed in as quickly as she could as the trio of lizards stumbled into each other before unleashing a series of shots from her Hand Cannon pixelating all of them.

Down to just the lizard hiding in the pit she raised her cannon towards it and began inching towards the pit so that she could blast the dungeon creature the moment it came into sight.

“Wait, where’s the lizard?” She frowned, finding the pit to be empty as she double checked her mini-map and found that yes the dungeon monster was supposed to be directly…(on top of me.)

Her head shot up just in time to watch the lizard grab onto her and drag her face first into the pit, before something painful stabbed into her back once more.

“Stupid… fucking…” She spat sand out of her mouth before taking a swing at the lizard and having it jump out of the way, thankfully removing its knife as it did so.

Forcing herself to sit up she aimed her hand cannons at the dungeon monster before yelling “¡Chingar tu madre!” as she proceeded to blast the lizard with a mix of sound and lightning, shattering it into pixels even as it turned the sand in front of her into glass.

Call her paranoid but after once more getting jumped out of nowhere by one of these lizards she found her eyes darting all over the room in case there was a fifth one hiding somewhere.

After two full minutes of finding nothing, she let herself lean back against the edge of the sand pit as she once more groaned, “Fuck this floor…”

Once her heart finally began to calm down she found herself struggling to get back to her feet, though she did eventually manage, and did a quick scan of herself. (Overall integrity… Oof, eight out of twenty… That’s not very good.)

(No it isn’t.) Her inner logic agreed. (If we assume the boss is twice as strong as the other monsters on this floor we might not be able to beat it in our current condition.)

(Unless we drink one of the health potions.) Her inner madness suggested. (I mean we might not have enough power to finish out the third floor, but if we take the potion we could finish out this one at the very least.)

(Are we sure that’s a good idea?) Her inner caution asked as she pulled out one of said potions. (We still don’t know what’s in those beyond liquid Madness.)

(Healing Madness? Honestly, as long as it patches us up without consequences does it really matter?)

(How do we know there are no consequences? There could be and the gamer’s guild could just be covering them up so people keep coming to their dungeon!)

She eyed the vial thoughtfully as she considered both points.

(I thought I was supposed to be the inner paranoia?)

(Then why aren’t you more worried about this?)

(Because I’m also the inner risk taker and I say this is worth the risk!)

(But we don’t know the risk!)

She made her decision.