When that was done he stood up. “Alright, dungeon conquering time.” He almost skipped with joy as he entered the first room. “Ugh, same puzzle as last time.” He mumbled before grabbing his party and jumping over the pit.

“Is it this way?” He was in the third room, the room where that crystal used to be stored under, the room that had six mineshafts jutting out of it. He disappears, no, not disappeared. I can track his movement on the dungeon HUD. He’s moving down each corridor with incredible speed. I can’t switch cameras fast enough to keep up with him. He reappears with his party. “That way.” They begin to follow behind him.

The first pocket dimension he enters is a field of prairie grass. He walks through it slowly, constantly on guard for an ambush. The next is an arctic wasteland. The next a volcanoes hellscape. He arrives at the swamp, it’s the type of swamp you’d see on a Magic the Gathering swampland. I can see the gears turning in his head as he and his party pick up their walking pace. Their speed walk evolves into a jog and eventually, they are sprinting through each pocket dimension in only a few minutes.

He reaches another prairie dimension and stops. “It’s not a circle, is it?”

His mage shakes her head. “The magical signatures are all unique.”

“So it’s a really long chain…. GIrls buff me up!”

His harem forms a semi-circle around him and begins to cast spells. “H̸a̷s̵t̶e̴”̶ ̵“̸G̴r̶e̴a̷t̷e̴r̸ ̵H̴a̶s̶t̷e̴.̷”̵ ̵“̴G̶o̸d̸l̶y̴ ̴H̵a̵s̴t̴e̶.̷”̵ ̶“̴O̴h̸ ̴G̸o̷d̵s̴ ̴a̶b̴o̷v̵e̸ ̴g̸r̷a̷n̸t̴ ̵t̷h̶i̸s̸ ̷H̸e̵r̷o̵ ̴t̴h̸e̶ ̴p̷o̷w̷e̵r̷ ̷o̷f̶ ̶s̸p̷e̵e̷d̶.̵”̴ THe ninja wordlessly casts speed buffs through sign language like gestures. This continues on until he waves his arm. “That should be enough.” Then he disappears.

He reappears in the middle of the demihuman village. Dude just broke the cannonball record in under a second. A bear demihuman sees the Hero and pauses. “Can I help--” He is cut off by a punch to the chest. Hiro looks at the dead body then looks at the terrified crowd of demihumans around him. “Weird.” Like a frat bro, he feigns a punch at a nearby demihuman who falls to their knees and cowers in fear.

“They aren’t even combat trained.” He rubs his chin and begins to pace. “If only I brought Maggi with me. She’s smart, she'd know what’s going on.”

Until now I haven't had any combat in the dungeon. It was a war of attrition, or it should have been. This monstrous man is too OP. A crying woman comes to weep over the bear man’s corpse.

“That’s it!” He points at her as he says that. He continues to hold that hand out as he walks closer to her. “Ma’am where is the core?”

“Why? Why did you kill him?”

“No leads here. I’ll try at the tavern. Ma’am, where is the tavern?”

“We don’t have one, we are just a poor village. Please, leave me alone!”

He rubs his hands together then screams at the sky. “I love it Anon! When did you teach these slaves to act as an actual village? A mystery story inside a dungeon? I love it!”

He walked into one of the houses that the slaves had set up. It was shabby, the furniture was definitely made by an amateur, but it functioned. Hiro approaches a chest of drawers. With one kick he turned it to splinters. He dug through the rubble. “No clues here, just clothes.” He turned to the clay vase on the counter. He grabbed it and chucked it at the wall. It exploded into clay fragments.

He went from house to house destroying random furniture until he was approached by an older mouse demihuman. “Please sir stop. We will tell you where the core is. Please stop destroying our homes.”

HIro looks downtrodden by the man's words. “This feels like I just brute forced the solution. No! I will not accept it. Everyone go back to your positions. I want this to be an actual mystery.”

The mouse elder shakes in fear “What do you mean?” In complete confusion.

I call out. “You heard Hiro, back to your positions from two minutes ago.” The demihumans walk backward with awkward stiff movements.

I zoom in as far as I can on the mousy elder. Keeping my voice below a whisper incase Hiro hears. “Here is the script….”

Hiro gives them a few moments to prepare then begins the journey again with reckless abandonment. “You! Ma’am have you seen a dungeon core around here? I know this is just a quaint village in the middle of nowhere.” I can feel him winking at the camera in his head. He really believes that this is a big drama production. “But entertain the idea that someone might have brought a powerful artifact to this rural town.”

“Core? What’s that?”

“It’s the heart of a dungeon, a conduit for the dungeon master to change it.”

The slave panics. From behind her head, I feed her the next line “How can I know if I’ve seen it if I don’t know what it looks like.” She repeats, her stress beginning to show in her voice.

“Ah, good point ma’am. It should look to be about a crystal ball, one foot by one foot, on a pedestal that is atop a four-foot-tall square frustum.”

“Oh! The statue thing. The generous Lord Anon brought it to town. He told us to bury it.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, the menfolk carried it off.”

“Thank you for your help young citizens! In return, I will grant you one wish.”

Since when do traveling heroes grant wishes? Is he some kind of demon in disguise?

“Yes, anything you wish for, fair maiden. Gold, power, freedom from slavery.” He winks at her. “Of course, after I free you you’ll be expected to join my party.” The slave girl looks shocked. “Don’t worry, you’ll fit right in. You’re a cute girl after all.”

“I-I-I’m good.” She stutters out. Hiro’s face goes sad for an uncomfortably long second before he bounces back to his chipper demeanor. “Okay. Well, I’m off to finish this puzzle. With the power of friendship!” He adds his catchphrase.

He finished digging out the core. Throwing his shovel aside he taps his adventurer card to it. It glows and he looks up with an overly satisfied, almost lewd, look on his face. “Well, that was fun. I’m going to use space magic to teleport out now. Thanks, Anon.”

“You’re wel--” He’s gone in an instant. I breathe a sigh of relief.