Gamer Guild’s Dungeon (1st Floor)

--- Josh ---

“Take the Chains.” He told her. “Since the whole point of this is to have fun and you want something more active than support, they should give you something decent enough to work with.”

“Alright, just give me a second to set my character.” Roxanne nodded, walking over to the chains.

“Uh, what do you mean?” He asked, watching as the chain evaporated under Roxanne’s touch before a translucent blue screen appeared in front of her and the chains reappeared wrapped around her forearm.

“Oh, each weapon has its own skill tree, and when you start the dungeon you get a few skill points to help you out.” The gamer teen explained as she began to mess with the screen. “From there I can unlock new abilities by doing things, while getting bonuses based on my chosen weapon.”

“I see…” Ying nodded as she crossed her arms in thought. “And what exactly earns you these bonuses for the chain?”

“I get some from dealing damage, but I get most of it from crowd control stuff like stunning enemies or moving them around.” Roxanne elaborated before vanishing her screen with a swipe of her hand. “Alright, I’ve set myself up with Chain Pull, Chain Spin One, and Wrapped Blows.

“I have no idea what any of that means.” He admitted freely, because while he had a few ideas of what they meant, he wasn’t sure he trusted those theories in actual context.

“Chain Pull let’s me pull an enemy towards me. Chain Spin is a series of skills that boosts my damage and range for a combo in exchange for having to build up beforehand. And Wrapped Blows lets me wrap my chain around my hands to boost my damage in exchange for dropping my range advantage.” Roxanne explained, listing each of her skills. “Since I’m going with the whole ‘active fighter’ thing I’m building for something that can handle solo fighting a bit better, rather than something that has to lock me down with my opponents.”

“That’s fair.” He nodded, since it’s not like he understood the topic well enough to judge. Though he could approve of what little he did.

“So with our… ‘characters’ set, I’m assuming that means we can attempt the actual dungeon now?” Ying asked, gesturing with her head towards a set of doors opposite the ones they entered from.

“Yeah, the first floor is the easiest though, so don’t expect to push your powers too hard.” Roxanne warned them as they gathered around the door forward.

“And what is the… ‘theme’ of this floor?” Ying questioned as he pushed the doors open.

“Rats.”

Ying blinked before slowly turning to the other girl. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Uh, rats are an RPG classic and outside of special events, are almost always the first floor of the Gamer Guild Dungeons.” Roxanne chuckled sheepishly. “It’s kind of an RPG tradition at this point.”

“Right.” Ying said in a voice that did nothing to hide her pain. “But why rats?”

“They work as both a swarm creature and a giant animal enemy. Plus if you shift the sizes you can probably get either infiltrator or scrapper units out of them, and that’s all before taking into account human-animal hybridizations where you could probably fit in magic users or actual rogues. Oh, and because of what they are, it’d also be thematically fitting for them to use disease or poison, which could be really nightmarish in a swarm scenario.”

Both girls turned to look at him with equally surprised expressions.

“What?” He frowned.

“I wasn’t expecting… that is all.” Ying admitted.

“Yeah,” Roxanne nodded, as they started down the tunnel. “Like I said the rat level is uh, it’s mostly tradition at this point and there’s only really little rats and big rats since this is kind of the tutorial level. I uh, I don’t think the GM even considered using them like that.”

“Oh…” He blinked, feeling a bit of heat in his face as the teens and wolf all stared at him. “I uh, I read a lot of fantasy novels?”

“No, it’s uh, it’s fine.” Roxanne assured him. “Heck, those were actually pretty solid ideas for a real Rat dungeon instead of a tutorial one.”

“Careful about giving the gang leader ideas.” Ying grinned.

“Sadly it wouldn’t be the first time…” He admitted, figuring that while DeSade wasn’t necessarily a gang leader the fact that he was legally a Dark Lord -he’d shown him the paperwork- meant that DeSade was technically a crime boss.

“Huh, you two are… interesting. You know that?” Roxanne informed them with a mildly mad grin.

“You’ve no idea.” Ying smirked back.

“Is… this it?” He couldn’t help but ask as they came to a large room with only a rat in it.

One, single, regular sized rat.

(I don’t know why, but I’m kind of disappointed here…)

“Yeah, this is it.” Roxanne nodded. “I know you guys are decently experienced so which of us should…”

“Pix.” He called, figuring that unless the rest of the dungeon was this (disappointing) then this was probably the only thing she could handle by herself. (And it's important to make her feel like she’s helping.)

Giving him a nod, the little fairy jumped off of Wolf’s back and flew toward the rat with magic building in her hands. The rat just barely looked up before Pix vaporized it with one of her zaps in an anti-climactic manner that fit his general feelings towards this room.

“Um, the rest of the dungeon is going to be better than this… right?” He asked, picking up a blue vial that had dropped when Pix killed the rat. (This must be one of those potions Roxanne was talking about.)

“Yes.” Roxanne told him tersely as she walked past him. “This is just a tutorial room for people who don’t know how to fight. Everything just gets harder from here on out.”

“Good.” He smiled, not sure what he’d said to annoy the gamer teen.

“If a single rat is the tutorial then what does one of the actual fights look like?” Ying asked, pretending not to notice the other girl’s mood despite giving him a shrug at his questioning glance.

“Well, the next one scales with party size.” Roxanne answered. “And since we’ve got a fair number of party members the swarm will probably have… twenty-five rats in it.”

“That is a fair number.” (For a game anyway)

He knew for a fact that an actual rat swarm in a space this big would have significantly larger numbers in an established colony.

(Fangs and claws scratched across the cave floors as the Corrupted Vermin fled the flames of his broken lantern. As he lit the Corrupted Corpse they spawned from aflame.)

Shaking his head, he pushed past the sound of skittering rats and turned his attention to the far less dangerous rats that Ying had already stepped up to combat.

“Uh, are you sure you can take all of them by yourself?” Roxanne asked, as sparks began to dance across the draconian teen’s fingers.

“Oh, they’ll be no problem at all.” Ying assured her, before letting loose a veritable thunderstorm of lightning upon the swarm of rats, causing each one to explode in a burst of lights as she waved her hand across them.

“You alright?” He asked, once Ying had finished, knowing that despite being an Incarnate using her magic continuously like that would still take a toll on her reserves.

“Yeah.” Ying nodded, flexing her hands. “I can probably do that three or four more times before I run out of magic.”

“Heh, most people don’t… do that.” Roxanne chuckled nervously.

“Hmm, truthfully I don’t care for restraint if I can help it.” Ying admitted with a shrug as he began to pick through everything that was dropped by the rat swarm.

(Couple more potions… I’m guessing blue is magic while red is health and…) He frowned before picking up a pair of oversized rat skulls. “I didn’t think these constructs would leave body parts.” The fact they did had several unsettling meanings in his experience.

“Oh, uh, they’re loot drops.” Roxanne explained as she shook off her stupor. “Each floor has its own and you can trade them in at the treasure room for prizes. Same goes if you find any gold coins, though you can’t trade those for floor specific items.”

“Hmm.” (Well, that’s not as bad as I was thinking.)

“Out of curiosity, how big is this dungeon?” Ying asked once he’d collected their gains and they’d started towards the next room.

“Um, kind of depends on what you mean.” Roxanne shrugged. “The dungeon itself has seven floors, while each floor gets larger and more complex the further down you get. This one only has five rooms and is a straight shot, but the next one is seven with a couple of side rooms, and the one after that has nine and a false branch.”

“Meaning the final floor has seventeen rooms with multiple twists to it.” Ying figured, doing the same math as him.

“Er, twenty-one actually.” Roxanne corrected. “Once you hit the fourth floor each floor gets three new rooms instead of two. It’s part of that whole difficulty curve thing I was telling you about, since that’s supposed to be the line between tourists and actual Masks as far as skill goes.”

“Hm, that’s something I’ll have to remember.” Ying admitted. “Though I am curious to see how we compare to actual Masks.”

“Does it use actual Combat Rank comparison or something else?” He sincerely doubted the Dungeon could output even an A Rank threat let alone an S Rank one, but given his experience with Madness he felt it was best to double check. (Even if she’d probably lie about it.)

“Um, each floor is supposed to be equal to a sub-rank, with this floor representing mid-F Rank.” Roxanne answered, seemingly surprised by his question. “Though, uh, the actual difficulty is a bit higher than the threat level due to everything being an endurance run.”

“That makes sense.” (If every room has a fight, and every fight takes an average of five minutes including the bosses and lower levels, then completing the dungeon would take about three hours excluding walking time which probably adds another hour. Meaning that in order to actually beat the Dungeon you’d have to complete a four hour marathon of running and fighting.)

Something he doubted he could handle without Pix or some kind of healing pushing his stamina. (Though maybe that’s the point of the healing potions if they also restore stamina.)

“I wonder if this is what a New York rat looks like?” Ying joked as they came to the next room, where a rat the size of a large dog stood in the center of the room.

“Eh, I’ve seen bigger.” He shrugged, as Wolf and Pix both nodded alongside him. Though that didn’t stop Ying or Roxanne from giving him an incredulous look. “What?”

“I, uh, I don’t think I want to meet the rats you have.” Roxanne confessed, looking mildly ill.

“Probably not.” He agreed before glancing at Wolf. “You want to take this one?”

His canine companion gave him an excited yip before striding forward as Pix jumped off of her, switching from Wolf’s shoulders to his.

“Uh, is this a good idea?” Roxanne asked. “I mean I get that she’s not a regular Wolf but that thing looks a little bigger than her so…”

“She’ll be fine.” Given how she’d said she’d seen bigger as well as the fact that she likely came from a place full of Anima mutated animals, he was sure she could handle this on her own.

A sentiment that was proven accurate as wind danced around Wolf for a moment, before she lunged forward in a powerful strike that instantly shattered the Construct.

With her tail wagging Wolf picked something off of the ground before coming back to him and dropping another Rat Skull at his feet.

“Good girl.” He told her bending down to scratch between her ears as he pocketed the skull.

“Right… let’s uh, let’s just continue on.” Roxanne sighed for some reason.

“Is something wrong?” He asked her, following her down the next tunnel.

“Er, not really. Just uh, just a bit surprised by how well you guys are handling this for your first run.” The other teen admitted.

“I doubt we’re doing that well.” He frowned, knowing for a fact that his Ma, Miss Edna, Rogers, and DeSade not one would have to even break stride to walk through what they’d handled thus far. (Well unless one of them decided to show off anyway.)

“Oh, I’ve seen people do better, but I’ve never been on a party that just steam rolls it like this.” Roxanne explained. “Feels like I’m barely contributing.”

“Well… this is just the first floor. There’s no reason you can’t help us on the rest.” He reminded her.

“Yeah, but…” Roxanne’s face scrunched up. “Wait. I just remembered this tunnel has a hidden enemy, that’s supposed to jumpscare you when-” A rat lunged at him from the side and swiped it out of the air before biting the constructs head off and shattering it in his hand. “-that happens… I’m not the only one who saw that right?”

“Saw what?” Ying asked, glancing at him curiously.

From his shoulder Pix gave the Draconian teen a shrug, which he figured meant he hadn’t done anything out of the norm for him.

“He just…” Roxanne inhaled deeply before sighing it all out. “Nevermind, this next room has a treasure chest in it. It always has ten coins you can use at the end of floor store.”

Like the gamer teen said, they swiftly came across a wooden chest with a gold lock on the front in the center of an otherwise empty room.

“Do we need a key or something for this?” He asked, thinking that if locked chests were going to be a norm here, he probably should’ve brought the lockpicking set his Ma got him for his last birthday.

“No, these locks are just for show.” Roxanne told him. “That said, the ones with actual padlocks on them need a key found somewhere else on the floor. Though their treasures are usually worth the extra effort.”

Nodding along, he lifted the lid off of the chest before finding ten or so gold coins inside of the chest. “You said there’s a store for these things.”

“Yeah, though what they have and how much all of it costs varies floor to floor.” Roxanne warned. “Especially those treasure trades you get from the floor drop. Each of those are floor unique, though the treasures further down may be worth the coins you can trade the treasures for.”

“Yeah, that’s about how a Deviant Market works.” He was sure, despite having only really been to two Deviant stores. One of which he’d technically worked at while helping Miss Edna.

“Hmm… You said this floor only has five rooms, correct?” Ying asked as they continued on.

“Oh, yeah, uh, the next room will be the Boss Room.” Roxanne nodded. “Usually they’re a stronger version of whatever monster is the floor theme, though a couple of them do have special abilities or gimmicks that make them a pain.”

“And the boss of the rat floor is?”

“The Rat King.” Roxanne answered. “He’s honestly not that strong but the fact that he can summon more rats to fight can make him a pain if you’re not used to fighting or multi-tasking.”

“I see.”

“Does he have the minions summoned before the fight or during?” He asked, reaching into his backpack for his bow.

“Uh, there’s a slight delay but he’ll usually summon two of the bigger rats once you start the fight and start summoning the little ones once you beat one of those.” Roxanne explained. “They’ll all stick around even once we kill the king, so best bet would be to have someone pin down the big rats without killing them, while someone else kills the king.”

“Basic Puppeteer protocols.” He nodded, pulling out his bow and a few arrows as they entered the boss room where a large rat with a crown and scepter sat upon a throne made from various bits of garbage and sitting atop a series of stone steps.

“Alright, we’ve got a moment to figure out who’s taking what role, as long as we don’t get too close or attack he won’t-”

An arrow pierced the rat king’s head before two more ripped through its chest cavity, shattering it before it could summon any of its puppets.

Roxanne just stared at the lights as a skull fell onto the throne.

“Surprised you didn’t go for three head shots.” Ying admitted.

“That target was a bit small for that, especially if it tried to dodge at the last moment.” He argued.

“How did you do that?!” Roxanne practically shouted.

“Um, I aimed and fired?” He answered, not entirely sure what the other teen was asking him.

“But, but, I mean-” Roxanne stared at his bow for a moment. “That’s a real bow.”

“Yeah?” He nodded.

“And you hit…” Roxanne weakly pointed at the throne, before shaking her head. “Sorry… Um, the Dungeon Bows have an aim assist, that uh… it doesn’t work against inactive bosses.”

“So the GM didn’t account for someone being able to make that shot naturally.” Ying realized.

“Yeah… that.”

“That’s a bit of an oversight.” He frowned, wondering how the dungeon handled magic from outside of itself given how many Arcane must’ve run through the Dungeon by now.

“Yeah it is…” Roxanne agreed, before giving a weak laugh. “It’s even worse once you realize there’s a disruption field that causes magic and bullets to curve just enough to always miss.”

“Then why didn't it affect the arrows?” He asked, his curiosity about the magical coming to the forefront.

“It uh, it’s some physics thing about larger masses draining more energy, and most spells being made of energy.” Roxanne explained weakly.

“What about if an Arcane or a psychic uses their powers to throw projectiles?”

“Disruption field affects the whole room,” Roxanne gestured, making her way towards the throne. “If there’s enough mass it’ll actually syphon speed until the projectiles fall exactly on the first step up to the throne.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m guessing Jon is the first person to actually use a real bow inside of the dungeon.” Ying figured.

“Uh-huh.” Roxanne nodded before sighing. “Let’s… let’s just go to the stairs. They’ll be in a tunnel behind the throne.”

“So these go to the next floor, right?” He asked, eyeing a set of doors similar to the Dungeon entrance as he pocketed the rat skull.

“Sort of,” Roxanne told him with a so-so gesture. “Behind the door is a treasure room where we get a prize for completing the floor. Behind that prize is the actual stairs that will lead us to the Between Floors room, where we can buy items from the merchant, leave the dungeon altogether, or head down to the next floor.”

Pushing the doors open he found himself in a room with three large chests each with an emblem on the front, standing between him and a large tunnel leading into a darkness he couldn’t see past.

“So, do we open all three chests or is there a trick here?” He asked, eyeing the emblems of a sword and shield, a shirt with padded shoulders, and a large potion vial.

“If you took a class you’d get a pop up now telling you we can open one chest and that it’ll make the other two disappear.” Roxanne informed him, likely having cleared her own screen away already. “One has a weapon, one has an armor piece, and the last one has a couple of potions.”

“And would taking one of the weapons be the same as taking one of the guild’s infamous power-ups?” Ying asked, stepping into the room.

“A couple of them will have special abilities, but the power-up only applies to the class select weapons since most people need those to learn how to use said weapons.” Roxanne explained before eyeing him for some reason. “Which I doubt is a problem for any of you.”

“And is the prize random or?”

“There’s a bit of randomness, but they’re designed in a way that they’ll never spit out something you can’t use.” Roxanne elaborated. “Admittedly, it’s probably going to give me something I can use right now, rather than you guys can use since the Dungeon hasn’t seen enough of you to decide on proper loot drops.”

(Right, Madness likes to make things semi-sapient…) He frowned, remembering the times that would bite him rather than help him.

“The armor chest usually has like one of five things depending on which floor you’re on. Though both it and the weapons chest will sometimes drop something from the next floor if you’re lucky.” The other teen continued unaware of his uneasiness. “And then we’ve got the potions chest which has a random number of potions of usually different kinds, though it’ll never have more than six in total.”

“So knowing all of that, which one would should we grab?” Roxanne asked, finishing her explanation.

“The weapon chest likely isn’t too valuable right now outside of powering up Roxanne, and maybe yourself if the dungeon noted your bow.” Ying began listing. “The armor may come in handy but at the same time between my healing factor, Pix’s healing, and your own jacket a first floor chest may not be worth it compared to the weapon or potions.”

“Uh, actually most of the armor comes with special abilities that make it easier to move, sneak, or defend.” Roxanne cut in. “In fact it’s almost always an accessory with a defensive power rather than true armor.”

“Good to know.” Ying nodded, before turning to him. “So which should we open?”

“Uh, why are you asking me?” He couldn’t help but to ask a bit nervously.

“Mm, same reason as before.” Ying smirked with a teasing grin.

“Yeah, from the looks of it he’s the party leader, so this seems like the kind of decision he should make.” Roxanne agreed.

A quick glance towards Pix and Wolf revealed neither of them would be any help, (in fact their amused looks might even count as the opposite of helping.)

“Fine…” He sighed. “In that case let’s open-