[Short Story] The Simple Dungeon

Not all dungeons are made equal. The cores are just magic crystals with a soul shoved in them, after all. So yeah, sometimes a dungeon ends up, not slow, but direct?

While in school, Jeffrey’s teachers had stepped around the subject. It isn’t really polite. Now Jeffrey has to deal with it. The dungeon isn’t even a problem, per se.

Before Jeffrey had gotten summoned in, they had already gotten some work done. A simple hallway with a room at the end containing their core. Oh, and three wolves in the hallway.

A functional dungeon to have been made in the first few days. Then the dungeon repeated things. Well, the hallway did come off the left side of the first room, but yeah, three more wolves.

That worked. Not much you can do this early on, anyway. Besides, early on, a dungeon isn’t awake enough to do much else. Besides, at this point, some local farm boy had found the dungeon and so people had started to come by to kill the wolves.

And the next bit of expansion broke the pattern a little, with the hallway coming off the opposite side of the last room. So the right side. Still, just a hallway with three wolves and a room. It is at this point that Jeffrey tried to shift things. “What about putting the wolves in the room instead of the hallway?”

That, uh, sorta worked. The dungeon did put the wolves in that last room. All nine of the wolves.

It stayed this way for a day as Jeffrey tried everything he could do to get his dungeon to revert the changes. Suffice it to say, this is a bit too challenging for the locals. Thankfully, the dungeon did end up reverting the change.

And added another hallway plus room. This time sticking to the last, going to the right. Then another set, except the dungeon, went extra fancy! And what that means is that the hallway goes straight off the back of the previous room.

Jeffrey, “How about, well, something other than a hallway and then a room?”

The dungeon seemed to think that was a good idea as it suddenly cut out all the space between the rooms and the hallways. This left the dungeon as one giant room. The locals didn’t like this either.

Jeffery took another day to plead with the dungeon to go back to how things were. That happened, though the dungeon did add on two more hallway and room combos. Right, then left.

In fact, Jeffery leaves the dungeon alone for a month or so as he flies off to confer with his teachers. Within that time period, the dungeon made seven more sections going left, straight, left, straight three times, and finally left.

Jeffrey asked and pleaded for guidance. His teacher shrugged, after all, it was a dungeon fairy’s task to guide, not force. If the dungeon just wanted to spam wolves? Well, at least it isn’t the most destructive pattern to follow. Though everyone did admit, putting the wolves in the hallways is kinda weird.

They also questioned how random the dungeon seemed to be with its design. Well, not random. All dungeons are random to some extent, except they would have mazes, not a single random walk path. Though once Jeffrey got back and saw the recent expansion, the actual pattern behind it all was revealed.

This isn’t a random placement of rooms, but rather looked to be some form of a classical labyrinth. Though, to be certain, Jeffrey waited for another three rooms to be placed. Straight, right, and right again.

That confirmed it for him. Though, to Jeffrey, this was almost worse. At least when he thought it was random, it meant some thought. There are more than enough things with souls that could fall into a similar pattern that would make for a very boring dungeon.

And Jeffrey Did Not Want This.

Oh sure, he isn’t crazy enough to think his dungeon would become famous. But he wanted it! He craved it! Not expected, but desired and this dungeon would make it hard to get there. Jeffrey would have to work hard at influencing the dungeon!

All the while, the dungeon trundled along, placing hallways, rooms, and wolves in a repeating pattern. Which made it relatively popular in the local area. After all, fighting three wolves in a hallway only wide enough for two? Not that hard.

Jeffrey saw this, but ignored the fame. After all, good newb dungeons are everywhere. Plus, it isn’t like this is even that good at that. Easy fights that didn’t train made for bad intro dungeons. “Please! Get some other monsters!”

So the dungeon did. In particular, it brought in a bunch of rust monsters. This was not popular. Jeffrey pleaded, “No, not those! Please get rid of them!”

The dungeon didn’t mind the order and removed the rust monsters. Though, while Jeffrey was still stewing on ways to trick the dungeon into being interesting, it did add something new after the rooms progressed all the way back to the front right side of the dungeon. The dungeon changed out the regular wolves with some bigger, tougher breed of wolves.

Jeffrey wasn’t sure what kind of wolves they are, but that happened a lot. Dungeons that focused on a single monster tended to have what people called transitional monsters when moving to something more advanced. These new wolves, however, didn’t change the dungeon’s popularity.

After all, by the time a delver got to them, they would be more than ready to face them. If anything, this change simply made sure the next section of the dungeon didn’t become a cake walk. This change, to Jeffrey’s disappointment, did not mean the dungeon was about to form a new floor.

Jeffrey would spend weeks figuring out what to try to get the dungeon to do next. Remove the rooms? The wolves seemed to suddenly notice any fighting in what is now one long hallway. Widen the hallways? Similar result except they lined up with the room width and so resulted in one giant room.

It took a year of this back and forth before the dungeon had expanded rooms all the way to the front right and to the back, lined up with the first room. This is where the dungeon finally created a second floor. This involved a simple ramp down and away from the front, then halfway it had a small landing before continuing the ramp back towards the front.

Jeffrey is interested in this change before he realized it was simply another hallway down to another room. At least with this change, the dungeon is now placing the monsters in the rooms. Oh, and it fully upgraded the transitional wolves into full grown dire wolves. Which are wolves. Except dire.

Oh sure, the bone spikes made them look edgy and in Jeffrey’s mind, that could only help. Except dire animals? Yeah, they’re sort of a known thing. Not even seen as magical despite the fact that they technically are. The first group of farmers, or as Jeffrey makes sure to refer to the majority of the people coming to the dungeon, “delvers” to see the dire wolves laughed at them.

Not because they are funny, mind you. Rather, dire animals in general are seen as jackpots. For an animal that is only somewhat tougher, you get magic infused bones. Quite valuable!

Jeffrey took this in stride, though the laughing at first hit him very hard. Once he realized it was because of value instead of derision, well, he can handle that. Except he soon realized it wouldn’t be the draw he wanted.

See, the magic bones are valuable. To farmers. Oh sure, new adventurers would gladly hunt down a dire animal for funds. Except that’s only if they have to or there are additional rewards. It is instead farmers who had animals, especially those that do their own butchering, that are particularly interested in these new monsters.

After all, even if the bones are valuable, you have to extract them. Which when the meat is still just wolf meat? Well, you’re only getting the bones and that takes more effort to do cleanly. Which all adds up to effort that most adventurers don’t care for. While a bit of a stereotype, most don’t end up in the career path because they’re willing to put in the effort.

And so Jeffrey could only watch as the few adventurers that were in the area, hoping that something more would come along, left. Hope faded from him as his ideas became more extreme. “Make the spikes longer!”

After all, if more of the bone is outside, they wouldn’t have to cut as much! Except this just resulted in the total mana concentration being lower and the bones less valuable. Yeah, that drove the last of the local adventurers away and they didn’t come back once the change was reverted.

From there, Jeffrey fell into a loop of requesting one strange tweak after another. It got to where the dungeon became known for being highly erratic. If it isn’t for the fact that the dungeon would always revert the changes, even the farmers would have likely given up on the place.

Time passed and at the same point that the transitional wolves showed up on the first floor, a new transitional monster showed up on the second floor. This drove Jeffrey to fly back to his old school. Though instead of asking for help, he was there for the library.

Book after book, Jeffrey cheated with a fancy fae spell to comprehend the knowledge within. This threw him for a loop as he isn’t exactly prepared for that much knowledge to be shoved into his brain.

All the while, back at the dungeon, things progressed. Which mostly meant more hallways, rooms, and monsters. Right until it reaches the point that it goes down once again, forming the third floor. Except while Jeffrey is away, the dungeon managed to do something actually interesting. It made a shortcut.

Oh sure, dungeons the land over bad short cuts. Best a boss and boom, you suddenly could open a door on the first floor that brought you to right after that boss. This is different. The shortcut is just an open ramp down to the third floor. You didn’t need to beat previous floors to use it.

While not unheard of, generally is not a thing. It even attracted the attention of the adventurers guild for a hot second. After all, who cares if the early floors are lame if you can skip them?

Except, the new monster on the third floor instantly cools that attention. From dire wolves to alpha dire wolves. Which made it exactly like dire wolves, except slightly bigger and better at teamwork. In other words, more of the same, except harder to beat with hardly any more value.

Once Jeffrey got back, he tried to get the dungeon to change the spikes to crystal after something he saw in the library. This went about as well as expected, given all his past attempts. The crystal was too brittle and worth less than the bones.

This was too much for Jeffrey. At this point, he had to admit to himself. He had become a dungeon fairy to develop a famous dungeon. And this dungeon? It couldn’t even talk back to him! Enough was enough!

It is difficult, but one thing he had found in his library trawling was that you can break the bond with a dungeon. This is especially true of the dungeon hadn’t developed enough to accept the bond themselves. After all, a one-way bond isn’t complete.

So Jeffrey went through the effort needed and accepted the downsides. Stuff like a damaged soul for a while and never being able to become the fairy for another dungeon. And with a final crack, heard not by the ear, but the soul.

Jeffrey flew up out of the dungeon, laughing madly, “I’m free! Screw this boring hole in the ground!”

And down on the deepest floor? “Good riddance.”

All the while the farmers in the local area would soon rejoice at the dungeon having settled down. Then, as the years passed by, the dungeon continued to develop at a steady pace, going deeper and perfecting wolves. Each new floor polishing exactly what it meant for a wolf to be a wolf, to where it even lost the dire traits, reverting back to looking like regular wolves. Though many times stronger.