[Archived Short Story] The Most Frustrating And Pointless Dungeon

Gregor crests the hill with his three friends and they spot their goal. Down in the valley below is an unassuming hole in the ground. His friend Jace, on the other hand, sees something quite different. While the hole doesn’t change, he can see massive plumes of mana being pumped into the atmosphere. He nods to Gregor, this dungeon hadn’t been conquered yet.

To the side, Beth sighs, “For a single floor dungeon this one has been here way too long with no one finishing it, are we even certain it actually is only a single floor dungeon?”

Next to her Jess shrugs, “As far as our instruments can tell it is still only a single floor.”

Gregor rubs the bridge of his nose, “So of course we get called in to handle it. I know magic only arrived on earth forty-some years ago, but there should have been someone local to manage this thing!”

Jess smacks the back of his head, “If you didn’t want to be ‘the hero’, you shouldn’t have stepped up when everything went up in smoke.”

Gregor rubs his head, “Everything didn’t go up in smoke, thank you very much. Technology still works A-ok. Hell, magitech is a burgeoning market. All I did was make sure that none of those megacorps continued to have a hold on our town. They wanted to keep control despite people having literal magic.”

Jess smirks, “Sure, the great liberator, hero of the common folk, and slayer of the literal forces of evil is a normal person. Nevermind the fact you brought down the dominance of companies worth trillions of dollars.”

Gregor shakes his head, “Someone had to. Besides, you were right there beside me with the rest of us. Couldn’t have done it without a healer. Those rich slugs literally sold their souls for more money and power.

“Anyway, all that is behind us. We need to focus on the dungeon in front of us. As far as the person we sent to check it out, the whole thing is easy newb level stuff, just annoying. No clue why they didn’t complete it.”

Beth nods, “I even sent in my familiar and they confirmed it. There aren’t even all that many monsters, from what I can tell. This should be an easy enough delve, in and out. We don’t need this much raw magic being pumped into the world. Things are already crazy enough as it is without chaos incarnate being added to it.”

Jace snaps his finger, and with a wisp of magic, creates a sonic boom. “Okay, if we don’t get in there we’re going to be out here talking in circles for the rest of the day. This place is only a single floor and I want to be done with it today.”

Beth whines, “But look at that entrance! It’s like, one meter tall! We’re going to be crouched over and that is going to be hell on my back.”

Jace sighs, “I’m going to blame the Fae on this. Damn tricksters probably played around with it when first digging out the floor and convinced the dungeon that the locals are all short of a meter tall.”

Gregor snorts, “Just because you can detect glamor in the valley doesn’t mean it was the Fae, just that it was most likely the Fae. We have an unofficial understanding with them, so wait until we have confirmation.”

From nearby, a giggle drifts out of a tree and a small humanoid with wings flits out. What is clearly one of the Fae waves at them, “No, it’s fine to blame us! Totally our fault this one. I can’t wait to watch the great hero of earth ‘fight’ your way through this one.” And the Fae vanishes back into the tree.

Jace lets out a long-suffering sigh, “Well, that confirms it I guess. Let’s get down to it.”

With nothing else to say, the four enter the dungeon, crouched down. The entrance hall continues deeper into the dungeon for quite a while. Beth kept track of it.

So once they reach a fork in the path she can’t help but curse. “This entrance hall is exactly the max length of a dungeon’s first floor. This fork might only exist because the dungeon couldn’t go any further.”

Gregor nods, “And both directions seem exactly the same. Well, left it is. Here’s hoping it isn’t the wrong direction.”

The left hall slowly curves away into the distance, suspiciously following the exact limit of a dungeon’s size. This hall continues all the way back to the front of the dungeon only to take a sharp turn and head straight back again.

Jace shakes his head once he sees this. “It’s going to just coil around itself, isn’t it?”

It was. The half height hallway just continued to coil upon itself until, after a good long time they reached the center of the spiral. By this point, their backs all hurt and are bored out of their minds, nevermind the fact that they suspect having chosen the wrong direction. This alone would have caused most of the locals to ignore the place.

What they see at the center though ratchets it up by a ludicrous degree. Instead of a deadend, the path ends in a ladder. Dungeons don’t have too much play on floor height, but this one was packing things in tight. There was an entire lower area.

Jess takes one look at it and flinches. She is wearing the classic garb of a healer, a white robe. While this is always an annoyance to keep clean, the area ahead makes that a pointless endeavor. At the bottom of the ladder are four paths, all half the height of the already short halls above so everyone is going to be crawling. Worse though for that white robe, the floor has mud slurry over an inch deep. Not just any mud either, but a nice healthy black mud.

Beth is a little better off with a more leather based outfit, but her skirt is still going to end up ruined. She can’t help but sigh, “Well if the previous part didn’t make people turn around, this would.”

Jace looks down at his wizard’s robe, “The expense to clean our clothes after this might end up overshadowing any rewards, especially since there haven’t been any monsters to loot.”

Gregor scratches his nose, “Yeah, I can’t smell any monsters nearby. Not that we have a choice here. To the left again.”

Gregor in the lead, the group is now crawling through a mud flooded hallway when they come across the first “trap”. Beth can easily detect it, there just isn’t any way around it. Just a simple pit trap with the cover left off that is about 3 meters long.

In other words, long enough that they can’t go over it. Rather, the group will have to get into it. Not that hard as the pit is only as deep as the hall is tall. On the other hand, it is filled with mud.

The group gets to the other side of the pit easily enough, but now they’re all coated in mud up to their stomachs. Of course, no dungeon is complete with only a single pit trap. This particular dungeon just happened to space things out enough so that they had finally dried off before throwing it at them.

This dip and dry pattern continued until they reached a dead end, forcing the group to head back to the ladder and try a different direction. Now repeat that again three more times with finally the last path being the correct one.

Of course, that isn’t the end. At the end of the fourth path is a ladder going up, ending above the original path. Though unlikely the muddy halls below, the halls above are barely tall enough for the group to belly crawl with a slight breeze blowing in their faces.

That breeze has just the slightest chill. Any other time, most of the group would have even considered refreshing. As it is though, they’re all covered in mud and much damper than any of them would prefer. At least the breeze does dry them off quick enough.

Not that this dungeon was going to let such things go so soon enough, they detected a trap in front of them. A simple spear trap. In normal circumstances, they could probably just dodge the thing. Not so simple when you’re belly crawling and have no choice but to have the person in front take care of it.

Also not so simple is the fact that disarming the trap dumps water on the entire party. Being relatively high level adventurers, everyone in the party is immune to the rigors of non-freezing temperatures. That, however, doesn’t mean being drenched in a slightly chilled wind tunnel is going to be comfortable.

Still onward, they crawl as they shiver. The wind might dry the clothes out faster than expected, but the traps are close enough together that it never really matters. Soon enough, though, they reach the end of what was basically one giant spiral, the reverse of the middle area, only to find a dead end.

It takes a bunch of squeezing and shuffling, but eventually Beth makes it to the front. Though no matter how much she checks, there isn’t a single sign of any secret door. This was simply the wrong direction. Worse yet, while Beth can manage to turn herself around, the others are stuck facing the wrong direction, even Jess is a little too big.

Good thing Beth managed to get turned around, though. It wouldn’t have been the most dangerous of things, but all the traps had managed to reset. This, oddly enough, was quite a bit more dangerous, as the pressure plate to activate them was on the other side of the trap itself. Any mistake at that point and you’re going to get a spear coming up somewhere quite delicate.

With this little catch, it takes the group twice as long to get back to the start of the wind tunnel. All of them shivering from a chill. Not enough to hurt them or cause them to catch the flu, but definitely something that would dull their reflexes if a fight was coming up. Good thing they know what is next and unless they decide to do a little mud wrestling, there won’t be any fights. Such a shame though, as they had just managed to get the last of the dried mud washed off.

Still, it isn’t like they have a choice and so back into the mud tunnels they go. The only upside is that they only have to travel through one of the mud tunnels this time, and not all of them. That cuts down on the time there, though it doesn’t stop them from getting completely coated all over again.

From there, it is a simple matter of crouching through the regular hallway. Though when they are met with the sight of the other side of the dungeon, all of them flinch. They don’t know what it will be like, but so far the dungeon has been the worst possible annoyance and they didn’t expect that to change.

They have to go on, sadly, and soon enough realize the other side seems to be a mirror of what they had already done. Not a complete mirror, of course. That would make things too easy. No, once again they end up having to go down all four of the mud areas tunnels.

The biggest difference is that this time they make better use of the water from disarming the wind tunnel’s traps. Instead of letting it soak them, the party uses it to wash off the mud. Then, after all that, they reach the end of this side’s wind tunnel and find a way up.

So with great care, Gregor crawls up through the opening and into an area that feels like a small meadow mashed together with an attic. The ceiling is slanted, light is coming in from one spot, and the ground is covered in grass with a small puddle in the center. Oh, and there is a horned rabbit chilling by said puddle.

Also, right across from where the party is entering the room is another spot. So similar to the square hole they are entering through except filled with stone. At that point, some things start to fall into place. Three places required them to choose a direction. The start, and both the mud mazes.

What did they all have in common? The party ended up choosing the wrong direction every time until there was only the correct path left. Of course, the sample size was a little small, but each one of them had a feeling in their gut. It wasn’t bad luck that caused this. The dungeon was designed to force you down every single wrong path.

Then the rabbit attacked. Of course, in normal situations, it would be less than threatening. Gregor would be in front with his plate armor and easily absorb the hit. This dungeon didn’t exactly allow for armor and such so his leather tunic now sported a brand new hole in it.

Though Gregor hadn’t been completely surprised so that was all that sported a new hole, his body was still puncture free. The others couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. Because, yes, the rabbit had just attacked their friend. The thing was, its horn was stuck in the tunic and so the horned rabbit was dangling there, flailing around.

Gregor made short work of the monsters after that and turned to Jace. With a quick look around, Jace was able to confirm this truly was the end. “Yep, the mana has stagnated and is no longer rushing out of the dungeon. So, uh, do you all want to just hang out here for a little? I really don’t want to go back into that back pain inducing mess.”

Everyone agreed that sounds like a fine idea and so settled down onto the grass. Though, as if the dungeon wanted to give a final hurrah, the dirt under the grass was quite damp and uncomfortable to rest on.