Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 356

Chapter 356 – Report

Finding the Safe Room on this floor was troublesome, since it was supposedly hidden, somewhere that would not be immediately obvious to most adventurers making their way through the dungeon. However, that was fine. They’d planned on mapping as much of the pyramid as they could, after all, and had plenty of rations tucked away in their inventories.

They did find a couple more traps that were as devious as the one which opened up behind the trigger. One caused the floor to launch up, smashing against the ceiling like a hammer, in a move that was only possible through magic. The other, however, was far more frightening, as it released a large stone boulder into the hallway, which began rolling after them. Even when they turned a corner, the boulder continued following them! The only way they stopped the damn thing was by activating a pit trap and then jumping over it, causing the boulder to fall into the pit.

By that point, they’d had been fairly thoroughly lost, and it took some work to get back to a part of the pyramid that they recognized. Namely, the sub-boss room. Gracie had them move on quickly, because she did not want to spend any more time in that room than necessary.

At last, they found the Safe Room. The hatch for it was actually in the ceiling in one of the rooms branching off of the labyrinthine corridors. Opening it revealed a ladder, which extended down to let them up. So far, so good.

Gracie wasn’t planning on them staying long in the Safe Room, though. A quick look was enough to confirm that the layout was the same as all the other Safe Rooms in the dungeon, and it had only been six or seven hours since they’d left the Safe Room on the thirteenth floor. That wasn’t exactly a short time, but it wasn’t long, either, especially since Tier 2 individuals all had enough attributes that a twenty-four-hour work day was about as tiring as an eight hour one.

That was just one of the many benefits to enhancing your attributes, and as that difference in attributes grew, it became it was one of the ways that different archetypes differentiated themselves. The physical attributes were fairly simple, in that regard. High Strength not only allowed you to hit things harder, and lift more, but it also affected your jumping, swim speed, and other such things. High Dexterity, meanwhile, meant that, eventually, your movements were entering an area where the unaided eye simply couldn’t catch up to them. High Constitution not only increased your hit points and stamina, meaning you could go longer and take more hits, but it also increased your resistance to disease and poison. A Tier 2 fighter type could drink an entire brewery dry, and barely get a buzz.

On the other hand, the mental attributes were a bit trickier. High Intelligence made you smarter, yes, but it also allowed you to think faster, and process information better. Some fighters were frequently limited in how fast they could act with more than base instinct, because their minds were too slow to process everything they saw. If even your own movements are too fast for you to see, much less your opponent’s, then you’re in a shitty situation, for sure.

High Wisdom meant you were better able to channel power from the gods, or other powers, yes, but it also caused you to fight off mental influence easier. To say nothing of seeing through lies and deception. And, when it got high enough, people even tended to have a ‘sixth sense’ about danger or what the correct course of action was.

And, of course, there was high Charisma. It made you prettier, and caused your personality to be more persuasive, which was always great. However, when your Charisma was a good deal higher than someone’s Wisdom, you had a situation where you had to actively work to keep from converting them into followers who believed everything you said. It was one reason why ‘ruler’ type professions typically relied on Charisma, but also kept Wisdom in good supply, needing both to truly succeed.

Strangest of all the attributes, however, was Luck. No one could really quantify what Luck did, other than making your strikes more likely to hit weak points, and other things like that. It was said that a high Luck could cause reality itself to warp around the person, causing improbable, near impossible things to happen, like dropping a quarter only for it to bounce just so to roll in front of a cat who tried to grab it, startling their owner and making them spill hot coffee on themselves, and when they stood up to clean themselves off, they bumped someone on a skateboard, causing them to fall into traffic, making a truck swerve wildly, and accidentally hit a pedestrian crossing the street without looking, just as she was about to shoot the lucky bastard who dropped the quarter. That actually happened in Miami last weekend, and no one was quite sure what the odds of such a chain of events happening were, but the guy in question’s Luck was well over 100.

At any rate, they had not been working long enough to truly need a rest, just yet. The reason they had sought out the Safe Room (besides needing to put the location on the map they were making) was because Gracie wanted to use the computer that Lord Kuronoth ensured was there, connected to the internet. It would be irresponsible of her not to check in with the Guild, and report what they had found, after all.

(Adventurer’s Guild Private Forums, Swamptown Branch)

MistressGracie: I have a report from the dungeon.

FrankieSaysYes: I’m here. What do you have for us?

MistressGracie: Found the Safe Room in the pyramid.

FrankieSaysYes: Flight magic got you past Shai-Hulud fine, then?

MistressGracie: Yes, but we almost got eaten when setting the device to call the worm so the portal would spawn. Came up from under us.

FrankieSaysYes: Glad you made it through. What about the sacrifice for the Pyramid?

MistressGracie: First, let people know that they just have to make it through the horde of undead and get to the altar. When that happens, the undead all turn to sand, and disappear.

FrankieSaysYes: Good to hear. The Pilgrims just destroyed them all with their magic, so we didn’t hear about that.

MistressGracie: As for the sacrifice, it is a lot like what you see at the Necropolis, combined with the Water Temple floor. Hundred gold per person or accepting a curse for the duration of the floor gets you in, once. Letting someone get bred by the undead gives everyone in the party a free pass so long as the child lives, which means no cleansing potions, and the woman has to carry the thing to term.

FrankieSaysYes: That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected. And the final sacrifice? Did the goblins work?

MistressGracie: Yes, goblins from Boca do just fine. Everyone present for the sacrifice gets a free pass into the Pyramid, and 10% bonus to all attributes while on the floor. However, that applies to the individuals, so new party members need a fresh sacrifice.

FrankieSaysYes: Got it. I’ll be sure to let everyone know. How is mapping the Pyramid coming?

MistressGracie: Slow. The traps in the Pyramid are definitely a jump in lethality from the ones earlier in the dungeon. Came across one trap that had a timed delay after someone stepped on a trigger, and opened up behind them. Looked designed to trap people in the middle or rear of a party.

FrankieSaysYes: Normal pit trap?

MistressGracie: I wish. Barbed spikes in the bottom, made of dungeon stone. Pulling someone off them will do as much or more damage to them as falling on them did. Worse, there’s a button on the ledge, which snaps the lid of the trap shut, trapping anyone still inside permanently.

FrankieSaysYes: Damn, that’s brutal.

MistressGracie: Yeah, there are other nasty traps, as well. Had one where a boulder kept rolling after us, even turning corners to keep following us! Had to open a pit trap and jump it. Boulder fell in, and we were able to relax a bit.

FrankieSaysYes: So, the boulder wasn’t just rolling along the hall, bouncing off walls, but actively following you?

MistressGracie: Yeah, made a 90 degree turn at an intersection to do so.

FrankieSaysYes: Well, that’s fucking wonderful. You’re marking those trap locations on the map, right?

MistressGracie: We’re not noobs, Frank. Of course we are. Oh, and the miniboss is fucking terrifying.

FrankieSaysYes: You find out what that altar thing the Pilgrims mentioned was about?

MistressGracie: Yeah. Those weak undead that come in after someone gets put on the altar? They’re carrying tools for mummification. Most likely, if you take too long rescuing the person, they are killed and raised as a mummy to join the dungeon.

FrankieSaysYes: So, rescuing the person on the altar takes priority, got it.

MistressGracie: Also, this isn’t confirmed, because we have a sample size of two, but the teleport sending someone to the altar may target the party leader. Both the Pilgrim leader and I were put on the altar, but I don’t know whether that was random chance, or something else.

FrankieSaysYes: Either way, that is definitely something we need to warn the other groups about, first. The leader getting snagged at the start of a fight can really ruin a team’s coordination.

MistressGracie: Yeah, that’s why I made a point of seeking out the Safe Room, so I could get you this report.

FrankieSaysYes: Strong work, Gracie. I’ll be sure this gets out to the other adventurers in town, and will forward it along to Miami, so they know who to credit for the info. Don’t push yourself too hard. Better to bring back what maps you have than for you all to get killed by the boss.

MistressGracie: We’ll at least get to the boss room, and see what we can see.

FrankieSaysYes: All right. Good hunting.

Gracie took a breath as she signed off of the private chatroom. The public forums were fine for general conversation, but they were too crowded at the best of times. The Miami board, especially, was not suitable for actually presenting information in a succinct manor. Too many people chiming in and derailing conversations with side issues. It was one of the reasons she never paid much attention to what happened on those forums.

“All done, Mistress?” Logan asked, trying to hide the fact that she’d been watching the way Gracie had been sitting on the chair made of tentacles that one needed to use when accessing the computer in the safe room. Oh, the tentacles didn’t actually do any damage, with it being a safe zone and all, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t… adventurous, exploring anywhere they could get to. There was a reason why the women on a team were usually the ones using the computers in the Safe Rooms.

Gracie nodded once as she extracted herself from the chair, going from pleasantly full in both her holes to empty as she did so. Really, if they got to where the Lord was, now, she was going to have to see if he would sell her a couple of these chairs for the house they had on the outskirts of Swamptown.

“Yes, I’ve done my duty, and warned whoever comes after us about the traps in the Pyramid. Frank was nice enough to ask us not to die without bringing back our maps, though. Guess we shouldn’t disappoint him.”

“As you say, Mistress.”

That joke might have seemed in poor taste to those who didn’t live the adventurer lifestyle, or were new members to the guild, but none of her pets looked put out by it, as expected. Anyone who managed to become a veteran in the guild knew that death was a real possibility every time they went on a quest, and even the Lord’s dungeon, which was far safer than some others, in terms of how many people died there, still claimed victims to this day. Sometimes, your luck just ran out. Anyone who didn’t accept that truth on a fundamental level quit before they became a veteran. Or they died.

Gracie smilled at her pets, and said, “All right. Let’s go find the boss, and see what the fight is like.”