[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 137 – Dastardly, Dreadful, Dungeon

“What are we, children?” Cal asked as Slyrox immediately grabbed a silver cuff and slapped it onto her wrist.

“Pyuu,” Smudge said as Slyrox’s paired bracelet flew off the wall and cinched itself around Smudge’s waist so he looked a bit like a very bulbous hourglass.

With a grunt, Smudge managed to force the bracelet into his body where it floated harmlessly, unable to be broken down despite his Hunger essence desperately trying to.

A faint blue line of light connected Slyrox and Smudge.

Slyrox moved her wrist around with curiosity as another line of light connected to a third bracelet on the wall.

Miranda crossed her arms, hardly surprised that one of her students fell for the trick immediately. Which meant things were going according to plan, if her suspicions were correct.

It was difficult to communicate a plan when speaking openly would be a quick way to the grave. The vampyr knew Shrubley was onto something. He had a connection to Dungeons that no one else in their adventuring party had been able to develop.

Shrubley slapped a silver cuff onto one of his branches and tossed the other two to Sose and Miranda. Both of which put theirs on with differing degrees of grumpiness.

Sose wore his like a belt around the middle while Miranda put hers onto her wrist like everybody else. She eyed it closely with a frown.

“Slimming,” Sose said, moving this way and that way.

Once all 6 had their bracelets on, with lines of blue light connecting them, the gate opened. Without wearing those bracelets, they could not proceed through the Labyrinth.

Shrubley looked both ways down the T-junction and was pleasantly surprised that his assumption was working. The more the Dungeon changed things to interfere or hinder them, the less energy the Dungeon had for other obstacles.

It only had so much power, and they were repeatedly draining it away, forcing the Dungeon–or more specifically, the one controlling the Dungeon–into lowering the threat level of the Dungeon itself. Every change they prompted meant one fewer danger the Dungeon could throw at them.

Dungeonley had imparted enough information about Dungeons for Shrubley to concoct this plan after seeing how the Dungeon responded. This wasn’t normal behavior. A Dungeon did not try to kill or deny entry usually.

After going just a few feet, the line of blue light turned green, then a warning yellow.

Shrubley looked at the bracelet curiously. The rest of the group looked at theirs.

The connection between Shrubley and Miranda, who was nearest to Shrubley, was the only one that was different.

So, it’s as I thought. They’re trying to make it impossible to split up. Something bad will undoubtedly happen if we go too far from one another. Though we could create a long chain… I don’t think that would be worth doing.

Shrubley looked at the options before him. Instead of dozens of branching corridors, there were only 3 paths. Left, right, and… center? As he stared at the T-junction, the wall ahead faded to reveal the third path.

Without a word, Shrubley went down the middle.

The direction didn’t matter. Whoever was in control of the Dungeon would do everything in their power to stop them. All Shrubley and his friends had to do was survive the obstacles and ensure more and more focus was put on slowing them down.

For every additional obstacle the Dungeon conjured into their path, the danger level of the Dungeon itself dropped. Shrubley’s Bronze senses had originally picked up several Iron Ranked monsters within the maze ahead.

Now the highest he could feel was Bronze.

Miranda gave him a nod. He hoped she understood what he was trying to do.

Smudge bounced after his friends, completely unaware of… well, pretty much everything except his stomachache caused by the indigestible bracelet.

Shrubley looked down at him and grinned to himself. Another idea popped into his head. “I love mazes,” he said conversationally.

Cal looked at him. “You do?”

“I do!” Shrubley confirmed. “They’re so easy. All you have to do is keep one hand on the left wall and continue to make left turns. You’ll eventually get to the end. All it takes is time, and we’re very fast. Even having to stick together as a group, we’ll be done in no time at all!”

“At least there aren’t any illusions,” Miranda added, itching absently at the silver cuff. Even over her layers of leather, she disliked the feeling. Against her skin, it would burn before long. The leather made it annoying and helped to attenuate the weakening effect slightly.

Meanwhile, Sose was attacking his own bracelet in full on scratch mode with all four paws.

Cal shivered. “You mean like the mirror realm? I hated that!”

Smudge looked from one person to the next. He was growing confused. “Pyuu…?”

“Yes, Smudge,” Shrubley said. “I know you hate them too!”

That was not what Smudge said.

“Pyuu! Pyuuuuu!” he said, trying to correct Shrubley.

“Oh, Smudge, you’re so silly,” Shrubley said, lifting him up and whispering into his pink gel.

“...Oh-ho-ho,” Smudge laughed, finally understanding what was going on.

Predictably, the sound of stone grinding upon stone filled the maze and the difficult winding paths became oddly straight and simple.

With every change to the Dungeon, the maze shrank. Both its monsters and traps weakened.

It wasn’t long before they arrived at a dead end. Smudge, resting atop Shrubley’s head, gently vibrated, letting him know that the wall ahead was fake.

Shrubley groaned aloud. “A dead end!” he said, picking up a piece of rubble off the ground and chucking it at the wall ahead angrily. “Stupid maze! Oh… wait, what? An illusion? How is that possible!?”

Miranda stared at the shrub. He needed acting lessons if this was ever going to work. If the one controlling the Dungeon was truly listening in, there was no way they would believe this was real.

And yet…

I hate that this is working, she thought to herself. How can the person behind this possibly be convinced by that?

“Drat, I lost it!” Shrubley said, feeling around on the incorrect part of the wall near the illusion.

Then he found it again and announced, rather loudly, “It is a good thing that there is light! As a shrub, I hate the darkness. It would be impossible to see without light.”

The lights went out.

Only Smudge would be fooled, Miranda thought. Is the person manipulating this Dungeon actually as oblivious as Smudge?

It seemed so unlikely to Miranda. How could someone with the power to control a Dungeon be so simple?

Shrubley continued this performance as they proceeded through the Dungeon, solving puzzles, escaping traps, and fighting what opponents they came across. At first, the threats were Bronze Ranked monsters. Incredibly challenging to everyone but Miranda.

Then the Dungeon’s monsters they encountered weakened to Copper Rank. By Miranda’s estimation, their opponents felt barely higher than level 15.

What was once a formidable Labyrinth turned into a weaker, pale reflection of its former self. Increasingly more convoluted restrictions and odd manifestations were created to impede the monster adventurers as they voiced their false fears aloud.

The walls, which were once intricately seamless and incredibly strong, weathered and pitted into a ruinous state. The stone grew stretching cracks, and at times even openings. Traps failed to activate, buzzsaws grinded uselessly in their channels and slowing traps turned to jelly rather than acid.

***

Snigbag was pulling as many levels as his tiny claw-like hands could manage. Every time the idiot shrub let him know what would make their task more difficult, he followed through because he was a smart kobold.

He had been paid well to guard the Dungeon and to keep any pesky intruders out. The strange woman that had given him this job paid him three whole schmeckles!

Despite his genius work with the Dungeon, the monsters were getting closer and closer to not only the control room, but the heart of the Dungeon. Every fight he sent their way, the monsters handled easily.

There were so many and the monsters Snigbag had on the roster to summon were getting weaker all the time, though the kobold couldn’t understand why.

He had started with Iron Ranked monsters. Manticores, great scorpions, serpentii, and a host of other horrible nasties that should have easily destroyed the adventuring party.

However, there was a chance that the monsters would prevail, and Snigbag could not allow that.

But his mistress had told him to delay and stretch it out as long as possible. They should never reach the Dungeon core. And that was Snigbag’s goal, to make sure that he ran out the 12-hour timer.

Panicking, he snorted fiery smoke through his nostrils. He pulled another lever, which allowed him to turn out the lights.

On the wall of knobs, switches, levers, and dials, a large gauge drained further and blinked a dangerous red. Still in the throes of panic, Snigbag ignored it.

The delicious screams of his enemies made Snigbag giggle with joy. He was winning! They would soon succumb to his brilliant machinations, and his mistress would reward him handsomely for it.

And so it went, with Snigbag eavesdropping on his prey, doing everything they hated or feared, further draining the mana of the Dungeon until, quite surprisingly, he heard voices directly behind him through a door that should never have been possible to open.

Too late, Snigbag realized that the Dungeon’s mana gauge was empty. He had exhausted all of its powers, adding soothing smooth jazz, trays of fresh citrus fruits to frighten the bony one, clown paintings along the walls to dissuade the lorg woman from helping her allies fight the automatons he dropped on them.

Automatons that, because of the Dungeon’s weakness, were hardly stronger than a Copper with only a few levels under their belt. Snigbag desperately threw levers and pulled the few dangling cords he reserved for the last moment.

Nothing happened.

The Dungeon was out cold.

***

Cal licked his fingers with his shadowy tongue as they entered the Dungeon core. “Those powdered donuts really hit the spot!” Cal said.

Shrubley, with his sword drawn, approached the Dungeon core. On the opposite side of the room was a large contraption. Frantically trying to manipulate the strange dials, knobs, and other assorted controls, was a very small creature.

A small, dragon-like creature with tiny curling orange horns and reddish scales, froze mid-pull on a lever. Shocked, it stared at Shrubley with widened amber eyes.

“Oh,” Miranda said, staring at the kobold. “Okay. Now it makes sense. For a second, I thought we were walking right into a trap.”

The Countess could not imagine anybody being stupid enough to get tricked by Shrubley. The more they fooled the operator of the Dungeon, the more Miranda feared that they were being played.

Instead of making their way easier because they were being sly, the operator was instead lowering their guard only to hit them with something terrible at the end.

Sometimes things really are just as stupid as you fear, she thought to herself.

“Can I get this off me?” Sose said, referring to the bracelet. “It’s itchy!”

With nothing more holding their bracelets on, the silver cuffs crumbled to dust and fell to the ground at the slightest touch.

Snigbag hopped off his swivel chair, raised his paws to the sky and screamed. “You’ll never take me alive!”

He ran toward them on his short legs, scooping up a stick with what looked like a clay pot hastily (and rather poorly) tied to the end.

Lifting the pot to his nostrils, Snigbag blew out a stream of sparks and smoke, catching the unseen fuse. It fizzled and burned as the kobold rushed toward them, shouting, “Singing Eruption of False Bug! My ultimate attack! You cannot withstand!”

“He is muchly cute,” Slyrox said, enamored rather than threatened.

Shrubley stepped forward, sheathing his sword. From what he could tell, the little kobold wasn’t even Mid Copper. He stood absolutely no chance.

Slamming the staff down toward Shrubley as he leapt an impressive 10 inches off the ground, the kobold cried out victoriously.

The pot’s fuse ran out and fizzled. Shrubley casually reached up a hand and caught the stick before it was anywhere close to hitting him. A burning smell filled the air as the pot overheated and the rope tying it to the stick burned through. The pot fell to the ground, forcing Shrubley to let go and jump back.

Smiling triumphantly, the noxious gas that erupted from the shattered smoldering pot only managed to hit the kobold.

Snigbag stood there, one eye twitching, before he keeled over, unconscious.