Remember, if you see something that you think is weird, let me know. I do edit these based on feedback prior to final publication.
“I need cover and time!” Troy shouted. “I can read it, but my [Detect Magic] isn’t high-level enough to tell me what it does!”
“Got it,” Ryan said, drawing his blade. “I’m good on mana again. Let’s go. Rose?”
“Ahead of you,” the [Bard] said, beginning her [Song of Strength].
Troy knelt down next to...
2022-09-27 22:12:03 +0000 UTC View Post“The name’s Lucas,” I introduced myself. “Tour guide for this dungeon.”
“Tour guide?” the [Sharpshooter] asked. “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Uh, what?”
“There’s two types of living things in a dungeon,” he said, drawing his weapon. “Adventurers and monsters.”
They have guns here? I hadn’t seen one up until this point, but I supposed that the level of magical technological advancement was high enough...
2022-09-27 01:56:51 +0000 UTC View PostEDITED 9/24: Read the latter half of it again to see the edits. TL;DR a rude level 2 [Sharpshooter] man shows up to the dungeon and catches up to the party, who're resting after the parkour room. Thanks to John Koor for the feedback.
“You may notice some differences from the last time you cleared the dungeon,” I said.
“It is a touch more intact than it was before,” Rose joked. “Although, yeah, this is pretty different.”
The three members of M-1 w...
2022-09-24 04:19:23 +0000 UTC View PostI just had to ask for trouble, didn’t I?
The sun was still pink on the horizon, the early-morning breeze cold but comfortable as it brushed against my skin. In the distance, animals of some kind or another—I couldn’t tell if they were mundane or magical from this distance—lazily wandered around the fields, grazing on grass as they went about their day.
And there were five people at the dungeon entrance.
Granted, those five people were M-1 plus Iris and Lisa,...
2022-09-22 17:12:11 +0000 UTC View PostName: Lucas
Class: [Dungeon Core] lv. 3
Spells (ordered by: used recently)
[Spawn Monster]: D
> [Spawn Snake]: D+
> [Spawn Construct]: F+
[Reshape]: C-
[Create Water]: D
[Create Fire]: D
[Replicate]: F
[Dungeon Perception]: B-
[New spell available!]
[View more ...
2022-09-22 14:13:05 +0000 UTC View Post“This might take some time to explain,” Lisa said. “I would advise we take a moment to recollect ourselves first.”
I could understand what she really meant by that. She couldn’t act all informal in front of so many other people who might be involved in the Guild in some way, so I was pretty sure she was essentially telling me that ‘hey, I just got stabbed, please give me a moment,’ which—yeah. That was fair.
“Can do,” I said. “But please do give me an explana...
2022-09-21 20:44:40 +0000 UTC View Post“Fuck!” Ryan shouted.
Time slowed down, my dungeon-half and human-half working in harmony to think as fast as possible so that I could figure out how to heal the [Elite Knight] while also processing the situation.
[Displace] was a damn powerful skill from a damn powerful monster that definitely shouldn’t have been in an area like this, especially not without going noticed. How the hell had the Guild managed to overlook something this powerful for this long? How had it been a...
2022-09-21 03:12:51 +0000 UTC View PostClara had thought she’d known the risks of this going in. She’d been one of Aedi’s Chosen all her life, yes, her bond strengthened ever since that fateful morning decades ago when the god had reached out while she’d been nothing more than a child assembling a toy. It wasn’t much of a stretch to say that Clara had spent the better part of her entire life training for this moment.
And yet somehow she still didn’t feel ready.
She shook her head, her ceremonial braids brus...
2022-09-20 01:48:10 +0000 UTC View PostEDITED TO CLARIFY ASPECTS OF THE ARI AND THE NATURE OF DUNGEONS
It ended up taking fifteen minutes to integrate the ARI into my interface. Before that, I’d tried to award her some loot from the final room—armor pieces with snake carvings in them and coins, mostly—but Lisa had refused to take most of it. After a bit of a back and forth, I’d at least managed to get her to take a few coins, but it was still a significantly lower reward than it should’ve been.
... 2022-09-18 14:46:45 +0000 UTC View PostEDITED TO CLARIFY THE ARI
“Most… popular?” I asked. “In the kingdom? How would that work? So far as I know, Minus One—ergh, that’s a bit awkward to say out loud, shortening that to M-1 really rolls off the tongue better—well, anyway, I think they’re the only adventurers in this area, right?”
“They are,” Lisa said. “As far as I know, they’re the only three adventurers in a five-mile radius. That, however, will not be the state of affairs f...
2022-09-16 16:41:30 +0000 UTC View PostWithin six hours of Iris Alder’s departure, the Guild came. I’d been half-expecting a visitor when I sensed the first person step into the safe zone, but to be completely honest I thought it would be Rose, come here to check on the results of my ‘negotiation’ with her mother.
Instead, it was Lisa, the level 10 [Spellblade] here once again. Somehow, despite knowing that that level meant she could definitely kill everything in this dungeon and then me, I was a lot less worried aro...
2022-09-13 17:52:26 +0000 UTC View Post“You’ve learned,” Nishi said. “You’ve progressed far beyond my expectations.”
“So I have,” I said. “And you’ve grown closer.”
“Indeed I have. And you appear to have gained the ability of detection.”
“So I have. What was your purpose in coming?”
“To observe your progress, of course.” The older oathholder still exuded a sense of presence even though I should’ve greatly outclassed him by this point.
I hadn’t properly ap...
2022-09-11 15:55:07 +0000 UTC View Post“Not an adventurer?” Rose’s mother said. “Would you care to explain?”
“The name’s Lucas,” I introduced myself, bowing ever so slightly. “I’m bound to this dungeon, and I also act as its tour guide.”
“Iris Alder,” she said, offering a handshake. “Head of Alder Corps. Pleasure to meet you.”
I accepted her hand. Iris’ grip was firm without being overbearing, asserting her position of power without going too hard. A merchant’s handshake. 2022-09-09 04:35:36 +0000 UTC View Post
“Was it hard to get?” I asked. “I can compensate you if you need it.”
“Oh, come off it,” Rose replied, nudging me lightly. “You already overpaid us to shit, this is just me returning the favor.”
“If you say so.”
The two of us were situated in the safe room on the same outcroppings that we’d sat on yesterday. I’d given Rose a brief explanation that the dungeon was currently under construction, which she had promptly responded to by offering to leave an...
2022-09-08 03:20:22 +0000 UTC View PostThere was a fair amount of work to be done on the dungeon. For one, the room that had formerly been a pseudo-jungle gym with plenty of snakes kind of just wasn’t there anymore. I could technically rebuild it in exactly the same way from the ground up, but that was boring.
“Have to keep in mind that this is for level 1s,” I muttered. The Guild was supposed to license dungeons and indicate the levels that parties were supposed to average at when they entered. I wasn’t com...
2022-09-05 02:56:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe oathtongue had the wrath of the betrayed behind it. As it pulsed across the room, I felt it out, the taste of alignment crossing my lips. Orchid was one of Ditas’. Not one I had hated all too much, once upon a time.
What were the conditions for alignment for his god, again? To gain a fuller understanding of his body? Of how to change others?
I wondered what he’d done, because whatever he’d figured out, it had worked well enough for his magic to nearly triple in strength....
2022-09-03 18:48:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe two of us sat on twin outcroppings of rock, conveniently placed just outside the first room. Speaking in the entrance room was a bit of a necessity, given that the entirety of the first room had been summarily smashed apart by the fight we’d just survived through. I could use a bunch of mana to fix it, but there wasn’t any point in doing that immediately before I had a plan on what I wanted to do with it once it was done.
“So,” I said, treating my words with the weight that ...
2022-09-01 03:18:24 +0000 UTC View PostThe cavern was an utter loss. I was probably going to have to redesign the first challenge room from the ground up, a prospect that filled me with equal parts exasperation and excitement. Losing work sucked, but along with that suckiness was potential. Something new to replace the old, worn-out adventures was always a welcome sight at my DM table, though in this case it was less old and more totally annihilated.
Oh well. At least everyone had come out of it alive. The combinati...
2022-08-28 22:47:29 +0000 UTC View PostAs I stepped back into baseline reality, the floaty high that I’d been feeling from the god’s influence dimmed a little. Most of it was still there, but the headiest bits faded into the background, the edges of my mood calming.
I’d demolished the place, I realized. There hadn’t been any other oathholders here, and I sure hoped there weren’t any stray innocents, because there was a twenty meter radius where there simply was nothing. I’d done the same thing before, albeit on a...
2022-08-25 14:50:05 +0000 UTC View PostFuck, fuck, fuck! I couldn’t deny that that had been a helpful spell, though I was going to have to ask Rose how in the hell she’d actually managed to use it. Still, involving them in this? That was a recipe for three promising young adventurers ending up in a thousand pieces.
My attention was split between the fight and the three adventurers at the entrance, but I did my best to warn them off, slowly raising the stone of the tunnel between entrances to block it off.
...
2022-08-24 16:57:46 +0000 UTC View PostThis was, to put it lightly, a suboptimal situation. The [Astral Monk] vastly outclassed me in firepower and mobility both—there was going to be no trapping her in a hole and then dropping a rock on her like I’d done with the earlier Kingsguard. If I put her in a hole, she’d make her way out of it before I could blink. Drop a rock on her? The cave would break before her defenses did.
I tried anyway. I tried a lot of things at the same time, both with my dungeon half and my human h...
2022-08-24 16:56:34 +0000 UTC View Post[You have died.]
[Special skill conditions met.]
[Special skill [Divine Healer] activating.]
[Channel to divinity created.]
[Channel to divinity activated.]
[You again?]
[Okay, seriously, how are you so willing to do this?]
[
“Welcome to the first room,” I said, trying to ensure my facade of calmness wasn’t breaking. “This is an introductory course to less linear combat, which few lower-level parties have had much experience with before.”
I was pretty sure my body had been changed in some way, because I definitely would’ve been sweating buckets in this position normally. As it was, I didn’t think I even sweat a single drop, which was cool but didn’t help at all with the panic coursing through...
2022-08-24 16:55:17 +0000 UTC View Post“Good luck!” Rose said, giving me a wave. “And thank you again! We’ll make sure to get you more good stuff for the next time we come!”
“Thank you,” I said, having finally managed to get them to take their rewards for the second time. “I look forward to your next trip with me!”
“You know,” Lisa said bemusedly, watching the three adventurers go, “you—the dungeon, I mean—did rather overpay them.”
“Oh, did it?” I asked, my heart jolting for a mo...
2022-08-24 16:54:49 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you mean, you can’t let them in here?” I asked. “And how did they clear but not the dungeon?”
“Give me a moment to explain,” Lisa said, sitting down on a convenient piece of rock with a sigh. “First of all, I need to ask a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Were you spawned by the dungeon, bound to it, or something else?”
“Bound.” Not technically a lie. I hadn’t done that much reading on dungeon binds, but I knew that they did exi...
2022-08-24 16:54:09 +0000 UTC View Post“This is what we call tunnel vision, by the way!” I shouted, trying to make myself heard over Ryan’s horrified screaming and the pseudo-hydra’s hissing. “Never take your attention off the biggest threat in the room!”
It had only hit him once, drawing back afterwards as Troy had tossed a [Manaburst] at the thing’s head, but it had been far more than a glancing blow. Ryan was bleeding profusely from multiple gaping wounds in his side, the fangs of one of the monster’s jaws...
2022-08-24 16:53:17 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay, I could technically use [Song of Displacement] two or three times,” Rose said. She was sitting on the edge of the safe zone, kicking her feet over the water as if there weren’t a whole bunch of snakes in there. “Chaining them together would definitely get me enough speed to get across.”
“You seem opposed to the parkour,” Ryan said. “Can’t do it?”
“Not my thing,” Rose said. “My agility stat is low.”
“You—“ the [Spellblade] started.
... 2022-08-24 16:50:28 +0000 UTC View PostName: Lucas
Class: [Dungeon Core] lv. 2
Spells
[Spawn Monster]: D-
> [Spawn Snake]: D
> [New spell available!]
[Reshape]: D+
[Create Water]: F+
[Create Fire]: F+
[Replicate]: F-
[Dungeon Perception]: C
Stats
[Spawn Speed]: F
[Capacity]: D- 2022-08-24 00:46:15 +0000 UTC View Post
With only a day to work on the dungeon, I hadn’t been able to add that much. I had a work-in-progress room that I’d set to one side, but that one wasn’t going to be able to be unveiled for a while. Not on this short notice, at least.
As I ran one final set of checks in my mind, I made conversation. Wouldn’t do to lead them into the dungeon just to watch my first mechanism fail.
“You seem like you’ve had a bad day,” I said to the [Spellblade]. We hadn’t exactly gott...
2022-08-24 00:44:08 +0000 UTC View PostThe morning after the adventurers had come, I was ready to start experimenting with the dungeon again. I’d spent the bulk of the night reading books, trying on clothes, and figuring out if there was a way to [Replicate] food items. I’d figured out a way to do it, though it was a lot more mana-intensive than I would’ve expected, and using it had revealed it to be a different spell entirely—[Replicate Consumable]. Maybe its intended purpose was to replicate stuff like health potions? Th...
2022-08-24 00:43:21 +0000 UTC View Post