The Impeccable Adventure of the Reluctant Dungeon

“I must say, having this outside was a splendid idea, dear,” Baroness Elderion said as she sipped her sapphire tea.

Of the entire town, she was the only person who had developed the habit of drinking it, possibly because she was the only person in the kingdom whose trade interests frequently came upon the substance. Although lacking any medical qualities, it had a far more pleasant taste than the local herb concoctions. In many aspects, it could be compared to wine with the difference that it didn’t cause any hangovers or stomach issues.

“Would you care for some?” the noblewoman asked, at which point one of her maids instantly approached with a fine crystal teapot on a silver platter.

“Thank you, Baroness,” Spok nodded politely.

This was the first time she had been invited to a leisure activity. The whole thing was an entirely new notion. The guardian was familiar with the concept—mostly thanks to Cmyk—yet her conscious self still rejected it. For a being that was created only to assist its dungeon, free time was only meant to preempt any possible catastrophe coming to Theo.

“Is there anything wrong, dear?” The baroness gave Spok a concerned look. “You seem somewhat anxious.”

“My apologies, Baroness.” Spok retained her calm. Still, it was impressive that the baroness had noticed anything at all. No wonder she was on the town council. “I just never expected to be invited to such an…” She paused for a few seconds. “…event. It’s usually Baron d’Argent that—”

“There’s no doubt that the baron has had an impact on Rosewind,” Baroness Elderion interrupted. “However, not when it comes to the minute details of everyday life. Everyone on the council is fully aware that you are running things.”

“I’m only doing what is expected of me,” the spirit guide said, but deep inside she appreciated being noticed.

“I suppose it’s not his fault. He’s a mage, after all. They tend to be, if you excuse the expression, a bit light on responsibilities.” The woman took another sip of her tea, then placed the cup—a quarter full, as etiquette demanded—on the table. “It’s obvious that soon enough we’ll be dealing with you directly, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to get to know you better.”

A maid approached, filling up the cup with tea.

“I won’t be the first, let me assure you. As you know perfectly well, appearances are deceiving.”

Had Theo been listening in, half the shutters in town would have creaked open. Fortunately, Spok was of far calmer and more practical disposition. It was not like her to jump to conclusions, especially since she had already noticed what the noblewoman was telling her. Despite their apparent shortcomings, the town council wasn’t just a collection of has-been nobles with large appetites and peculiar habits. Every single one of them was cunning, hiding their true power. In many ways they were acting no different than the dungeon. Unlike him, though, they had a lot less to hide.

“This new adventuring notion your baron started,” the baroness continued. “It has its benefits, but also requires a lot of groundwork. Since you’re practically controlling half the real-estate in Rosewind, I would expect you to take a more active part in… reorganization matters.”

“Baroness, I’m merely a caretaker,” Spok said, not a hair out of place. “Naturally, I shall do my best to assist the baron and my council.”

“Naturally.”

Sensing the unspoken order of her mistress, a servant approached from the woman’s mansion, unrolling a large scroll of paper on the table. On it was a map of the town. It was skillfully made containing all the recent changes, but that wasn’t all. Three new districts were also present, continuing onward from the town walls.

“Nothing is official, but if the baron’s plan succeeds, it's inevitable that the city would grow, quite possibly in this fashion.”

“Three new districts,” Spok noted. By the look of things, the future territory had already been divided.

“It’s speculation, but I suspect that we’ll come to such an agreement.”

“Would any of them belong to the baron?” the spirit guide asked the obvious question.

“Why, all of them will belong to him, my dear.”

That wasn’t a response that Spok expected. The surprise forced her to take her cup of sapphire tea and take a sip. Unfortunately, she could feel no taste whatsoever.

“I must admit, Baroness, I’m at a loss. I got the impression that the council wasn’t particularly fond of the baron’s recent real-estate acquisitions. Has this changed?”

“So, it’s actually possible to surprise you.” The baroness afforded herself a smug smile. “I suppose that after serving someone like the baron for so long, it must seem strange. The simple truth is that success and ownership are two completely different things. None of us are particularly interested in owning vast amounts of land. We do it because it’s better than the alternative.”

“Even Earl Rosewind?”

“Especially him. That sly old fox has been giving things away any chance he gets.”

“You asked me here to tell me that you won’t stop the baron from growing his domain?”

Provided that Theo managed to deal with his hunger issue, that would be an excellent offer, possibly too good to be true.

“Absolutely. What I would like to agree with you beforehand is the location, size, and function of the buildings in the new districts. Oh, and the extremely favorable rent conditions, of course.”

Now, everything was made clear. There was no better builder than a dungeon. Even mages couldn’t come close. The earl had noticed that ever since the baron’s mansion had first emerged in the empty plot. Making Theodor the protector of the town was merely an excuse to assess his capabilities. Now that the town was better than ever, even after a devastating goblin battle, it was natural for him to be the first choice of any future expansions.

Spok would have to spend some time explaining everything to her dungeon, but it was a rather good deal, just like a symbiotic relationship: Theo would be allowed to grow, and the nobles would be able to make use of certain facilities without having to pay construction and maintenance costs. Quite clever, indeed.

“Is there anything specific you have in mind, Baroness?” Spok asked, placing her cup on the table.

“Many things, but that’s for a later time. I just wanted to be the first to open negotiations with you. Besides, I needed an excuse to dedicate some time to myself. Rest is good in small amounts, after all.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Baroness.”

“Ah, youth,” the woman said with a bittersweet smile. “I remember when I looked down on rest as well.”

Another servant approached with a silver platter containing a variety of scrolls and letters. All of them had wax seals, indicating they were of substantial importance.

Once the platter was placed before the baroness, the man rolled up the map of Rosewind and handed it to Spok.

“One more thing.” The Baroness broke the seal of a scroll and started skimming through. “You will no doubt get other offers regarding the town’s enlargement. I hope you’ll keep in mind that I was the first to approach you.” Scoffing at the scroll, the woman placed it on the table and took another one. “And be cautious of family relations. They have the nasty tendency of avoiding you until the moment you become successful.”

The second scroll fared worse than the first. After a quick skim, it was tossed aside as well.

Aware of the intricacies of polite etiquette, Spok was about to make a random unrelated comment about families and society, when she noticed something unexpected on the platter. Among the letters one wasn’t like the others. For one thing it emanated a faint air of magic. That, in itself, wasn’t alarming. Many people used magic to send letters—it made the experience faster and more secure. The seal of the letter, though, was something that the spirit guide had seen recently; it belonged to the family whose estate had been taken over by the abomination Theo was currently trapped in.

“Thank you for the invaluable advice, Baroness,” Spok said, her voice ringing with sincerity to the point that the noblewoman looked up from her letter. “Considering what you told me, I think attack would be the best approach.”

“Attack, my dear?” A single note of uncertainty rang in the baroness’ voice.

“Of course. Instead of letting the other members of the councils approach me with their offers, I intend to visit them.” As she spoke, the spirit guide used telekinesis on the cursed letter, snatching it from the pile and pulling it off the table, as if it had been caught by the wind.

Normally, it would be a servant’s job to pick it up, yet doing so while one’s mistress and her guest were talking was considered beyond rude.

“That way I could set the terms,” Spok continued. “As the saying goes, Baroness, there can be only one first impression.” Further manipulating the letter, the spirit guide caused it to float beneath the table. “You were the first to approach me, which means that no one else did.”

“My, my.” The baroness smiled. “You’re quite vicious when it comes to business, my dear.”

“As you said, Baroness, I deal with the day-to-day responsibilities of my baron. It would be a disservice to him if I didn’t do my utmost best.”

“Now I see why I can’t find any good assistants. The best ones are already taken.”

With the conversation coming to an end, a servant quickly approached the table, then knelt down and picked up the letter, handing it to the baroness. The woman opened it… revealing nothing.

“There always is one,” she grumbled, turning it around just to make sure it was empty on both sides. “I suppose I should be glad that it wasn’t one of those trade schemes. Make sure I never get any of those ever again.” She turned to the servant.

“Yes, milady.” The man bowed, taking the letter and quickly stepping back.

Spok calmly observed the exchange. Deep inside, she was worried. If one abomination letter had made it to Rosewind, it was inevitable that more would follow.

Beneath the table, the real cursed letter quietly floated to the spirit guide’s hand. This time, she had been lucky. If the baroness had dealt with her letters any sooner or later, things would have turned out quite differently. It was only thanks to Spok’s quick thinking that she had pulled the letter out of sight and used some simple magic to create a fake replica.

“If you would excuse me, Baroness, I need to return to my duties,” she said, sliding the letter into the map scroll.

“So soon?”

“Sadly so. Despite his appearance, the baron demands perfection. Whether he knows it or not.”

“Ah, I understand. Well, go along, dear. I find our talk pleasant and productive. We should do it again sometime.”

“I’m sure we will, Baroness.”

Standing up in a brisk but elegant motion, Spok bowed to the noblewoman, then turned around, walking away in a brisk step. She took special care only to step on the paved sections of town that belonged to the dungeon. Turning a corner—and making sure that no one nearby was paying any particular attention—she disappeared, reappearing in Baron d’Argent’s mansion.

“I believe there’s some trouble, sir.” She took the cursed letter from the map and looked at it.

“I’m in enough trouble as it is, Spok,” the dungeon grumbled. “Do you have any idea what—”

“Cursed letters have appeared in town, sir,” the spirit guide interrupted.

“Huh? What?” All doors and shutters of the building instantly closed in a reflexive attempt of the dungeon to quarantine the cursed item.

There could be no doubt about it, of course. Theo could feel the same stickiness that accompanied all the curses his avatar had come across.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Sure for sure?”

“I took the letter from Baroness Elderion, sir.”

“How the heck did she get one? This was supposed to be a quiet, boring town! The whole reason I went on this cursed adventure was to prevent that from happening.” A long pause followed in which Spok stood there motionless as a statue. “And maybe some other stuff.”

“There are several possibilities I could think of. It’s possible that the abomination has kept on sending letters and they’ve reached Rosewind.”

The explanation was perfectly logical, but as Theo knew from personal experience, the best option never turned out to come true. If he knew the universe, there was something else lurking beneath the surface—something that he wouldn’t like.

“Or?” the dungeon said.

“Well…” The spirit guide adjusted her glasses. “It’s possible that the abomination has started to affect you.”

“No way! I would have known if that had happened.”

Even as he said that, the dungeon ran all sorts of spells on itself. Everything seemed to be in perfect order. His energy levels were adequate. The slimes remained isolated in certain corridors. There were no cracks or dysfunctional chambers. Thanks to the blood spider core his avatar had consumed, even the hunger had subsided for a day. Could it be that he was wrong, though?

Suddenly, Theo had a realization. Curses didn’t only affect the person they came into contact with. While, thanks to a few overpowered skills and the unusual nature of his avatar, he and his group had avoided any curses in the estate. However, there was one that had affected him; the very same one that had taken them there to begin with—the so-called noble quest. Given the capabilities of magic, it would have been easy for the abomination to pinpoint their location, then focus on infecting the town.

“Crap!” The dungeon lifted all the furniture in the main mansion, then slammed it onto the floor several times. “Where the heck is Paris when you need her?!” Now he had to find and kill the abomination that much faster. “Find and destroy all the letters,” he ordered.

“Me, sir?” Spok blinked. She had gotten used to the vast number of responsibilities she was given, but this was a bit too much.

“I’ll deal with the abomination. You make sure nothing happens to the other side of town.”

As a rule, spirit guides didn’t have the right to object to the orders to their dungeon. Yet even one not granted precedented amounts of autonomy would have some common sense, would have explained that was impossible on several levels. For starters, there was no way for Spok to set foot outside the dungeon. Furthermore, doing so increased the risk of someone finding out her—and by extension, Theo’s—true nature.

Yet, as the universe had seen, extraordinary beings gave rise to other extraordinary beings.

“Of course, sir,” Spok replied. “I’ll get on it right away. Was there anything else you needed assistance with?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Of course, sir.”

In perfectly calm fashion, the spirit guide went to the staircase, then climbed all the way to the top floor. There, she used some of the power granted to her by the dungeon to create an anti-magic box in which she put the cursed letter. The spell wasn’t something she was pleased with, but it would do for the time being.

A sudden thump sounded in the corner, as if someone had dropped a very heavy ball of cloth.

Immediately, Spok looked over her shoulder.

“Maximilian?” she asked in a disapproving tone. “What are you doing here?”

The overly fat rabbit didn’t reply, staying where he was and looking straight forward, as if the spirit guide didn’t exist.

“No, you won’t get more food.” The woman went up to the creature. “Honestly. Cmyk has been pampering you too much.”

The rabbit just looked at her, then back forward.

“We’ll have a talk about this.” Spok created a cushion on the floor, then lifted the rabbit with telekinesis and placed it on it. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

“I can’t hear you, Spok.” Theo replied in an almost childish fashion.

“Yes, we will,” the spirit guide told the rabbit. “Now, stay there and don’t cause any trouble.”

With that, there was one thing left to do. As much as the spirit guide didn’t appreciate the thought, it seemed that the only being that could assist her in the current task was the gnome that had recently come under the dungeon’s employment. In general, gnomes were a good addition to any dungeon. Yet, free of demonic influence or not, Spok had her doubts when it came to Switches. He didn’t have any debt, which made his desire voluntary and that was suspicious in itself. Sadly, today, she’d be forced to rely on him.

Summoning a piece of paper, Spoke wrote a note containing the words, “Come here at once with the gnome”, and magicked it to Cmyk. Now, she could only wait.

Meanwhile, Theo’s avatar had problems of his own.

CORE CONSUMPTION

1 Skeletal Warrior Minion core fragment converted into 500 Avatar Core Points.

Skeletal warriors were among the more annoying enemies, especially when there were many of them. They were skilled, fast, and completely immune to piercing damage. To make matters more annoying, these made excellent use of the weird environment.

“How many more are there?” Amelia shouted.

She and Avid were back-to-back, fending off a trio of skeletons that surrounded them. The bony entities were taking turns attacking, then pulling back out of reach of the adventurers.

“Don’t think about that,” Liandra said, shattering two skeletons with a sword arc strike. “Focus on staying alive.”

Fireballs and shards of ice kept on flying as the avatar kept on trying to hit a group of skeletal archers. The pesky creatures were doing an outstanding job of taking shelter right before the moment they would get hit.

A massive skeletal warrior leaped down from above, his two-handed ax determined to split the baron in two. Before he could, an aether sphere appeared around him.

Not giving up, the minion slammed at the sphere’s surface with the ax. Nothing happened.

“Indestructible,” the avatar said. “But you aren’t.”

Using telekinesis, the baron shook the sphere with the intensity of a child on a sugar rush shaking a snow globe.

The aether sphere went up and down, then side to side, slamming into walls, floors, and ceilings rattling all the way. Eight seconds later, the sphere had pretty much turned into a very exotic rattle. Once the invulnerability ended, Theo smashed the sphere a few feet away from him. Bones spilled all over the floor.

CORE CONSUMPTION

1 Skeletal Warrior Minion core fragment converted into 500 Avatar Core Points.

AVATAR LEVEL INCREASE

Your Avatar has become Level 24.

+1 Speed, ACROBATICS skill obtained.

4400 Core Points required for next Avatar Level.

ACROBATICS - 1

Allows you to perform acrobatic feats.

Using the skill increases its rank, increasing the acrobatics performance.

The skill was far from useful. Flight and telekinesis achieved the same result, even if at a slight cost. Regardless, the speed was a pleasant boost.

“There are only three left!” Ulf shouted as he charged against his opponent, crushing him against the wall. Other than Theo and Liandra, he was the most efficient fighter, having killed a total of four skeletons so far. On the opposite scale was Octavian. Lacking wide spaces, the griffin couldn’t manage a proper attack. Confronted with tight spaces, relatively low ceilings, and an abundance of enemy arrows, it did what any cat would do in the circumstances: perch a safe distance away, carefully observing the scene for the precise moment to attack.

“Everyone, come here!” the avatar shouted.

Fearing the unknown more than the skeletons, each of the people not engaged with skeletons quickly rushed towards the baron. Liandra spent a few more seconds swinging her two-handed sword, more as a means to keep the creatures at bay, then joined them.

“Finally,” the avatar grumbled with the annoyance of a short-tempered manager, then leapt up. Twisting his body thanks to his newly acquired acrobatic skills, the baron intensified his ice magic.

“Ice cubes!” he shouted, casting thousands of them in all directions.

Perfect chunks filled the space, bouncing off every surface in sight, and hitting any unfortunate skeleton that dared to show itself during the process.

On their own, each cube caused no more than a bruise—or scratch in the case of skeletal minions—yet that didn’t account for the amount. Disoriented by the multitude of hits, several skeletons were slowly hailed to death. Those that managed to take shelter remained there for ten seconds more—which they believed to be the point at which their enemy would run out of mana—at which point they reemerged, only to suffer the same fate.

Ten more seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty.

Piles of ice began to form as there were too many ice cubes to be pushed away by the new batch.

“I think you got them!” Liandra shouted, yet to no avail.

The avatar continued spraying cubes in all directions for a quarter of a minute. He would have continued more if it wasn’t for a new message that appeared before his eyes.

ICE MAGIC - ULTRA

Allows the creation of Ice Elementals of your size.

WARNING! A Mind value of 100 is required for you to effectively command the Ice Elemental.

“A… h-h-hundred?” the avatar stuttered, floating depressed to the floor. He needed a hundred mind to make use of that skill? That was a scam if he’d ever seen one. In his main body, he could make a minion just like that without any prerequisites whatsoever!

“Quiet!” Liandra said, taking a small orange vial from her belt and smashing it into the ground. Glowing liquid covered the floor in the small area deprived of ice. After a second, the color faded away, leaving behind the number sixty.

“We have sixty more?” Avid asked.

“No.” the heroine put her sword away. “That’s how much time we have until they respawn. We better get out of this place.”

“Where, though?” Ulf looked about. “This place is a maze that goes on in all directions.”

“It doesn’t matter. As long as it isn’t here, we’ll have better odds at staying alive.”

No one had the will to argue. At the same time, traveling with the avatar had pampered them quite a bit. Instead of rushing off in a random direction, all of them turned to the baron, looking at him expectantly.

“I’ll start charging you mana.” He crossed his arms. Still, even he knew that there was no better course of action, so he levitated them all off the floor and cast aether spheres around them. “Just one thing before we go. You never said what Memoria’s tomb was.”

“You don’t even know that?” Muffled indignation came from Liandra’s half-open pouch. “To think that my collection was ruined by such uncultured savages. I—”

The heroine quickly tightened the pouch.

“Memoria’s tomb is a prison,” she explained. “More specifically, it’s a memory created by Archmage Gregord to hold beings too dangerous to be let loose and too powerful to be destroyed.”

“Great. And there’s one of those beneath the castle?”

“It’s not that difficult. All this is just an illusion of space created by magic. The tomb is probably no larger than a single room. The door we saw before getting here was probably the lock. When you destroyed it, it brought us here, as it does everyone who risks releasing whatever’s inside.”

That didn’t sound particularly good. It did make sense to have it, though.

“I guess the abomination is locked in here,” the avatar noted.

“It’s possible. Abominations have a tendency to leak through. Its body is probably locked somewhere here, while part of its power must have cursed and corrupted the estate’s inhabitants.”

“Turning them to jewelry,” the avatar said beneath his breath. “So, what’s the way out?”

Liandra merely looked at him.

“There is a way out, right?” he asked in a more insistent tone.

“The only way to end the memory is to destroy the creature it was meant to imprison. We must find the abomination and kill it before it affects us.”