LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 91: Blessings of Bounty (Arc 4: The Experts)
Welcome to Arc 4! Many boxes await you following the chapter.
DAY 90
The following weeks contained more than their share of weirdness, yet at the same time a sense of normalcy and consistency had eventually fallen upon Worthy Dungeon and Grassbrook. The Challenger's Association camp was no longer a camp, but a district - almost a village of its own, nearly doubling the infrastructure the locality possessed. The Association office was fully completed, as was a full-scale tavern and inn named The Lucky Bastard, a building whose walls were decorated with the spare luck charms various dungeon regulars had donated. While few were the sort to give away their first dungeon loot, it had become a tradition to hang your third or fourth or fifth rabbit-foot charm on the wall along with a name tag, once a Challenger had spent enough time in the region to feel the need to leave their mark. Besides, a person could only wear so many charms, and a superstition had begun to spread that the dungeon punished the greed of those who flaunted too many of the items.
Smiths, shops, and a few basic training facilities had been constructed as well, although it would still be some time before any specialized facilities really got going. The Initiates had slowly been supplemented by Advanced-class Challengers, either through training and promotions or by new arrivals as word of the dungeon spread. Even so, Advanced classes still tended to use fairly basic gear types, and it wouldn't really be until Masters began coming by that the truly high-level shops and craftsmen would spring up to service them. Still, the place only lacked for a brothel to be able to say it truly serviced all of a common Challenger's needs...and that was one of the areas in which things had gotten a little weird.
Fatalities had dropped significantly in recent weeks, with only a dozen deaths compared to the almost-twice that which had occurred in the dungeon's first fifty days. Some of those had been hard-earned as well, seven of them resulting from ill-advised attempts at Lollyp's Challenge Mode. Maimings were up across the board though, with BB, Lollyp, and the Armor duo claiming quite the collection of arms and legs. Still, the deaths were enough to grant Xenia a fifth floor without the need to rely on curse shenanigans to acquire it. After a bit of prep work, Floors Four and Five were both opened for the public, though unusually enough Floor Five was far more well-known. Only two parties had even entered Floor Four so far, with both of them being rather unprepared for it, and both turning back after traps on the cliffside climbs caused heavy injuries.
Floor Five on the other hand had been designed for different purposes entirely. As odd as the quest was, Xenia hadn't been willing to give up on the possibility of earning another Divine Favor, especially considering how difficult they seemed to be to earn. With that in mind the dungeon master had spent quite a bit of time brainstorming ways to encourage Challengers to 'get frisky' within the dungeon bounds, and it seemed clear that the current facilities were not suited for the task. She did not want her core chamber being turned into the dungeon's designated makeout point, and while Floor Four had lots of potential space to use, it was highly limited by the fact that no one had actually managed to fully explore that space yet. Given that the dungeon had theoretically dozens of eventual floors available to it thanks to the curse, it was eventually decided to devote the resources of a full floor to the task.
Physically located atop Floor One, Floor Five was in fact entirely disconnected from all of the other floors, with the core chamber having been returned to its temporary position beneath Floor Four after its reopening. Instead, it had been divided up into sections, and each section was accessible only via portals found after each boss arena. Upon exiting a portal, Challengers would find themselves in a circular chamber with a healing fountain and a number of doors leading to various identical bedrooms. The quality of these rooms improved depending on which floor visitors arrived from - those coming by after defeating BB on Floor One would find little more than torch-lit caverns with simple bedrolls on the ground, while anyone who visited after defeating Floor Four would find a section where each room had the appearance of a log cabin containing a comfortable queen-sized bed, a number of decorative plants, and a bottle of fine wine.
It was the freebies like the wine where things got truly, uniquely weird and confusing for the Challengers who stopped by. While 'safe rooms' were a common sight in dungeons that weren't entirely hostile to delvers, a floor with no boss and no apparent puzzles became quite the mystery. How were Challengers meant to acquire the rewards from such a floor, if any existed? The truth was eventually discovered, although it had to be discovered several times as the first few parties who found out its secret neglected to tell anyone else after they arrived back in town. As it turned out, if two or more members of a party within a Floor Five section reached climax during their stay, a chest would appear - a secret Challenge Mode which had to be one of the most unique any Challenger had ever heard of. The rewards improved based on the section visited, with the lowest tier bedrooms awarding items like a stamina potion or simple metal buttplug, while higher-tier rooms awarded aphrodisiac potions (their safety much improved from Lollyp's first efforts), printed pornography, or the bottles of highly-valued slime lube. Beyond that, a particularly thorough team eventually found that they could acquire all of the rewards if they made a stop in each section on their way through the dungeon.
All of this caused an incredible stir within the local Challenger community. True, you had to bring your own partners, but what need was there for a local brothel when the dungeon paid them for having sex? Of course, the fact that the payment itself was almost always sexually-themed items meant that those parties who had no interest in such things could choose to ignore the Challenge Mode at little personal cost. But still...the gold coin you could get for selling a bottle of slime lube on the market was still a gold coin, and many parties found themselves questioning just how close their members were willing to get with each other. The fact that this surely had something to do with the dungeon's unique choice in divine patron was lost on nobody, but many Challengers were relieved to find that even couples with no chance of...fertile results were still rewarded with the full prize value.
As much as many of the visiting Challengers seemed to be amused and excited by the discoveries though, there was at least one among them who felt deep and utter regret. Indeed, every day she found herself asking just what life choices had brought her to where she now was, and today was no different. Physically, 'where she now was' happened to be a well-outfitted office on the second floor of the Association headquarters building, but emotionally, she often found herself wishing for a deep, dark hole to hide herself in. As Kelsey knocked on her office door, she wished once again that she'd had the foresight to install such a hole somewhere on the premises. "Hey Alizz, mind if I come in? Got some updates to discuss."
The drider sighs as the door already begins to swing open. "I suppose you must. Let me guess, Brawler Brudd's party has returned and begun showing off their latest trophy down at the tavern?"
"And how! You wouldn't fuckin' believe this one, Alizz, I'd honestly be tempted to call this one the first actual weapon Floor Five's handed out. I mean, it's got an actual handle to it and it's gotta be as hefty as - " His boss quickly cuts the kobold short.
"Please, don't feel the need to fill in the gaps in my imagination, I'd prefer to live in denial. I swear, at this point it's like the parties are just competing to see what bizarre item they can get out of the dungeon today, and I'm one hundred percent certain Xenia is encouraging them. Surely they're becoming more and more impractical every week!"
"Well, I don't know, we've got some pretty adventurous types in town these days. Hell, even a couple parties I thought were packed full'a prudes a month ago are showing off their new toys these days." The kobold grins widely at the thought - while Alizz's team hadn't had many opportunities to visit the dungeon themselves, and they certainly hadn't 'taken advantage' of the Floor Five offerings, the newly-found boldness growing in many of the local Challengers had benefits for even those stuck back at HQ. Assuming one was interested in in those sorts of benefits, and sadly only one person currently in the room fit that particular description.
"I regret everything, Kelsey. If only I had known! I was expecting maybe, I don't know, more loot items with improved fertility chances, not a rebranding into 'Fuck Dungeon - The Dungeon Where People Fuck'! If I wasn't so deep into this shit already, I'd be seriously considering requesting a transfer at this point." The woman pushes her paperwork aside and shoves her face into her hands, nearly knocking her glasses off her face in the process. "Tell me this is the worst of it, Kelsey. Tell me it's just going to be normal, monster-filled floors from here on, yes?"
"Well, I can't speak for the dungeon, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to pull you outta yer denial for at least the afternoon. Our 'special guests' are gonna be here pretty soonish."
Alizz looks back up, adjusting her glasses. "The church? They're here?"
"An advance party swooped in about twenty minutes ago to scoop up some rooms at the inn, 'in the name of The Church of Bounty'. The VIPs should be here in a few hours at most, and I assume they'll want to come by to say hello."
The woman sighs before giving a nod. "Thanks for the heads up. I'll clear my schedule, and hopefully this arrival will improve on our current mess instead of making it worse..."
Religion was, as always, a complicated affair in this world. While every notable church and almost all of the niche ones recognized the same official pantheon of deities, that did not mean they all got along or even worked towards similar purposes. Many deities had their own specific church organizations devoted to them specifically, and while some churches worshiped multiple gods, it wasn't always the ones you might expect. The two primary war gods for example, who covered the specific portfolios of 'strategic warfare' and 'tactical combat', appeared to hate each other's guts and meetings between their respective religious organizations often turned bloody. The Church of Bounty on the other hand was a two-god affair, jointly worshiping Kahlia, Goddess of Fertility and Palain, God of Harvests. While the church lacked some of the urban political favor other bodies enjoyed, it was perhaps the premier religious authority in much of the countryside. Raising children, livestock and crops were the most important goals in the lives of most villagers, and a church that covered all of those topics was fated to be quite popular.
One area where the church had almost no influence in however was dungeons. Dungeons were nearly always in semi-remote and inhospitable places, so there weren't even territorial disputes about Challenger camps being set up on farmland or anything of that ilk. While Grassbrook was fairly pleasant, the low population of the region due to its proximity to the southern border meant the Association had been able to acquire unused land at bargain rates. So it was that when Alizz's visitor arrived that afternoon, it would be the first time Alizz had interacted with a Bountiful Church official at all. This time it was Sely who knocked on her office door, the Divine Masochist being the group's unofficial representative in divine matters. "Alizz, Bountiful Mother Elance Hammerdown is downstairs and requesting a meeting with you."
"Thank you Sely, please send her up." The cleric nods and vanishes behind the door, and a minute later it re-opened to reveal a very different figure. The woman who walked in and made her way over to Alizz's desk fit at least two of the three main preconceptions the drider had about Bountiful Church officials. For one, she was a woman. While the church didn't disallow male members, it did look on them with a faint bit of suspicion, as the church considered it to be important to raise children as well as just conceiving them and salacious rumors that spread about the church often led to them getting male applicants who didn't seem to understand the difference. Secondly, she was a dwarf. While dwarves were not renowned farmers, they were infamously personally fertile, and having sizable families was a large bonus when it came to deciding who to promote to higher ranks.
The third stereotype was where Alizz's preconceptions fell apart, however. Instead of a gracious, gentle motherly figure in fancy robes, the woman who stomped across Alizz's office floor wore the same dirty traveling leathers you'd find on most Challenger arrivals, and she climbed her way into one of Alizz's guest chairs without waiting for an invitation. She had a few gray hairs among her brunette braids indicating at least middle-age, which for a dwarf meant the woman was probably into her eighties. Still, her stout arms carried hints of strong muscles, and Alizz found her mind slipping into other stereotypes about dwarves being ready to work an anvil at a moment's notice before she arrested that train of thought. The woman did her own quick analysis of Alizz in return, looking her up and down before introducing herself. "Field Agent Alizz, eh? I'm Elance Hammerdown, feel free to call me Elance, and I'm here to see just what sort of craziness the Goddess has gotten us all into this time."
Alizz finds herself raising an eyebrow at the brusque language. "Good to finally meet you, Elance. You sound as if you don't particularly approve of the divine's decision-making?"
The cleric waves a hand. "Don't get me wrong, craziness is good sometimes. Hells, it's been centuries and we still talk about the little project with the Goddess of Love as being 'the old craziness', you know? Still, never once imagined I'd be dealing in dungeon business."
The drider nods. "While many churches have arrangements with the Association for training and class programs - my associate Sely being one of those on behalf of The Church of Enduring Suffering, for example - I'm aware your church is not one of those. I'm told though that your title of 'Bountiful Mother' would be the equivalent of a Master-level Challenger class, however, which is an impressive accomplishment."
The dwarf grins, but shrugs as well. "Aye, we learn healing spells, blessings and the like. Of course, I earned some of my rank thanks to the eleven runts I popped out in my time, an' I doubt that's likely to be added to the Challenger program anytime soon, haha!"
Alizz grins in response, but only half-heartedly. "I wish I could be as confident about that...Worthy Dungeon is changing quite a few preconceptions of late."
Elance leans forward. "That it has. So, let's talk about how the Association and the Bountiful Church can help each other, aye?"
DAY 53-90 SUMMARY:
