Dungeons and Noobs

by Ryan Rimmel

  “I couldn’t agree more,” replied Jarra. “I can overcome my roadblocks. You, however, are stuck flicking your fingers at nothing.”

  Bashara frowned at her. Jarra sat smugly, finally having a solid one up on the Wizard. I was pretty certain I could hear teeth grinding. Bashara had become quite a bit more manageable, ever since I figured out she was mentally manipulating me. On the other hand, since I’d taken away her main avenue of attack, she’d begun to get frustrated. I was pretty sure the only reason she remained in town was the dungeon. Its door was going to open soon, and everyone wanted their turn inside it.

  Hell, Glorious Robert even had his assistant captain running the fishing boat while he waited around for the opportunity to get into the castle’s dungeon. He and his wife were off drinking in the corner, with him giving me the occasional side-eye. Our first meeting hadn’t gone particularly well, and he was trying to figure out a way back into my good graces. I was pretty sure I wasn’t really still mad at him, though. Probably.

  Bashara excused herself a few seconds later. Jarra, realizing she didn’t need to guard me anymore, walked over to the bar to visit RueVivian. I was left alone at my table. Taking a moment, I glanced again at what had been bothering me.

  ● Max Level Achieved

  ● Quest: Travel through a Demon Door to remort yourself!

  Chapter 2: Maximized

  I made my excuses and wandered off into the night, before anyone had a chance to catch up to me. I was mildly moody, so slipping away hadn’t been difficult. The blast of cold air that hit me was new, though. Nighttime temperatures had dropped from pleasantly warm to downright chilly, almost overnight. The abrupt change didn’t help my mood at all.

  “Shart, did you find out anything?” I asked my shoulder demon. He didn’t like crowds and had simply vanished to his demonic palace. I wasn’t entirely certain where his refuge was or how it worked. I was guessing it was on an ethereal plane or some such, but I could never get the demon to talk about it.

  “I just got the built, and you suck,” stated Shart, groaning. He’d been working on the task for the last two days, in my meat sack time. Given that Shart operated at around a 200 to 1 timescale, that meant he’d been working on this little project for nearly a year in his time. He’d become kind of surly after the first fifteen minutes or so.

  “Is it working?” I asked, ducking into the darkness of an alley.

  “Of course, it is,” stated Shart. “I built it. I’m amazing. If I build something, it will work. Of course, stupid mortals don’t really understand the complexities of the . Building one in my vacation home shouldn’t have even been possible.”

  “But the console works and told you what was wrong?” I continued, waiting for him to demonsplain it to me.

  “Yes, of course it works! I just told you it did, Dum Dum. It's just. . .” started Shart, pausing as he considered how to respond. “Well, it's just that you have a unique situation, so it took me a while to figure out what was wrong.”

  Everyone on Ordinal had a trait. Some were common, some were rare. Mine was unique. I had the UnBound trait, which prevented me from having level-based limits. That had allowed me to level up in multiple classes that were, at least in one case, mutually exclusive. That was also giving the fits.

  The massive problem I’d run into occurred just after the final battle with the goblins. Everyone else was celebrating their level-ups. A few people had earned skill level-ups as well. I had been greeted with a screen saying:

  ● Maximum Level Achieved: You are level 60 in the following class: You are a legend! Go to a Demon Door to ReMort yourself into a new class!

  “And you swear you didn’t do this,” I asked Shart again.

  “I did not,” stated the grumbling demon. “You know I can’t lie to you, and you’ve asked me a variation of that question twenty times now. I’m getting sick of it.”

  “It just seems like something you’d do, if you could,” I replied.

  “I wish,” responded the demon. “I’d have done that straight away, if I knew how too.”

  I glared at the demon. Shart vanished off my shoulder, only to reappear on a crate that had been thrown into the dark alley we were hiding in. Just outside the alley, people were walking around. Even at this late hour, they were preparing for the holiday season. I could smell some sort of pine tar concoction being cooked down for some reason. I hadn’t been able to drag an explanation out of anyone, yet.

  “Anyway,” continued Shart, clearing his throat, “I figured it out just a bit ago. I double-checked the numbers against the . Check this out.”

  I felt a tugging on my character sheet. I brought it up and looked at it. With my Ring of Mental Bonds improving our demonic bond, I was more clearly able to find out what Shart was doing in my head. It was one of the more beneficial effects of the ring. Not to help Shart, mind you. It was helpful because whenever Shart was rooting through my sheet, I could easily bounce over and see what he was looking at.

  ● Jim: Sorcerer, Level 3

  ● Mage-Knight, Level 14

  ● Beast-Master, Beast Lord Path, Level 15

  ● Adventurer, Level 14

  ● Duelist, Level 14

  ● HP: 700/700

  ● Stamina: 550/550

  ● Mana: 250/250

  “Your total level is 60,” said Shart confidently, as if that answered every question I might have.

  Unfortunately, it did. “Everyone’s maximum level is 60,” I said, the realization suddenly dawning on me. “So even with UnBound, I can’t level up to 60 in each class. I can only go up to a maximum level of 60, total.”

  “Yup,” said Shart.

  “And my build is terrible,” I said, slumping down. All of my choices were coming to bite me in the ass. I’d been operating on the assumption that I’d be able to level-up to the maximum in all my classes. I had made choices based on that assumption that were now proving to be truly and overwhelmingly wrong.

  “It's not all terrible,” said Shart comfortingly. “Your skills and talents are still uncapped. You can level those up, even if your build is basically the kind of fever dream a sugar crashing six year old might have.”

  Having higher-level skills was still quite useful. My Jack of All Trades ability did grant me a bonus to learning new skills and leveling them faster. Likewise, I’d discovered that you could gain additional talent points from experience. I could keep increasing the talents I had in my various class trees, albeit at a significantly reduced rate. The problem was that most of the real top-tier powers were locked behind class perks. I wasn’t going to be earning any more of those.

  My UnBound allowed me to ignore level requirements when picking perks, but it didn’t ignore any of the other requirements. Most of the really good perks were three to five tiers deep in the perk trees ,or they required you to possess multiple other perks. I had Resistance, which allowed me to take three follow-up perks to reduce Damage from various sources. All the other really good ones were located deeper in the path, like the Iron Kettle Body perk. It granted your body a significantly improved Defense stat. I had been planning on taking that next. Now, that was looking like it was impossible.

  In one battle, I’d gone from an overpowered super-tier character to that idiot with the absurd build.

  “I’ve peaked,” I said, the finality hitting me like a ton of bricks. “How do we fix this?”

  “I can think of two ways,” said the demon. “First off, you could go to a bunch of dungeons and gather power from their Dungeon Cores.”

  “Dungeon Cores?” I asked.

  “They are the embodiment of the Will of the dungeon. If you defeat the final boss, then claim energy from the Dungeon Core, you gain at least one perk. There might be more, depending on the dungeon,” stated Shart. “Any person who gathers energy from a Dungeon Core gains true power!”

  “That’s promising,” I stated. If I managed to clear quite a few dungeons, then I
might be able to power myself up enough to offset my disadvantage. “What’s the other option?”

  “Well, you can go through a Demon Door,” said Shart slowly.

  “Are you still going to erase me so you can build a hero to fight the Dark Overlord?” I asked.

  Shart’s plan had initially been to take my soul and get rid of all of the annoying “me” parts, which was a theological issue; my soul was composed exclusively of “me” parts. He would then use what was left to build a hero capable of fighting the Dark Overlord.

  “Yeah,” admitted the demon.

  “Why can’t you just use me to do it? I’ll fight him for you,” I said. I’d already died once, and I didn’t really much care for it. The idea of my soul being wiped clean had a bunch of implications I didn’t really want to consider. My main concern was Shart dealing with my actual soul. What would happen to “me” when I got erased? I always hoped, though hadn’t dared to believe, I’d be going to Heaven with my wife. If Shart did his thing, I wasn’t really sure that would happen. For all I knew, allowing a demon to ravage your soul earned a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. It wasn’t something I wanted to risk, assuming such a place existed.

  Shart was quiet for a long time. Finally, he spoke. “You aren’t cut out for it. You don’t have the bloodlust that the hero who’s going to fight the Dark Overlord will need. It's going to be a real, honest to , battle to the death for the fate of the world. I just don’t see you, as you are, pulling it off. No matter what you do, you are not fit for the job.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” replied Shart, brightening slightly. “Sure, you aren’t the kind of monster in human flesh I need to fight the Dark Overlord, but that’s not a bad thing. It just means that you aren’t cut to fight something truly horrible. You grew up soft, Jim. You were an IT guy, not a Hero of Destiny. “

  “That’s what every man wants to hear,” I said slumping. “When the chips are down, you aren’t going to cut it.”

  “Just don’t go to the Demon Door, then,” replied Shart, watching me. “Don’t do it. I checked the . When you die, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to catch your soul anyway. Just live your life and don’t worry about it.”

  “So, no matter how this ends, you are going to wipe my soul,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “That was always the plan. I just had to put in the effort to confirm the possibilities with the , and you asked me to do it,” replied Shart.

  I was about to retort, but he was talking about the . I had asked him to build it. Now, when I died, I got perma-death because of my own request. Poetic.

  “If I figure out a way to defeat the Dark Overlord without you erasing my soul, that’s still fine, right?” I asked. “No soul erasing, then?”

  Shart nodded ecstatically. “Yes! Look, I don’t want to do this, Dum Dum. I would much rather leave you be than erase you. I mean, If you can find someone else potentially powerful enough to take your place, I’ll use them instead.”

  That would have to be enough to keep me going.

  It was only later that Shart had finally called me by my chosen name.

  Chapter 3: Preparation B

  I woke up the next morning in my bed. The foul stench of badger breath permeated my nostrils.

  “The hell!” I exclaimed.

  “Wake up, Jim, my boy. It's time for us to get busy,” replied Badgelor.

  “I respect you as a badger, but I’m not into that. Check with OttoSherman,” I groaned, trying to go back to sleep.

  He was hopping up and down on my chest, looking insanely pleased. I was immediately concerned. Normally, when the badger was this happy, something tasty had just died. I was also pretty sure he was ruining my blankets as his claws repeatedly caught in them. All I wanted to do was sleep a bit more, but it was hard with someone so enthusiastic nearby.

  “What’s going on?” I finally asked.

  “In five days, we are having Badger’s Night! I need to begin preparations,” answered Badgelor. The excited weasel grabbed me by the neck and hauled me up from my soft, comfortable mattress. I wasn’t quite sure of the physics of it all, but the next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Staring up at the ceiling, I wondered what fresh, confusing hell I was in for.

  “What the hell is Badger’s Night?” I asked. Badgelor scurried up my dresser and flung out a shirt and a pair of pants for me. I hastily put them on as he explained.

  “It's the most important night of the year,” Badgelor informed me. “Didn’t you hear the poem?”

  “The one you swore throughout to the children at the inn?” I responded, trying to make rhyme or reason out of what was going on.

  “Like they can understand me,” replied Badgelor, growling. “I waited until Grace left the room.”

  “I wondered why you were singing,” I replied, following the wildly gesticulating badger into the hallway and up the stairs. Ashe stormed down the stairs, frowning fiercely at me.

  “I’m not touching that,” she said. I squeezed myself against the wall, giving her space on the smaller staircase.

  I was about to say something when Badgelor jumped through the still open door to my crafting room. It was the only room of its kind that I’d seen on Ordinal. It contained five large workbenches that could be used for any kind of crafting discipline. The massive pile of garbage in the middle of the room was new, though.

  My crafting room was located in the attic, taking up nearly the entire space on the top floor. A massive vaulted ceiling went up nearly twenty feet in the center. The room itself was spacious and organized. The long crafting benches lined the walls, and there was usually plenty of open floor space. It was a well-designed and, typically, fastidiously neat crafting area. Currently, in the middle of the room, there was an eighteen foot tall pile of garbage. Shart was sitting on top of it like some sort of strange trash tree topper. He was slumped slightly, narrowly avoiding scraping his head on the ceiling.

  “What?” was all I managed to get out. I was pretty sure the floorboards were warping, due to the weight of the garbage. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that none of the rubbish smelled. Very odd. I frowned and looked over at Shart.

  “What? What’s wrong?” the demon asked. I managed to open his inventory screen. Aside from a few healing potions and other random crap I’d seen before, he was empty. Shart had a notorious instinct to gather up whatever shiny piece of garbage caught his eye, and now they were all in the middle of my workshop.

  “Explain this to me. Use small words,” I said to Badgelor, who had resumed hopping around like a coked out kangaroo.

  “Explain it to him like he’s Jim,” replied Shart. I wasn’t sure if he meant the Curious Little Puppy or because I was particularly slow in their eyes. I wasn’t happy about either comparison.

  “I need you to make toys. Shart said you have the Salvage skill,” replied the badger.

  He was right. I did have the Salvage skill, but I didn’t understand how Badgelor’s excitement, the trash, and the Salvage skill were connected. I typically kept Salvage deactivated, because it was kind of annoying. On Ordinal, if you had a skill active, you kept getting an overlay as to how the skill could be used. If you had Salvage up and looked at a person, the results were unpleasant.

  I brought up my skills menu and flipped through the options. I’d learned Salvage when I was much less experienced. It took a moment, but I finally found the settings to activate Salvage but disable it for living beings, because I didn’t need to know how many pounds of meat Badgelor was worth. Then, I went a step further and set it so that I’d have to specifically look at an item before the skill would activate. That was still an improvement over my Improvised Tools skill. I had to set that one as broadly as possible, because that skill seemed to only work when I could see everything. That was how I learned how flexible RueVivian was. I usually kept it deactivated.

  ● Salvage, you are Amateur. You have a lim
ited chance to gain poor quality components from a salvaged item.

  I sifted through the pile of junk, pulling out the bottom part of a coat rack. At one time in the village’s past, Windfall had apparently had a prosperous coat rack trade. Shart had been collecting pieces since we moved to town.

  ● Damaged Coat Rack: Salvage. You have a chance to recover two blocks and one dowel. Would you like to salvage ?

  I selected “Yes” and pulled.

  ● Critical Success: you have recovered all parts, plus an additional pole!

  The item literally fell apart in my hands, leaving me with two large wooden blocks, a dowel that was as long as either of the blocks, and a pole that was nearly four feet in length. In all, the materials I’d salvaged encompassed at least 100% more material than the damaged piece could account for.

  The garbage pile swayed dangerously, forcing me to drop the materials and put my shoulder into it to prevent an avalanche.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “When you Salvaged the coat rack,” answered Shart with a sniff, “The other half must have been in the pile.”

  “You mean if I salvage something, all of it is salvaged? It doesn’t matter if I have the entire thing or just pieces?” I asked, considering the implications. “I could use that over long distances. Set up a trap or something.”

  “No, Dum Dum. It's got a very limited range,” replied Shart, rolling his eyes, “If the parts had been further away, you would have only been able to Salvage the bits that you had.”

  I picked up one of the wooden blocks and set it on a workbench. I knew from Carpentry that blocks were one size down from planks. I also knew they were used mainly in the assembly of smaller wooden items. Boards were also used by the Carpentry skill, but for more specialized purposes.