by Troy Neenan
Thinking that perhaps he was wrong, he had to ask, “Morgan, do I have to kill people? I mean, can't I just feed off the ambient magic or whatever it is.”
Morgan gave the avatar a dismissing wave, “I know I know, just looking at you I can see you're soft. But donna' yeh worry, me lad. I'll toughen you up. After I'm a…” she let out a belch worthy of Revenge of the Nerds. “Ahh, yeh. That's the shite. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Once you see your first trap make a knight go splat!” she smacked the side of the can in emphasis, “You'll get used to it. Hey, what's that sound?”
It sounded as if his body had gotten through to emergency services. The sound of a helicopter's blades piercing the air could easily be heard and the dungeon could see that the tarp was fluttering.
Seeing no other option, David dropped eighty-two hungry ants on the leprechaun.
He closed his eyes and turned away. He couldn't look as Morgan let out a monkey scream of fear and pain. He hadn't trusted that the bug zapper could kill the little woman. She already proved that she was bigger and stronger than mosquito girl. For all he knew she'd just shake it off. He tried to think of the most professional way to end her life.
He turned his head. Morgan had dropped her disguise. She kind of looked like Gizmo out of Gremlins only her fur was fire red and her teeth belonged to a dog. She screamed and began to pick up ants and eat them but she was severely outnumbered. Just to make sure that she didn't make a run for it, David sent in the air support.
The dungeon again had to close his eyes as the wasps stung Morgan's eyes and her mouth. Meanwhile, the ants were forming a cocoon around the little woman several ants deep. Smothering and biting under their numbers.
It took longer than expected but David felt Morgan's passing. While the ants had been like eating stale popcorn, the fairies' deaths had been like gulping down a red bull. It was no wonder that dungeons killed the crap out of people. He wondered if killing a human was like snorting cocaine, not that he had experience with the stuff.
Still, as much as he disliked some of the arseholes he had to deal with, he wouldn't make a habit out of killing them for a caffeine boost.
Not wanting to look at the ants feasting, David looked down at his tablet. He had an idea before Morgan showed up. This instinct thing was nice and all but being a gamer, he really wanted a better interface. He wanted to see a manual, some stats. He wanted the things like the ants automated. He didn't have the patience to tell each ant to dig there; he wanted to let the system do that shit.
David glared down at his useless work tablet and growled, “Why can't things come with a fucking manual?”
Then a deep voice of some dark alien presence spoke in David's head.
DO YOU WISH TO CHANGE THE DUNGEON'S CONFIGURATION?
“Oh, thank fuck, yes,” David said.
The voice seemed to take this as an agreement and it continued.
WARNING. YOUR INTENDED CONFIGURATION IS CLASSED AS UNUSUAL. IT WILL TAKE TIME, POWER, AND EFFORT TO ACHIEVE THIS. YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO INTERACT WITH YOUR DOMAIN UNTIL THIS IS COMPLETE.
Thinking that this was just a game prompt or the dungeon OS asking for permission to change the display, David was all up for saying yes. Before he did so however, he morbidly looked back at Morgan's corpse.
The ants had been busy alright. What David could see was torn up muscle and bone. What would happen if something popped up while this configuration thing was happening?
As if sensing his thoughts the voice spoke again.
YOUR DOMAIN WILL BE CLOSED UNTIL CONFIGURATION IS COMPLETE. WARNING, ALL THE SERVANTS THAT ARE UNDER YOUR CONTROL WILL BE HARVESTED FOR ENERGY. RESOURCES WILL BE HARVESTED AND STORED. WITHOUT YOUR CORE PRESENT THIS PROCESS WILL TAKE LONGER.
“Cool, do it. Wait. What core?”
Pain unlike anything that David had ever felt before slammed into him.
Chapter Five
The nurse who was currently attending to an IV drip was given a massive shock as David shot straight up from his bed and let out a loud gasp of air.
“Motherfucker.” Were literally the first words that left the trouble shooter’s mouth as he came to.
As the nurse ran back to alert a doctor, an exhausted David lay back in bed. He felt drained and weak, with his brain feeling like it was trying to bash its way out of the back of his head.
After a few seconds of intense nausea, he turned his body to the side and vomited onto the floor. There hadn't been enough time to aim or check for a bucket or towel, he felt his stomach come back up and there it went.
Hacking his guts up several times more, David returned to his pillow and saw only two vague human shapes in pink and white uniforms standing at the foot of his bed. Whoever they were, David could tell that both of them were disgusted with him.
Keeping his eyes closed, he spoke softly, “Water.”
There was the sound of water being poured and after a moment a straw touched the call centre agent's lips. David's esophagus was coated in stomach acid and it had been dry too long. When the cool water went down his throat it hurt.
“Take it easy,” Came an older woman's voice. “Too much and you will be sick.”
David didn't recognise the voice but guessed that it belonged to a doctor or nurse. Despite having just puked his stomach contents, he knew the smell of a hospital. It wasn't so much as a lack of smell but more janitors using payloads of detergent and cleaning solvents to nuke every germ. It was the smell of human faeces and blood having been sterilized.
David opened his eyes and saw a woman in her fifties or sixties in a lab coat. She had dyed her hair black but there was no hiding the wrinkles.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
The straw was taken away and David was about to express how he felt using his best and most profane language modifiers, but decided to just come out of it. “Bad.”
After the attending nurse had given her ward his hit of water, she looked down on the puddle of bodily fluids that he had just splattered on the floor, just knowing that she would be the one cleaning it up.
Her scream could be heard from outside. “Oh my god. Oh shit.” she shouted backing away.
“What?” David and the doctor yelled at the same time.
What the doctor found would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. Swimming around in a foul smelling soup of stomach acids were five large bull ants and two squirming maggots.
The doctor watched in morbid fascination as one of the bull ants got its bearings and attacked and ate the fly larvae. “Jesus Christ.” she yelled and raised her foot, preparing to stomp the lot of the bastards back to Hell.
“What?” David shouted hearing what sounded like an expensive shoe repeatedly smacking on linoleum.
“Nothing.” The doctor said, trying to keep her patient calm. “Nurse, get a mop and a bucket.”
The nurse visibly retched but queasily obeyed her superior.
Avoiding the nightmarish puddle, the Doctor moved to David's bedside and shined a light in his eyes. “What do you remember?” she asked all the while thinking about the mess on her shoes.
Still a bit freaked out over the commotion, David thought back. “I was in a car accident and got emergency services to pick me up. I remember waiting on a hill and then...” That was funny; he couldn't remember a thing after that. He shook his head, “Sorry.”
“It's alright,” the doctor said and looked down at her shoes. “Do you have any family?”
David thought for a moment, “I have an aunt, but she's in pretty much the same state that I'm in.”
“I'm going to book you in for some tests. Is that alright?”
“I'm not really capable of saying no here, Doctor...” David trailed off, waiting for the good doctor to fill in the blanks.
“Glover.” came the doctor's reply.
David looked down at himself. Something that the doctor found interesting, “I have to say, you're moving surprising well, considering.” she said.
“Considerin
g I almost died out there.” David said. He was surprised himself. He felt like crap, but considering that he had just been in a car crash and it was a miracle that he hadn't died. He saw the Doctor hesitate and go to examine his chart.
She was trying very hard not to freak out. She had just seen a man vomit up a few very large ants and things that she wasn't about to repeat aloud. She kept glancing back and forth between David and his chart, trying to understand what had just happened.
“Mr Mascoff. There is no easy way to say this but you have been in a coma for some while now,” Glover said.
David didn't know how to feel about that. Coma? Wasn't that just some stupid plot device that bad drama movies used so they didn't have to pay their actors for a season? He looked at his stomach again. It hadn't been his imagination, he had lost some weight. Another wave of tiredness hit him. He felt drained. He was frightened to ask, “How long?”
Her hesitation told him that it was more than a week and he inwardly groaned.
After bracing herself for the inevitable crying, screaming, anger, and denial that was about to come, the doctor said, “Two years.”
Something happened then that David did not expect, a line of text appeared at the top right hand corner of his vision.
Quest completed. Wake up.
You have survived a complete configuration change.
Reward: New game-like configuration. Your species has been changed to Dungeon Core.
***
David woke up. He didn't so much feel pain but a sense that he had spent an all-nighter writing a detailed report about something meaningless, like his entire life. He was emotionally drained, his mind functioning on autopilot. He didn't know how much time passed but he existed in a state of wanting to do nothing but stare at an empty wall.
Was he standing or lying down? Was he dead? Was he dying? Was he hungry or thirsty? David couldn't work up the power to give a rat's arse, so he did what many people did when they couldn't get to sleep; he stared at the ceiling and thought about nothing.
Eventually, he got bored and managed to scan his surroundings. He appeared to be in a small security room, the type of which you would expect to find in a supermarket or department store. Nothing too grand, just a few monitors and a smell of coffee hanging in the air. It was the type of place where varicose veins were born, grew up, and had little babies of their own.
The dungeon looked down and discovered that he appeared to have lost a bit of weight and that he was wearing his favourite and only real suit. He was unable to get over it, he must have lost over nine or ten kilograms. He was far from skinny but his beer gut had definitely receded. He was also amazed to discover that he was sitting in his favourite computer chair.
“What happened?” David asked himself.
In front of him were five computer monitors all displaying various screens and diagnostic tools. To David's left was a door, and to his right there was a coffee pot with a sign on it saying in big bold letters DEATH FOR COFFEE. It was all rather weird.
David groggily got out of the seat and approached the only door, “Hello?” he called out. When no answer came, the dungeon let himself out and found himself back in the cave. “Crap.” he spat. He was still a God damn cave. Only now his truck was gone. Just what the hell had happened?
He continued to look around and noticed something. Was the cave bigger than it had been before? The decor hadn't changed, except of course for the security office add-on, which was nice if a little simplistic. It wasn’t like NASA control room big, but it was better than being in a dingy cave.
There came a buzzing noise from David's pocket, “Is that...” he checked and sure enough it was his phone. To his further astonishment he discovered that he had mail.
To: DungeonMaster@dungeon
Subject: Version 2.0.0.0
Dear David Mascoff
Thank you for choosing to become the first dungeon in your area.
Your current configuration includes;
A private sanctuary where you can monitor and interact with your environment, manage your subordinates, and manage your current storage.
Limited building abilities.
Limited domain expansion.
Nullified instinctual abilities.
New mutation utilities.
New storage system.
New manuals.
New tutorials.
New resources to dungeon points coffee machine.
New dungeon points bar.
A phone that allows access to functions outside of sanctuary.
Sleep mode.
Autopilot mode.
Warning and notification system.
Maintenance bar
Internal storage
Reports
Keep in mind that due to maintenance costs you are only given the very basics of dungeon abilities. As you increase your base dungeon points/DP you can upgrade functions.
Enjoy.
David read and reread the email. It looked like a game update rundown rather than anything else. He looked around at his domain and then back at his phone. There were application shortcuts on the desktop showing various abilities
Out of curiosity he tapped on the button that looked like a sheet of paper with lines on it. It was his stats page.
Dungeon name: Unnamed
Dungeon Master: David Mascoff
Dungeon type: Rogue
Dungeon fairy: N/A
Current dungeon points: 53
Achievements:
I'm my own boss
Unexpected guests
Earth based
Highest level monster: Komai Oatzzi
Kills: 2
Time since dungeon start: 2 years, 4 months, 16 days, 4 hours, 9 minutes
It was then that David stopped reading and turned his attention to the clock, “You're shitting me?” he said to himself. It really had been two years since his crash. That sucked. That had to be the longest update in history. What did he have, friggin' dial-up?
He wondered how his body was doing. Had he died of a heart attack? Was he still working in a call centre? Had he gotten himself a girlfriend? That last one was improbable but so was him being a dungeon.
Getting more curious, David turned to the button with what looked like a goblin.
It appeared as if this was some kind of database with all the creatures he killed, owned, or had on file. He looked at the buttons.
Australian species:
European Wasp
Bull Ant
Blow Fly
Insect Race:
European Wasp
Bull Ant
Blow Fly
Hell Butterfly
Demon Race:
Hell Butterfly
Exotic:
Komai Oatzzi
Komai oatzzi? That was what Morgan was? David clicked on her name and read her stats.
Monster species: Komai oatzzi
Native homeland: Alora
Type: Exotic
Rarity: Scarce
Special contract powers: Larger storage bank, ravenous hunger, space folding.
Description: Komai oatzza started off as bags of holding. Through experimentations by wizards they turned into a sentient race of beings who exist only to eat. Eventually one of these creatures was destroyed by a dungeon, that dungeon then manufactured hundreds of these monsters.
When the dungeon was destroyed these creatures were set free to devour the world.
Komai oatzza are considered both a calamity and a sign of prosperity, as killing this creature results in its body expelling all of its contents. Entire mountains have been eaten and later expelled by the death of a family of komai oatzza.
“Son of a bitch.” David said aloud. It was starting to sound like killing Morgan had been the right call after all. If he had let her go she could have eaten half the planet before somebody ended her. That was all the world needed, a cute, sexy black hole that some kid would confuse for a cabbage patch kid. But what was this about dungeon ab
ilities?
He clicked on a tab and was immediately transported to a dungeon wiki, which was really awesome.
It seemed that it wasn't just fairies that dungeons could make contracts with. Humans, plants, insects. Anything with an ounce of sentience was fair game. The dungeon provided a base of operations, gave the creature abilities, and did a whole bunch of other cool stuff.
If he had bonded with the hell butterfly, which he guessed was that mosquito girl; all he would have been able to summon were demons and insects. Morgan would have been tougher as she was a magical construct, an item given life. Rarest of the rare, hardest to make, expensive, and total dog shit. Morgan would have driven him into what could only be described as financial ruin.
This, of course, didn't mean that staying independent was a good thing. Without a bonded creature, David couldn't buy any mythical monsters with his dungeon point reserves. He had to lure in the natural fauna and then mutate the hell out of them if he wanted anything useful. This was an uphill battle.
If another dungeon ever decided to attack David, they would be using dragons while he would be still playing with ants and dingoes. Their animals would be tougher, more experienced, and they would be able to shoot lightning out of their dicks. A few ants might take on a fairy but they were going to be shit against a suit of living armour or a fire elemental.
Going through what a bonded creature could give him, David was both intrigued and horrified.
Morgan could have given his storehouses a massive boost, allowing him to store a ridiculous amount of materials, and she would have given him access to making bags of holding. He was starting to rethink killing her when he read what ravenous hunger did.
Ravenous hunger would have caused him to go utterly insane with hunger and he would have been compelled to eat everything. Now, anyone who would have seen David eat a pizza would have made a crack about that, but this wouldn't have been a craving for a bag of chips. This was three weeks starving hunger. David already had almost zero self-control; he couldn't imagine what that would have done to him.
