Dungeon Configure: Book One Dark Exchange

by Troy Neenan

  It was still early so Kevin wouldn't be home, yet. This was a good thing as it gave David time to properly hide the suit of plate armour. The last time that David had brought one of his projects back to the house Kevin had found it. The damn fool had swung the very real and very sharp broadsword around like a kid with a lightsabre. While it would be funny to watch, David had better things to do then pull Kevin's head out of his new helmet. The things had a date with eBay.

  Going back inside the warehouse to collect the rest of his things, David saw that the older men were admiring his work.

  “Are these iron links?” one of the veterans asked.

  David hadn't bothered to learn their names. He had thought that yesterday was just a one-time thing, now it looked as if coming here was becoming a habit. He didn't know why but he had just felt the urge to make things. He mumbled something in the affirmative.

  “You were bending them with your fingers.” another said.

  David just had to smile, “Magic trick.”

  He couldn't get over it. He had just created a suit of medieval armour. A teenage David would have been whooping and crying in joy, but all the Dungeon Core wanted to do was lay there and die. He had accomplished something today.

  Out of curiosity, the man with the dent in his skull put on the helmet. The design was both incredibly impressive and dull at the same time. A simple metal top with chainmail which was supposed to flow down the back of the neck like an iron mullet. The old man took off the thing, “That's bloody heavy. How do you not break your neck wearing the thing?”

  “Now you know why people were so short a thousand years ago. They were all squashed,” David said.

  One of the other veterans attempted to put the silly thing on but failed. The person who was meant to wear this stuff was going to be a lot smaller than he was.

  “You working on a movie set or something?” the man they called Hector asked.

  Through the effort and pain, David managed to stand up, “Nope. Just felt like... clearing my head.”

  “Most people get like that they take a walk, they don't make a pair of iron skivvies.”

  The Dungeon Core took in a breath, he looked around at his surroundings, skipping over the machines and trying to find a drinks machine. “I don't suppose you guys have water or something?”

  Twenty minutes and a food run later, David was inhaling potato chips and whatever ground up putty they used for their so-called beef burger. The Dungeon Core ate greedily, not bothering to savour the taste of the bland burger.

  Eating was proving to be the most efficient way to raise the levels; sleep if anything was draining. That was another thing that David enjoyed about being inhuman. The lack of dreams.

  Before the change, he had suffered from nightmares. In his dreams he faced off against monsters with indestructible properties. Nothing hurt the nightmares. Hiding did nothing, as did physically harming them. The only thing that worked for a handful of moments was running as fast as he could, but they were always right there, waiting for him to look back.

  Now that he thought about it. The only time that he had successfully dispatched a nightmare was when he convinced others dreams to kill them.

  It turns out that only a nightmare can kill a nightmare.

  These days David slept like a passed out drunk. No dreams, no pain. You could have set a watch by the time he went to sleep to the time he opened his eyes.

  As the Dungeon Core got back to a hundred percent, he held the helmet up. It was physical proof of what he could do and what he was not. This dungeon stuff is kinda’ cool. He admitted.

  Contrary to belief, humanity, as a whole, sucked. Anime and bad TV try to convince its audience that humans as a whole were caring, helpful, and decent folk. Thirty years later you watch as the same actors get caught snorting cocaine and propositioning under-aged boys. Peace and love, man.

  If television had taught David anything, it was that the human race was a doomed species. Despite homo sapiens’ advances through the centuries, war and planet wide mutilation were still its greatest accomplishments. Not that David himself was different; he liked violent movies, alcohol, and fatty foods.

  During his months of lying on Kevin's couch feeling sorry for himself, the Dungeon Core had a lot of time to think about his current situation. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do. Eventually he decided that he honestly didn't care about being human. The only reason that he was a part of society was because he liked having internet and owning nice things.

  Licking his lips, he looked at the hunk of metal in his hands and recalled the way that he had so easily morphed the stubborn substance minutes before. This time he attempted to do something different.

  You are attempting to modify Kuhre'ue armour. You need three things to modify this piece, resources, energy, and measurements.

  The measurement and energy part were easy. David recalled seeing a measuring tape and there were enough chicken nuggets to keep him topped up. The iron was just going to be a problem.

  The aluminium can in the Dungeon Core’s hand caught his eye. When he had been looking through the net on silver, he had caught a site which said that the scientists in Korea were working on an iron-aluminium alloy.

  Could he somehow merge the two metals together?

  After rummaging around in the recycle bin, David pulled out every piece of metal he had. He had also scavenged up some tin and some dead batteries. He didn't know how this dungeon power stuff worked but he was willing to experiment.

  First, he just put the helmet and the empty beer can together. Nothing happened. This time he imagined the aluminium spreading over the can, enveloping it.

  Having watched the odd man clean out their bins for odd things, Hector kept his eyes on David, unsure exactly what the new guy planned. His old eyes widened as he watched the empty drink can slowly break apart like a flower. The silvery metal turning almost into a liquid as it spread across the skin of the helmet.

  “What the fucking Christ?” he yelled earning the attention of the other veterans. Those who weren't in danger of losing a finger turned their heads back and watched as the new guy did something that was supposed to be impossible.

  When he felt like he was done, David opened his eyes and saw six old men staring down at his crotch. He followed their gazes.

  Instead of melding into the iron, the Dungeon Core had achieved some kind of electrolysis. The helmet was no longer a rough dark brown but had an almost silver sheen to it. There were even specks of red and white paint that had been attached to the helmet, a side product of the process.

  You have discovered the skill. Electroplating.

  Nice. David moved and adjusted the helmet, turning it this way and that. It hadn't been a perfect job; he had focused his attention on the cap, forgetting the chainmail. Seeing that his power had dropped by five points, he ate a nugget.

  “How the hell did you do that?” one of the men asked.

  “Magic,” David said a bit impressed with himself. He didn't even know that aluminium could be attached to an iron base; he had thought you needed to do that in layers. He shrugged.

  This time he imagined the aluminium coating sinking into the iron. He concentrated, envisioning the atoms combining into any configuration that appeared to work. In his hands the metal helmet started to grow warm as chemical reactions began to take place, the iron and aluminium merging and defusing.

  The veterans jumped back as a solitary spark shot out from the metal dome. Most of them cursed and more than one cried out, but they continued to watch from a safe distance.

  David kept his eyes closed. In his head there appeared to be some kind of mini-game happening, his gamer mind was trying to cope with the intense mathematical formulas that were taking place by the only means it could. By annoying the shit out of him.

  The game was more complicated than the usual crafting systems. It reminded the Dungeon Core of circuit boards, creating tracks to form the correct bonds. Saying that it was complicate
d was an understatement. David didn't just have iron and aluminium to worry about; there was also the air to take into consideration. Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and dozens of other things that could drastically alter the end result.

  Not thinking, The Dungeon Core started the game and immediately both won and lost at the same time.

  Congratulations. You have discovered how to make Thermite.

  The iron reacted violently with the aluminium. The helmet’s dome burst into sparks and flames which shot right into David's face. The helmet's metal's structure underwent a radical and violent change, the result was a viscous molten glob which burnt straight through the floor.

  Having some common sense, one of the veterans ran and collected the fire extinguisher. “You stupid prick. You’re burning the place down.”

  A geyser of white foam spewed out from the nozzle, spraying the molten slag and the Dungeon Core. It was an uphill battle. While the flames were easy to take care of, the stream of molten iron was a little bit tougher to put out.

  Fortunately, burning thermite had a low lifespan. The game, the fire, the stream of blinding hot metal, lasted for less than thirty seconds.

  The veterans that weren't mourning over their lost eyesight were either standing far back or were running outside to fill up a bucket of water. The two men who were staying far away from the action were watching David with equal parts fear and awe.

  The Dungeon Core had been at ground zero when the thermite went off. David's hands were gone. They weren't black and crispy like they had been left in a fire, they were just gone, and in their place were dark stubs. The rest of his body was in bad shape; his face had melted off, showing inner muscle and bone. The sparks which had landed on his cheeks had burnt all the way through. At the right angle you could see the Dungeon Core's tongue.

  Seeing that he had used up all his pure iron, David exited the game. He should have come back screaming, his body should have become one big mound of angry pain. Instead, there was this familiar itch in his head, only this time it felt as if it had been cranked all the way to eleven.

  Once again he had no idea where the thought came from, but there it was. He wanted to know if it was possible to shift a person's sense of pain into an emotional stimulant. This was a rather weird thought to have at the current circumstances.

  Looking like Skeletor's fat cousin, David looked at the old men who were staring at him with terror in their old eyes. He shouldn't have even been able to see as his eyes had turned into goo that had crawled down his cheeks, yet he somehow could. “Do any of you know where the nearest hospital is?” he asked calmly.

  Chapter Ten

  Twenty years ago the racquet-ball centre had been a decent type of place where teenagers would spend hours just throwing their balls at a wall instead of at each other.

  As buildings went, David had been finding it hard to understand why the structure had been left in its perpetual state of limbo. As far as he could tell there was nothing particularly wrong with the structure of the building itself. The insides were a mess due to vandals and a lack of maintenance, but the foundations and the exterior were healthy enough.

  That was just how it went he supposed. Lack of attendance, a mismanaged bill, bureaucracy, a touch of asbestosis. Just one little thing and suddenly your little business turns into a crack house.

  Things had become difficult for the Dungeon Core after the thermite incident. David had lost his hands and he could no longer pass himself off as human. He had foolishly damaged himself and when the doctors asked how he could still be alive after getting his face and fingers melted off, he didn't exactly have an answer that they would consider mentally stable.

  Knowing that the questions were only going to get harder and the tests would show what he really was, David had escaped his bed. However, instead of fleeing back to Kevin's house he had gone deeper into the hospital, hiding himself inside the walls.

  To call his time in that place a pain in the arse wouldn't have done it justice. If it hadn't been for a grumpy nurse, David would have run all over the place naked. With the aid of a fifty year old text book on human anatomy and a pencil in his mouth, he began to learn the structure of bones and used the computers to learn about how the hands and how the human brain functioned.

  He stole from the patients, took food and anything that could be missed. He used his forge ability to learn how to create chemicals and pharmaceuticals. With enough energy he could secrete penicillin and a host of other drugs from his skin. Not that he needed it. Dungeon Cores, apparently, were immune to mundane things like infection.

  While growing his hands back proved a tedious allocation of his time, power was what mattered.

  It turns out that a damaged core has a tendency to leak power like a... Well, David didn't like to think of himself as some sort of unshielded nuclear bomb that was unleashing radiation, but he would be lying if he had said that it wasn't a possibility. For years he must have been oozing an unbelievable amount of radiation. How the doctors hadn't discovered this meant that either the energy was benign or that their instruments couldn't pick it up.

  While David had learned the ins and outs of the hospital, evading the security cameras using his ability to see copper, it had been his constant craving for sustenance that had been the Core's undoing. One of the nurses had picked up his suspicious activities around the vending machines and the police had been called in.

  In a desperate attempt to finish his repairs, the Dungeon Core did something drastic and stupid.

  Realising that he was just one big generator, the Dungeon Core had theorised that he could siphon off the electrical energy from batteries and then use that energy to repair his tissue. The process was not perfect, while he could drain a double A battery, the amount he received from the transfer was insignificant.

  Taking a chance that all he needed was a more powerful jolt, the stupid git shoved his twisted and mangled stumpy fingers into the hospital's power grid. The results were shocking.

  The hospital had a complete blackout except for a few emergency pieces of equipment, and David exploded. Apparently he could only absorb a small amount of pure electricity at any one given time.

  If it hadn't been for that Salvation Army bin he probably would have gotten arrested.

  Poor and homeless, David had spent his time hopping from hospital to university, and state to state, learning more on how the human brain processed stimulus and emotional studies, but it wasn't enough.

  Science still knew very little about the workings of the human brain. The organ was more than a slab of meat like the heart or a thigh, it was complicated. And while studies were being made every day, the Dungeon Core was finding himself constantly frustrated. Studying text books and other people's theory work only got you so far. David needed practical experience.

  Having just hit a wall in his research, the Dungeon Core was ready to call it quits when an epiphany struck him hard against the head and then mugged him. Which was how he found the racquet-ball centre.

  “Mmm mmmm.” The woman reached out her hand to the ceiling and opened her cracked lips into a grin. She giggled like a deranged hyena that just heard a fart joke.

  It had been far too easy to follow the pitiful thing to her lair. She and her partner had not even attempted to hide their tracks, and like the rats they were they returned to their nests to shoot themselves up.

  A human David would have walked away, glad that he had survived the event. But he wasn't human any more, and he was curious.

  In her drugged out state, the woman looked up at damaged Dungeon Core, and seeing only a man in a hoodie and not her recent victim she sneered, “What do you want?”

  “What does it feel like?” David found himself asking this creature before him, and indeed she was a creature. The woman had gone to great lengths to shave off her humanity. The endless conga line of narcotics, alcohol, and self-abuse had turned her into some kind of sub-human. What remained was just a toxic toilet that snorted and injected hersel
f with anything she could find.

  Then again who was he to judge by looks? There were dead possums on the highway that looked healthier than he was.

  The female appeared to be approximately forty, though she was probably closer to twenty. She was in a bad state, malnourished and dehydrated being the least of her concerns. Her hair and her teeth had fallen out in clumps, and her yellow eyes were filled with madness without end. Worse, she was pregnant; her swollen stomach was the only thing about her that had any weight to it.

  The woman breathed in and smiled as she recalled the feeling, “Like flying.”

  “Like liquid stars,” said one of the other junkies that were sharing the place.

  The Dungeon Core looked around. There were ten other people in the room and five more wandering the building, either tripping their balls off, shagging, or possibly dying. It was a den of suffering and misery, where your neighbour would kill you if they thought that you were holding onto a grain of smack.

  David, having a thought, placed his scarred hand on the woman's head.

  The woman, thinking that she was in the presence of a customer, grinned. Her mouth was a petri dish of bacteria, with what teeth she had were green and broken. High and out of her mind, she unzipped David's pants and took the Dungeon Core in her foul mouth.

  David ignored this and concentrated on the woman's brain.

  You have unlocked the mini game. Brain Scan.

  A sapient’s brain is as complicated as the universe itself. The brain handles much of what happens to the body and is capable of some amazing things. This mini-game is designed to help you better understand another creature's brain.

  Mmm. David had first thought that the mini-game stuff was some kind of joke. His already fragile mind teetering on a downward spiral of insanity. Personally, as a real gamer, he hated mini-games. They were tedious diversions meant to drag the main story line out. He recalled one mini-game where you were forced to scan planets for resources. The exercise took an extraordinary amount of time away from the story and action, which were already full of plot holes and bugs.