Arden chewed her thumbnail as she played observer to what happened next. Their latest batch of cattens arrived. Lerona went for Jennifer. Blaize took on Buff Dude, ready to continue her kill streak from the kossbug incident. That left Robin for Wagbell, who released an excited screech.
Lerona put Jennifer on the defensive. She moved, getting in Jennifer’s face as quick as a pesky spider. An aura of electricity sparked to life around Jennifer’s frame. Lerona flinched, Jennifer’s sparks bouncing off from her aura and hitting her in the nose. She growled at the indignity of it all.
Buff Dude slammed his ax down towards Blaize. She rolled out of its path. He put his entire body into the swing, which left him vulnerable to Blaize’s strikes. She got in a few hits to his arm, but Arden doubted that they hurt him as much as they should have. Adventurers his size usually had defensive bonuses.
He let go of his ax’s handle to full-on backhand the catten. Blaize ducked low. She launched at his leg.
Critical hit!
The catten ripped into the warrior with her teeth, a fair amount of his blood splashing. She clamped her jaws on him. Nice! That was exactly what Arden liked to see.
Wagbell didn’t let up on his charge against Robin. He had Robin moving all over the hall, the rogue doing his best not to get hit. Whenever Wagbell slashed to the left, he moved to the right. It was like he was one step ahead of the catten. Wagbell snarled. The catten’s efforts pushed Robin to the wall.
Blue streaks appeared around Robin’s legs. He jumped, using Wagbell as a launching pad and vaulting over him. As he flipped, he sliced with his blades. They cut through Wagbell, plummeting his health points to 18. The catten spun around.
Lerona hopped back into the fray. Jennifer’s aura thickened, the electrical charge practically batting Lerona away. Lerona didn’t stay down for long. She rose in time to receive Jennifer’s latest volley of electro-spells. The 20 points of health she had left dropped with every spell that landed. 15, 10, 5… Lerona rushed at Jennifer with the last of her strength.
“She has to be running out of mana after all of that,” Arden hoped. Jennifer was panting, much like how Arden would whenever her mana waned.
Jennifer’s electro-shield dropped as Lerona flew at her. Lerona landed on top of her, knocking her down. Jennifer screamed. Lerona’s claws went through Jennifer’s shoulders, but Jennifer used what may have been the last of her mana reserves to fire her aura back up. Arden cringed, imagining the burnt smell as Lerona’s fur singed.
The catten exploded into glitter.
Buff Dude shook Blaize off of his leg. Blue energy swirled around his fists before he grabbed her by the neck. She struggled in his grasp, her limbs rotating to take a piece out of him. He flung her against the wall where Robin and Wagbell were fighting. The way he tossed her, he treated her like a doll he didn’t want anyone to know he played with.
Robin brought his blades up in time to block Wagbell’s claws from tearing into his chest. They interlocked, blades on claws. Wagbell’s eyes filled with murderous intent. Robin let go of the deadlock, taking a step back. Wagbell fell towards him.
The catten failed to notice Buff Dude’s approach. Buff Dude hands ignited with blue energy again and he grabbed the creature. Just as Blaize got up, Buff Dude threw Wagbell into her. Both took damage as they collided.
Blaize exploded into glitter dust.
Jennifer hurled an electro-blast at Wagbell. He leaped to avoid it. Inadvertently, he came into contact with Robin’s waiting daggers. He didn’t last much longer after that, the victim of their cruel three-on-one battle.
To dust, the catten went.
Arden didn’t say anything until it was over. Robin and the others drank from red and blue colored potions, restoring their health and mana, respectively.
“We need to change strategies,” she said.
“This is fine,” Minette said. “Every wave’s better than the last.”
“But we lost one of our original cattens for nothing.”
“They’re wearing them down.”
“Did you see them drink? They’re probably back at full health and mana now. You have to take advantage of what makes the cattens special. Numbers. In fact, we should be building more. The pit traps are good and all, but we need more cattens to overwhelm them and push them back before they even get to the pit area.”
“No, I think what I’m doing is gonna work. You just wait and see.”
Arden wanted to pull her hair out. Minette prepared another trio of cattens to fight the adventurers.
This time, the adventurers took a bit of a longer break. They decided to chat.
“Getting a little sloppy?” Jennifer asked. She brushed dirt off of the front of her robe.
“You have no right to ask me about sloppiness. We all saw you take that tumble,” Robin said. He sneered at her.
“I planned for that to happen,” she said.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Guys, we don’t need to fight each other. We should be focusing on finding Robin’s daggers. Do you think that pixie will come out to play?” Buff Dude asked. His eyes roamed around the walls.
“With the way she teleported away like a little wuss? I’m not sure about that,” Robin said.
Arden ignored the obvious bait.
“Which way does your spell say we should go?” Robin placed his hands on his hips.
Jennifer spun her staff a few times. “I’m sensing that we need to take a left.”
Speaking privately to Minette, Arden cleared her throat. “We could use her spell to mislead them. Sprinkle some monsters along the wrong way for them to go. I could teleport there and lead them astray, then a swarm of our cattens can get the jump on them.”
“I don’t think so,” Minette said. “Just relax and let this happen.”
“You’re sending waves of cattens at them and getting them killed.”
“It’s fine. I’ve got a plan,” Minette replied.
Arden gritted her teeth. Suicide missions were not a plan. Okay, maybe they did count as plans for desperate people, but they counted as terrible ones. They didn’t work in the dungeon’s favor at all.
Normally, there was a long-term strategy that backed up sending endless waves of monsters at people. Eventually, adventurers would slip up after facing an onslaught of creatures. They’d get tired, and maybe even retreat if they were feeling hopeless.
But, in Minette and Arden’s case, there was too much of a delay between the waves. The efforts of six cattens were entirely undone as soon as the adventurers took their potions. Who knew how many more potions the adventurers had on them?
What they needed to be doing was something entirely different than what Minette had planned.
“Your plan, whatever it is, doesn’t make any sense.” Arden frowned. “Don’t you care about your cattens? They’re dead.”
“What’s death in a dungeon?” Minette asked. “They’re not dead. They’ve come home.”
Arden winced, recognizing those words. “You’re twisting what I said. Don’t use that to justify your insanity.”
“Just trust me!”
Arden didn’t have much of a reason to trust her. They were making baby steps towards bettering their relationship, but they weren’t at a level where Arden could freely let Minette do whatever she wanted. This little experiment of theirs felt like it was backfiring—big time.
The latest trio of cattens ran into the adventurers, meeting them in the middle of the hall. Like last time, they adopted Minette’s strategy of one-on-one brawling. Arden watched the adventurers intently as they fought, searching for exploitable weak points. By now, they should’ve been more obvious to her, but it’d been hard for her to focus when on the inside she was panicking. Even in the Overview mode, Arden was acutely aware of the sweat accumulating on her palms.
The cattens put up a valiant effort. Backing Robin into walls put pressure on him. He relied on his leapfrogging move once more, but Paolo the catten did a bet
ter job of escaping his trap. Paolo went for his legs and stomach, hoping to immobilize him.
His efforts were in vain. Robin stabbed Paolo in the spine, the catten’s legs sprawling like a crushed bug’s. He turned into glitter dust.
Jennifer was reliant on her ranged abilities. When the catten got too close, she switched on her electrical aura. Zaac the catten was headstrong. He braced himself through the pain of Jennifer’s electric shocks, tackling her. Buff Dude had to stop fighting his target to toss his ax in the catten’s direction. The momentum of the ax hitting the catten knocked it clear off of Jennifer. That gave Jennifer the prime opportunity to blast Zaac, killing him.
Buff Dude had issues with his speed. His defensive capabilities balanced his movement problems. Arden figured that the best way to take him down would be to overwhelm him. Multiple cattens at a time would be able to tackle him from every angle. His grappling and throwing skills were also something to keep in mind. They were being magically boosted, she assumed. That would explain the blue lights that appeared around his hands whenever he did those moves.
Arden didn’t see a correlation between his blue energy and Jennifer’s staff. Her staff didn’t light up when he did. The buff wasn’t coming from her.
“Alright,” Minette said. “Next batch.”
“You do realize that the next batch is our final batch, don’t you?” Arden asked.
“We have the pits, too.”
“You should be building more cattens. Forget the pits!”
“Hey, I know what I’m doing here. Back off. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be happy and cheerful? You have to be supportive. What happened to that?”
“You’re sending everyone to their deaths. I can’t be supportive of that.” Arden couldn’t believe her dungeon right now. “Do you want to die? Is that it?”
“You’re mad because you can’t have it your way. You can’t stand me having control.”
“My way is the way that won’t get us killed. I cast Sudo!”
Minette gasped.
[SYSTEM:
Sudo mode activated.]
Checks and balances existed between dungeons and their partners. Equality was something to be strived for in every partnership. A dungeon can’t do everything. Neither could a pixie. It was meant to be a give-and-take relationship between them. But, realistically, that didn’t always happen. Dungeons became tyrants. Pixies struggled to maintain their purpose in situations like that.
The sudo command was designed as a failsafe method for pixies to gain power over their dungeons. It was something to be used in only the direst of situations. Those who abused the command were sent straight to the lords of their domain to be punished. Really, anyone who used the command was up for an investigation. It was not to be invoked lightly.
Sudo stood for Super User Dungeon Override, and it was the way for pixies to override their dungeons commands completely. Through using that spell, they could do anything their dungeon could do. Arden herself had used it once before.
The majority of pixies never invoked sudo, let alone twice the way she had. Her old patterns were coming to light once more. Arden wasn’t anything like the other pixies. She couldn’t be as pliant as them. She couldn’t sit and wait and watch her dungeon ruin everything that they’d started so far.
Arden hoped that the Demon Lord Oiseau would understand why she did this when he pulled her in for questioning later.
Taking control of Minette’s functions, Arden reviewed the resources that they had on hand. She learned that she had 110 shinies at her disposal. The workercats were keeping them decently stocked. One of the workercats, Grandis, was still laying down the pit traps that Minette set out for it to do.
She selected the catten “Warp Gate” in the Cattenery and chose to create four more cattens. That would bring their overall numbers to seven. The problem now was waiting for them to be generated.
The pit traps would help slow the adventurers, but they wouldn’t hold them off forever. Arden wasn’t willing to needlessly throw their final cattens into the throes of combat, not when their numbers were so slim.
They needed backup. To her chagrin, that backup would have to come in the form of a certain overbearing pixie—herself. Arden had to play a careful game.
Minette hadn’t said anything, perhaps too shocked by the fact that her pixie had taken over her systems. For the next hour, she wouldn’t be able to do much except for talking. The sudo command lent pixies that much power.
Arden’s mentors had told her that the sudo command was for emergencies only. Again, she hoped that their situation warranted it. She was already at the top of the Demon Lord Oiseau’s “eat and smite” list.
This latest incident would probably catapult her to a brand new level on top of that list, a level that no one knew existed. But, she told herself, as long as everything went well and she warded off these adventurers, her actions would be justified.
Minette would understand. The Demon Lord Oiseau, Overseer of Bellstrang’s Dungeons and Ruler of Cross-eyed Pigeons, would understand. Everyone would understand, especially Robin and his friends when they got their asses handed to them. They’d learn that the Trash Tier Dungeon was nothing to be messed with.
Arden used Minette’s Influence power to tell the cattens to hang back where the pit traps were. The pit trap hallway was around the corner from the Dungeon Heart room. If the adventurers reached that point, it’d be a close battle to protect Minette. Arden didn’t understand why Minette wanted to bring the battle so close to where she was. Had that been part of her plan?
She supposed Minette sent the waves of cattens at the adventurers to delay them from finding her. The delay bought time for the workercats to create and place more traps. Once a trap was finished in the Trap Workshop, a workercat needed to move it to the designated spot. If Minette’s plan was all about ensuring the traps were completed, then she succeeded in a way.
But, at what cost? Arden knew the exact answer to that question: nine cattens’ lives. Three cattens remaining wasn’t very many cattens at all, if that point hadn’t been made perfectly clear yet.
While Arden worked, the adventurers resumed their dungeon dive. At one point, they made an incorrect turn. Robin and Buff Dude blamed it on Jennifer. Jennifer argued back at them, screaming at them to respect the might of her staff. A minute of listening to them gave Arden a +1 to her headache score. She refocused elsewhere, double checking the progress on the cattens.
“Just a little more time,” Arden said out loud.
She was their last viable option for a delay tactic. Arden waited for as long as she could, then she switched out of the Overview mode. Already outside of the Dungeon Heart room, she flew as fast as she could down the halls. She knew the dungeon’s corridors like the feel of her wings. Without a problem, she reached the pit trap area, then shot from there to the back end of the maze.
Time to throw Jennifer off.
Minette hadn’t liked Arden’s plan when she proposed it, but since Minette had nothing to do with this anymore, it was time to put it into action. She took a turn within the maze to mislead Jennifer’s staff. Before Arden joined the fight, the mage relied on the presence of incoming cattens and pit trap-laying workercats for guidance. This time, she’d have Arden around to ruin her “compass” of sorts.
She kept a retreat plan in her back pocket. If combat became unbearable, Arden planned on teleporting back to Minette’s room.
“I feel like you’re leading us to a dead end,” Robin said, his whiney voice carrying from the other end of the hall.
Arden heard the adventuring party before she saw them. They spoke particularly loud for dungeon crawlers. Did they not realize that noise-activated traps existed? Arden hadn’t figured out what their levels were exactly (every adventurer had a rank), but their actions made her suspect them being somewhere in the teens.
Being so new, the Trash Tier Dungeon hadn’t yet established which levels it was meant for. Good adventurers respected a dungeon
’s designated level. Level 30 adventurers had no business crawling through a beginner or Level 5 dungeon. They left dungeons for their matches.
Of course, there was no accounting for jerks who liked to crush underleveled dungeons, but for the most part, adventurers raided dungeons most appropriate for them. As long as dungeons served their purpose of experiential opportunities, loot, and whatnot, adventurers kept them around. It wouldn’t do to obliterate a dungeon, especially if it was servicing the surrounding community in some way.
Minette’s humble dungeon served no one. They needed more time to make their mark. The last iteration of the Trash Tier Dungeon would’ve ranked at a Level 1, maybe a 2 for the number of rooms it had. Considering that the dungeon didn’t have any creatures or traps to speak of before, labeling it as anything more than a Level 0 was being generous.
Until they had more data on it, Arden wasn’t sure where they’d fall in the Level scale.
Did it matter? Right now the only thing that mattered was beating Robin and his group. She wondered if these people were from that guild he told her about. They weren’t wearing the matching outfits she would’ve expected from guildmates, but maybe that was an old-fashioned trend guilds moved away from. If they were truly a guild, then there’d be more adventurers for the dungeon to contend with later.
The thought both excited and terrified Arden at the same time.
More adventurers meant their little dungeon had more chances of impressing the Demon Lord Oiseau. Defeating a whole guild would lead to the betterment of their dungeon. How could they not get a passing score after defeating a guild?
Robin whined once more. “We should go back!”
Arden listened in on their conversation, still unnoticed.
“Do you see my staff?” the magician asked, obviously annoyed. “It’s flashing, which means that there’s a monster nearby.
“I bet it’s going to be one of those weasels again,” said Buff Dude.
“I think they’re weasel cats or something. I don’t know. Odd choice for a mob,” Jennifer said.
The Trash Tier Dungeon Page 10
