He refused to listen to any of Arden’s suggestions. No amount of calling him “honey bug” brought him back on her side. He reminded her not to forget her place as his pixie.
The raid group continued to storm through the dungeon, taking down everything in their path. Their traps became minor speed bumps. The waves of units Bugsy threw at them were ill-timed. He tossed them into the fire without an ounce of care. For every adventurer they defeated, they lost at least a dozen troops.
He insisted that it wasn’t a problem, and he doubled down on his insistence as the remaining raiders closed in on his Dungeon Heart room.
“You have to draw them away from there,” Arden said.
“No, I don’t have to do anything. Our boss monsters will take care of this.”
“They’ll kill them and then kill us. We’ve got to utilize the units we have left. Send the twin-tailed scorpions down the western wing. They can flank the group and redirect them away from our Dungeon Heart.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Be a good pixie and shut your mouth. This is my dungeon.”
“This is my dungeon, too. Sudo!”
The Super Dungeon User Override command locked Bugsy from doing any further damage. Arden flipped through the menus, re-familiarized herself with the controls, and then got to work on fixing Bugsy’s mistakes. In the end, she eked out a victory, but it came at the cost of 90% of their units.
“It could’ve been worse,” she’d told the Demon Lord Oiseau when he came to investigate. He checked through her memories, then gave them a chance to explain themselves.
“She almost lost,” Bugsy said.
“I did it to save us.”
“You’re not supposed to do that. That’s my job. What good’s a pixie who doesn’t know her role?”
“Maybe I should’ve let us die.”
“Look at what I’m working with, Demon Lord Oiseau. She’s the worst. She doesn’t have any respect for our bond. I thought we had a special relationship. We were best friends and then she went and sudo’d me. I could’ve understood it if we weren’t so close but we were. I’m heartbroken.”
“Excuse me? You’ve never treated me like a friend, let alone a best friend! I was never happy here.”
“If you were that unhappy, you should’ve asked for a different dungeon assignment,” the Demon Lord Oiseau said.
“No. That would’ve been me admitting I was a failure,” Arden said. “I wanted to prove myself.” Besides, there was an inherent wrongness in leaving a dungeon. It had been ingrained in Arden to never even consider it.
“I want a new pixie. I don’t want to work with Arden anymore,” Bugsy said.
“Likewise,” Arden confirmed.
“So, this is how one of the top-ranked duos in Bellstrang comes to an end,” the Demon Lord Oiseau said. “For shame, Arden. You’ve committed a horrendous act and rather than feeling bad about it, you’re bickering with your former dungeon. Do you not understand the seriousness of this?”
“I do.”
“It should’ve never gotten to this point. I’m taking you back with me to my castle. I’ll figure out what to do with you. Bugsy, it’ll be a few days until I can assign you a new pixie. I have to find someone who’s right for you.”
“Thank you.”
Although Arden was sure that the Demon Lord Oiseau would smite her, he gave her one last chance…
***
“…a chance with the Trash Tier Dungeon. I think he must’ve taken some pity on me. It wasn’t until you told me about how you can create your own menus that I realized that Bugsy must’ve rigged everything when he gave me my shot,” Arden said. “Maybe that’s what saved me. The Demon Lord Oiseau saw me being tricked and felt sorry for me.”
She expected a whole lot more than silence by the time she finished talking. If Minette’s color hadn’t changed to a medium blue shade, she would’ve thought that Minette hadn’t listened at all. She hoped that the name of the shade was a contemplative blue rather than a don’t-give-a-crap blue.
“So, that’s why I’m the way I am. This is me, Arden the Endless Terror.” Arden shrugged. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re my love kitten and I’m your honey cat. Meow.”
“Were you listening at all?”
“Sorry, I wanted to lighten the mood.”
“Bad timing.”
“I’m not as bad as Bugsy, don’t worry. I won’t force any pet names on you. He gave you a real chip on your shoulder, didn’t he? That explains a lot about you. Actually, it explains everything. You’ve been mean to me for a reason, not because you hate me. That doesn’t mean you can get away with it anymore, though.”
“Yeah, I figured that,” Arden said.
“I could tell you were defensive from the moment we met. I’m not anything like Bugsy. You don’t have to be all defensive with me,” Minette said. “I’ve never attacked you, other than that one time I called you a bitch.”
“Kind of deserved it.”
The fact that Minette was being so understanding touched Arden. It was awkward to admit that to herself. Venting about her past to Minette made her feel like she’d gotten the weight off of her shoulders.
“For a split second, I considered letting you go. It would’ve been easy,” Minette admitted.
“Thanks for not doing that.”
“Instead of thanking me, I want us to continue like the way we are right now. We can have a good relationship. I mean, I’ve got some trust issues here, too. You’re not the only one that’s had something to learn,” Minette said.
“How many pixies did you burn through?” Arden asked.
“Three. I told you what happened with the first one. The second and third were pretty much the same. They wanted to change things, but I was too busy loafing around with my workercats. No one pushed me about it, so I didn’t know it was a problem.”
“I’m surprised no one snapped. I would’ve.”
“My second pixie came close. She left when we were on the edge of a big blow up,” Minette said. “When my third pixie showed up, she had some ideas, but she eventually stopped giving them. She acted like she was happy playing with my workercats. I never saw her disappearance coming.”
“That’s rough.” Arden cringed.
“Yeah, I know.” Minette sighed. “I did some reflection. Obviously, I was missing something if everybody kept leaving. So, when I met you, I decided I needed to be open to change. I went along with the things you said. I don’t know, I thought it’d help us reach harmony.”
“But then it led us here.”
“We both made some mistakes,” she said. “I’ll own up to mine. I think that’s what makes us good for each other. We’re not afraid to make mistakes. We don’t try to be perfect because we know we’re not. I have a weakness for cute and cuddly things and you, well, you’re you.”
Had she been a worse mood, Arden would’ve taken that the wrong way. “I’m not like your other pixies, that’s for sure. I’ll be a bitch when I have to be. I don’t care.”
“Sometimes, that’s what it takes. You have to have the right attitude.”
“Here, I think it’s called cattitude.”
Minette giggled, her color brightening. “Cattitude. That’s a good one.”
“Mess with the cats and you get the claws.” Arden swiped the air.
“I think you should quit while you’re still ahead. Let’s end on a high note before we get into pun territory.”
“Sorry, I pawsitively can’t help myself sometimes.” Arden pointed at her smile. “Whiskah could change, but I can’t.”
“Those were even worse,” Minette said. Arden pictured her cringing. “Hey, didn’t I win our bet?”
“Technically,” Arden said.
“I know the purrfect way to get back at you for those puns.”
“No, no, you can’t do that. You can’t chastise me for making puns and then go ahead and make a pun. It doesn’t work like that.”
&n
bsp; “Sure, it doesn’t,” she said, her sarcasm evident. “Lucky for you, I’m going to cash in my victory at a later time.”
“When? How much later?”
“When I feel like it. You’ll see.”
“Anyway,” Arden coughed into the crook of her arm. “Those adventurers are definitely going to come back to get the other dagger. I don’t know what it was exactly that made them decide to leave, but I think we should count ourselves as lucky.”
“The magician was getting mauled. Then their warrior got freaked out. They got scared, that’s all. Do you think they’ll come back with more people? They’re from a guild, aren’t they?”
“That depends on if Robin can convince more people to help him. The three of them seemed to have a personal attachment to those daggers. There’s no guarantee anyone else does,” Arden said. “I doubt they’re part of a massive guild. They would’ve brought more people.”
“Good,” Minette said. “I don’t think I could handle any guild warfare right now.”
“Yeah, let’s hope that’s something that we’ll get to look forward to in the far future.” Arden rubbed the back of her neck.
“How’s your mana? You should probably head over to the Monster Lounge to do something about your wings.”
“I’ll teleport there in a bit. I’ve got enough mana to do that now. I’m not very good at this whole getting mushy and saying thanks thing but I want to say thanks for taking another chance on me. Again. I probably don’t deserve it.”
“Forget about deserving it or not. Let’s move forward. When you’re ready, let me know you want to go into the Overview mode and we can take a look at things.”
“Together.”
“Yeah, together.”
…For the first time.
Chapter 11
Arden’s physical body rested in the Monster Lounge while she and Minette looked over the dungeon in the Overview mode. After what happened with Robin and his crew, they badly needed to refill their ranks. Minette suggested that they take a look at their total roster.
She’d already done the honors of applying nicknames to their newest units. Their numbers stood at six workercats (Drasko, Grandis, Daccota, Joseph “Eagle,” Hugh, and Brooke) and five cattens (Coop, Angelo, Nuzkits, Matfield, and Dusk).
“We took a hit,” Arden said, pointing out the obvious.
“It won’t last forever. We’ll rebuild. Our surviving cattens are resting with you in the Monster Lounge, right?”
“Yeah, they were there before I teleported there.” Arden was careful with her next words, not wanting to sound bossy. She still needed to prove her trustworthiness to Minette. “What we should probably do now is fill out our ranks and do something about our upgrades.”
“What about applying some traps around the Warp Gate room? You said you were interested in making some snare traps, right? We could do that. I was mostly turning you down earlier to prove a point.”
“Cattens are more useful.”
“If we want to keep them alive for longer, we should give them some more advantages. I like the thought of upgrading them, but upgrades are pricy. Traps are a good investment in the meantime.”
Hearing Minette’s logic knocked Arden off-center in a good way. The dungeon who’d formerly used “fun” and “cuteness” as her main reasoning points was actually thinking. Arden didn’t want to openly acknowledge it in case it turned out to be a fluke, but she liked this new side of Minette.
“Right,” Arden said. “We should reach our 12 count of cattens again, then start building the snare traps. That’s a good middle ground for both of our plans. After that, we can do something about our upgrades.”
“And to even get those upgrades,” Minette added, “we need to find some glowyrms. If only we had one of those glow stick things like that wizard had. We could wave it around and find us some glowyrms just like that.”
“Let’s have the workercats search in a new direction. Maybe they could try making a tunnel off of where the Warp Gate room is. It’ll make it more of a trek for them to carry the glowyrms back, but it’s something we haven’t tried.”
“I don’t know about them going that far. How about we have them search on the other side of me? And when I say me, I mean my Dungeon Heart room.”
“Alright. We can do that. How are we on resources?”
“20 shinies. We’re rather low.”
“We’ll focus on the cattens first and then deal with the rest,” Arden said.
In that moment, she felt like their relationship was the strongest it ever was. It was still touch-and-go to some degree, and communicating with her still wasn’t something she was used to doing. Perfection would come later.
Working together was a learning process.
Things in the Trash Tier Dungeon moved along. Arden imagined what the adventurers must’ve been doing in their bitterness. Robin, no doubt, was probably yelling at teammates for messing up. Buff Dude was most likely trying to fan the flames of Robin’s ire, and Jennifer was biting back all of the offensive remarks she should’ve shot out at Robin.
Killing them was an exciting, heart-pounding prospect for Arden. Being able to boast that they had the golden skulls of adventurers within their depths would brighten the Demon Lord Oiseau’s opinion of them. In addition to that, their corpses would provide the dungeon with some much-needed loot.
Loot was still an area that they lacked in. While they appeared to be making progress on most of the other fronts (crawling potential, traps, and action in the form of monsters), they weren’t doing much about their treasure trove.
The flame dagger was one thing, but that was the problem. It was one thing. Until they discovered a forge of some sort, they couldn’t generate weapons like that on their own. The dagger would provide a fine prototype once they did.
Their units had the potential to drop some natural loot. The cattens had their claws and the workercats had their skins, as far as Arden knew. There was a chance that an adventurer could pick up either. Not knowing the economy of the area, Arden didn’t know how much those items could sell in a market. Until Kazzipur’s citizens became aware of the Trash Tier Dungeon’s revival, their natural loot wouldn’t have a presence in their markets.
“Did you bother with loot before?” Arden asked. She doubted it since it seemed like Minette never bothered with anything, but still, it was worth asking.
“I can’t say I really thought about it,” Minette said. “I’ve never liked the whole concept of it. It’s confusing.”
“It’s one of the laws of this land. Adventurers like loot and we provide it. We can always get it back from them if we kill them, anyway.”
“Why are you bringing loot up now?”
“I was thinking of going up to the surface level and collecting some. I can con some people out of their stuff. I’m good at that,” Arden said. “I’ll need a catten.”
“Oh, okay. There’s something I have to say first.” Minette sounded like she was on the edge of telling Arden some really bad news. “I think that my monsters are allergic to the surface level.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I’m allergic to parasites here and they’re allergic to whatever’s going on up there. I’m so sorry to tell you that.”
“I know you have to be lying. There’s no way that’s true.”
“You got me. I’m still a bit nervous about you leaving and never coming back.”
“You know I won’t do that,” Arden reassured her. “There’s a small chance we’ll die. I’m not planning on doing any fighting, but the catten will be with me as an insurance policy.”
“I don’t have any eyes up there. You get into trouble and there won’t be anything I can do. I can’t even use my Influence up there. It’ll be the two of you alone.”
“Like I said, there’ll be no fighting and no drama. Just a girl and her cat wandering the forest looking for cool stuff to bring back to the dungeon. We’re going to need loot eventually, so it’s a good idea to sta
rt stocking up on it now. Do you think you can handle the dungeon without me?”
“I can always handle myself,” Minette said, “except for all the times where I didn’t handle myself. Ignore those.”
“We’ll be seeing you soon.”
No fighting. No drama. Nothing like that.
She repeated her own words herself as she left the dungeon, Matfield the catten in tow.
***
It would’ve been nice to do her thievery in Kazzipur. Right now, though, she needed to stick to the forest outside of the Trash Tier Dungeon. By now, it was almost guaranteed that Robin was smearing her good name all over the town. Well, not her proper name, but the lovely set of pejoratives he’d heaped upon her while he’d been crawling through the dungeon.
The catten that was with her was from that time. It was lean and long, like its feline beast brethren, its name Matfield. Matfield looked like he could run in a series of races without slowing down. His paws scratched at the dirt as if he was revving up for a mile long journey.
Arden opted for a variation on her human-like Disguise sans cat ears and tail. She didn’t need the attention that being a cat girl would bring. That would be practically waving a flag that said “please, go ahead and kill me” and to die yet again for this dungeon. All she planned on doing was a bit of thievery, much like a bandit.
This bandit would be a little girl, though. No one would expect a pig-tailed blonde in a pink dress to rob them blind.
“Oh, hello, my name is Emily. No, that’s not gonna work.” Arden practiced the type of voice she needed to use for her costume. She needed to sound endearingly squeaky. “This is ridiculous. What are the odds of us even finding people in this forest?”
Matfield sniffed the air, his whiskers twitching.
“Did you catch a whiff of something?” Arden asked.
He took a deep breath of whatever he was smelling, his mouth hanging open. Sure enough, there was something in the air that even Arden could detect. Burning flesh? It was some kind of meat that she couldn’t identify. Honestly, it was difficult for her to keep track of something she didn’t care that much about.
The Trash Tier Dungeon Page 13
