Dungeon Tour Guide: A LitRPG Adventure, page 34
All told, it took maybe two minutes and most of my mana to get him back into a state where I was confident he wouldn’t heavily injure himself or die if he moved wrong.
With that sorted, I needed to handle the [Analyst]. I didn’t have that much mana left, but it did regenerate naturally—slowly, yes, but it did—fast enough for me to manage a [Healing Stream] or two, which was more than enough. The [Analyst] wasn’t in risk of immediate death, so a couple of those to get him back to consciousness and slowly mend his wounds would be fine.
“Wha… what jus’ happened?” Ed asked, his accent creeping more heavily into his voice.
“Oh, you’re awake,” I said. “I just saved your life, that’s what.”
“He did,” Jackson admitted. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get to you in time.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Actually, do worry about it, work on your response times, but in this case, don’t blame yourself too much, yeah?”
“Thank you, Lucas,” Ed said. “How bad?”
“You kind of didn’t have most of your ribcage,” I said. “Heart was missing, too. Pretty bad, I’d say. You were a corpse for a while there.”
The [Arcane Archer] recoiled. “Goddess. I can’t repay you enough, then.”
“Leave a good review or something,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe put a good word in for me with your boss. Owe me a favor, I dunno. That’s not what’s important, though.”
Salman’s eyes opened.
“That’s everyone awake!” I cheered. “You’re welcome for me saving your lives, feel free to thank me, blah blah blah, we have immediate concerns.”
“We do,” the [Analyst] said, surprisingly put together and, well, not brain-damaged for someone who’d just been blasted so hard they’d fallen unconscious. Thank you, magic healing. “First: let the [Record] show that Kingsguard may be carrying martyr-type explosive spells with them.”
Now that everyone was alive and well, the tension went out of the only somewhat severely injured [Shieldbearer].
Jackson turned to me. “I did tell you that it would be better to kill him immediately.”
“We would’ve lost the information we got,” I said. “Information with the benefit of an [Analyst], no less. Also, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have detonated it right off the bat?”
Besides, it’s not like every person involved in the Kingsguard is a murderous sociopath like this guy. I kept that thought silent.
“I suppose that’s fair,” Jackson said.
“Jackson Sliprider. Lucas, dungeonbound. Edward Alys. I believe that the following discussion may necessitate a level of security beyond what the interview already mandated.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked.
“A [Geas],” he replied. “Only for the specific purposes of preventing this conversation from leaking to other dungeon delvers and causing general panic.”
I resisted the urge to smile. As if.
Well, he could sure try.
“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”
He manipulated mana, repeating some legalese that I didn’t really care to hear.
[Special skill [Divine Healer] prevented you from suffering a negative mental effect.]
Yeah, no thanks. I was fine with being hush-hush about this, but there was no way in hell I was going to let someone else fiddle with my brain. I’d been absolutely thrilled to learn that [Divine Healer] blocked it—maybe for the same reason that it dulled my pain receptors?
Whatever the case, it didn’t notify the [Analyst], who seemed pretty satisfied with his work.
“We should move on the Kingsguard immediately,” Jackson said. “We’ve lost enough people to them, and from the looks of it, they’re just going to keep trying to take more.”
“That we have,” Ed said. “Poor Francis…”
“The two of you have been employed by the Alder Corporation for a sufficient period of time to understand the workings of war,” Salman said, shaking his head. “You know just as well as I do. War cannot occur in the kingdom. If we are not at peace, the people are not at peace, and that means inconveniences, issues, riots, and disorder.”
“We need to do something,” the [Shieldbearer] asserted, setting his shield in the ground. “I refuse to let this go unpunished.”
“I never claimed that we would do nothing,” Salman said. “While the kingdom may never know war, quiet conflicts are an old friend of the Alder Corporation.”
“You mean…” Ed trailed off.
“Yes. Iris’s investments are ripe. Our army is waiting for us. All we need to do is assemble it.”
Well, that certainly was something, wasn’t it?
“That’s good and all,” I said. “But why involve me in this conversation?”
“I gather more information than any of you think I do,” the [Analyst] said, affixing me with a stare that made my skin crawl. “Part of that is information that this dungeon—the unnamed Ketz dungeon, for the [Record]—will be a critical part of the Kingsguard’s movement into our kingdom, as will the three adventurers associated with its first discovery. Further conversation will be conducted at the Ketz offices.”
That was it? Seriously? I guess he wanted to avoid giving me too much information, but…
Oh well. I could see if Rose could get it to me later.
“One last thing,” he said, mana no longer infusing his words. “Both of you, out. Return to the offices and get yourself healed.”
“Yes, sir,” the [Shieldbearer] said, giving him a salute and wincing as he turned away. “Thanks again, Lucas.”
“Ever need a favor, send someone to the Ketz office,” Ed said, clapping me on the back. “We’ll be there for you.”
I nodded. “Thank you for your assistance.”
The two of them took their leave, but Salman didn’t say a single word, even after they’d left the room.
“This is going to be brief,” the [Analyst] finally said once both of them had completely left the dungeon. “I know you’re hiding things.”
“I hope that’s not all you have to say.”
“As an [Analyst] that reports to an official kingdom agency and the kingdom’s largest corporation, I’m obligated to report what I learn,” he stated. “As a father with a child your age… I feel that same obligation to inform you that I am aware that your connection to this dungeon is deeper than you claim it is.”
“I can communicate with it,” I said. “Is there an issue?”
He winced. “Please stop speaking about it. I can suppress parts of my spells, but I can’t stop my instincts. I know you’re lying, and I have to report that. I am aware that this may endanger you, which is why I’ve avoided asking questions in that vein.”
That was… not good, right? I didn’t actually know how much information he had, but any of that getting to Iris might mean that she took a different position in our negotiations. More importantly, if he shared it with the Guild and the corporation and there was even a single information leak, the Kingsguard would know.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said, meaning it. “Please try to keep it as quiet as you can.”
“I will do what I can. Thank you for saving my life.”
He didn’t stretch his greetings or goodbyes, huh? Just like that, he was walking away.
Alright. There was… nothing I could really do about that.
There was one actionable item I’d gotten from this conversation, though.
The Kingsguard were going to be attacking me more. For some reason, they were incredibly focused on me and Minus One.
In order for us to survive, I’d need to grow as a dungeon, and they’d need to grow as adventurers. I’d made my dungeon reasonably easy so far, enough that I could guide people through it, and I needed to switch things up.
To beat people who fought dirty, I would have to do it myself. I’d have to teach others how to fight dirty.
I smiled despite myself.
The Alder Corporation was assembling their army. The Kingsguard was probably putting together their next strike team.
All I had to do was outdo them.
Chapter 46
I had to swap up how I did things around here. That much was immediately obvious.
So far, I’d been fair. I’d explained traps to people, told them what monsters did, and generally just handheld them through the entire dungeon. Yes, I’d given them lessons, but it had all been done with some level of kid gloves.
The Kingsguard weren’t ever going to do that. The first ones who’d invaded me, their low-leveled scouts? Yeah, those might play fair, but that was just because they literally didn’t have spells or attacks other than “bash person with sword”. The second attack had occurred through the mind control of a level 20, the third through a dungeon break unleashed miles away, and the most recent one had involved someone who abused spell combinations to blitz his enemies.
The last one hadn’t actually been that tough compared to the [Astral Monk]’s incursion even accounting for the five-level gap, which I guess spoke to the power of picking good classes and skills. Still, his combo had been devastating enough to kill or nearly kill both of the similarly underperforming level tens with me.
Anyway, the point was that the Kingsguard used underhanded, one-off tactics that worked incredibly well the first time and significantly less well after I figured them out.
I had no reason to believe they were going to exhaust their bag of tricks, so I was going to need to teach my adventurers to deal with that kind of shit.
If I wanted to train adventurers to fight against the Kingsguard, my dungeon would have to fight like the Kingsguard. What did that mean in practice?
Well, I couldn’t think of every eventuality, but I could think of some of the methods that the Omen king had deployed or might deploy in an effort to attack me—sending soldiers with powerful spell combos, mind-controlling allies, breaking dungeons, maybe using monsters that the Kingsguard had captured and controlled—and implement similar things in my dungeon.
I was probably going to have to get in touch with Lisa again after I did this. There was no way my dungeon was going to still be suitable for level 1s if I continued down this path.
Well, maybe if I disabled the new measures. That could work.
Also, I had to reconsider the method of guiding that I’d been doing. Even I could acknowledge that I’d been helping people a little too much. Explaining the goal of the puzzle without letting M-1 have a shot at figuring out the entire room themselves, telling people where air vents were hidden and what monsters did… sure, a traditional tour guide might tell people what things were and where they were, but clearing a dungeon was no traditional tour.
I’d have to ease it in—after all, Minus One was pretty used to my dungeon by now, and it would be a bit weird to just completely change the tone of it on them—but I did need to start thinking about the dungeon with consideration towards how I could use it as a training facility in addition to a fun, rewarding experience.
My mindset approaching this wasn’t to create a scenario for literally every edge case that the Kingsguard could throw at us—even leaving aside the fact that I didn’t know what they could do, I wouldn’t be able to implement all of them.
The point of this was to build a mindset. My adventurers had known what to expect, and that was the polar opposite of what they’d be going into with the Kingsguard. I’d taught them well on things like teamwork, protecting each other during fights, communication, and better usage of those skills, but I’d yet to train them on how to fight against enemies that didn’t play fair. I had to make sure that they could be prepared for sudden developments in practically any situation. They had to learn to be adaptive.
What tricks could I use to facilitate with that?
Well, for one, I’d been putting off one of my [Combine] experiments, and this seemed like a perfect time to apply it.
I separated the testing room from the main dungeon again. I didn’t bother putting the [Displacer Snake]s back in there—they’d proved their use already.
Six feet of solid stone was probably enough for my purposes. I’d done enough experimentation with [Combine] to be used to it at this point, so the process was simple enough.
A lesser [Spawn Earth Construct] came first. I had to make this monster before creating the [Displacer], since doing it in the other order practically guaranteed that the construct would get destroyed before it could be fully created. Other than that, though, there wasn’t much to it.
One more use of [Spawn Monster] later and my [Displacer] was in place. I activated [Combine] as quickly as I could—couldn’t have the [Displacer] deciding it didn’t like the construct’s existence before I consumed it for its skills.
This [Combine] was noticeably harder than the last few had been, but I’d regenerated enough mana to manage it. It was still going to be a bit tight on my reserves, but that was perfectly acceptable if this worked out the way I wanted it to. Besides, I had a bunch of snakes still in the dungeon—if I really ran short, I could just absorb some of them.
I set the [Combine] to land on the earth construct. Theoretically, I could’ve made a [Displacer] that had increased strength and durability, but that was less ‘sometimes the enemy will have an unfair advantage’ and more ‘fuck you, you are going to die in this dungeon’ kind of stuff.
The process was over in an instant, and…
[New sub-species [Earth Construct - Displacer Variant] discovered! Sub-species added to [Spawn Monster] pool.]
Wow, that was a wordy name.
To test it, I spawned a handful of snakes inside the isolated room, pumping more of my limited mana into them to make them larger.
I was pretty sure I could tell the difference between what would create a new sub-species and what wouldn’t at this point. At a guess, if I just manipulated the [Spawn Monster] skill itself, it could create something that had a different species name, but it wouldn’t give me a new unlockable subspecies. [Combine], on the other hand, probably did it every time since I was going beyond the boundaries of [Spawn Monster]. In this case, creating human-ish-sized snakes was enough to get them to be considered [Greater Snake]s under the interface but wasn’t enough to get that subspecies unlocked in [Spawn Monster].
The—ugh, [Earth Construct - Displacer Variant] was such a long name and so was Displacer Earth Construct. Maybe I could refer to it with an acronym?
I sent an instruction to the new monster to attack, and the ECDV got moving instantly, lumbering forward.
I frowned. That wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but I had to keep observing it. There were some very obvious physical differences—normal earth constructs weren’t nearly as metallic as the ECDV was—but was that the extent of it? Hopefully not.
My worries were assuaged as it stepped forward to strike a snake. As the ECDV’s target slithered out of the way, the construct blurred.
Half a second later, it appeared directly in front of its target, and it completed its attack, already halfway through its swing.
The snake didn’t stand a chance. It exploded into gore and free mana, the ECDV’s fist slamming through it like it was wet paper.
Good. I might need to tone down its attacks some—an attack that fierce killing an adventurer might take them past the limits I could [Revivify] them from—but this was very different from the slow-moving constructs that my dungeon had made use of so far. It was sure to catch someone off guard, and it’d be a good segue into narration by me about how lots of enemies out there in the world would surprise you like this.
Interestingly enough, the [Displace] it used wasn’t quite the same as the one that a [Displacer] could utilize. [Displacer]s arguably had a more effective one because they could teleport and swap spaces with an ally, making combat flow significantly harder. I wondered why the [Displacer Snake] and ECDV didn’t do that. Restrictions, maybe? Lower intelligence?
Whatever the case, this worked really well. I didn’t have enough mana to make another one and still have enough to [Revivify] someone after, and I wanted to keep that safety net, so I would be satisfied with the one construct for the time being.
I gave it an instruction to stay passive until ordered into action just like the rest of the constructs, then reconnected the testing room with the main dungeon.
“You can go in the… parkour room,” I muttered. “That’ll throw people for a loop.”
Since I could only make one of them, I could only put it in one side of the dungeon. For the time being, it could go in the guided side since it was pretty likely to just straight-up kill someone.
Alright. What else could I do?
I still had a [Spawn Monster] slot open. Could I take a look at that?
I needed something that could throw people off. So many of my options were too simple—stuff like goblins, bats, skeletons, any decent adventurer already had a plan to deal with. All I could really create right now were fodder enemies, and I didn’t want that.
One particular monster caught my eye. The option [Spawn Mephit] could be interesting if I remembered what those monsters did correctly…
Fuck it. It wasn’t like I had much else I could do with this, right? At this level, there weren’t actually that many good options.
Alright. I selected it.
Something clicked into place as the interface confirmed my decision, the Will of the Goddess pressing down on me. That was my last level-up upgrade, I was pretty sure, since that constant feeling of incompleteness was gone now.
I was still running low on mana, but the [Spawn Mephit] spell was pretty unintensive in terms of resources. It only started consuming more when it got to consuming more mana to make variations like [Ice Mephit]s or [Acid Mephit]s and the like.
The result was a small winged imp-like creature with long, clawed fingers that was maybe the size of my head. At base, they didn’t really do anything other than be a nuisance and try to fly and attack you, but…
I ordered it to stay still, allowing it to fly a bit into the air, and then I dropped a rock onto it from the roof.
