Dungeon Tour Guide: A LitRPG Adventure, page 7
Maybe the explanation came from the fourth member of their party. I had the vague impression that I might’ve seen her before, but I had no idea who it was. She looked a lot more prepared than the adventuring trio did even after their preparations—she had chain armor, a blade pulsing with magic, and enough arcane focuses on her body to last a month.
My senses told me that she was a [Spellblade], level 10. An offensive class that mixed magic with melee. Even though she was definitely more than strong enough to solo clear everything I’d prepared here, my first instinct was to tell them off for not bringing in the defensive utility that their team needed.
Well. First things first, I needed to greet them. I closed the room I’d been using for testing completely, made sure I hadn’t accidentally left any traps out in the open, and then I made my way to the entrance.
“Hello and welcome back,” I said, greeting them with a smile. They returned the gesture, their faces lighting up when they noticed I was wearing what they’d bought for me.
Well, they excluding the [Spellblade].
“Who are you?” she asked, the hostility in her voice so sharp I could’ve chopped wood with it.
“I’m the tour guide,” I replied. “Here to help you out with the dungeon. Though it doesn’t look like you need it.”
“This is certainly an anomaly,” she said, not talking to me. “You said it was benevolent?”
“He’s really nice,” Rose said. “And a [Healer] or something similar as well.”
The [Spellblade] didn’t move to attack me, but she didn’t calm down either. Had there been an issue between her and the others?
“Show me what it—”
“He,” Rose interrupted. “He’s a person.”
“What he does,” the [Spellblade] said, exasperated. “You have thirty minutes, and if I’m not convinced that he won’t be a threat to proper dungeon functions by then, I’ll kill him.”
The way Troy turned to look at her suggested that this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, like he already knew the response he was going to get. “But—”
“No buts,” the level 10 adventurer said. “Need I remind you that you unlicensed adventurers delved a dungeon that was under the Guild’s jurisdiction? I’m being lenient.”
Troy cringed back at that. “No. You don’t.”
“Don’t worry about it!” I said cheerily as if I hadn’t just had my life threatened. Not that I really cared that much. I was pretty sure I could live an attack with the power of the dungeon, though I would need to hide the Dungeon Core part of myself even deeper under the ground.
The [Spellblade] glared at me, but it wasn’t a properly angry glare. More like she’d been about to get off work and gotten saddled with a surprise task as she was on her way out the door. From what I knew about the Guild, that might’ve even been what had happened.
“Sorry about this.” Rose grimaced. “We kind of got into trouble.”
“Not an issue,” I lied. “Come on. I have some new things to show you.”
Chapter 9
With only a day to work on the dungeon, I hadn’t been able to add that much. I had a work-in-progress room that I’d set to one side, but that one wasn’t going to be able to be unveiled for a while. Not on this short notice, at least.
As I ran one final set of checks in my mind, I made conversation. Wouldn’t do to lead them into the dungeon just to watch my first mechanism fail.
“You seem like you’ve had a bad day,” I said to the [Spellblade]. We hadn’t exactly gotten off to the best of starts, but I didn’t want to hate her for it. Also, it was probably a bad idea to antagonize the person who was laying judgment over my life. “Are you alright?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to an anomaly,” she said, her eyes fixed at a point two feet to my left, even though she was clearly talking to me. “Guild protocol.”
“Then don’t talk to the anomaly,” I said. “Talk to the air, and maybe something will reply. Who knows?”
That got a brief snort out of her, which surprised me. It was a sound that I would’ve expected one of the other adventurers to make, not the threatening level 10 woman from the Guild.
“I don’t dislike you,” she said.
“Thanks? Anyway, same question. You good?”
“If by ‘good’ you mean ‘extremely irritated’, yes.”
“I don’t think that’s what good means. Is something up?”
“These little shits,” she grumbled, jerking a finger towards the other three adventurers, “showed up to ruin my day. I swear to the gods, I spent the entire damn day saving lives and cleaning up the mess of three separate dungeon breaks, and what do I get? I get an assload of paperwork and then the sudden appearance of a Kingsguard soldier in my town and three unlicensed adventurers delving an uncleared dungeon. These three, to make it worse.”
The way she said it made it sound like there was something special about them, but I didn’t ask further. It wasn’t my place to pry, and they had already expressed a desire to not share more about their backgrounds. I hoped that they would be open to talking about it more once I’d gotten to know them better, but that was a thing for the future.
“That must be rough,” I said. “Work with the Guild can be way too taxing sometimes, it sounds like.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she said.
As much as a part of me was telling me that it would just be irritating and pointless to keep politely listening to the grievances of the woman who might want to kill me, I wanted to do it anyway. She’d been talking as if we were two friends out drinking after work rather than… judge and defendant? That sounded like the best analogy, at least. I found it hard to believe that she could speak like she was with an old friend and still truly want me dead.
There was an even smaller part suggesting that I lure her deep into the dungeon and kill her like I’d done with the Kingsguard, and I was ashamed that the thought had even come up. She was as human as the rest of us, and it wasn’t like she actually wanted to kill me. Yeah, it was more than a little threatening, and her manners were for shit, but who was I to turn to violence as a first resort?
A dungeon, that little part of me said.
Well, fuck that. I was Lucas the tour guide, not some wandering monster, and I wasn’t going to give up my humanity just because I technically wasn’t a human anymore.
On another note, the dungeon was good to go.
“Alright, everyone,” I said. “We ready?”
“Uh, how is this going to work?” Troy asked, hesitant.
The [Spellblade] turned a baleful eye on him. “I’m your supervisor. You said you cleared the dungeon, so you’ll clear it again, which you’re only allowed to do now because you have me here.”
She paused for a second, driving in the point that they hadn’t been meant to do this dungeon earlier. “My assignment is to classify the dungeon and eliminate any threats to its function, not to clear it. I suspect that my abilities are too great for an accurate classification.”
“Ouch, we’re that weak?” Ryan asked, half-jokingly. “Yeah, that tracks. I’m down to run it again anyway.”
“Then in we go,” I said. “C’mon!”
They followed me single file, Rose followed by Ryan and then Troy, their supervisor hanging around at the back.
“Don’t try anything funny,” the [Spellblade] warned, though there was less danger in her voice than there was exasperation. “If you die on me after all of this, the amount of paperwork I’m going to have to go through is going to be fucking astronomical.”
She had an odd way of swearing, overemphasizing them like she was trying them out for the first time. It was a little endearing, to be honest.
“For those of you unfamiliar,” I said, stepping into the first room and gesturing at the [Spellblade], “this is the snake room. With a veritable playground for these snakes to crawl around, they’ll attack from all sides. Make sure you’ve got a good balance of offense and defense, and remember to ask for help if you need healing!”
I had to admit, I was a little proud of my spiel. I hadn’t practiced it much, but it sounded all official, which the outfit had to help.
“We have a strategy this time,” Troy said, more eager now that we were properly in the dungeon. “We got this.”
“But wait!” I said, holding up a finger for effect. “There’s more! Today, we add a new level of complexity.”
I waved behind me, opening a strategically placed pocket of space at the same time. Behind me, air hissed. In front of me, the three adventurers recoiled as—hopefully—five snakes were tossed halfway up the room, their hisses matching the sound of the wind that pushed them there.
“Proximity traps!” I announced cheerily. “Get close to them, and you’ll get a faceful of snake!”
“I like a challenge,” Rose said, a cheeky grin spreading across her lips. “Let’s get it.”
“Don’t get yourselves killed,” the [Spellblade] called, but the adventurers were already moving.
I let them go at the room. They did have more of a strategy this time. Ryan was playing hard offense, and his aggression peeled enough attention away from Troy and Rose for them to do their thing. Troy was working on using his [Thunderspark], apparently seeing some value in pursuing that line of magic. Rose had a [Song of Mana] going, but she was spacing it out, only using it when Troy cast. At the other times, she sang a [Song of Strength] for Ryan.
All in all, it was a strategy that would’ve worked perfectly if nothing had changed in this room.
But things had changed, and Ryan got too close to a certain marked section of the floor. With my dungeon-self giving me a great deal of increased cognition, it was trivial to figure out when he got close enough to the trap to activate it.
The gust of wind this time was great enough to lift Ryan a full ten feet into the air, four snakes coming with him. A moment later, while he was still midair, I opened another vent, shooting a snake at him from a wall.
I had to give him credit. He took it pretty well, slashing his sword out in mid-air. The arc of it killed one snake and wounded another, and it kept going. With a muted thud, it stuck into a rock pole, giving him a way to keep himself from falling down.
Holy fuck. Was that a magic sword? There was no other way it could’ve cleaved into rock so easily.
Well, either way, disabling two of his enemies didn’t mean that he got all of them. Not many of them hit, and his freshly bought plate stopped all but one. That last one managed to find a chink in the armor, though, and my mana spiked as Ryan took a hit.
“Fuck!” Ryan shouted, kicking his leg out. The snake flew off.
I cast an [Antivenom] at him, not bothering to do anything else. He didn’t need healing yet.
“You’re good for poison!” I shouted up. “You guys are doing great!”
“Thanks!” Ryan shouted back, now clinging to the pole. “I got this. Don’t worry about me!”
“You know, I wasn’t actually planning on killing you.”
I turned to the source of the voice. The [Spellblade]’s posture had relaxed now that the three adventurers were doing their thing. Before, she’d looked tired but determined, and now only the former applied.
“Were you now,” I deadpanned. “You seemed pretty serious earlier.”
“Scare tactic, nothing more,” she said. “Name’s Lisa. I’m one of the elite adventurers at the nearby town’s Guild.”
“Lucas,” I replied. “Tour guide. Like I said.”
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry for being an ass.”
“Sure,” I said. It kind of grated that she could so casually threaten my life, but I liked to think I wasn’t the type of person who held grudges. “Scare tactic, you said. For who?”
“For them.” She sighed. “Fucking cocky adventurers. They think they’re too good for a Guild license, and then they go and get themselves killed. If they don’t get scared that they’ll lose something important to them—and you seem important to them, more than their own safety for whatever reason—then they’ll lose a lot more than their friendship.”
“They—“ I paused, my words cut off by another hiss of air. Ryan had apparently figured out where one of the vents would be, and he’d jumped towards the ground. The gust of wind had broken his fall and turned it into a much more graceful landing. “They were really messy yesterday. I helped them figure things out, though.”
“These kids? Messy?” Lisa chuckled in an old, familiar way that told me there was a history there. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“They’ve been a thorn in your side?”
“Rose there has been dragging the other two into Guild jurisdiction for years,” Lisa said. “Kept saying she couldn’t get licensed, so she never did.”
“They’re here now,” I said.
“Someone wanted to lock ’em up, but their parents are way too powerful,” Lisa said. “So it wound up being a babysitting job and a dungeon scouting trip at the same time.”
“Harsh babysitter,” I commented, defanging my own words with a slight smile. “Sorry to take time out of your day.”
“Not your problem,” she said. “I just wish that kids would be more responsible. When I was younger, we lost a bunch of the youth to stupid adventures before the Guild was what it is today. I don’t want that to keep happening.”
“So you go harder on them. And me, in the process.”
Lisa glanced at me. “It’s that or they die.”
I nodded towards the group, who were currently utilizing Ryan’s [Agility Boost] in combination with Rose’s [Song of Displacement] and the air vents to push the [Knight] around the room, granting him the ability to take the fight to even the most tucked-away snakes. “They seem to be doing pretty well.”
The [Spellblade] frowned. “You’re right. Was that you? Far as I know, they never received training.”
“I did what I could,” I said. “I’m pretty much part of the dungeon, but I’d say I help.”
Lisa nodded. “That’s a point in your favor. I know you haven’t done anything bad yet, but just let me be sure you aren’t about to stab me?”
“Sure,” I said again. I… didn’t really like this woman, but I could tolerate her enough for the time being, and I could see her growing on me if, y’know, she didn’t decide to stab me dead.
She stood and drew her blade. On instinct, I flinched back, but she didn’t turn the edge on me. Instead, she invoked mana, passing it through the sword, and then she cast.
[Insightful Edge], the sword sang, and I could feel mana begin to flood the air around it.
To my surprise, I found that I could turn it away. I didn’t, because once again it was a bad idea to antagonize the woman powerful enough to solo clear my dungeon, but I could sense clear as day that the mana that entered my human body was a part of the dungeon just as the rock was. Mine to control.
“You’ve got secrets.” Lisa frowned. “Nothing you believe to be harmful to us, though.”
“Or the dungeon’s regular operation?” I asked.
“That’s Guild bullshit,” she growled. “If we don’t ensure the dungeons are at one hundred percent loot-dispensing capacity, we get punished.”
“I’m not harming it,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I’m helping it.”
“We’ll see,” Lisa said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I think I like you. Sorry again about earlier.”
“It’s fine,” I said, not sure if I was lying or not. She’d turned out to be a pretty decent person after all, but I was going to stay on my guard. “Come spectate them with me?”
“Sounds good to me,” she replied, standing up straight with an exaggerated sigh. “We’ll see if we can’t make proper adventurers out of them yet.”
“Ow, fuck!” Ryan shouted, interrupting the conversation.
Mana flowed to me as—presumably—the [Knight] took another hit.
[Level up!]
Chapter 10
Name : Lucas
Class: [Dungeon Core] lv. 2
Spells (ordered by: used recently)
[Spawn Monster]: D-
> [Spawn Snake]: D
> [New spell available!]
[Reshape]: D+
[Create Water]: F+
[Create Fire]: F+
[Replicate]: F-
[Dungeon Perception]: C
[View more spells?]
Stats
[Spawn Speed]: F
[Capacity]: D-
[Mana]: C-
[Endurance]: D
Name: Lucas
Class: [Healer] lv. 2
Unique Skills
[Divine Healer]
Spells (ordered by: used recently)
[Healing Stream]: lv. 20
[Antivenom]: lv. 20
[Rejuvenating Pulse]: lv. 20
[Healing Zone]: lv. 20
[View more spells?]
Stats
[Magic]: 100
[Agility]: 15
[Strength]: 14
[Focus]: 20
[Endurance]: 12
I had two separate stat screens, which tracked—one for the human half, one for the dungeon. I hadn’t bothered checking them that much even when I’d been only a human since the only purpose of doing so was to track how much progress one had made on their spells. [Divine Healer] granted me ridiculously strong healing, so it wasn’t like I needed to track how many spells I had.
One interesting thing to note was that the interface apparently used a different system to track progress for my dungeon half, using letter grades rather than numerical statistics. It had been a surprise to start with, but I supposed the manner of existence that a Dungeon Core had was very different from that of a human adventurer. Still, the stat screens really only mattered after interface messages for level-ups. The stats themselves were generally quantifications of abilities that one had, not the driving force behind them. Obsessing over them all the time wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all myself.
