When the time came, I went with them as far as the elf village then bid them good luck as they rode eastward toward the swamp. I’d done what I could, now it was up to them. Fly, baby birds, fly.
I watched them go along the path through the trees, shrinking down to mere bobbing silhouettes on their crazy fantasy mounts until they disappeared from sight. Then with great effort I staggered over to my tree house and passed out on my bed, thankful that changing out of my clothes took no more effort than mentally telling my inventory to swap them for the light pants and shirt the elves favored as pajamas.
My nap didn’t quite last for anywhere near the twenty-four hours Sigrid had prescribed, but it was long enough to leave me feeling a lot better. When I woke up, Sigrid was sitting beside the bed polishing her sword. She noticed I was awake, thwipped the sword away, and smiled at me.
“This is weird,” I said.
“What is?” she said.
“Waking up to you sitting beside my bed instead of being in it.”
She laughed. “You needed the sleep.”
“How’d it go?” I said, lifting the sheets to invite her in.
She slipped into bed with me and we lay together on our sides facing each other.
“I guess you slept through the announcement,” she said.
“You did it.”
“We did it.”
“I knew you could. I’m so glad.” And relieved. I don’t know what would’ve happened if they failed again. No doubt I’d be blamed for it somehow.
“Jane wanted to wake you up as soon as we got back to the village but she got vetoed.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
Sigrid rolled onto her back and stretched. “Someone had to protect you from her. You know she doesn’t listen.”
“Something smells good,” I said, suddenly realizing how hungry I was. I may have been neglecting more than my sleep and hygiene while ensconced in my inventory crafting items, subsisting on the local equivalent of high calorie junk food and instant cup ramen to keep my mana up.
Sigrid pointed to a plate of waffles and sausage on the bedside table. Waffles were something else I’d introduced to the elves after discovering they didn’t exist here. I’d artificed the first prototype waffle iron and enchanted it with a bit of Fire affinity magic to heat it up to the perfect temperature, and now the whole village was addicted to them.
Word had spread and the elven artificers were working overtime mass producing enough irons to meet the demand for them in the city. Ruka had been delighted to receive one as a gift during one of her visits.
“This adorable little elf kid keeps coming back every hour to bring a fresh plate. You should eat or he’ll be so disappointed.”
I sat up, arranging pillows behind me to lean against, then leaned over Sigrid to get the plate. It was a bit too far to reach, and Sigrid showed no sign of helping, let alone moving, so I had to literally slide over her to get it.
As my body pressed down on her chest, she said, “You know what’s truly weird?”
“What?” I said.
“For weeks now you’ve woken up to a hot woman in your bed, yet you’ve never so much as hinted at making a move on her.”
Plate in hand, I slid along her breasts back to my side. “That’s because I never have time, I have to kick her out before you show up.”
She elbowed me in the side. “Jerk.”
“Watch it, you’ll make me spill the syrup and whipped cream. You wanna get all sticky?”
She licked her lips. “Don’t tempt me. It’s been a while since I got creamed.”
“Pervert. Tell me what happened in the dungeon,” I said, spearing a sausage. “Was your new gear helpful?”
“Was it?” she said, rolling back onto her side right up next to me and propping her head up on her hand. If it was anyone else my internal alarm bells would be clanging over the flagrant invasion of my personal space, but this was Sigrid. Things like personal boundaries didn’t really exist for us anymore. “Holy hell, Daniel, it was amazing!”
She went on to regale me with the story of their dungeon raid. The warmth of her body seeped into mine where it touched my side. The strategies Morgan and I came up with had worked wonders and the raid went down much differently than before. This time only Wayne had been killed in the battle, and thankfully he respawned.
>>> The Shadow Dungeon had a fatality factor of 75
Dang. They were lucky they only lost Andy in their raids. Suddenly the existence of so many unaffiliated Players made sense: dungeon-related attrition would surely take its toll and pretty soon teams would need to replenish their numbers.
The star of the show had been none other than clever little Kenji, who once again proved his abilities were every bit as useful as I’d been telling everyone all along. When will they start trusting me?
With the cloak I’d given Morgan to pass along to him and his mad ninja skillz he was able to to take a page from my book and sneak past many of the traps and encounters that had made the previous attempts so difficult, creating distractions, and helping the team surprise the monsters that had been so hard to fight before with carefully planned and flawlessly executed ambushes.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
It was all possible because Morgan had convinced everyone to allow him to scout the whole place before the raid and he’d come back with information that let them plan it all out properly. Detailed maps marked up with monster types, locations, and numbers, as well as traps, alternate routes, and ambush points. Proper intelligence.
With her new equipment Sigrid had been a powerhouse, more than making up for the absence of Andy’s formidable fighting skill while at the same time preventing others from taking damage that may have been fatal.
In the end, she was also the one who helped win the final boss battle. She used her power to reveal weaknesses and uncovered a hidden vulnerability in the Shadow Demon. Its power was being amplified somehow, and while the rest of them kept the demon busy, Kenji had managed to find a device hidden deep within the fortress and destroy it, severely reducing the boss’s power and making it easier to defeat.
What made me happiest of all was that by doing so Kenji had unlocked the hidden quest and, having the right affinity, attained the title Shadow Lord for himself.
Team Maple Leaf now had control over the Shadow Dungeon, and with his title, Kenji had gained extra abilities and usurped control over the shadow creatures that lived there.
“I don’t know anything about the Air Dungeon yet,” Sigrid said, “but I am totally going to win its hidden quest. This I promise you.”
“Well don’t you two look cozy?” Jane said after cracking the door open and poking her head in. “I thought I heard voices. Not that I was waiting outside or anything, I just happened to be passing by, of course.” She pushed the door open wide and came inside.
Sigrid responded by throwing an arm and a leg over me and sticking her tongue out at Jane. “Mine.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Come on, the elves are throwing a bash to celebrate the end of the Shadow Demon’s reign.”
“Oh!” Sigrid said, rolling off of me and hopping off the bed. “I love parties.”
“And elves,” Jane said.
“You two go on ahead. I’ll catch up,” I said. “I need to scarf this down then freshen up a bit.”
“Okay,” Jane said, grabbing Sigrid’s wrist and pulling her out the door. “But don’t take too long powdering your nose.”
Sigrid put her hand against the doorframe to resist being pulled out. “Hey Daniel? Can you do me one favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can you turn yourself into an elf for this? Pretty please?”
I was still thinking about how to reply when an announcement appeared.
System: Global notification – the Fire Dungeon has been solved and is now owned by Team Droogs
“Well fuck,” Sigrid said. “Looks like the dungeon floodgates have finally been opened.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think things are going to start getting quite interesting now.”
System: Team rankings have been updated
1. Team Invictus 1005 points
2. Team Player 1000 points
3. Team Maple Leaf 990 points
4. Team Droogs 865 points
4. Team Spice 705 points
5. Team N3m3sis 670 points
7. Team Legion 615 points
8. Team Overgeared 535 points
9. Team Ninja 515 points
10. Team Happy 505 points
11. Team Karma 470 points
In the days that followed, details about the successful dungeon raids started spreading. It was common knowledge before this that the Fire Dungeon was located to the South in a cave hidden in the mountains that separated the plains from the desert — there was an NPC in town who was always giving people quests to go down there — and many teams had tried to beat it.
Several Players had died-died in these attempts so it had a reputation for being a killer dungeon. And no wonder, I learned from Command Line that Fire had a fatality factor of 65. While Team Droogs had finally managed to defeat the final Boss and win, it had come at a heavy cost. Only two of them had crawled out alive at the end of it, and three of the ones who’d died never respawned.
Since the incident at the Cathedral, adventuring had become considerably more dangerous. As criminally expensive as their healing had been, it had also been the only option most people had. It had become near-impossible to find healing potions for sale anywhere.
My friends and I had no problems. As far as I knew, and I was pretty sure I’d evaluated every Player at least once by that point, Nina and I were the only ones with healing powers, and Morgan and I were the only ones able to craft potions. Everyone else had to rely on outside sources, which were rare and hard to come by.
It appeared as though the game was compensating for the dearth of healing, though. First, healing potions began dropping more often as loot, then they started appearing in NPC shops more often. News of the city’s burgeoning prosperity was spreading and elves weren’t the only ones coming back to the area.
More and more ships were sailing into Seaside from abroad, bringing with them more and more foreign goods — including healing potions — as well as new immigrant NPCs, several of whom happened to be alchemists or people like Sifu Chow Bo with minor healing talents like Laying On Hands. It was still nowhere near enough to meet the demand of all the Players who were getting hurt on a daily basis, but it was a start.
The elves had opened a shop in the city where they sold their most exclusive wares. Most of their goods were sold to the city merchants for resale, but the really good stuff was only available directly from the elves. This included the healing potions the Beastfolk made, and we were starting to make very decent profits from that arrangement even while selling the potions for a fraction of what the Cathedral had charged.
The demand still far outstripped the supply so we could have charged a lot more, but that would make us no better than those dirty cult extortionists and also didn’t jive with my long term plans of helping everyone grow stronger.
About a week after the Void Dungeon, I was playing John Wick with Chika while Shashu trained his first pupil in toron-do. Farrah, one of the Dragon Clan’s better NPC fighters, had completed the rounds at the other clans and learned all their martial arts. She was a prodigy on par with Shashu in kung fu and had been able to pick up the other five very quickly.
There was a whole crop of NPCs from all the clans hot on her heels who’d be ready to learn toron-do soon. Training them would be a fulltime job that I didn’t have time for so I’d delegated it to Shashu. Once Farrah was up to speed she could help teach too. My goal was to raise the bar for everyone, after all, even NPCs, and that didn’t only mean improving their combat ability it also meant helping them be better able to help themselves.
We weren’t alone in the courtyard, as usual there were others there doing their own things: some were training by themselves, some were lolly-gagging, and one was gardening.
The same tinny fanfare we’d heard when we first arrived in this world suddenly filled the air. We Players all stopped what we were doing and looked up at the sky, where a giant, grinning image of Annabelle had appeared.
“Yahello Players!” the huge holographic Annabelle said as it waved to us. “It’s Annabelle here with some veeeery exciting news!”
Up next: Annabelle's very big news
Would you be interested in side stories from the POV of other characters? (Feel free to add a comment if there’s someone in particular whose perspective you’d like to get .)
