DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

Nate clapped his hands, bringing everyone’s attention back to the task at hand. “They are all interested in exploring and playing with the newest toy that has made an appearance. Eventually, they will either come to their senses or it will disappear. Right now, we have our own items that we need to be concentrating on.”

Angie nodded and hung her head. She knew she had said too much and wasn’t willing to meet anyone’s eyes for the moment.

“He’s right, and so are you,” Nina told Angelica, gently lifting the girl’s chin. “Unfortunately, what happens in the dimensional zone stays in the dimensional zone. Out here the strong rule. Laws don’t come into effect again until you reach the walls of the city. Like you said, people who have gone inside the building have died. A few have also returned with riches until enough cultivators have died without getting anything. They’ll keep going inside.”

The computer on Nate’s wrist vibrated as a message appeared on the screen, temporarily replacing the storage screen.

‘What your mother said is right, the cultivators of your world do seem inordinately obsessed with the treasure chests. Since you left, I have been able to view all the recordings that have been made since the creation of the dungeon. I have come up with several ideas that I would like to try and implement on the first floor as deterrents against the cultivators. I would also like to discuss a number of things that I have learned regarding the purpose of this dungeon. It appears that there is a plan for this dungeon, after all.

-Aura’

He closed the message and tried to turn his attention back to what the group had been doing. It was a task that he utterly failed at, and he remained distracted for the next several minutes while he worked through what the message meant.

First off, it was clear that Aura could listen in and possibly even see what was going on around him. Considering she was his companion beast, that made a sort of sense. For a little while there, he had started to only think of her as being attached to the dungeon, instead of himself as well.

What it actually meant was something he would need to ask her later. Could he summon her, or would she simply obey his commands if they ever met up in person?

He had a feeling it was the latter that made her more useful in the dungeon at the moment. Even if he was wrong, though, explaining her sudden appearance would have caused problems. Which seemed to be a recurring theme for him.

Nate finished setting up his tent near the truck and joined the others by the fire.

“Are you finally done with being distracted?” Lindsay asked as she threw a pinecone at him.

Nate flicked a stray piece of the pinecone back at her and rolled his eyes. “I was just thinking about a few things is all. That conversation we were having earlier about the building and the dimensional zone.” He waved a hand in the air. “My mind got stuck on a few random ideas and then just sort of ran with them for a while, is all.”

Angie looked up from where she was poking the fire and waved her stick around, sending burning embers into the sky. “You really think right now is the best time to be getting distracted?”

“Well, no, but I mean, at least I chose a time when we have others around to pick up the slack instead of just us.”

His father lightly hit him on top of the head for that remark as the entire group converged around the fire. “Just be more careful in the future, all of you. Now, we have the perimeter set up and can start the fans inside the trailer at any time. We should still have another two hours of light left, and the camp has been completely set up. Are you all ready for this? These next two hours will most likely be non-stop fighting.”

“We will do our best to keep all three of you safe, but you need to stick together and work as a team.” Nina reminded them. “Once the fans start spreading the smell, beasts will be coming constantly. It might take a minute for one of us to get free and help you if something happens. However, we also won’t be running all the fans on the rig. There is no point in overwhelming you on your first foray. These beasts may be weak to us, but they aren’t to you, and this expedition is primarily about the three of you.”

The three teens swallowed and nodded in understanding.

As one last measure, Niall inspected their weapons, while his wife inspected the armor they were wearing. Since their weapons and armor had been used throughout the day and had been adjusted for comfort, they needed to fix certain areas on both. For the armor, it was primarily putting certain pieces back into their proper positions.

With the weapons, it was filing and sharpening out the minor nicks in the blades. The kids had already taken care of the other items themselves by the time he got around to inspecting them. Niall spent a few minutes sharpening each of their blades, getting out the minor imperfections, before deciding they were good enough.

With that last item completed, Nina turned on two of the fans on one side of the rig. Instantly, everyone in the clearing could smell what the beasts had been releasing inside the trailer after their death. It was the same smell that had called beasts to them on the trail back to the rig.

Only it was several times more condensed now.

Nina let out a muffled curse and turned off the second fan. With how many beasts they already had inside the trailer, one fan spreading the smell would be more than enough. This initial wave that they had just called was going to be a pain.

“Get ready,” She shouted as she got into position. “This first wave is going to be a doozy!”

For a long minute after she spoke, the forest was quiet. Then came a distant roar, the sound of hoofbeats, the noise of branches breaking, and finally the thudding of the ground as it trembled underfoot. The beasts were coming, and just as Nina had predicted, it was going to be a lot of them for the first wave.

Nate stood next to Angie and Lindsay as they readied themselves.

Above the group, his mother and Fitch stood on the rig with their respective bows and crossbows at the ready. Everybody else used close-range weapons or throwing weapons like Niall’s knives and needed to be on the ground.

It was up to the group on the ground to ensure that Nina and Fitch never ran out of arrows and bolts. With every lull, they were expected to retrieve whatever they could. The good thing about fighting atop the rig was that they were directly on top of where they had stored all their extra ammo as well. This was a well-known tactic, and the groups always came prepared with plenty of extra arrows and crossbow bolts.

They were no longer holding back with the intent of teaching the kids. Each swing of the blade and twang of a bowstring was done at full power.

The three teens needed to be educated on the realities of a beast wave first. Further education opportunities could wait until after that.

Within minutes of hearing that first roar, the clearing had turned into a complete bloodbath. Every type of beast they had already seen and more came charging into the area, desperate for the fresh meal. They wanted the qi that lingered inside the meat of the fallen beasts, and if they were truly lucky, the core itself.

Each bite of meat was equivalent to cultivation for them, but it also satisfied their hunger. It made sense that they would be desperate to reach the clearing first. With all the smells of the dead beasts mixed together by the fan, whatever they were smelling undoubtedly smelled powerful. They weren’t coming to eat the corpse of something weak like themselves. Instead, it was the body that represented a once-in-a-lifetime chance to elevate their realm in an instant.

It was no wonder the trap worked as well as it did.

It got to the point where Nina had to shut off the fan completely, and still, they kept coming.

Nate had his back to Angie, while Lindsay kept her back to both of theirs. It wasn’t the formation they had been practicing earlier, but with how many beasts there were, that wasn’t an option. Thankfully, most of these were easy enough that they could eliminate them after a minute or so of effort on their own. If they ever looked like they were in danger, then Nina or Fitch were quick to step in with an attack of their own and finish the beast for them.

It was tiring, eye-opening work, one that made them all appreciate how the meat they ate had been reaching their tables. Despite that, the three never truly felt as though they were ever in any real danger. They had absolute faith in Nate’s parents and the four guards that had come along with Angie and Lindsay. For better or worse, that was just how good the adults were at doing their jobs.

The three were pushing themselves, but they were able to do it in a semi-controlled environment. They couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

There was only one time that any of them felt like they had even screwed up. It was when Nate managed to get a kukri stuck in a bone joint that it would have easily cut through a half-hour earlier. There was another reason they kept the fights shorter for younger cultivators. The weapons they could afford couldn’t stand the constant abuse. Metal dulled quickly and needed to be resharpened constantly.

More experienced cultivators and those who went out on expeditions regularly tended to use weapons made from beast materials. Bones, claws, quills, and even hard shells all had their uses. Metal was cheap, and worked great for a person’s first weapon, but that was about it.

The three would each be getting new weapons after this trip, along with choosing their secondary weapon. That was the way things worked. As long as you proved yourself capable of not stabbing yourself in the foot and properly handling your weapon, then you were upgraded to a real weapon right away.

Thankfully, for Nate and his parents, while these beasts may have been weak, they were abundant. While they weren’t exactly flush with cash, especially after starting a company and buying the truck and rig. They would still make enough, even after splitting the shares, to buy him the two weapons he needed.

They might not be of the highest quality, but they would work.

It was a real struggle for Nate to hold back his grin when they explained everything to him and the girls during the cleanup process a little later. He didn’t have a spare set of kukris he could transfer over, but he did have the crossbow he had been itching to use all day. Now that he knew they were planning on buying him a secondary weapon, he wanted to save them the money by revealing it. The question still remained though, how to go about doing that.

What plausible reason would he have for owning a crossbow like the one in his storage?

It was a hard question to answer, and not one he had an immediate answer to.

By the time they finished digging out all the cores from the bodies, the moon had fully risen into the sky. The guards had been ferrying the bodies into the trailer near constantly ever since the initial wave stopped. Stragglers continued to trickle in, but they were quickly dealt with and added to the pile.

Nina waved the tired kids over to the end of the rig and pointed to the inside of the packed trailer. “What do you see?”

Lindsay blinked tiredly and was stopped by Angie’s hand at the last moment before she could rub her face with her blood-encrusted hands. “Um,” She mumbled. “No space?”

“True, not quite the way I would have put it, but yes, there is no space left in the trailer, and yet,” She waved at the bloody clearing. “We still have plenty of bodies here, that will start releasing their delicious scent soon and we have already set up all our tents. What are we going to do?”

“Send it back to the wall to be quickly processed?” Angie asked, a little more awake than her friend, who had been swinging a heavy halberd all day long.

“Exactly. Niall and one of the guards will go back to process this load and then come back as quickly as they can. In the meantime, you three need to get all the rest you can. If they don’t make it back in time, we’ll be facing another wave, and without two of our party members this time.”