Dungeons Are Bad Business

A snowball arced through the air and splattered against the wall a few feet away from where Vee stood. Crouching down, the [Ghost Maestro] turned his own snowball thrower – also known as a ghost arm – in the direction the attack had come from. That’d been Hanako’s last snowball, so now she had to change her position. Trying to be as small of a target as possible, she sprinted out from behind the shoddily constructed snow wall and headed to another one nearby. Vee smiled between panting breaths as he took aim. When his intern was firmly in the middle of his crosshairs, he yanked the makeshift ectoplasm lever he’d attached the contraption’s side. The thunk that followed was still a little too loud for his tastes and he winced, but ultimately that wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. His own snowball whizzed across the alley, and though Hanako ducked when she saw it coming, she was a little too slow to dodge it completely. The frosty projectile hit her right in the shoulder.

“And that’s game,” Reginald called out. “With a score of five to two, Vee is the winner! That makes what…four in a row?”

Hanako stamped her foot and swore. “I want a rematch!”

Vee winced. Of course she did. As it turned out, Hanako was extremely competitive and absolutely hated losing.

“That one doesn’t count! You cheated, Vee! I swear, I had you lined up in my crosshairs perfectly like…ten times, but my snowballs kept missing! These ghost arms suck!”

“Well, that’s sort of to be expected. In fact, you might even say that’s why we’re doing this in the first place,” Vee said with a sigh and a shrug. They’d been at playing for just over an hour and a half, and he was getting tired of all the running and diving their game required. “We’re calibrating the throwers so that they’ll work properly when we add them to—”

He was cut off by a snowball hitting him right in the face.

“Why’d it work that time then, huh? See, it’s like I said! You’re cheating! You’re doing some sort of…some sort of [Ghost Maestro] trickery!”

As if to emphasize her point, Hanako wiggled and waggled the fingers on her free hand nefariously. Vee smiled at the poor imitation of [Shape Ectoplasm], but held up his arms to protect his face all the same. That afternoon, he’d learned that his intern was quick when it came to packing snowballs and that facefuls of snow were no fun.

“Seriously, I’m not doing anything like that,” he insisted. “I don’t know why your thrower isn’t working right. There’s…at least six different things that it could be. Let me take a look at it and we’ll go again afterwards, okay?”

She held her ghost arm up and gestured at his. “Trade.”

Vee did so, then gave his new weapon a quick once over. Sure enough, the crosshair was a little loose, so Vee tightened it up with a bit of ectoplasm and gave it a whirl. His shot seemed to go basically where he wanted it to, so he nodded to Hanako and they both went to their respective starting points

The rules of the game were pretty simple. There were six snow walls in the alley, and each had ten snowballs stacked behind them. Contestants weren’t allowed to make more, so once a wall’s supply was exhausted, they had to run from one wall to the next. Between matches, members of the light section hurried to pack more snowballs and stacked them up in the proper position. The first person to hit the other with five snowballs won. Alternatively, if one contestant ran out of snowballs to throw

To be honest, their game was a pretty inefficient way to get the ghost arms ready for use, but Vee didn’t feel much like doing the tests by himself in his lab. There was something to be said for breaking up a monotonous task with something fun, and the matches certainly met that particular criteria.

“Are you both ready?” Reginald asked. He was grinning, and though he’d complained loudly and bitterly about not being able to join in the games himself, he was obviously happy to serve as the [Announcer] for yet another venture. Reginald always loved to hear himself talk.

Vee nodded and the match started. Hanako darted and jumped like rabbit fleeing an eagle. She moved like a woman possessed, and despite Vee’s best efforts, he lost the round five to four. He was relieved, to be honest. Though his hands had grown clumsy with the cold, his legs and lungs were burning.

“I won! I won!” Hanako said, doing a little jig. She stopped and looked at Vee, her gaze suddenly suspicious. “You were trying that time, right?”

“Of course I was,” Vee hurried to say. The last thing he wanted just then was for Hanako to think he’d intentionally thrown the match. “Hey, Alforde, why don’t you play a few? I need a break.”

The armorsoul looked up from his book – The Complete History of [Crochet Knights] – and nodded.

“Let me finish this chapter real quick first.”

As Alforde got up and Vee sat down next to Reginald, the [Dungeon Master] couldn’t help but smile. All in all, it’d turned out to be a perfectly acceptable day.

It certainly hadn’t started out that way. Walnut had swaggered by in the morning to collect Sacre’s due: forty gold fleurs. As always, making the payment was deeply unpleasant. Sporting a black eye – which he said he’d gotten courtesy of those “furry pricks down in Southtown” – the gangster had clearly been in a foul mood. He’d snatched the coins and tucked them into his pocket as he always did, but gave Vee an extra unfriendly slap on the back before leaving.

Since it still ached, Vee was pretty sure it was going to bruise. He was tempted to let the man have a taste of some miasma the next collection day, but ultimately decided against it, as he knew it was a bad idea. Escalating violence against a gangster was most definitely not the play. Still, he was tired of Walnut’s attitude and wanted to do something about it. He’d come up with something.

Adding to that, the day’s runs hadn’t been terribly interesting either. Crestheart was virtually devoid of minions – only a few slimes remained and they were too small to be much of a threat– and most of the adventurers had already faced Vee’s traps plenty of times, so there weren’t many opportunities to trip them up. That meant that the minutes had no choice but to stretch into hours, and Vee had discovered a new level of boredom as he sat as his desk pressing buttons in vain. He'd been doing that for days, and was growing tired of it.

The challengers made it down to Alforde almost without fail, but luckily they still weren’t much of a match for the [Dungeon Champion]. Even with the boosts they’d earned from their nightly power-leveling, Alforde made quick work of every fight and sent them packing. Thankfully, the armorsoul seemed to be of the opinion that quantity had a quality all its own, so he hadn’t complained at all when he brought up the day’s earnings like he had the day before.

After the last run, the trio left the dungeon and found Juniper waiting for them on the bottom floor of the tower. The [Herbalist] had a cold, as her red nose and scratchy voice made obvious, and she said that she wouldn’t be making potions or helping out with the Lobby until she got better.

Vee didn’t have a problem with that, but it was yet another inconvenience. Admittedly, the potions hadn’t really been selling since there weren’t any threats that made them necessary, but the snacks and drinks at the Lobby had been selling like crazy and Vee’d been hoping to start collecting a percentage of the earnings from an expanded menu.

As the [Herbalist] left, Torres had appeared too. Storming up and twirling his mustache, the [Stationer] complained bitterly about the fact that he hadn’t sold a guide in days. He’d demanded compensation, somehow believing that his woes were Vee’s fault, and the [Dungeon Master] had had a heck of a time convincing him otherwise.

Doesn’t he read the paper? Isn’t that his thing? It’s not like I can do anything about the fact that my minions haven’t been delivered or that the adventurers have all memorized the current layout, Vee thought angrily as he watched Alforde get hit by a snowball. The armorsoul returned two shots of his own, but neither hit Hanako, who still had entirely too much energy. Stupid Torres. That relationship was starting to taste sour, and Vee wondered if he could come up with a way to break it gracefully.

Ugh, there were too many things to think about and not enough things Vee could do to fix any of them. It was galling.

Hanako jumped over her wall and tagged Alforde once more to win the match. Alforde shook his helmet, clearly disappointed.

“Go ahead and swap out your throwers, guys,” Vee said. “Both of those are probably good enough for now.”

He’d rigged up ten throwers in total, and six of them were already calibrated. It took another three matches, but Alforde and Hanako finished the last of the games they needed just as the sky started turning purple. It was almost sunset, so they had no choice but to leave the throwers in the alley and hurry to the gate.

“That was a lot of fun,” Hanako said as she walked beside Vee. “I think there are a bunch of people in town who’d like it too. Why don’t you open it up for everyone over the next few days? Charge a couple bronze fleurs or something, but give folks a chance to come and play with the ghost arms. Goodness knows they probably could use the distraction. Everyone’s so down. They’re all fixated on the stupid bandits.”

Vee thought it over. “I like that idea quite a bit, but we’ll have to find another place to set it up before we let people come play. I’ll have the fiends look around for somewhere suitable.”

Once they were through the gate, the group called it a night. Hanako headed home, promising to return to the dungeon in two days with some new experimental trap crystals, and Vee led the way to the Grinning Pig with Alforde and Reginald. He was starving.

It wasn’t particularly busy, so Vee barely had to wait a few minutes for his dinner of spiced rice and biscuits. As Big Simon had predicted, Vee was starting to get a little tired of both, but while he wasn’t enthusiastic about it, the [Dungeon Master] forced himself to eat every bite and thanked the kitrekin for the meal.

[Public Relations +1]

With Vee’s stomach full, the trio got to discussing Crestheart’s next perk. Since there was bound to be a delay on receiving it no matter which one they picked – curse those bandits! – there was no point in hurrying the decision.

“The portal gates make the most sense right now,” Vee said. “We can use them for some fun traps, like an infinite fall, and at some point in the future they can help us extend the dungeon too.”

“How would we do that?” asked Alforde.

“We’d have to go back to using different paths,” Vee said. “But basically, we could refill rooms adventurers have already cleared, then let them pay a few extra fleurs to go back through them again. It makes their runs denser and more efficient, and boosts marginal revenue for us too. It’d probably go over better than another regular price increase.”

“That would really drive up our minion replacement costs, though,” Reginald said. “Which wouldn’t be a huge deal if we had plenty to spare, but isn’t in the cards right now.”

“That’s one problem, but it would make each run last longer too,” said Alforde. “It already takes most of the day to get through the adventurers we have. Think about how much worse that’ll get if challengers can redo parts of the dungeon, too!”

“We’d probably have to start living at the dungeon,” Reginald said. “I don’t think I’d mind that, but you probably wouldn’t be much of a fan, eh Boss?”

Vee shook his head.

“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” he said. He rubbed his chin and drummed his fingers on the table. “Maybe we could offset the increase in run length with staggered starts? You know, have the next adventurer begin their run as soon as the person before them reaches the third floor or champion’s arena? That might not be too bad.”

“Could be tricky to implement. We definitely don’t want challengers running into each other,” Reginald said. “It’s not terrible in theory though. Anyways, dungeon perks. You’re still dead set against taking the pendant?”

Vee shrugged. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that, but I’m wary of selecting something that we don’t have any immediate uses for. Same idea goes for the crystals. Hanako says that her dad has boxes and boxes of samples that he’s fine with us using, so we’re not going to run out for at least a few months.”

“But think about the secondary effects,” Reginald said. “The later perk chances. I bet there’s a couple cache perks that are really valuable, or a piece of dungeon equipment that might be super useful. I don’t know that we get enough out of the portals to give up all that potential, you know?”

“Doesn’t that go for dungeon devices too?”

Reginald twisted his brim. “Not really. We can rig up plenty of useful devices ourselves,” he said. “I think about it like this: the portals have a higher value floor, but a lower value ceiling. We don’t really need the extra value right now, but as the repayments get higher and higher in a few more months, we might need every last bit of help we can get.”

Vee hadn’t really thought about it like that, and he had to admit that it was an interesting angle to consider. Before he got the chance to respond though, the restaurant door swung open and a blast of frigid air filled the restaurant.

Three suited figures walked inside.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 12

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 13

Plotting: 17

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 21

Leadership: 16

Guts: 12

Intimidating Presence: 9

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 6 (+1)

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 3

Might: 38 (+1)

Wit: 12

Faith: 25

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 17

Intimidating Presence: 13

Heart of a Champion: 8

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 5

Vanity: 2

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%$@ &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#$@!)~--, #$v@& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 40

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 14

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 7

Might: 1

Wit: 32

Faith: 11

Ambition: 26

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 35

$#&*!@!!

Loyalty: 45

Patience: 9

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7

**************

Bonus: Hanako's Character Sheet:

Hanako Maluw:

Primary Class: ????

Secondary Class: Enchantress (Jacques Maluw X), Level 15

Tertiary Class (Hidden): Petal Dancer (Madame Li’s Guide to Martial Arts), Level 8

Might: 10

Wit: 16

Faith: 7

Agility: 14

Adventurousness: 10

Guts: 8

Deceptiveness: 6

Control: 13

Loyalty: 8

Focus: 9

Endurance: 3