What is happening? This has escalated way too far! Egbert watched in growing concern as what was supposed to be a fun but very mean puzzle room was snowballing into a four-way war. The seamstress forces had marshaled on the bridge, and after looking at the waves of fire, water, and eldritch bullshit being thrown about. They stopped abruptly to apparently weave into existence an entire phalanx of knitted warriors.
Needles were waved, chants were shouted, and a metric shit ton of pink and chartreuse-colored string began shooting around in the air like crazed streamers before forming lines of armored figures armed with unreasonably large swords and hefty shields. They immediately began laying into the carpet of mushrooms along with the beat of the chants “HOOK, LOOP.” They pressed across the bridge and into the beginning of the street like a vibrant scythe through a field, spraying mushroom bits all across the cobblestone.
I may have lost control of the situation. A fair amount of gold has been spent, but, uhh...everyone is too busy not dying to go and buy my very important keys that most of today's profit hinges on! Egbert bumped the key prices up another gold for good measure, not sure that it mattered considering they were in the middle of the mushroom swarm. Ha, at least it can’t get worse.
Thrognar crossed the porch threshold with half of what might have been a goat dripping entrails onto the floor over his shoulder. “Scrawngly! Puppy! Barbarian Bug! Thrognar brought snacks!” Oh goddammit.
Thrognar pranced through the dungeon like the world's scariest frolicking child. He paused briefly to rip the head from the goat carcass and throw it down at the very confused Bully. It recoiled in horror as the random head took it upside the shell suddenly with far more force than necessary. “Enjoy snack future familiar; Thrognar will be back!” Bully scuttled away from the severed head in terror and shuffled into his castle with a soft “Huuu…” before raising the drawbridge.
Oh yay...let's add three hundred pounds of no survival instinct and sheer efficient violence to this! Egbert's view swiveled back to the battlefield. The seamstresses’s forces had made it all the way to the first home, and half their soldiers had cordoned the entrance off from the Ravagers. The other half was trying to make a forced entry.
Edith had gone back to help Tammy with the morass of keys and mimics, sending Jeb up front to “help” defend; currently he was wielding some kind of spectral kelp whip and flailing at the Crochet warriors with mixed success. “Grandpa, how in the great underteet do we kill the spaghetti warriors!?” Jeb shouted in panic.
Hank looked back with equal parts disbelief and disappointment across his face. “I’ll assume ye didn’t just have a stroke, and you mean the summoned warriors. Just keep flailing, boy; it ain’t doing much, but it’s better than nutthin. The whip will do most of the work for you.”
Egbert You need to think like a dungeon. So what if this has spiraled into a four-way war? The question we must ask ourselves in this situation is simple. How can I profit from this conflict? I have an array of goodies available to purchase and a fair amount of gold. Oh...that's an easy one.
A key locked in a sales case suddenly appeared in both chest rooms, priced even higher than the ones in the street. Almost instantly one of the knights paid the frankly stupid fifteen gold coin price to open the case in the hunter's home. Egbert felt a bit smug, but that was exceptionally low-hanging fruit, and people would still need to find more keys.
[Copper 4] [Silver 9] [Gold 21]
Egbert popped over to check on Ben and the rest of the knights surprised they had bought the key. Holy shit...I keep forgetting how scary these guys can be. They are trained warriors, Egbert, no matter how funny they may be at times. Ben was standing. In a puddle of blood, heaving deep breaths, and Carter was right next to him, a gore-coated dagger in one hand and a key in the other. Carter twitched angrily, throwing the dagger into a key mimic that tried to shuffle back into the key pile. “Stop...moving...the FUCKING KEYS.” Carter hissed out.
Both of the mimic chests were decidedly dead after a very personal amount of dagger stabs on the one that had grabbed Carter. And the fact that Ben had somehow exploded the one that grabbed him—the entire room was covered in Mimic guts. Carter kicked one mimic corpse aside and fit the purchased key into the lock with a satisfying twist, followed by a very dramatic CA-CLUNK as two of the three locking mechanisms were now open.
Ben and Carter looked back at the pile of coins. “One more…” Carter said with a blood-smeared grin. The one living key mimic left in the pile decided now was a great time to just never move again. The front of the house was a similar situation. Joe and Reese were coated head to foot in mushroom guts and smoldering bits of plants. Remorse hadn’t made a damned bit of progress against Joe’s shield, feebly still trying to reach over his magical bulwark.
Reese squinted past the slightly opaque shielding holding the Ravenous mimic back. In the center of the street, the mushrooms were parting like an invisible force field pushed against them. But all He could see was a stupidly adorable little puppy hopping out into the open to play with the mushrooms. “What the fuck, that poor dog.” Reese said sadly, certain the puppy was about to be swarmed.
Egbert sensed something malevolent on the other side of the room. A creeping excited shadow that had been waiting for the right moment to strike. Boo was hanging upside down under the bridge a handspan from the water, literally quivering with anticipation. Her front legs rubbed together slowly and let out a sound like an off-key violin.
“Peekaboo”... Echoed throughout the room faintly, followed by tinkling laughter moments before one of the seamstresses fainted suddenly. A row of the Crochet warriors unraveled violently the moment she hit the ground. Screams tore from the advancing circle of magically inclined women as Boo skittered from under the bridge and leapt straight onto Samantha’s head. “TEE HEE!” came the horrifying psychic screech, devastatingly echoing through the seamstresses’ minds.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Ehh, low-hanging fruit is still fruit. Egbert dropped another one of the Dungeon monster pass dispensers right on the edge of the bridge slightly past the screaming crowd. With a giant “Buy me if you don’t want an aneurysm” sign above it in big creepy red paint.
The Crochet warriors lost most of their form and numbers as Boo continued leaping from mage to mage with a scream and giggle each time. Blasts of desperate magic were flung at Boo, but none came anywhere close in the panic. The bridge descended into a desperate mix between attempting to continue the ritualistic casting and fleeing the terrifying spider with hundreds of eyes and no concept of personal space.
The door from the loot pit room was flung open with enough force to make the bridge shudder, and the room seemed to almost pause for a moment. “There WAS A PARTY?!” Thrognar boomed across the cavern unintentionally loudly.
Boo skittered away as Thrognar started flickering with tinges of red mana. “Why wasn’t Thrognar INVITED?” Thankfully for everyone involved, his growing anger aimed at the “partygoers” was snuffed out the moment he saw the hordes of slavering mushrooms nibbling on Remorse’s feet and swirling around the “Puppy.” Instead, his anger was very suddenly directed at the small plant mushrooms threatening his beloved scrawngly and puppy.
Most of the seamstresses simply flung themselves from the bridge into the river waters as Thrognar’s rage ignited in a dripping red fog of thick, uncontrolled mana. Red smoke oozed from his eyes and breath as he focused on the threats. “Leave them ALONE!” Uhh...I might need to buy another mushroom colony after this… Thrognar jumped hard enough to slightly crack the bridge stonework spiderwebbing crevasses across its surface. He hit the first ranks of myconids like a god of war and hate, disappearing into a wall of misted plant gore with a single horizontal swing of his axe.
He kept hacking his way forward, ruining the hell out of the violent stalemate that had been settling across the battlefield. He exploded through pack after pack of ravagers without slowing until he had fought his way straight to Remorse's side. He grabbed Remorse like a log, squeezing him tight under his arm as he laid into the crowd with his axe, making his way towards the suspiciously empty space all around the “puppy.” “Come to Thrognar, floofy!” He shouted while booting a half dozen myconids into the afterlife.
Remorse struggled in Thrognar’s grasp for a moment before his eyes settled onto the goat corpse still over Thrognar’s shoulder. With an excited tremble, remorse settled on letting himself be dragged so he could eat the goat handful by handful.
Thrognar exploded from the crowd of ravagers into the calm eye of the storm in the center of the battlefield. A perfect circle around the “puppy” that held no living creature. The puppy rolled onto its back and whined at Thrognar until he ran over and scooped it up, setting it onto Remorse’s head. “Don’t worry, friends, Thrognar protects,” Thrognar shouted. Remorse’s eye locked onto the puppy in rigid panic, and he disguised himself as an actual log.
Egbert was sure he was the only one that saw it. The puppy’s face for a brief moment looked at Thrognar with a far too human expression, one holding unbridled amusement and a cruel sense of joy. It was only for a split second after the barbarian had declared how he would protect his friends. I saw you, you conniving creature, playing the long game, are we?
Egbert was starting to make himself dizzy trying to keep track of everything happening all at once, so he decided to pick the one that mattered the most. Obviously that was the fisherfolk because they had the option to spend fifteen gold right next to them, and they hadn’t done it yet. Wait…do they even have that much money? Dammit, Egbert, gauge your audience better. How much could a man who is normally so drunk he falls into the lake daily really make?
Egbert zoomed on over to the first house with the yokels, with Boo and Thrgnar tearing about; the assault on the front door had lessened massively. Hank was still holding the few mushroom dregs at bay, and Jeb was somewhere between screaming and crying as he whipped his kelpy weapon about against the sole Crochet warrior still slashing against Hank's barrier. Tammy and Edith were in the middle of just skipping the key pile and heading straight to outside-the-box problem solving. Dammit, of course they would be the ones.
Tammy was bent over the real madman’s chest, a starfish-looking abomination with too many eyes and an extra arm or three in each hand. She was gently placing them over each of the keyholes. The starfish grabbed onto the side of the chest eagerly, beginning to quiver uncomfortably in place. There was a definitive KA-Thunk as the first lock was picked by the eldritch starfish. “Ho ho, take that, Mr. Dungeon! With a new patron come new boons! Meet my new familiars!” The starfish all detached a single arm to wave into the air. I'm going to end that puppy if it's the last thing I do.
Where is Edith? And my mimics? Egbert looked around the house in confusion but couldn’t find a single trace of a key or chest mimic, much less the blobfish abomination that sired a line of questionable intellect. The next lock opened with a strangely squishy-sounding ka-thunk and a squeak of disgruntled pain.
One of the familiars had lost an arm in the mechanism, and the others skittered over to try and help get it back. “Oh no! Hold still there, splootch. We will get that popped right back on!” The starfish burbled happily as Tammy gingerly picked it up and fished a little starfish arm out of the lock, popping it back on with a briny flash of mana and a deeply uncomfortable happy grunt from the starfish. Sighh…I wish I was still a tax collector.
The familiars zealously crowded around the last lock, chirping at each other as they took turns trying to pick the lock. The final lock opened resoundingly, and the chest flung wide, revealing the prize that had turned the dungeon into a war zone. A hefty glittering blue jar of Zip Dust sat nestled among a nearly overflowing chest of silver and copper coins, with the rare specks of gold dotted in as well. Tammy turned towards the front door. “We Got It!”
Hank turned from his chanting for a moment to shout back at Tammy, “Escape plan B. It’s still awfully feisty up here, and Thrognar is out there; that boy done lost his damn mind again!”
A slow sound rose, building to an omnipresent hum that echoed across the cavern. Tammy turned in horror towards the chest as the sound built to a buzzing Gregorian chant. The one and only god of the dungeon rose from the treasure chest held aloft by a hand of shadows and gold. Someone had challenged his supremacy and dared to offer patronage that was his by right. Contempt’s form continued to rise into the air, trailing strings of gold and shadow behind him.
All around the room, Loot bugs had made the pilgrimage to watch as their sovereign dueled with the usurper. Looming from under porches and over awnings, they chanted, eyes locked towards the dark being that had dared to challenge Contempt.
The “puppy” furrowed its brows and growled back a dangerous, deep sound that should have been impossible. The noise echoed throughout the room like the groans of a dying god.
