Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 32 (Patreon)

“The name’s Lucas,” I introduced myself. “Tour guide for this dungeon.”

“Tour guide?” the [Sharpshooter] asked. “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Uh, what?”

“There’s two types of living things in a dungeon,” he said, drawing his weapon. “Adventurers and monsters.”

They have guns here? I hadn’t seen one up until this point, but I supposed that the level of magical technological advancement was high enough in this world that having a revolver or two floating around wasn’t unheard of.

Still, I hadn’t actually read about there being guns anywhere, which meant that this was either a recent development, a secret one, or the adventurer was from somewhere far away enough that the news of firearm development hadn’t percolated to this kingdom before I’d become this dungeon.

Not that the revolver was terribly threatening to me. Sure, a gunshot to the face would hurt, especially if the [Sharpshooter] had any spells to enhance it, but [Divine Healer] was stupidly strong. A single gunshot would never be able to kill me no matter how well it was placed.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was an adventurer?” I asked.

“I can smell the dungeon on you, boy,” he said.

That sounded like bullshit, but he was using some flavor of a [Detect Monster] spell, so he did actually have some basis to argue that on.

Huh. That was interesting. [Detect Monster] registered me as one even though I was still completely human? Was it because it was registering the link I had to the Dungeon Core? That might bode poorly for my secrecy down the line. Or maybe it was just this specific brand of [Detect Monster]?

Well, that was a question for later. For now…

The twin beams of Troy’s [Manaburst] sizzled through the air, curving and arcing through the air as they went.

I realized their target too late to do anything about it, and then I could hear nothing but a high, staticy whine as they found their target, my vision lit up by the intense blue of the spell.

After blinking a few times, my eyes were clear enough to see the [Sharpshooter] knocked to the floor.

“Hey!” I shouted, whipping my head around. “Don’t kill him!”

“He was about to shoot you,” Troy said. “I can recognize eastern technology when I see it.”

“I would’ve been fine,” I said. “I’d rather not kill the people who come into the dungeon where I live, okay? This guy’s not even Kingsguard!”

“He’ll live,” Troy said. “Anyone with a half decent class should survive my [Manaburst], even at level 1.”

“It’s not just that,” I said, passing a [Healing Stream] into the apparently unconscious man. “Just… try not to shoot first, ask questions later? Especially when it’s other people? Life-or-death situations excepted, obviously. I probably should make that a little more clear—a gun to the face is absolutely not life-threatening to me.”

“Ah. Huh. You gotta have stupidly powerful defensive skills, then.”

“Yep.”

I turned back to the [Sharpshooter] just as he woke up.

Within moments, his hands were on his guns again and he was pointing them up at me from the ground.

“Asshole!” he shouted.

“You had the weapon up!” Rose shouted back. “I don’t think he’s the asshole here!”

“Look, man,” I said, raising my hands placatingly. “I’m dungeonbound. You know what those are?”

“Of course I fucking know what those are,” he snarled, rolling to his feet.

Okay, so he definitely didn’t know what those were. “Basically, I’m a person that became a victim of a natural phenomenon and got stuck to this dungeon.”

“Sure,” he said, obviously unconvinced.

“I’m not here to do you harm,” I said. “Quite the opposite, actually. I just healed you.”

“Then who—“

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, cutting him off. “Happens sometimes. Anyway, are you trying to clear this dungeon?”

“No shit, man,” the [Sharpshooter] said, readjusting his aim to look towards M-1.

“Stop, don’t!” I shouted, raising a hand behind me.

Troy stopped building up his second [Manaburst], but Ryan started building mana instead, assuming a defensive position.

I stepped in front of the [Sharpshooter], pushing the gun downwards. “None of that, please. How did you even get here?”

“ARI,” he explained, popping up his interface and showing me a familiar sight. “There’s an opportunity of a lifetime here. Early delvers get paid crazy.”

Huh. That had been rather faster than I’d expected. I’d understood that the ARI’s reach had been fairly massive, but for a random wandering adventure to use it as a basis to just… make his way to Ketz and try to clear me?

“Well, you’re welcome to join,” I said. Not really, but I can’t just say no. “Don’t make trouble, and I will help you get to the good loot at the end.”

Man, I was going to have to figure to something out. It hadn’t been a problem when I actually liked everyone that decided to run the dungeon, but this guy had already made a terrible impression on me. If there was a way I could get them to safely run the dungeon without irritating me, that would be ideal.

For the time being, though…

“If I get my share of the prize,” the [Sharpshooter] said, lowering his revolver. “I’m in.”

“Alright,” I said. “Some of the challenges have been cleared already, but not all of them. For your first challenge, you need to get to the other side of this room somehow, since the water’s rather deep.”

As I spoke, I absorbed the snakes into the ground, turning them into pure mana. This new guy wasn’t high enough level for me to deploy the snake infestation. On a similar vein, I disabled the air cannons.“How in the hells am I supposed to make it across?” the man asked.

“Like this,” I said, running through the parkour course.

“Shit,” he muttered, quiet enough that he probably thought I couldn’t hear him.

“And if you have any problems!” I shouted at him, once again at the far end of the room with M-1, “It’s fine! I’m a [Healer]! Just trust your footing!”

For a second, I could see him visibly undergo an internal conflict, emotions warring on his face. At a guess, that was fear fighting with human greed, and if there was one thing I was sure about on the subject of human nature, it was that the promise of shiny loot at the end of an endeavor was always enough to get someone moving.

At length, he decided to give it a go, hesitantly putting a foot forward.

I decided to not drop the platforms after he stepped on them either. After all, he was still level 2 and this was his first go through on this dungeon.

Even with my run as guidance and the dungeon on its lowest difficulty possible, he still wasn’t quite there. His steps were unsteady, and he wasn’t actually converting his momentum from jump to jump—instead, he was sprinting, jumping, stumbling to a stop on the next platform and then repeating it.

“You need to transfer your momentum!” I shouted up at him. “Make it flow, don’t just run and stop!”

“Fuck off! I know what I’m doing!”

“He seems like an agreeable fellow,” Rose said.

“Can I shoot him again?” Troy asked dryly. “I think that’d improve his personality.”

“You have to give him some credit,” I said. “He hasn’t fallen yet.”

“Yet being the important word here,” Ryan said, gesturing to the [Sharpshooter] barely grabbing onto a monkey-bar-style outcropping of rock. “Though I’ll admit that he’s pretty good at hanging in there.”

“I kinda hope he’ll fall,” Troy said.

Me too. I didn’t voice my thoughts because I was going to be professional and impartial, damn it, and that meant not trash talking the adventurer who’d chosen to do a delve inside of my dungeon.

He managed to disappoint the lot of us, sadly. Although he came awfully close to taking a swandive off an earthen diving board at one point, the cloaked [Sharpshooter] did manage to make it to our side of the room.

It took him more than a couple seconds to regain his breath, which I supposed was fair—he’d tripped so many times up there that his accumulated minor injuries had actually given me back more mana than I’d expended on all of my manipulation of the rock around me in the past few hours.

Once he’d finally gotten his breath back, assisted by a minor [Healing Stream] from me, he looked towards the three adventurers of Minus One. “And who are you?”

“Minus One,” Rose said, introducing the group with a curtsy that bled sarcasm. “And who might you be?”

“Anderson,” the [Sharpshooter] replied laconically, his voice frigid with thinly veiled hostility. “I don’t recognize you. This is your first time through?”

“Nope,” Rose cheerfully replied. “It’s yours, though.”

“Bullshit,” the man allegedly named Anderson said. “The ARI—“

“Oh, goddess, not that fucking thing again,” Rose said. “I could go on about that for ages. C’mon. Let’s get going or get lost.”

“You heard the girl,” I said. “I won’t tolerate infighting on a tour, you know?”

I wasn’t sure if this even qualified as infighting, but at this point I’d take any excuse to keep the adventure going. Fuck me, I was going to have to figure out a way to take adventurers through without involving my personal attentions. Anderson was making a habit out of getting on my nerves.

I led the way, only checking back once to confirm that Anderson—however reluctantly—was following M-1 and me. Greed is enough for him, I guess.

Ah. That brought something to mind. As we walked up the stairs, I considered contingencies in case he turned on the party and tried to take the loot for himself. They likely wouldn’t be necessary, but it was always good to have some.

After a bit where I heard nothing but the labored breathing of the people behind me, we reached the door to the next room.

“We’ve reached the new room,” I said. “Innovated after the dungeon was taught basic engineering, I present to you a puzzle.”

The four of them entered the room behind me, Anderson jostling Ryan as he squeezed his way in.

As the door slammed shut, I clambered up to the top of the goblet that this room revolved around.

“What’s the deal with this one?” Anderson asked gruffly.

“The path to the next room lies within this cup,” I said. “However, if you climb up here, you’ll notice that the goblet is full of water, which in turn is full of the same man-eating snakes you’ve seen throughout the dungeon.”

“Ooh,” Rose said.

“The tiles on the floor are magical,” Troy said. “Give me a moment. I need to figure out what they do.”

“Let me get up there real quick,” Ryan said, already climbing to join me on the edge. “I need to take a look at this.”

“What the fuck?” Anderson asked. “How am I supposed to know how to do this?”

He’s really new, huh? I knew the type. There were plenty of people who thought they were badasses and turned out to just be terrible team players.

Well, while Troy figured out how to activate the tiles that would increase the flow of water to the goblet, maybe Anderson would actually turn out to be a badass.

With a flick of a mental switch, the door clicked shut, sealed by stone, and the walls started to move.

“Ah, shit,” Ryan said. “More constructs. Six? Room’s too small for me to dodge ‘em all.”

“Then we fight,” Rose said. “Troy, keep it up.”

For the first time, Anderson the [Sharpshooter] looked like he was actually willing to participate in this dungeon.

“You have two minutes until more constructs come,” I said. “Better get solving.”