Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 178 (Patreon)

In the last few weeks, I had grown all too familiar with the goddess’ touch. She’d sent me gloating comments, luxuriating in our misery, and she’d even come to talk to me alone once.

I wasn’t alone. Kevin had died saving the Pallbearers and Starfall, sending a final message right after he’d had a meeting with her. Rose had talked about her unique relationship with her. Carly’s ascension had been ruined by her.

And given the timing of when she had betrayed us and the complete one-eighty, I could assume that Tuyu had been meddled with as well.

This time, rather than an empty space, the goddess brought us to a more familiar location.

A faintly familiar house. It was devoid of other life, but I recognized the table. I’d played dozens of games of Dungeons and Dragons on it.

“If this is supposed to unsettle me, you’re bringing the wrong attitude to this talk,” I said. “You’re not going to intimidate me into giving up.”

[I admit, your final performance was worthy of applause.]

“Would you mind giving me a face and a real voice?” I asked. “It gets tiring, dealing with the same game-system type of interaction you usually do.”

Points of light flickered on through the room, fluttering about until they formed the rough wireframe silhouette of a woman.

[Is this more to your liking?]

“…Close enough,” I said, shaking my head. “So. You have me. Now what the hell do you want?”

[You already know.]

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Entertainment. You want this world to dance to your tune. I get it.”

[You fail to understand.]

“I don’t know what I’m failing to understand,” I said. “This entire time, you’ve been constantly going on about that. You told that to Rose, you told that to Kevin, you told that to me, and I bet you said it to Tuyu, too. Every damn time. You want entertainment? Why don’t you start by showing me what that even means?”

[You fail to understand that my entertainment is not the same as yours. It is the fuel that drives your inner fire. It is the pen that writes your story. It is the very lifeblood that flows through my veins. You think in petty, human terms.]

“You need it to survive?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, her avatar raised a hand, and the scene around us changed. She changed the subject back to my question.

We were in my dungeon—no, not my dungeon, not yet.

“I know this scene,” I said.

She showed me anyway. I watched as the Dungeon Core overloaded, then as I told the people who would eventually become the Pallbearers—the Heretics, I corrected myself—to get behind me.

The scene changed.

I watched my first tour; I watched myself kill the Kingsguard interloper.

It changed again.

The scenes were all memories I was deeply acquainted with, so they didn’t stay long.

Interrogating a man until he used [Power Word - Martyrdom] on himself.

Demolishing the Kingsguard who had come to attack me.

Killing everyone who invaded my domain.

Teleporting into the Omen’s territory. Freeing Minus One. Fighting the Omen, overcoming his strength.

Then they started morphing further. Rather than showing my own memories, I saw moments through others’ eyes.

I watched Sylva, the [Chronomancer], survive on [Borrowed Time] and try again and again to save us and herself.

I watched Starfall and the then-Pallbearers venture into Omen territory, risking life and limb to undo his teleportation wards.

I watched Anton, my otherworlder friend, drinking at the same bar. A moment later, the area around us showed him fighting for his life amidst the king’s monster horde.

Again and again, the scene changed, and every time, it showed one of the death-defying stunts we’d managed. Every time, I saw us narrowly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. There was nothing in the goddess’ show but violence. Violence from me, from the adventurers, from our enemies.

“This?” I said. “This is what entertains you? Fighting for our lives? Always being an inch from death? I always thought you were a sadist, but this is taking it a little far.”

[Once, I believed so.]

She didn’t say anything else past that.

Great. I was going to have to manage this conversation myself, then.

“Once, you say. So not anymore?”

[Your grand finale satisfied, but it was brief. The rest…]

I had never known a literal goddess to be at a loss for words, but there she was, trailing off.

Was I treating this conversation the wrong way?

The goddess had a habit of using different “faces” to talk to different people. I knew that thanks to Tuyu and some of the books Alder Corporation had delivered to me. To me, she’d always been more casual, while she’d been more of a mystic, divine figure.

This, though, didn’t feel like a mask or a false face. After all, what reason did the goddess have to fake vulnerability or confusion?

Maybe I was speaking to someone who was less wise and more human than I had thought.

“You’re telling me that you didn’t find this cycle of violence entertaining?” I asked. “Are you, perhaps, uninterested in the people that are fighting?”

Even if I was approaching this conversation from a different angle, I had to remember that the goddess was simply not a human being. Her reactions to everything differed from ours, because on some level, she just didn’t view us the same way.

At best, we were pieces on a board for her. No matter what we did, the goddess could always choose to overturn our decision. I could honestly understand where that could lead to ennui, and I could see why she cared so little for our lives.

Still. These were our lives, and I refused to let her throw us at death again and again until we finally slipped up and lost.

Sylva. Jonathan. Christopher. Jacqueline. Ashton. Aven. Alana. Kevin. Tuyu. Austin. Hundreds of thousands of otherworlders whose names I had never learned. Millions of natives that I might have worked with before.

Just because the goddess didn’t care for them all didn’t mean that nobody did. Those had been real lives that she’d snuffed out.

[The same cycle repeats, and repetition bores.]

Again, the scene changed.

This time, it showed two images simultaneously, as if each of my eyes was witnessing something different. It wasn’t even disorienting. That was divine power for you.

In one eye, I saw an elite force of Kingsguard descend on my dungeon in its old location near Ketz. In the other, I watched the Omen’s brainwashed civilians do the same. The dungeon was larger, more powerful, and more prepared, but the scenes looked remarkably similar.

Then both faded, and one image replaced it.

Monsters, swarming Centerpoint. Otherworlders doing the same.

This could have been taken not half an hour ago.

[The same. The same. The same.]

And whose fault is that? I didn’t say it out loud, but I knew the goddess heard my thoughts.

[Then show me more.]

“I have,” I said. “And I know you weren’t unhappy with it, because you never dropped in to complain. Not like you did when we were doing exactly what you wanted.”

[SHOW ME.]

It was like she’d regressed to a child, or maybe an angry teenager. It was a familiar, impotent rage.

I smiled wanly.

“You remind me of myself,” I said. If she was going to hear my thoughts anyway, I may as well voice them. “If you want me to show you, then I need to be able to change the scene, too.”

[You have the power.]

To my surprise, I did.

When I’d said that there was nobody stronger than me on this plane, it hadn’t been hyperbole. The goddess seemed to acknowledge that.

Planes, I thought. That was a fun concept.

I wondered how Carly was doing. Despite knowing that we were only on the first of many layers, I had never witnessed the worlds that lay beyond ours. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but poor Carly had been forced into one two levels higher than ours. Hopefully she was alright.

[A new plane, perhaps. That struggle… that could sate me.]

Before I could manipulate the unreal space around us, it changed again.

[Behold. A potential future.]

The goddess showed me a world at war. Radiant demigods the size of skyscrapers duelled it out over burning seas and dying armies. Each soldier possessed more power than any of the Starfall members might, and as I looked closer, I realized that many of them weren’t entirely real—they were constructs, or resurrected corpses, or otherwise artificially augmented in some way.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. Do you not understand?”

[…]

[I do not.]

Of all the things the goddess had ever said, that was the first to truly and genuinely take me by surprise. The goddess had implied her lack of ability to understand certain parts of why she reacted the way she had, but never before had I seen her straight up say she didn’t understand something.

“You’re in my head. How can you not understand?”

[That alone is not enough. Show me.]

I sighed. “Will you let me, then, and stop showing me your fantasies of more pointless violence?”

The silence was answer enough.

I flicked my fingers, flexing the new muscle the goddess had granted to me. It took a bit to figure out how to use it, but the goddess was at least patient enough to wait for a few minutes.

It was like lucid dreaming, in a sense. Though I hadn’t dreamed—or, in fact, slept—in nearly a year now, I still remembered the basics. This space was limited only by what my mind could think of, so long as I was capable of directing it.

I brought back the image of the war-torn hellscape, then overlaid it with the barren, monster-ridden land that the kingdom had created, and I placed my dungeon down in both.

In one reality, the king’s monsters invaded. In another, it was a war. Shattered divinity stepped into my realm, and I fought to protect everyone within.

To the people involved in either, it was a matter of life and death.

For the goddess, it was not so.

“Look,” I said. “You want something different out of the cycle, right? What do you see here?”

It was obvious. Even I, the person charged with saving everyone, had recognized the pattern.

[…]

“Heal. Summon. Kill. Heal. Summon. Kill.” I raised a hand, and the scene froze. “Is that what you want? To throw me to to the same wolves, just with a fresh coat of paint?”

I was oversimplifying, and both of us knew it. The threats I had faced were different enough for me to need entirely different methodologies to facing them, and the stakes continued to rise every time—but that wasn’t what the goddess cared about, was it?

“Maybe, if you were someone different, you would find this sufficient,” I said. “But if you have to interfere with the world to not even properly satiate yourself, I think you’re doing it wrong.”

[…]

Her facade was cracking. I could feel it. Even her false form of light, which she should have had perfect control over, was shifting, degrading.

I could win this. I could—no, winning wasn’t the word I should use. Winning implied there would be a loser, and the goddess could never lose.

She shifted where she sat. Right. She can hear me.

No, this wasn’t about winning. The goddess implied that if she didn’t see new experiences, she would literally die or, at the very least, degrade.

I needed to demonstrate a better way. There had to be a way that she could survive and we could, too.

I loved adventuring, I really did, but what we had been doing wasn’t adventuring. It was a fight for survival, and we deserved so much more than that.

A glimmer of hope materialized within me.

We were so much more than that.

[If I am failing, then show me a better way.]

Gladly.

Though I had come into this conversation not knowing what the goddess wanted or how I was going to speak with her, an idea had crystallized.

She must not have been looking inside my head, because I could swear I felt anticipation radiating from her body.

I drew my fingers through the air, and for the first time, I drew up a scene of my own.

Just as the goddess had done before, the scenes I drew came straight from my memories.

A single scene, just after the first tour I’d ever given.

“Well,” Rose said, opening a basket, “You did save our lives a few times in there. We couldn’t have done the dungeon without you, so we brought you some gifts.”

Another, from a quiet moment before the Omen had even sent his first force.

She started playing again, and this time I realized where that recognition had come from. A stupid smile came to my face halfway through the piece, but I let her finish it before speaking.

The [Soloist]—[Bard], at the time—had been playing a track from one of my favorite games, I remembered. That same stupid smile came to my lips now once more.

I sent us forward in time.

“It’s a possibility,” Iris said. “Untapped dungeons are rife with possibility. If this area’s rewards are good, then it is very possible that it attracts hundreds or even thousands of adventurers, and those people need to eat and sleep and play. A dungeon is the basis for community, and I’ve proved this time and time again with Alder Corps’ projects.”

I did it again and again.

For every scene of raw violence and anger she had made me watch, I showed her a memory of peace, or something approximating it. Memories of adventure, not horror; love, not abject hatred; growth through teamwork, not because the situation necessitated it.

“That,” I said, “was embarrassing.”

I showed her the process of training the Duelists; then Minus One, then the Land Pirates, then everyone.

One wand’ring bard of needs and wants

One prodigy of Ketz

I showed her Twill, the late [Soulsong Bard], compete against Rose.

Just like she had, I accelerated the scenes, driving them faster and faster until they were almost incomprehensible.

Unlike any normal human, the goddess could process them all.

While she had focused on the fights themselves, I looked at the events leading up to them.

Training with Lisa in the Omen’s underbelly. Teaching Anderson how to guide. Shooting the shit—and monsters—with him before the Cataclysm.

Experimenting with monsters. Trying out different configurations for a better, more engaging dungeon. Letting myself take hits from my [Combine]d monsters just to see what they did in a fight.

Welcoming Anton and the couple he’d been with in. Joking about my tomatoes with them.

Creating a nation from the ground up.

Thanks to the goddess’ power, we had all the time in the world, so I showed her everything.

“This is what you’re missing out on,” I said softly. “The time in between. The connections that matter. This is what I was always good at. Not fighting. I got good at that because I had to. This is what I want, and I think that to some extent, it’s what you want.”

The goddess was silent for a very, very long time. It stretched on long enough that I started to worry that she had taken personal offense to one of the insinuations I’d made.

When she spoke again, her response was simple.

[Perhaps.]

Some time passed, and I was about to ask if that was all she had in response to me baring my soul when she spoke again.

[I have erred, but I know not whether your path is superior.]

“That’s fine,” I said. “Not knowing whether or not it’ll work isn’t any great failure. It’s human. That’s what everything is like, for us.”

[I do not know.]

“You don’t have to.” For once, I found that I couldn’t muster any anger for the goddess. When I spoke, it was calm, measured, and above all, genuine. “All you have to do is try.”

[Then try it we shall.]

The space she’d pulled me into disappeared as abruptly as it had formed.

Her presence wasn’t gone. It never was. She was always watching.

But she had drawn back. There was no finger on my shoulder. No blade waiting above my neck.

The goddess had not struck me down, and I was, for all intents and purposes, the sole power of the base plane of reality.

I knew I couldn’t affect the layers above us. I just wasn’t powerful enough, and as much as I hated to admit it, I didn’t think I had it in me to try and fight off another world.

For now, I would do what I could.

Eyes wide, arms spread, I welcomed the broken mess of a world I had inherited.

And I set out to fix it.