Lewd Dungeon, Book 11 Prologue (Patreon)

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Adventurer’s Guild Official Forums, Miami Branch)

SunnyBunz, MightyMouse, ImAPally, DontYouWantMe, AsaAkiraIsBae, BestGirl, LatinHeat, Salty, Backpage, Craig34, l33tpally, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, RedFox, Kimiko, DonnyJuan, Crusader, BadCompany, HurricaneGal, Scholar, Righteous, Id10t, Satyr, DarkEnchanter, ScoopGirl, VenusFlyTramp, MagicMike, TsundereHealer, Max, LightningLegacy, SwiftTaylor, Domino, Bacchus, Aegis, Temptation, and Lord_Kickass are in the chat.

Id10t: Oh, man, have you seen the new gear some of the craftsmen have started coming out with, now that people are starting to really get the hang of making shit with the System?

BestGirl: Oh, gods, yes! You should see the necklace I was able to get from someone who had picked up the Jeweler profession! It had stat bonuses on it, even before I took it to an Enchanter!

Kimiko: Yes, that seems to be a common thing once someone has enough practice with their craft.

Scholar: It is influence from the System, naturally. My research says that the nature of the stat bonuses depends on a few factors. The nature of the object itself obviously will cause some shaping of attribute bonuses. A sword is more likely to get a Strength bonus than a Charisma bonus, for instance. Different materials can influence that as well, it seems. And some ‘designs’ just seem to hold certain attributes in it.

Salty: But there are weird objects out there. I found a staff off a vurlock that was made from coral, but had a bonus to Fire magics. Don’t ask me how that came about.

Bacchus: Was this in the dungeon, or the ocean?

Salty: Ocean. I haven’t gone back to that damned place since my month helping make the water temple, and I don’t think I ever will.

Temptation: Aww. *sad face*

BadCompany: How come, Salty?

Salty: After getting a look ‘behind the scenes’? You people don’t realize how much that bastard holds back. With the power he has, it would be easy for him to turn that place into a deathtrap that no one could get through, and no one would know the change until it was too late.

Id10t: I’ve wondered about that, myself. The minor monsters seem to roam around, but other than a few minibosses that are designed as ambush encounters, the really powerful ones are always in the same place, even when people figure out the secret to beating their ‘boss rooms’.

Scholar: According to the Demon, he does it that way because it is all one large trap. Familiarity breeds complacency. While the Water Temple was being built, the first floor Swamp was still claiming victims every day, despite it being virtually unchanged. And that’s not counting the number of people who needed cleansing after getting attacked by Captain Hentai. And yet people kept pushing on, going for the deeper floors, and trying to ‘clear’ the dungeon.

Temptation: I have to get my pleasures where I can, you know. Watching you all struggle, move forward, fight, and, yes, sometimes die is quite entertaining. If I were to turn the dungeon into an unbeatable deathtrap that no one could possibly survive, then no one would come, and I would be doomed to eternal boredom.

Salty: Until you decide to start sending your minions out and about.

Crusader: Wait, what?

Temptation: Ah, treading some fine lines of that contract, Salty. At any rate, no, I do not wish to send the creatures I have created or bound to my dungeon outside of my domain. Frankly, that is not in my best interests, unless someone does something stupid that requires intervention.

VenusFlyTramp: What counts as ‘something stupid’?

Temptation: Well, someone raising another Necropolis nearby or setting off a Monster Lure in Swamptown would qualify.

MightyMouse: How would you know about such things, unless they were reported on the web?

Temptation: Did you think I would build a dungeon without a way to see if armies of self-righteous idiots were trying to form some kind of crusade to destroy me before those armies entered my dungeon?

AsaAkiraIsBae: Ah, so some kind of scrying magic, then? You can basically look in on anything in the area?

Temptation: Something like that. I don’t generally pay attention to what goes on in Swamptown because most of the people there have signed the contract keeping them from harming the Dungeon or allowing others to do so. If I spied on their strategy sessions, it would make things boring and uninteresting.

Craig34: Why are you telling us this?

Temptation: So that no one can claim I was hiding things from them if I ever see a true threat to the Dungeon coming and take steps to eliminate it. The… more refined mana coming from the Dungeon acts as a lure to creatures, and I’d really rather know if some eldritch abomination from the depths decides it wants to try and move on my dungeon before it is rampaging through Swamptown.

Craig34: Oh, yeah, that would be bad.

TsundereHealer: Hey, Temptation, any word on those soldiers that were testing out System guns? How’s it going for them?

Temptation: Well, they rallied from their utter spanking in Goblin Town fairly nicely. There was some good information there, by the way. Looking at my logs, it appears that different kinds of spells are more effective at defending against guns than others. Between that, defensive skills, and magical healing, the soldiers weren’t able to damage the goblins faster than they were getting healed, while the goblins were lobbing spells and ranged attacks at them from behind their shield bearers.

Scholar: Interesting. So it seems that the gun’s day as the supremely powerful handheld weapon is done.

Temptation: Yes, that is one way of putting it. At any rate, the soldiers are now the first ‘guests’ of my Undead-themed floor. I am really quite happy with the results so far. Sure, no one has died, but they’ve provided a great deal of entertainment. Unfortunately, they fell for a trick which has handicapped them for the rest of the dungeon. And now they are trying to find the Vampire Lord.

Scholar: Hmm. I will have to speak with the soldiers when they emerge, and see if I can figure out this trick.

Temptation: Good luck with that. They didn’t bother asking the proper questions or testing things. They made the sad mistake of assuming things were as they appeared. But I am interested to see how things progress from here.