Chapter 442 - Pick your poison (Patreon)

Hera and Blue handed their bags to Helena and the others. Unfortunately, they couldn't find hotel rooms for everybody. But that didn't mean that they needed to go to a different room to rest for the night. Hera could use her private room to allow two people to stay there comfortably. If needed, she could have everybody stay there, but they would sleep without blankets or pillows. There was a limit to the number of items that she could create inside, and currently, she could only make enough for two people. Not that there weren't ways to go around that, but those were cases for an emergency. In fact, there were a lot of things for them to do before going to bed today. Leaving their bags with Helena was just something they did so they didn't have to carry some basic supplies, change of clothes, and other simple things around the room.

When the time came for them to go to bed, Hera and Blue could just walk to one of the towers that had a much larger doorway where no one would be bothered if two people tried to cross together. Said tower was the biggest one of them all. It was Obsidian with pearl details. But, aside from the massive 20-meter wide and 5-meter tall doorway, everything else was just the same as the other towers.

After setting up everything, the group walked around looking at the shops and the other tourist spots in the room. Helena, being the one who was used to the place, took the job of the tour guide and talked about the houses, including the one that was a museum dedicated to the first group of explorers that came here. She took them to a tall structure that allowed people to have an unrestricted view of all the towers and talked about each of the 10, explaining what kind of rooms they were connected to and how it seemed like every new doorway connected to this place would appear out of nowhere. While inside that tall building, they stopped by a coffee shop to discuss what they would do for the rest of the day.

"OK, so we can keep exploring the city, looking at houses, museums, the training rooms, which are supposed to be among the most advanced ones in the MAZE, or go see the shops which, again, are packed with rare and unique items. Like I said, this place may not be a metropolis, but more resources are poured in here than in a big city. This is one of the few places in the MAZE that can connect so many different rooms, and because most people try to take advantage of the wide range of customers that they can interact with," Helena turned to the server who had just brought the party their drinks and thanked him.

"Even if that's interesting, I kinda wanna do something more exciting," Alex replied while taking her cappuccino from the tray on the center of the table.

"Me too. We don't need to go fight monsters. But I'm not much of a history buff. The museum was… OK, I guess, but I don't see the point of going there. And shopping, if I was going to change pieces of my gear, I want to do that when I have time to get used to the new weapons. I don't like the idea of changing my equipment in the middle of something unless I either find something really good or something happens to my current gear. And for anything that is not combat or travel-related, well, I want to do that when I have the time and can bring everything home, not when I'm just leaving for a trip," Blue broke a large cookie in half with her hands and started eating.

"Even I have to agree. This place is amazing, don't get me wrong, but I rather know more about the towers and everything than about what happened to the people who found this place," Bonnie looked to the outside of this building, where she could see the red tower, and its neighbors, "For instance. Looking here, the structures seem to be much bigger on the inside. I mean, the corridor we came from should be at least a hundred meters deep, and the red tower doesn't seem to be much bigger than the central chamber from this angle."

"Yeah, you're not the first one to notice that. We kind of assume that inside each corridor is kinda like an open dungeon that is connected to several different doorways, and that's why when a new one appears, there's no visible change. It's just there, as if everything has been there since forever. You're welcome to try to figure out what's actually happening, but a lot of people are giving their lives to do just that, and it's not exactly going well. I mean, the last time I heard any new developments about that was like, ten years ago when I was just starting out," Helena glanced at the same tower Bonnie was watching.

"Right, I don't think I want to dedicate my life to this, but I might try to… I don't know. Just see if that gives me an idea for something," Bonnie replied.

"That's fine and all, but what are we going to do?" Alex asked.

"We have a couple of options. I know of two dungeons that we can do. I've done them both in the past, and we can run them without having to worry about the difference in strength. It's more of a bunch of different trials and challenges than something where we have to fight to survive."

"So we don't have the risk of dying in those dungeons?" Hera asked.

"Oh no, we can die in both. But the odds are very slim. As long as we are smart. The first one is called Dinner Party, but people know it as the jester dungeon. That's because of the person responsible for the dungeon. I don't know if that one was created because of something but still. It's basically a mixture of a murder mystery party with a escape room with one of those crazy fun houses that we see in carnivals with a bunch of mirrors and moving floors and stuff like that sprinkled. We're gonna be playing detective while trying to figure out who stole from the guests. At the same time, we have to avoid the traps that are everywhere in that place. This one is the safest since none of the traps are actually supposed to be deadly, but accidents can happen. If you end up going on a slide at a bad angle, you might eat your head and break your neck, and there is a room that gets flooded with water, and if you don't figure out how to get out of there fast enough, you might drown. Those are just some examples, but I think it's been like five years since the last fatality inside it, so we're OK.

"That seems fun," Bonnie perked up.

"That seems annoying," Blue scoffed.

"They are both. It can be fun, but depending on the layout of the castle and the traps that can be active, it can get really annoying. The second dungeon it's called the Nhotel, or No Hotel. This one is very weird. In the dungeon, we're inside a hotel that is manned by statues, and they don't move. They can speak, and if they want to give you something, whatever they wanna give you will just pop up, but the statues won't ever move around. The quest here is just to grab a key for a room or several rooms in the reception and reach your room. Simple enough, right? Not really," Helena sighed.

"When we get there, the front desk statue will tell us how long it takes for the housekeeping to clean a room. We have that time to move around the hallways that are very much like the ones in the tower. They seemed to stretch for miles and miles, and people even tried to see if there was an end. There was this guy who spent a week just walking straight in the hallway until he gave up and just finished the quest to get out of there. But the point is, we need to find a room, and at certain times we will hear a roar coming from the 'housekeeper.' At those moments, a monster will be set free, and it will start roaming around the hallways. During that time, we need to find an open door, get inside and lock it behind us. Sometimes there is no lock so we need to find the 'do not disturb' sign in the room and place it on the doorknob outside. After that, we will be safe, and all we need to do is wait and survive any potential traps for a certain amount of time. The traps inside those doors are never deadly at first, but they get increasingly worse with time. For instance, we may find a room that's cold, and it gets colder and colder and colder until we are frozen to death. The thing is, when we are inside a room, the timer that stops the creature from roaming around will be increasing, so the longer we stay in a room, the more time we have to search the hotel and look for our goal. And staying in several rooms for long when they are close by can have diminishing returns. So we need to be smart and split our time. Also, we all need to be inside the room for the timer to start. It doesn't have to be the same room, though," Helena finished her explanation.

"What if we try to kill the monster?" Alex asked.

"We will just die. It is a level 70 creature that has increased regeneration to the point of regrowing an arm in 10 seconds. There was even a group of high-level explorers who came here trying to kill it, and they couldn't. And the party was above level 80. Everybody assumes that there's a hidden quest related to killing the monster, but it's not what we need to do to get the hard mode, so there's not that many people trying to kill the thing," Helena took a sip of her espresso.

"So the hallways… are they all regular hallways, or do they have weird shapes like the back rooms?" Hera asked.

"Back rooms?" Helena turned to the explorer.

"It's just an urban legend. It's kinda like a glitch in the universe that sends you to this bland infinite expanse of corridors with seemingly no exit. Just countless walls of the same gray or yellow wallpaper that twist and turn endlessly. It's one of those Internet rumors that people use as inspiration for horror games."

"Ah, I see. They are not like that. Each hallway is like a very fancy hotel hallway with several rooms you could enter. You won't seem like a wall that doesn't connect to anything. It's not tight like the ones in the tower. There are large hallways that several people can walk along without a problem, others are small and we would need to walk on a single file line. It's just an endless expense where we will be running around like headless chickens. There are a few things that can show us to our room, but I'll talk about that if we decided to head there," Helena looked around the table, "So, where do you guys want to go?"

"Between the two. I think I like the dinner party better," Bonnie replied after thinking for a moment.

"Same. The hallway thing seems confusing," Alex nodded.

"I agree. Having a level 70 monster after us doesn't seem fun," Blue crossed her arms. Even if none of the dungeons had what she wanted, they still could prove to be interesting.

"Besides, it seems like a good place for us to start. Since that one is the least dangerous of the two. We can see if we can beat it without a problem. We can try the No Hotel if we feel confident after it," Hera added.

"Then we need to head to the green and purple tower," Helena pointed to the east, "And the dungeon connection is simple. The Jester wears a hat with that color pattern."

"Really?" the entire party rolled their eyes.

"Hey, I wasn't the one that put it there. But yeah, that's the idea people accept. Because that tower leads mostly to swamps and places filled with poison," Helena explained.

Hera looked over to the tower, "Do you know if there is any place there where I can find a Poison Spirit?"

"I'm not sure. I'll look that up and let you know later. But for now, finish your drinks. We have a dinner to attend."