Chapter 249 (Patreon)

Something crunches beneath my boot as I walk through the rubble and destruction that makes up floor forty-seven. Looking down at the thing beneath me, I lift my leg up and step off of the crushed minotaur skull. It was crushed before I got here, I swear!

I just kind of crushed it a little more.

Bending down, I pick up a fragment of the bone and fiddle around with it, spinning it between my fingers as I look upwards, to look around the space that I find myself in. Crude stone buildings, made with massive bricks each the size of a man in all dimensions, line the floor, coming together into a spiral as they row of constructions loops tightly and tightly closed, towards a point of convergence in the center of the floor.

Floor forty-seven. The minotaur’s dwelling.

Getting up, I look around as I walk past the first houses on my way. I suppose this is where the minotaurs have their origin story in their plot-line inside of the dungeon. Looks like a nice enough place. Cozy. A dead baby’s femur crunches beneath my boot as I walk and I skip up a step, trying to jump off of it with a pang of guilt, like accidentally stepping on a sleeping animal’s paw. Sorry.

It could maybe use a little clean up, sure, I think the neighborhood has gotten pretty rough these days. But which neighborhood hasn’t? Honestly, the whole dungeon just needs to have a good washing out. Like, someone should just stick a pipe into the top of the dungeon, pump it full of water, give it a good shake and then hold it upside down to let all of the gunk wash out.

My free hand runs along the scorched, blackened walls of the houses as I follow the spiral. A bit of rock crumbles off, falling down to the ground. It might be too late for that though. You can wash out the goo from inside of the dungeon, but you can’t wash out the goo from inside of the dungeon, you know what I mean?

“Are we on an adventure?” asks the slime, popping out of my armor.

“An adventure?” I ask. “Hmm…” Lifting my head, I leap and grab hold of the flat-top roof of one of the houses, pulling myself up onto it. It’s faster if I go over them rather than following the whole spiral. I can already see the staircase from here, though it’s hard to miss, being right in the middle of the floor and all. “I mean, if you really want it to be?”

“Are we adventurers?” asks the slime, her eyes growing wide.

“Boy, I hope not,” I say, bracing my legs just before I leap across the road, towards the next row of houses, towards the inside of the spiral. “Adventurers are jerks.”

“Are we jerks?” she asks curiously, her goo dribbling around as we fly through the air.

“Boy, I hope not,” I repeat, landing on the next roof. “Well, you aren’t. But I might be,” I tell her, making my way to the next one.

She bubbles, half-satisfied. “How come?”

“I live for my work,” I explain, leaping again. “Plus I get really mad at other people a lot, kind of like the dungeon-master.” I shrug as I land. “So I guess that makes me a jerk.”

“Can lizards be jerks?” she asks.

“Lizards?” I ask.

“Lizards,” she affirms.

“Lizards?” I think about it. “I guess not? I mean, they just kind of do lizard things?” I rub my skull, thinking. “But I guess if you’re a bug and a lizard tries to eat you, then you’ll think that it’s a jerk.”

“Does it matter?” she asks.

“What?”

“What the bug thinks? If you’re a lizard?”

I leap, dropping down onto the before last row of houses near the center of the spiral.

“I guess not. I don’t think lizards care about what bugs think.”

“What about fish?” she asks.

“I don’t think lizards care about what fish think either,” I say, leaping to the final roof.

She nods, satisfied. “Now you get it!” The slime retreats back into my armor and I land, not sure what it is that I am supposed to have gotten. “It was a metaphor!” she explains.

I stand there, scratching my skull as I think, trying to understand it. Was it? I feel like she was just talking about random nonsense. Maybe she’s been sticking to my bones for too long? It’s making her… philosophical.

I shudder, before leaping and jumping down to the center of the spiral. The center of the minotaur village, where there is a long, spiral staircase in the center of the dungeon floor, that reaches up towards the roof so far above us. Stepping up onto it, I continue my climbing, happy to have had a full floor with no metaphors and no drama. I scrape my boot against the edge of the steps, scraping some of the dead baby off of it. That’s dungeon life for you -

“Tell you what,” she finishes for me and I nod, approvingly.

Adventurers, huh? Seems like a lot of work. You spend all day running through disgusting, dirty dungeons. Your life is filled with nothing but work and suffering. If you have any friends, they’re going to die horrible deaths more likely than not. In the end, you’ll be alone in the dark, with nothing but a weapon in your hands and some foggy memories to show for it.

Wait.

Shit.

As I stand in the middle of the spiral staircase, looking down and around floor forty-seven, which I am about to leave behind me, I realize something. I might just be an adventurer.

Oh no.

Turning away, I quickly march up the staircase before anyone finds out my dirty secret. Can you imagine how mad the dungeon-master would get, if they found out that I’m moonlighting as an adventurer? Nervously, I look up towards the distant ceiling, wondering if the dungeon-master is even still watching me at all anymore?

Or have they decided to ignore me entirely and let me fade away on my own, like a bad, foggy memory?