I was back in the hallway. The tree-lady was alive.
Bizzeki – Half-Treant. Level 50.
Guildmaster of this guildhall.
This is a Non-Combatant NPC.
Treants are trees who think they're special. Half-treants are the result of people that agree they're special, so-much-so that they fuck the treants. Imagine the splinters.
Her mouth was moving, her hands gesturing.
"Look, lady, I'm deaf."
She blinked in surprise. Words appeared on my screen, for the first time with an obvious source.
Bizzeki: Sorry about that, and about all the delays. There were some hiccoughs in the system, with you managing to get down here the way you did, but we're here now, so let's just plow on ahead!
She had in incredibly forced smile. Her glassy eyes weren't properly focused on my own.
Maybe that's just what half-treants were like. "Sure, whatever. Do you know sign-language? I hate talking without my implant on. I always feel like I'm gonna mangle the words."
Bizzeki: The system might translate that, but we'll have you set up with chat soon enough.
Not even trying to watch my test of the sign-language translation, she led me into the same room I'd just been in and gave me the spiel I was supposed to get two floors ago. God, I hoped Lacie had managed to find one of these. I hoped she had a lightning spear and a sweet bike and that her head was still attached to her body.
Deep, steadying breath. Man, those breathing exercised felt more effective every day.
Bizzeki spent a while talking me through the interface, showing me all the tools that were supposed to help me with this nightmare world, like a minimap and a chat system and an inventory system, then settled in for the big things I'd missed out on: loot, race, and class.
Bizzeki: First, to finish this tutorial, you need to learn about achievements and loot. You've probably earned some boxes, and the contents will help us select a race and class.
She showed me how to display all those achievements I'd been swiping into the corner of my screen.
Maddy: It says I have fifty-seven achievements.
I clicked, and a whole mess of them started announcing themselves. They mostly seemed to be a way for the dungeon to insult me.
New achievement! Slippery Little Shit.
Five different creatures attacked you at the same time and you dodged all of them at once.
Reward: You've received a Silver Adventurer Box!
New achievement! Feel the Burn.
You stayed fatigued for over thirty hours without stopping. That's not healthy. You should try taking a nap.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Adventurer Box!
New achievement! You leveled a skill to 10.
Normally this isn't of much note, but you're level 1 still, so here we are.
Reward: You already have a skill at 10. Why would you get another reward?
New achievement! Alright, That's Actually Impressive.
You have dodged a thousand consecutive attacks without sustaining damage. If you keep this up, you'll never learn how to take a punch. It'll be really funny watching you die when someone with real skill shows up.
Reward: You've received a Gold Adventurer Box!
New Achievement! They'll Smell you Coming.
You just pissed yourself. Ew.
Reward: Why would reward pissing yourself? That's not my fetish.
New achievement! You found stairs!
You have found a stairwell down to the next floor. They say the cream rises to the top. So what does that say about you?
Reward: This barely qualifies as an achievement. Your reward is that you're alive to read this.
New Achievement! Highway to the Danger Zone!
You went through the entire first floor without ever entering a safe zone. That's impressive like breaking safety-glass with your face is impressive.
Reward: You've received a Gold Adventurer box.
New Achievement! Pacifist!
You survived an entire floor without hurting a single, poor mob. That's not how this works. Nobody likes you.
Reward: You've received a Gold Pacifist's Box.
New Achievement! Bereft.
You somehow got into the second floor without a single item in your inventory.
Reward: You've received a Gold Adventurer box! Now, the idea is, you open the box and you take the things. That's why we give you an inventory in the first place.
New Achievement! Lost Baggage.
You made it to the second floor without that baggage you dragged in here. Good for you! She was only gonna slow you down.
Reward: You've received a Silver Adventurer box! As for your baggage, she got nothing but a sense of abandonment.
Maddy: Is Lacie alive? I kept looking for her, and she was just gone.
No response. I looked over to see Bizzeki sinking into the cushions of her chair, eyes unfocused. "Hey!"
She startled, shaking her head as if to clear it.
Bizzeki: Pay attention to the achievements. This is important.
Maddy: Where the hell is Lacie?
Bizzeki: I can't tell you where another crawler is, or if they're alive. It's against the rules, but if you entered with them, you should be in a party. Your interface says you aren't in a party, so there's no way to know what happened.
Maddy: Your rules suck!
Bizzeki: Whatever. You're just gonna die in a few hours anyways. The buffs they give lowbies this far in are basically just a gift to crawler-killers.
Maddy: I hate this place! I should be able to talk to Lacie. We have this weird chat nonsense. How do I look her up?
Bizzeki: You can't until you get in person with her. Now will you—
Maddy: Screw you!
Our little spat meant she missed most of the remaining achievements, but they were logged and I read them later.
New Achievement! Little Runaway.
Your fellow crawlers attacked you and you ran away without ever hurting them. Good for you. Cowardice is sure to get your through this massive deathtrap. Just kidding, you're gonna be chopped up and eaten.
Reward: Why would we reward running away? Kill them and you might get a prize.
New Achievement! The Third Sense.
You noticed and avoided an attack from an invisible threat due to a shift in the air, not because you heard them coming or were smart enough to notice a trap. You're probably thinking this should be a sixth-sense, but that's stupid. Everyone who's not some disabled freak like you has six senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, scent, proprioception. The air hitting you was felt by your sense of touch. This isn't a new sense, you're just bad at paying attention to it.
Reward: You're not dead. Be thankful.
New achievement! Borough Boss!
So, you've stumbled into the chamber of the second-weakest type of boss. If you survive this, it means you are in the top 5% of all crawlers. Too bad only the top .25% make it past the next tier.
Reward: Yeah, no.
New achievement! No Rest For the Boring.
You stayed fatigued for over sixty hours without stopping. Did you know this achievement was supposed to be "No Rest For the Wicked"? We both know how much you've done down here so far.
Reward: You've received a Silver Adventurer Box!
New achievement! Sleep is for the Weak.
You stayed fatigued for over 120 hours without stopping. There's debate as to whether you qualify as undead yet, but I wouldn't call what you're doing living.
Reward: You've received a Gold Adventurer Box
New achievement! Your the first to level a skill to 15 with battlefield conditions.
Did you know Ignore Fatigue is a skill? It's not a useful skill, but it's a skill, and you've got it in spades. Normally, there's no achievement for reaching 15, but you're the first level-1 crawler to ever achieve a base of level 15 in a skill purely by using it too dang much. That makes you special.
Reward: You know, this is such an impressive achievement that, even though the skill is supposed to be its own reward, I'm going to award you a Gold Box of Impressive Skill.
We started paying attention again as the achievements that came right before my descent to floor three were popping up.
New Achievement! Now You Smell Even Worse.
You pissed yourself again. Have you talked to your doctor about this?
Reward: I already told you this isn't my fetish. Try something else and we'll see about rewarding you.
New Achievement! Rulebreaker.
You broke a dungeon rule. Something really bad is about to happen, so this is probably your last achievement.
Reward: Nothing. We don't encourage breaking the rules, even when it's hilarious.
New Achievement! You Did Nothing.
You founght a borough boss that died, but did zero damage, healed no friends— wait, you have no friends. You're alone, and you accomplished nothing.
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That fight went so long without a climax, it was like a reenactment of you masturbating endlessly in your room back home, another thing you did alone because you have no friends, gooner.
Reward: You're lucky I don't take a box away for how long you spent running in circles. Thank god nobody was watching or they might have died of boredom.
New Achievement! The Actual Danger Zone Itself.
On January 3rd, 1943, Sergeant Alan Eugene Magee was in a B-17 bomber over France. The plane was shot full of holes by flak. One such flak hit shredded his parachute. As the plane went down, Magee blacked out from a lack of oxygen. While unconscious, he was thrown clear of the plane and fell 4 miles to crash through the glass roof of a train station.
He survived.
We look at Magee and say, "That man wasn't stupid enough to do this intentionally." You, on the other hand, have safe rooms all over the place and just constantly sprint into danger with no chute.
What I'm saying is, you seem to be an idiot, and we like that. Here's a prize!
Reward: You've received a Platinum Adventurer box.
New Achievement! Utterly Bereft.
Holy cow, you got to the third floor with nothing in your inventory?
Reward: A Platinum Adventurer box. Seriously, just take some stuff. Right now, you're too embarrassing to look at.
New Achievement! Boooor-riiing.
You are still at zero views on floor 3.
Reward: A slap upside the head. If you're not entertaining, we're not paying.
New Achievement! Naked Time!
Over 70% of your clothing has been destroyed since you entered the dungeon, and you've replaced none of it.
Reward: A Gold Apparel box. I'm sure whatever's in here won't reveal even more than what you're already wearing.
New Achievement! Completely Harmless.
You're to the third floor, and you have yet to deal any damage to any creature. Normally, this achievement has another name, but you were trying to damage things, you just failed completely.
Reward: A Legendary Pacifist box.
I sat there for a minute, ignoring Bizzeki while I fought back tears. Lacie was gone. This nightmare-AI hadn't even made some snide remark about her in my floor-three achievements. Could she actually still be out there?
There were also a lot of other notifications, almost all of them You've gained a skill level! which I raced through, as none of them made any sense to me yet.
When I was done clearing those, I saw that Bizzeki was asleep again. I clapped my hands as loud as I could and she startled awake.
Bizzeki: Oh, where were we? That's right. Now, you open the boxes. You've got thirty-nine, which as a total of everything you received from the first two floors, well it's not a lot. I'd be worried, but that legendary pacifist box is a big deal. Let's get this going. It's the button in— yeah, click that.
Thirty-nine boxes popped out in a line out in front of me, extending into a distance that didn't exist, like a weird optical illusion. The first boxes were a mess of bronze adventurer boxes. One by one, the boxes opened on their own, things popping out and then leaping into my inventory.
I'd gotten twenty-three of those, and all I got were lots of torches and bandages, eleven health potions, and four mana potions.
Next were eight silver adventurer boxes, which had more potions, some poison-antidotes, potions for treating burns and bleed-effects, and twenty-three Thirty-Hour Energy Potion. Wipe away fatigue with no risk of the jitters. Unless you get the jitters from too much caffeine, in which case this will give you the worst jitters you've ever experienced.
Finally, seven gold boxes, two platinum boxes, and that looming legendary remained.
Gold Adventurer Box (29/39)
Good Healing Potion x2.
Potion of Invisibility.
Gold Adventurer Box (30/39)
Box of 20 Healing Potions.
Gold Adventurer Box (31/39)
Gold Ring of +3 Dexterity.
That seemed promising. I looked at Bizzeki who was sucking a vape, eyes glassy, unfocused. Great.
Gold Adventurer Box (32/39)
Tatami Hitai-ate of the Wanderer
Gold Adventurer Box (33/39)
Shadow-Twined Faulds.
Gold Box of Impressive Skill (34/39)
A note popped out: We already went over this. You don't get rewards for improving a skill. Were you expecting a prize? Aw, that's so sad. The note flared to ash. If I didn't already hate this place, I would be hating it now.
Gold Apparel Box (35/39)
Mesh Top of the Midnight Ballroom.
Gold Pacifist's Box (36/39)
Twinkle-Toes Ballet Flats.
Next up were the platinum boxes, which would be a big deal, I assumed. I glanced at Bizzeki to find her apparently passed out in her chair again. This dungeon was such a mess.
Platinum Adventurer Box (37/39)
Hilt-Binding Cord.
Platinum Adventurer Box (38/39)
Skill Potion.
Legendary Pacifist Box (39/39)
Extremely Sharp Knife.
"Just a sharp knife? From the legendary box? I hate this place. Hey! Bizzeki!"
She was fully out of it.
I sighed and started looking at things in my inventory. It took a few seconds to get the descriptions to pop up.
Tatami Hitai-Ate of the Wanderer.
This headband gives the wearer +3 to the Blindsight ability.
Can be expanded into a closed helm, which is more protective and increases the Blindsight ability by an additional +3.
It was a red cloth band with a metal plate that fit around my forehead and reach back to just above each ear. I carefully tied it in place, and suddenly the world was audible again. A mark in its favor, the AI had decided to repair my implant, in its own way.
New achievement! Loot! You're wearing something you found in the dungeon. Reward: You're a pretty little lady. What more could you ask for?
New achievement! Oooh, Magic! You're wearing magical gear for the first time! You're a wizard, Crawler! Reward: You've received a Bronze Adventurer Box!
I was distracted for a moment, then returned to figuring the items out. A little poking found the option to expand the hitai-ate. Plates slid out from behind the main forehead-plate, both up and down, clicking shut to form a helm that entirely encased my head.
I had weirdly-good sense of the world nearby. I could feel the brush of breezes in the air, hear soft sounds of motion, catch hints of odor, and stitch it all together into a picture of the space. I could figure out the space for about twenty feet, and it wasn't very precise.
Even more fiddling let me put that option onto an easy-access list on my interface. I clicked it, and the hitai-ate returned to being a headband. My senses dulled, but I could see again.
Mesh Top of the Midnight Ballroom
+2 to the Hide in Shadows skill.
Grants the Sink Into Shadow benefit.
Presumably, being able to hide was good. With some work, I figured out how to make the benefit display what it did.
Sink Into Shadow. You know those goth losers in high-school, trying to dress so everyone will notice them, but instead everyone avoids them because they're such fucking edge-lords? This is like that, except it's meant to avoid notice.
Sink Into Shadow: While this benefit is active, the area around you will grant you additional concealment. So long as you remain in the shadowed area, your dot will not appear the minimap and it will be far easier for you to to hide. Remains active as long as you remain in the area and are not spotted. Once the effect ends, it cannot be activated again for twice as long as it was active.
I was really pissed at the commentary about people like Lacie, but it was also a black mesh shirt that would look really cute, especially compared to the five or six threads that remained of my green mesh top. I couldn't help but notice that it had given me nothing to replace my jean shorts, which had developed several new holes. At least my leggings were still present down to mid-thigh.
As to the ability, I was less sure how important mini-map icons were. Wait, had those murderers been tracking me like that? Breaking line-of-sight had hardly mattered!
I put Sink Into Shadow on my hotbar and clicked it. A haze of black fog seeped from my pores, feeling faintly oily, dimming the world about me.
Bizzeki: Woah! Careful with abilities in safe zones.
"I see you're awake again. And you can talk. The headband fixed my cochlear implant."
She focused on it. "Oh, that's pretty good. This stuff will be amazing if you decide to make a hunter-play."
"A what?"
"Hunter. Stalk other crawlers and kill them. Since you won't—"
"What? No. That's sick."
"It's good XP, and they're all gonna die, anyways." Her shoulders slumped, her bark seeming to crinkle, as if the thought alone were making her ill. "May as well benefit you."
I wanted to yell again, but she suddenly looked impossibly pathetic. Next, shoes.
Twinkle-Toes Ballet Flats
Goodness, aren't you just the cutest, most original girl ever. A hugely impractical shoe that's sure to leave your feet injured, your arches ruined for life.
+3 to the Light On Your Feet skill.
+5 to the Dance skill.
Your footsteps twinkle.
"My footsteps twinkle?"
She was focused elsewhere. Looking back, she said, "Those are only decent unless you need the dance skill. Light on your feet is fine, but also not amazing. Don't worry about any individual piece. When you get a whole load of gear at the same time, the AI is usually putting a specific build together for you."
I considered the shoes for a long moment. Firstly, they weren't even ballet flats, they were ballet shoes. Someone had screwed that up. Secondly, I had never done ballet and had no desire to. Thirdly, they were iridescent white. "Aren't my feet gonna be killing me if I'm running around in these?"
"Not with magical equipment. They'll be ideal for moving about in."
Feeling doubtful, I took off my slightly-worn black running shoes and put on the blinding-white ballet shoes. Standing up, I took a few steps. There was a little flare of light each time my toe touched down. "Kinda negates the shadow-whatever, doesn't it?"
"Look, you're level one on floor three. You're gonna have to work with what you've got. Now, put the rest of this shit on."
I took the "faulds" out. They looked like the back half of a skirt, meant to be buckled at the front with an emblem that vaguely resembled an eclipsed sun. On closer inspection, it wasn't fabric, but an impossibly-fine chainmail wave, feeling smooth to the touch, sliding across my fingers like silk. The metal was black, with a faint blue sheen to it where the light hit.
Shadow-Twined Faulds
We call them faulds, but it's obviously just a cape for your butt, because your butt wants to feel like a super-hero, sometimes.
+3 to Dexterity.
+3 to Constitution.
+5 to the Hide in Shadows skill.
As I wrapped the faulds about my waist, the waistband of my jean shorts disintegrated. Dang.
I secured the belt and could suddenly see the working of the light around myself better, where shadows would fall and where light would strike. I guess that would help with hiding, it was probably part of the hide in shadows skill. Weird.
I took out the plain leather cord that had been in the platinum adventurer box.
Hilt-Binding Cord
Warning: This item has a short shelf life.
Apply this to any thrown weapon to grant it the Returner benefit.
I opened my mouth to complain as a twenty-minutes timer popped up over the item, then realized it had been given with the intent that I add it to the Extremely Sharp Knife. I guess this is what I was going to be using, then.
Extremely Sharp Knife
In a truly impressive feat, you went through two whole floors and didn't get a single weapon. This right here is that gift horse you shouldn't look in the mouth. And by look in the mouth I mean test the edge. This thing is oops-there-goes-my-finger sharp.
+5 to Dexterity when wielded.
Has the Pierce Through benefit.
Has the Translucent benefit.
0.25% chance to cause Bleed debuff per dexterity of the thrower.
It looked like a throwing knife made out of glass. I started wrapping the hilt-binding cord about the blunt end, making a hilt that was just barely too small to be a good grip for anything but throwing. When I tucked the cord into place, it stiffened slightly, gaining a glossy surface. The color seeped away until it was just a rougher part of the transparent glass blade.
"Such weird stuff down here."
I started looking at what the benefits did.
Returner. After being thrown, this weapon will reappear in the owner's hand or inventory (owner's choice).
Pierce Through. This weapon will penetrate into and through targets far further than a typical weapon would, potentially continuing through to mobs behind it.
Translucent. This weapon is effectively invisible, reducing the odds of a target noticing where it was thrown from.
Bleed. The target will continue to lose health until healed or bandaged.
All together, that seemed like a potentially good weapon, depending on what dexerity worked like. A glimmer of hope formed, and then I remembered that I was level 1, and that I was probably about to die. I thought about the ball gag for a moment but didn't look at it. I didn't want to wear something like that.
