Dear Diary,
Have you ever heard of chaos theory? Annabell Smith hadn’t. But if she did hear of it, she would probably have found it pretty neat, in the same way one might find a suspiciously smoking toaster pretty neat—something that hummed with potential but probably wasn’t worth getting too close to.
However, if someone—through a miraculous feat of patience (and without completely losing their sanity in the process)—did manage to get to the bit about how a single misplaced action could cause a series of increasingly ridiculous disasters, she would probably have nodded sagely and said, “Oh, that. Yeah, I do that all the time.”
Annabell had always thrived on being unpredictable, much to the despair of teachers, authority figures, and—most pressingly—the Dungeon she now found herself in.
***
Strung up by the consequences of her own actions, (read as: make-shift rope, tied around her waist, literally holding her afloat above a horde of starving zombies,) Annabell Smith was attempting to spin around to locate this mysterious “Jousting Jim” she was supposed to be fighting. The word attempting is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
“Hold up. Just—erm… Just give me a second. Okay?”
What actually happened looked less like a smooth turn and more like a fish caught-on-a-hook, flopping wildly, remembering that it once knew the concept of movement.
In a way, she did manage to spin around. This was the good news.
The bad news was that in doing so, she caused the precarious structure that was holding her up to start filing its soon-to-be resignation. There was a creak. A groan. Possibly a sigh of long-suffering exhaustion from the universe itself.
The even worse news was that Jim, having galloped through the crowd with little care for who got trampled, was already lunging toward her with a confident snarl. His prey was right there. His “Employee of the Month” streak was destined to continue!
What Jim failed to account for was Annabell’s natural response to being startled—aka, seeing a snarling, middle-aged undead with a receding hairline hurtling her way—consisted primarily of flailing wildly and letting physics do the rest.
There came a yelped, “Whoa!” followed by a lot of frantic wiggling, and Jim’s attack managed only to snag the loot-filled pillowcase in her hands. Unfortunately, said pillowcase was still being held rather doggedly by her, and she, in turn, was being precariously held by what could generously be described as “structural support.”
“Hey, this is my loot, you thief!”
The aforementioned support, now bearing the combined weight of one (1) thrashing gremlin and one (1) undead salaryman, decided it had had enough.
What followed was a chain reaction of masterfully—or possibly just conveniently—placed disasters. All of which began with every piece of tape, well-squeezed tube of super glue, and prayer coming undone above them to a sound best described as “a structural engineer’s nightmares made audible.”
Metal snapped, cloth ripped, and hope crumbled.
Annabell, now unburdened by the minor inconvenience of dangling helplessly in the air, was no longer where Jim had planned for her to be when he launched his attack.
Neither was Jim.
And the dazed zombie that’d been occupying the prime spot directly underneath Annabell, waiting for her inevitable fall? Rewarded with a heavy coin bag to the face (shortly followed by Annabell herself).
“Thanks—cough—thanks for catching me…”
The rest of the undead horde was too preoccupied to notice.
Hollow eyes stared skyward, and slack jaws hung open with dread. For above them, the Falling Tower of Doom (working title) had just begun its grand descent, the kind of descent that made bystanders wish they had taken out better insurance policies.
(It’s around this point one should consider asking: what purpose does making such a delicate structure out of propane tanks—retrieved from the closet of a deeply suspicious apartment—serve? Annabell had done it simply because she thought they looked cool. And sturdy. And definitely not prone to catastrophic detonation.
In hindsight, this had been optimistic.)
The first propane tank struck the horde with the grace of a ballistic missile, was promptly impaled by a rogue metal post (possibly thrown from a third-floor window), and did what propane tanks are never supposed to do: explode. Exactly how the gas ignited without a visible spark was one of those things best filed under Gremlin Engineering Mysteries, right next to why inert bicycles sometimes detonate for no reason.
Just as Annabell considered separating herself from the ground—“Erm, I need to get back to my friend, if you’d just…”—the first fireball screamed past overhead, missing her by inches. Shortly after came the shrapnel, followed by a series of secondary and tertiary explosions.
At that point, in her infinite wisdom, she opted to stay down for a bit longer.
“WALLACE! HELP ME~”
Through all of this, her System interface lit up with a spectacular surge of notifications, each one dutifully listing another unfortunate undead caught in the blast radius of bad decisions. On one hand, that was deeply satisfying.
Shambling Peter (Level 3): Defeated…
Stiff-legged Marauder (Level 2): Defeated…
Pale-faced Carl (Level 2): Defeated…
Listless Diane (Level 4): Defeated…
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Regretful Undead (Level 2): Defeated…
…
On the other, even pressed flat against the ground with a pillowcase full of hard-earned loot as her only shield against flying undead bits and burning debris, Annabell’s health bar (restored through dutiful snacking and leveling up) was dwindling at a concerning rate.
10/12…
Warm gore rained down over her, the sort of cloying mist that suggested several zombies had been very surprised by their sudden and involuntary transition into a gaseous state.
“Yuck!”
9/12…
Something bounced off her back. It could have been a decapitated head. It could have been a lampshade. Either way, it had a worrying amount of momentum, and it took a chunk of her HP with it.
“Ouch!”
7/12…
By the time Annabell felt brave enough to cautiously peel herself off the ground, the scent of burnt and extra sticky undeath filled the air. Her ears rang, lungs burning, vision full of smoke and the lingering regret of people who had, until very recently, been shambling nuisances.
She let out a quiet cough.
She had really outdone herself this time, and as it turned out, chaos was far more enjoyable when experienced from a safe distance.
Then again… surviving it was a thrill all its own.
She was just about to throw her head back and cackle in triumph when something yanked at the back of her heel, knocking another point from her HP.
6/12.
Annabell’s gaze dropped.
There, glaring up at her with the baleful intensity of a man who took his grudges very seriously, was Vengeful Jim, demoted from his jousting days. Even so, impaled through the torso by what used to be a bed post, he still managed to radiate menace, his decayed fingers clutching at her ankle with the kind of determination usually found only in debt collectors.
“My loot, and my leg. Bad baldie!”
Now, the upside of having sunk most of her points into Might was that kicking free wasn’t too difficult. It even caused the undead salary man’s head to tilt to the side in lifeless, groaning defeat.
Vengeful Jim: Defeated! (thoroughly)
+5 XP (Could’ve been more. Should’ve been less. You didn’t do a whole lot of work there, bud…)
The downside was that the rest of Annabell’s stats were, well, what they were. Which was an issue, as she now found herself on a street where misplaced furniture merrily smouldered and her presence was mostly considered that of a succulent morsel, with only 6 HP to spare.
In brighter news, the unscheduled carnage had left the remaining horde, for the time being, too dazed to act. Some of them stood slack-jawed, their gurgling moans momentarily caught in their throats as they tried, with great difficulty, to process where their friends had just gone.
They had been right there a moment ago, and now they were… well, mostly in the air. And in other places. Many places, in fact. And in no place at all, depending on how one defined ‘being.’
Annabell didn’t wait for their eyes to refocus on the far easier to answer question—not the where or why, but who had been the cause for the disaster—before she set off in a rapid series of cartwheels toward Apartment Complex 4C’s entrance. This was an unusual stroke of insight on her part.
“Excuse me, coming through!”
In a far more characteristic stroke of recklessness, she built up rather too much speed and, instead of stopping at the door, chose to momentarily occupy the same physical space as it.
The reinforced glass gave way instantly. Not that it had been particularly ‘reinforced’ anymore, having suffered a full day of aggressive undead battering. It still managed to take another two points off her HP, though, in what felt like a final act of petty defiance.
Safe Zone Invasion Imminent
Time Remaining: 00:44:11…
Time Remaining: 00:00:00!
Annabell paid this about as much attention as she paid most warnings from reality, which was to say: none at all.
She was already halfway up the stairs, victorious, entirely failing to notice how the surviving horde behind her had just collectively snapped back to their senses. The eager groans that followed her up the stairwell could only be translated as: “Hey, look! The doors are open.”
Annabell noticed none of this.
“Wallace! Wallace, it worked!” she shouted as she reached the third floor, scooping up the bulldog plushie mid-stride as she gave her loot-stuffed pillowcase a triumphant wiggle.
“We are rich!” she cheered, bouncing back toward her apartment with the unrestrained glee of someone who had just accidentally reinvented capitalism.
Behind her, the groaning undead steadily made their way up the stairs.
Warning! Undead Invasion In Progress…
Difficulty Level 5
Safe Zones Temporarily Disabled
Extra Hostiles Spawning…
“I’ve found an infinite money glitch!”
Meanwhile—
***
“…A dungeon core is anything but infinite,” stressed Bac, a possibly-human woman whose defining features included bronze skin, dark goggles, and an attitude that suggested she had seen far too many people make very expensive mistakes.
Each sentence was punctuated by the rhythmic clang of her chisel against stone. “That’s what Stingy Ol’ Achim was trying to tell you, kid,” she continued, brushing her gloved fingers over the smoothing surface, only to then pat the stone like a beloved dog. “A dungeon core is like this block right here—you can shape it into anything you want, but only once. Sure, you can try to change your mind halfway through, but the results tend to be… disappointing.”
She nodded to a nearby pile of rubble. Within were the shattered remnants of two very different creatures, their faces frozen in eternal horror, as though caught in the middle of a particularly nasty disagreement about who was supposed to be in charge of the body.
“When a Dungeon Core destabilizes, it’s even uglier than that. Especially if someone is threatening its existence or loot. The more it feels cornered, the harder it fights back. That’s where a good Dungeon Master comes in, and why the early days of a dungeon’s formation are critical. Once they’re set, like the first strikes of a chisel, that’s it. Try to change it too much, and at best, you weaken what it could’ve been. At worst, well… you ever seen what happens when someone plays hopscotch with a brand-new Dungeon?”
Lionel, who had never in his life considered hopscotch a threat, shook his head.
“Do it once and you might be fine. But do it twice and you can be very sure that Dungeon will dedicate itself to becoming the most lethal hopscotch challenge in existence. Land mines, too many numbers, and riddles while standing on one foot. There’s no changing your mind once that happens.”
Lionel blinked. “So, I just need to be careful and… not play hopscotch with it?” Truth be told, he just wanted this conversation to be over with so they could get to the interesting part, but social interaction was a slow and, sometimes, incredibly painful dance.
His family had taught him that, too.
“Oh, you need to be more than careful, depending on what kind of core you’re working with.”
Bac dusted off her gloves and leaned in slightly, as though letting him in on a particularly grim secret.
“The hopscotch was just an example. Anything and everything that transpire inside a newly formed dungeon shapes it. Some cores are slow to set, nice and steady. Others? Give ‘em the slightest nudge and whoosh—off they go, running full tilt in some bizarre direction before you can say ‘bad idea.’ And even the ones that seem harmless at first? Oh, those are the tricky ones. Once they start adapting, once they start morphing, they can turn into something… terrifying.”
“A dungeon,” Bac said, her voice dropping into something almost reverent, “never forgets.”
She let that hang in the air for a moment, before adding with a slightly wicked grin:
“And despite popular belief? Oh, yes, they do hold grudges. Take something from them, and you can be sure they’ll do their best to take everything from you. In the worst way possible, with exactly the kind of scenarios that would hurt the Delver attempting to clear them the most…”
