Chp 2: Lessons from Agony (Patreon)

I didn't bother moving from where I'd been placed for half an hour. Part of that time was spent wallowing in everything I'd learned. The rest was spent trying to make myself wallow longer while spinning in slow circles in my chair. Trying to hit a minimum level of emotional distress was hard work when you didn't actually care. A fact which bothered me. Shit had gotten really weird, but I was still way too okay with it.

"Open interface," I said aloud. I'd reached an intolerable level of boredom rather than a revelation of distress.

"The shit?" I said, surprised not by the window opening but by my voice. I couldn't think of what it should sound like, but “double-layered whisper of opposing ranges” wasn't it.

"Do Re Mi Fa-" I stopped, the sound of my attempt at singing weirding me out too much. Thinking the command to close the window it obliged, and my view was unobstructed once again. I tried several other variations on mental commands to get it open. They all worked, seeming to function off intent rather than my specific phrasing.

Looking at the window I found five tabs. The first unlabeled one seemed to contain my personal information. The second was inventory which had a single item, my Dungeon Core. The blue pearlescent ball looked cute to me and I felt an urge to take it out but resisted. I hadn't done so much as a basic recon of the area yet and once it was out it would be vulnerable to attack. How I knew that I couldn't have explained as anything but instinct.

Glancing down, I found a little counter at the bottom that was the sideways-eight of infinity. I wondered for a moment if that was the bonus I'd gotten for Eric Rashad's death. Feeling morbid I moved to the next tab. The item store had its own set of tabs for terrain, traps, monsters, decor, and a points section. Everything not under the points section had a mana cost, I'd have to place my core before I could buy anything.

The Dungeon Map was blank, to be filled in as I built mine. The next tab was Dungeon Inventory which I assumed was meant to reflect only what was placed. The final tab was Creatures and blank like the others.

The review only took two minutes and I was back to the blank tab. I scanned my personal information as recorded out of curiosity, it didn't take me long to spot that something was off. There was a blank field, just one. If it had been something like my class, I would have understood it being blank. That it was the name field was the inexplicable part. My title, Master, was filled in neatly. My level, one, filled in. Species, Dungeon Master.

Even the countdown until the end of the year was ticking along happily. That it displayed a gracious three weeks instead of two was a momentary relief. Worse, or stranger depending on how you looked at it, I couldn't remember what my name had been.

I could remember lots of other things about my previous world. Pizza toppings, famous people, the Macarena, all of that was intact. It was my personal information that was missing for some reason. I knew I'd been a human before but that was it.

National origin, skin color, hair length, and everything else about myself was a blank. Even my gender felt like something I was sort of assuming but it fit. Looking down at myself I thought I would see some of what I'd forgotten but was rudely surprised. I didn't find a familiar, or unfamiliar, appearance. Instead, it was another item to add to the list of personal things that were missing.

I was a human-ish shaped shadow thing now. My limbs were of semi-transparent darkness and when I poked myself, I barely felt it. Punching the arm of the chair produced a dull sensation that let me know I'd struck something. It didn't produce the expected pain. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should have reacted with panic or experienced dysphoria.

Spinning in my chair for a while I considered my situation and the changes to my body with an unnatural calm. Deciding I didn't know enough to decide, I looked at my species and found a question mark tooltip next to it. Opening it a brief description appeared.

Under that was a chart with the progression of transformation levels. They started at Demi Dungeon Master which was still ninety percent of the base species. It ended at Dungeon Master. I had completed the full transformation, if the chart and my listed species was anything to go by.

I didn't need food, sleep, or even to breathe. I was a spectral manifestation of will and memory-bound to the core as the center of my life source. The only trait I couldn't confirm was if my eyes were orbs of fire, thanks to a lack of a mirror or reflective pool.

Getting up from the chair I found myself floating in the air. I bobbed a bit in the breeze but didn't move more than an inch or two unless I wanted to. I moved by the same process as I had when I was flesh and blood, what was responding changed but not how.

A fact I confirmed when I drifted into a tree while hovering with my head down. I'd decided in the middle of the motion to see if I had "feet". I found a wisp of shadow that would separate into legs if I thought about it but reverted when I didn't.

What I could see of my new body was female-shaped but with a flat appearance. I could feel it wasn't two dimensional. The issue was that all features were lost unless seen in profile or outline. Like my lack of feet, my hands looked like mittens unless I was doing something. My fingers looking fused together if close to each other.

"Shiiiit." I muttered in my weird new voice and found it sounded different than the first time. Still layered and whispery but like different women were doing the whispering. I flopped back down in my chair, not disturbing it with my nearly weightless form.

I didn't have an endocrine system to trigger an existential freak-out. I had to think about things with a clear head instead of letting nature give me a hint about what to do. Without any clear plan or experience, I fell back on my new standby, sitting in the chair and staring.

I watched day fade into the night. The unpolluted sky produced a lackluster sunset but revealed a gorgeous starry night. The planet I was on had three moons. The smallest was pale yellow, like buttermilk. The largest was a blush of pink but dimmer than the smaller moon. In the middle was a bluish-grey one that was like the familiar one from the sky of my home world.

I didn't feel homesick or scared of what had happened. I could appreciate the beauty in front of me, from the subtle way that my vision shifted to accommodate the darkness to the starry sky. Who I'd been before was gone, corroded away by the transformation. I, as I currently existed, was all there was.

A nameless Dungeon Master who needed to decide what that meant to them. After an hour I still had no idea what it meant to me and no sense of urgency about figuring it out. Accepting that as a half-assed answer itself, I gave a mental shrug.

No matter what the decision I came to it didn't change the situation. I'd agreed to build a dungeon and my continued existence depended on doing it well. I had three weeks and had wasted two hours on trying to feel things I didn't, it was time to get to work.

"Manual? Tutorial?" I said aloud, wanting to get used to the sound of my voice. I didn't expect anything so convenient to appear, but they did as a pair of pop-ups. From what I could remember when playing games it was better to do the tutorial first. The manual, if it was like the ones I was familiar with, would be overwhelming. I'd be better off using it for reference once I understood the basics.

The forest around me shimmered like heat haze and I found myself in a lava tube. I could smell sulfur and feel a warmth that was a little uncomfortable. Since I felt it so strongly it must have been at least at boil blood levels of heat. My body didn't sense much of anything after all.

A sign in cheerful palm tree themed font informed me I had arrived at the Labyrinth of Lava. A sign taped to the first sign added: Under Construction! I was starting to feel like I'd be getting my intro from a talking fruity umbrella drink.

"Hi! I'm Agony! I'll be your guide for this tutorial," a cheerful voice said suddenly, making me jump in surprise. A small humanoid, made of lava, hovered in front of me. Its face and body were a combination of black stone, glowing fiery heat, and it looked adorable. I dubbed him a Lava Sprite in my head but didn't say it aloud.

"I'm… still working on a name. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agony," I said, realizing I'd forgotten about my lack of a name. I could have called myself anything from Barbie to Janice and it would have been fine. Only it wouldn't have been fine for me.

It didn't feel right to pick something mundane. I wanted my new name to sound badass. Actually badass. Not edgelord-ish like ‘Mistress Nightshade’ or some other vampire-romance OC name.

"No problem! Would you like to start the tutorial or skip it?" Agony asked, his smile seeming strained.

"I'd like to start, please." I said, confused by the option to skip. I'd had to start it, so it didn't make sense to skip.

"Really? You'll still get the bonus items if you skip." Agony seemed surprised and mistrustful of my answer as if he thought I was teasing him.

"I want to learn how to do this right," I said with confidence despite not feeling much. If Agony didn't get many chances to teach because people skipped, then I was in for a rough ride.

"We're going to get along," Agony said after a slight pause, a glowing smile cracking the blackened stone of his face.

"Follow me!" He shouted and started flying down the lava tube. He brought me to what he called the core room of the pre-fab dungeon. Once we were in he started the tutorial with a cheerful burst of video game music.

The similarity to Sim and Tower Defense games was intense. A fact which made things easy to follow even when Agony went too fast, which was most of the time. He zipped around like a kid showing off his treasures to a new friend. I floated after him as quickly as I could, happy to be the friend.

"You can buy terrain tiles in your shop. Buy four of whatever to hit the goal, but then I'll show you a trick," Agony said, hovering in a bouncy way as he waited for me to comply. I did as he said and a burst of little magic fireworks went off with a text scrawl letting me know I'd hit my goal.

"Okay, now go into your map and select ‘grid view’" Agony said and I tried to comply but would have been scrunching up my nose if I'd had one. I was in the map view but couldn't find anything that said grid.

"I can't find it," I admitted after looking a few times. There wasn't anything aside from the map.

"Oh...Try thinking ‘view options’ instead. You might be in lite-mode," Agony said and I tilted my head in confusion. The interface had settings. I'd never considered that, despite its similarities to a computer interface.

"Wow!" I said as I thought of it and an expanding menu appeared. I'd have to go through them, but for the moment I checked the grid. I found the interior of the dungeon and the area surrounding it sliced up into neat little squares.

"Pick a square from outside the dungeon. A mana glyph with the cost under it should appear. You can buy it for that price. It’s also added to your store for the same cost," Agony said happily as I followed his instructions.

An uneven patch of hexagonal basalt pillars appeared in a corner when I dropped in my new tile. Since it was still selected, I rotated it a few times until I liked the aesthetic before deselecting it. They looked like broken steps connecting the lava tube to the core room.

It was an aesthetic improvement over the simple slope that had been there before. Dropping in two more I changed their heights to be uneven. Its appearance became more intimidating and sinister.

"Niiice," Agony said, offering me a fiery fist bump that I returned with a shadowy knuckle. The converted tiles cost half of the mana of the regular ones from the store. I felt an urge to spruce up the design of the entire dungeon but had to stop myself.

A core had a daily energy output value based on a scale of E to SS. Each day it would refill to its set number. That meant I had lots of points to play with over three simulated days of building. The trouble was that making my dungeon too big was a trap.

The larger the dungeon was, the more difficult it would be to populate. Challenges, monsters, and traps had daily upkeep costs. Being careless and focusing on aesthetics would result in a shabby feeling experience. Adventurers would have too much time to recover which endangered my core.

I knocked out several of my objectives while I contemplated how to keep myself safe. It was hard to balance the size of the dungeon and the density of obstacles. Lost in thought I had bounced several feet into the air when everything started to strobe. A siren wailed, one loud enough to burst eardrums.

"What the fuck?" I asked Agony as I covered my ears. Unfortunately, I didn't sense anything with them. Jamming my shadowy fingers in didn't lessen the sound.

"Mute alarm!" Agony shouted at me, his little hands over his stone ears. I was reading his magma lips and guessing but gave the command. The sound went away though the strobe effect continued.

"Order and tax law!" He growled and I stared, feeling like he was cursing and finding it cute. A fact I wasn't going to share with him as he looked pissed enough already.

"Put your map in share mode." Agony said after a few minutes of tapping his ears and adorable cursing. I thought the command and an icon of a person with a plus sign next to it appeared. Lite mode sucked ass and I thought standard mode to change it over.

Nothing happened. Either I'd revealed everything hidden or wasn't thinking of the correct thing. It was something to figure out once whatever had set the alarm off was dealt with.

With the map visible to both of us, I spotted a cluster of red-tinted tiles. They were flashing but I didn't understand what the problem was. Agony changed the map view and a 3D model appeared. I'd dropped a lava flow into part of the labyrinth to break up the monotonous stone corridors.

"Okay, so rule... something or other. This is a game, and it has to be possible for hero's with luck, pluck, and no fucks left to give about living to make it through," Agony said, tapping a lava tile. When he touched the tooltip more detailed statistics appeared than before.

"This stuff is too hot to get past even with maxed out fire resistance. You can still use them, but the placement made the labyrinth impassable. That triggered the obstruction alarm," Agony said, pointing out that its type was a barrier.

"So long as it's in any kind of build alarm state, hero's can’t enter. Worse, if you don't address it before the timer runs out any people inside will be ejected without harm," Agony added, pointing to what I'd mistaken for a clock in the corner of the map screen.

"Noted," I said, wide-eyed and eager to never experience that again. I added “figuring out how to block my hearing” to the growing list of things I needed to figure out how to do. It was right below getting access to music from my home world. Below both was figuring out how to experience a more familiar level of touch sensitivity. The order a matter of my perception of difficulty rather than importance.

"It's alright, better it happened now than when you were on your own," Agony said and I nodded in full agreement.

"Finish up the rest of your goals and we’ll get started on the second half," he added and with another nod I got down to business. The goals were all interface-oriented. I learned a few interesting things about my shop and item bag but nothing I couldn't have figured out.

I still valued the experience. I was learning a lot faster than I would have with trial and error as my teacher. Despite my initial misgivings, Agony was a good teacher. Without him, it would have taken hours to sort out my various fuck-ups and the more vaguely worded goals. He made up for the lackluster objective-based tutorial’s blandness with enthusiasm.

Once the build phase was done, a little clock appeared on the map next to an icon. It looked like a bathroom sign version of an adventurer’s party. It counted down from three minutes and right as it hit zero I felt that someone had entered the dungeon. I looked over at Agony who grinned at me.

"No point in making it unless you test it after," he said then cackled like a cartoon villain. He touched the adventure party’s icon on the map and an info box appeared for each of them. Along the side, a new option appeared. Track. He checked it and the map became high definition surveillance footage. Footage of the party as it tore through my labyrinth like it was made of paper.

"MOTHER FUCKERS!" I was shouting unimaginatively as they murdered their way to the core room and shattered it.

"Hey, it's fine. Everyone gets wrecked the first time," Agony said, sitting on my shoulder and patting my head to console me.

"My best suggestion is to watch the footage a couple of times and learn from it. The next round is graded. The better you do, the bigger the reward at the end," Agony said as I took some time to calm down. A ‘continue’ button had appeared but I moved it aside and started reviewing the raid.

As the defending party, I should have had a pretty steep advantage, but the terrain rules took most of it away from me. That and the fact that I was attacked by heroes capable of taking on my challenges specifically. A feature of the tutorial that I hated despite it making sense. In a real attack, I'd get a much more mixed bag.

I shook off the thought, smelling bullshit on it. Thinking like that would get my core kicked in. I had to plan like I was always going to be up against top tier mission-specific opponents. With that mindset, I went to work on my new layout.

The second section had me starting from scratch with no helpful prompts. Agony, likewise, didn't offer tips this time. Thankfully he still answered questions if I had a technical problem. With the clock ticking, I did my best but kept running up against a wall when it came to the design.

"Okay, I hit all the goals, but I still feel like this setup is weak," I said, my prompt open and in share mode so Agony could read over my shoulder. The tutorial's supplies were a bit lackluster but that wasn't what was bothering me. I still didn't like the low aesthetic value of my design but had gotten over worrying about it. It was something about the basic structure that made me feel nervous.

"Yeah, you'd be having a panic attack if you were linked to the core," Agony agreed, pointing to the core room I'd set up. It was like a massive murderous game of "the floor is lava". If I had my way it would have just been lava with the core embedded in a stone pillar in the center.

That would have been against the rules. To keep it from being completely inaccessible I'd had to create footings. They needed heat resistance magic to use them, but it was possible to reach the core platform at the back of the room. That still didn't explain what was troubling me so much. I had a very large elemental between the entrance and the core after all.

"A sniper could land a couple of mana reinforced arrows. A good one could even crack a weak core like this," Agony said, pointing out the sniping points.

"Fuck…" I muttered as I looked over the design. Snipers weren't something I'd considered when I was building it. Now I had images of elves storming the place and parkouring their way to the core room. The dark fantasy ended with them exploding it with arrows. I tried to figure out how to make it safer without breaking any rules or losing my goal points.

"No worries, this isn't supposed to be too realistic. You might lose some bonus points but that's all," Agony said and a timer dinged which explained why he'd suddenly turned chatty again. It didn't count as helping if he told me when it was too late to be useful.

On cue, a force of heroes appeared to challenge my dungeon. I felt a vibration course through me. Like butterflies in my stomach and a cold bead rolling down the spine. If they were blended like a margarita with acid instead of tequila. The etching variety, not the fun one. My equivalent of a premonition of death.

I could still alter my design but doing so came at a cost. Buying new items cost triple and moving tiles cost their value in mana per square moved. That put them out of reach for me since the core I was using was an F grade.

They ranged in grade from F at the lowest end to SS at the highest. Like changing my layout upgrading the core to give me enough mana wasn't going to happen. Changing any aspect of the core required points rather than mana, and I had none. My only hope was to try and use some of the leftover items in my inventory.

Looking through my item box I didn't find much. All that was left were some items I'd received from the prior tutorial that hadn't seemed worth using. I gambled and threw in the fire rat nests I had left and low-grade traps. I tried to be strategic but didn't feel confident in my choices.

Agony looked at my last-ditch attempt with a raised eyebrow of stone but didn't say anything. He'd said I'd get better rewards based on the outcome, and what would be would be. Even so, I was desperate for any advantage I could get and crossed my fingers.

I got a little lucky, the priest couldn't cast a high-enough elemental ward to block the heat completely. The combat-specialized mage couldn't compensate. As an older man in heavy robes, he was suffering almost immediately. He died of heat exhaustion a third of the way in, setting back the party as they tried to carry him out to no avail.

It was disappointing as I'd hoped he'd live. They might have abandoned their mission to tend to him. Instead, they lost some time but returned to their assault with renewed determination. The heat damage still accumulated but it wasn't enough to kill another member of the party.

The rogue was the next to go. He got past the traps and puzzles but was suffering from the heat more than the others. It caused him to weaken and make mistakes. Thinking a lava dog was dead he stopped to wipe his brow and the creature managed a final, fatal, bite attack.

"And then there were four…" I said, wishing I had fingernails to bite or could fidget more physically. It felt weird to have nervous energy but have nowhere to spend it. I wasn't particularly interested in another new and horrific dungeon master only experience though.

Focusing, I started watching the party more intently. The priest, fighter, archer, and defensive tank were still a nasty combo. With every obstacle they passed, I could feel my points slipping away. The tank and fighter would be able to handle the core guardian with the priest's support.

Worse the archer would be able to attack the core from the points Agony had shown me earlier. The core guardian was a lava elemental with the intellect of a brick. It probably wouldn't even notice the archer's attacks. Shielding the core from them would be beyond its ability to visualize even if it did.

"Fuck…fuck…fuck…" I muttered to myself. I tried willing them to fail with my mind only to see them overcome my carefully planned defenses. The group was battered by the time it reached the core room but not out by any means. I still had a little hope left but it was crushed in short order. Despite not having a rogue, they bashed through my traps like they weren't there.

They followed my prediction about the formation. The priest, tank, and fighter went for a direct assault. That pulled the lava elemental immediately, distracting it. The archer stuck to the sides and climbed up some uneven basalt pillars to a ledge at a good height to see the core from.

Since he was still inside the chamber, I hoped the guardian might finish the assault team then go for him. I wasn't lucky. The team taking on the guardian was doing fine. They were in a stalemate but not taking serious damage. With them holding it the archer was free to go for the core.

With an easy win at hand it was the archer who surprised both Agony and I. My hastily placed fire rats started to attack. Despite biting at his boots, they couldn't penetrate the elemental resistance spell. Like my shitty traps that hadn't slowed them down, it was embarrassing to watch them fail.

That was when things started to get weird. He wasn't in any danger from them but responded with a strange zeal. He stood up to face them, ignoring that his party was waiting on him to finish the main fight. Stomping on them he seemed lost to the activity, losing track of his surroundings.

"Wow!" Agony said as we watched the scene unfold. Boots slick with gore, the archer lost his footing and fell from his perch into the lava below. His party heard the thump and then the hiss of flesh burning. Only that wasn’t quite right as the noise took a sharp turn and sounded like the scream of a human sized teakettle.

“Lawful Hells!” Agony said, and started laughing so hard his little body bounced on my shoulder. The scent of ham filled the air and a split-second later an explosion rang out. The archers body had superheated and exploded. I’d never seen anything like it, watching in rapt horror as a bit of it actually reached where I was observing from and splattered against me. I brushed it off absentmindedly, uncertain of what to do with my newly acquired information about human bodies and lava.

The core chamber descended into chaos as the priest broke formation. He didn't seem to understand that the archer was beyond help. The tank had to rush to block an attack from the guardian in an attempt to cover the priest. He wasn't fast enough to get a good footing and the attack sent him down to his knees. He didn't recover in time to stop the next one. He died screaming and the priest froze.

It was as if how badly he'd fucked up was sinking in during the split second before the guardian killed him too. With the priest dead the fighter lost his elemental protection. Thankfully the guardian gave him a more merciful death than burning alive.

The practice dungeon blipped out of existence. A sparkly banner saying "A+ Newbie" hung in the air while fireworks filled the sky. I couldn't see it but the flame orbs of my eyes were burning intensely, my equivalent of being wide-eyed.

I just stared at the celebration of my achievement, numb. The psychological desire to throw up burned in my mind. It had no physiological mechanism for release and remained with me. I don't know how long I floated and stared before I felt a tiny pat on my shoulder.

Agony was sitting on my shoulder, trying to comfort me as we hovered over a tropical black sand beach. He patted me again, looking concerned. I nodded, not wanting to worry him.

"You did good." He said and I returned his gesture. My shadowy finger touching the plume of flames coming off his head. He smiled and I nodded, wishing I had the features to lie more convincingly but also glad I didn't. I wasn't sure if I could have held it together if I could cry.

"I had an excellent teacher," I said, at odds with the knowledge that this was going to be how I lived going forward and that I'd chosen it. If it had been my actual core in that dungeon I might well have died. I was alive because I'd gotten lucky and other people died instead.

I couldn't live like that, clinging to luck. I thought about it a bit as the scent of ham finally left my nose. Eeking out the win had been lucky, but I'd taken down two of the party on merit. Given that it was my first time trying it out, I felt like that wasn't bad.

I hated myself for the sense of accomplishment the thought gave me.