DF227 - Bellybowl (Mel) (Patreon)

This was bad. This was terrible. Mel was going to be in so much trouble!

“The roof is collapsing!” she yelled. “What was the first thing I told you! Don’t let the roof collapse!”

She didn’t need to shout. Despite the noise of the ongoing catastrophe—the loudest sound Mel had ever heard—the communication was mental in nature. The figure beside her could hear a whisper as readily as a scream. However, Mel felt she needed to shout to convey the urgency of the situation.

She stomped her foot. She was standing on air, but since she meant to convey her distress at this ongoing disaster, the air responded with a firm thump. “We’re going to lose so much mana!” she protested.

“Relax,” the figure beside her said lazily.

Mel felt that Kelsey was not responding appropriately to the situation. Granted, there was no action her avatar could take that would affect things in any way. It was just a mental projection, indicating Kelsey’s primary focus of attention. Kelsey’s actions were governed by her all-encompassing dungeon senses, and the presence, absence or attitude of her avatar did not affect her efficiency.

Still, Mel thought that the disastrous situation should warrant a little visible concern.

“I already withdrew to the floor of the Pit,” Kelsey explained. “I kept the first mana barrier covering these galleries, but it’s just a few holes, easy enough to contain. Now—”

She made an entirely unnecessary gesture.

“I can bring the first level up to cover those rocks and catch the deaths of all those yummy dying soldiers. All the rubble blocking the shaft will greatly reduce the mana leakage.”

Part of Mel was running the calculations and realised that, yes, while the resultant mana leakage was wasteful, it wasn’t catastrophic. The rest of her was struggling with the larger issue.

“You knew the ceiling was going to come down?”

Kelsey gave her a sidelong look. “I brought it down? Didn’t you notice the charges going off?”

“There was a noise…” Mel said uncertainly. Kelsey knew she wasn’t good at noises! And Mel wasn’t certain she knew the difference between charges going off and rocks falling. Not least because they always occurred together, in Mel’s experience.

“But, but, you said you weren’t going to set off any explosives on the first three levels!” she protested. “You said that people would find out about them!”

“The rules have changed!” Kelsey declared. “Times are changing, and we get to change with them.”

“Then…” Mel looked over the devastation. Most of the rocks had settled, but some of the fallen soldiers were still alive, so it wasn’t quiet. “This was all planned, then?”

“Of course! What did you think the big shaft was for?”

“I dunno.” Mel looked up at the unblocked portion of the shaft. The angle was wrong to see the sky, but she could see daylight. “You’re always doing things I don’t understand. I thought it was maybe that new waste treatment plant you’ve been going on about.”

“I do have to get on that,” Kelsey noted. “The sewers upstairs are going to be choked. Wait, did you think the rats were going to eat the sewage?”

“Yeah? Rats will—oh wait, undead rats. I guess that was wrong, but didn’t you once say that was all Tier One rats were good for?”

“A fair point,” Kelsey admitted, “But it turns out nothing is entirely useless. Rats can get in amongst the rubble and get to all the humans that are trapped in there. They might lose to a five-year-old, but they can take out a wounded, pinned, desperate adult. Eventually.”

It was probably Mel’s imagination, but she thought the screams were changing in tone as the rats started nibbling. It was hard to tell, though.

“Some of them aren’t pinned, though,” Mel noted.

Some of the survivors had pulled themselves out of the rubble. Either lucky or a higher level, they were wounded, but still walking, kicking at any rat that dared poke its head out of a crevice. They looked like they were planning to climb out.

“That’s why I’ve got Jenkins,” Kelsey said. A Special Forces Skeleton came out of the tunnel behind them.

“Wait, aren’t we on the same floor as them? How’d you give him orders?”

“We’re on Floor One,” Kelsey explained. “Floor Two is behind that door back there.”

“Ah, I see.” It wasn’t like she’d needed to give him complex orders.

“Hopefully, I won’t need him for long. The expenditure for a Tier Two on Floor one is almost as bad as that mess down there.”

A moment’s thought, automatic after a long life of helping dungeons with their mana economy, told Mel that Kelsey was exaggerating. But that was normal. She always complained every time she had to spend mana.

Jenkins raised his rifle to his scapula and started firing in short bursts, one at every still-moving intruder. It wasn’t long before they were all unmoving.

“And… I’m back in control,” Kelsey gloated. “Still no response from above…”

“Should there be one?”

“I feel there has to be one eventually,” Kelsey speculated. “The longer it takes, the more organised it will be, which I don’t like. Let’s see if we can provoke something.”

She looked down at the pile of rocks and corpses. “Time to turn this into art!”

Mel could have gone down and observed what Kelsey was doing, but Mel could see enough from here. The flow of leaking mana slowed as Kelsey merged the lower half of the pile into solid rock. She left the top level untouched, which confused Mel, but she kept silent. Kelsey would reveal her thinking soon enough.

“Okay, so there are a few high-value targets in here. Oh! Did I mention that I got a prince?”

“Really? Congratulations!” Kelsey had killed a count before, but this would be her first royalty. They weren’t worth more than any other third-tier, but it was nice to have the bragging rights.

“So, him and… that guy. He looks high-ranking. Pop him into Inventory, use the corpses as the source for… new zombies!”

Mel blinked in surprise. In fifty years, this was the most excited she’d ever seen Kelsey get about a zombie. Revenants had provoked interest at times, but this was Floor One; it had to be…

Yep, there it was. Two zombies popped into existence on the rocks below. Normally, Kelsey just used magic to create a zombie, but this time she had used the corpses to make a pair of zombies. They were dressed better this way, but the only other difference was…

“Why are they just lying on the rocks?” Mel asked. They weren’t going to catch any intruders that way.

“I ordered them to,” Kelsey told her. “I’m hoping they get mistaken for their wounded leaders.”

“Why?”

“Humans tend to come and rescue other humans,” Kelsey explained carefully. “We used to do that with the Revenants, remember?”

“Oh, yeah!” Mel smiled at the memory. “But then they learned not to do that,” she said sadly.

“Yeah, well, these are a fresh bunch; it’s worth a try.”

“But that’s just a zombie! Is it really going to fool anyone?”

“If they don’t, I’ll just seal up this entrance and withdraw back—leaving a few booby traps, of course.”

“Traps don’t count for experience unless they’re within your boundary,” Mel warned.

“Yeah, yeah. It will just be a few, to keep them on their toes.” Kelsey stared impatiently up at the surface.

“Kelsey… what did you mean when you said times are changing?”

“Hmmm… a lot of things, I guess.” Kelsey’s avatar looked closely at Mel’s expression. “It won’t change too much down here, but it will a bit. I’m Tier Four now, and I’ve got that new level to build.”

“The experience is pouring in,” Mel agreed. “I thought you were stagnating, but you’ve really taken off in the last few days!”

“Armies don’t come along every day,” Kelsey said, “So I should take advantage while I can. Maybe now I’ll attract some Tier Fours.”

“Not unless you start giving away more gold,” Mel said. “I told you before that you were too stingy.”

“That’s my mana that goes into those gold coins,” Kelsey objected. “They can have it when they’re dead.”

“That’s not how possession works!” Mel protested.

“Hey, I’ve got gold in my Inventory. Once the dead join it in there, it’s like they’ve been united with the wealth they once sought. It’s poetic.”

“As if! That doesn’t even rhyme!” Mel was always on the lookout for rhyming in the words that people spoke. It meant they were either tricky or lucky—both were dangerous.

Kelsey laughed. “Sure, sure,” she conceded. “But as for the changes, most of them will be up top.”

Mel frowned. “We’re not supposed to involve ourselves with the surface.”

“So you’ve said, but meddling with things up there is like having an extra floor—lots of extra floors—between us and the invaders.”

“Floors filled with humans. You can’t trust them.”

“I can trust… that they’ll act in their own self-interest. As long as they see the benefit in working with me, they’ll help protect me from everyone else.”

“Sounds tricky,” Mel complained. Kelsey just grinned. Oh, right, Kelsey was tricky.

“And it will get us both in trouble,” she added.

Kelsey’s grin got wider. “You should know by now, Mel, I am trouble. Oh, wait, what’s this?”

With a soft hiss, five ropes descended from above, their ends pooling on the ground. Almost immediately, they started jerking about as the soldiers started climbing down.

“Oh ho ho!” Kelsey chortled. “And it isn’t even my birthday?”

“It might be, you don’t know,” Mel said. There was a lot of meaning conveyed in that word, several concepts which were alien—if not unfamiliar, from previous conversations—to Mel.

Mel knew that Kelsey was referring to the anniversary of the date, unknowably long ago and in a different universe, when her human body had been born. While at the same time, acknowledging that the day she attained awareness in this universe was probably more appropriate. At least that date was knowable.

Mel often wondered how meat-creatures could get all that just from hearing the sound. She usually concluded that they didn’t, and that they never understood even half of what Kelsey said. Further thinking on the matter suggested that Kelsey was more than happy with that state of affairs and did everything she could to make it worse.

The first soldiers landed on the broken floor—broken on the surface, at least—and approached the bait zombie, which flailed helplessly on the ground.

“Sire! We’ve brought a potion!” One of them said.

“Daren Volik, Level 22,” Kelsey whispered.

“We’re—oh no. It’s a—” Daren’s voice was cut off by an arrow.

Five arrows arced out of crevices in the shaft wall, all aimed at Daren. Two of them glanced off armour. Two of them found flesh. One of them hit his throat.

“How did you get the timing right?” Mel asked.

“Ordered to shoot the first one that got within ten feet,” Kelsey said. “Now it’s a free-for-all until they approach one of the galleries.”

Daren wasn’t dead, sadly. A Level 22 soldier was tougher than that. He grabbed both ends of the arrow that was protruding through his neck and snapped it, yanking both ends free. Only then was he able to let loose the scream of pain that he’d been suppressing.

He took a swig from the potion that he had been offering to the zombie prince and screamed again. Then he stomped on the head of the ex-prince and crushed the skull to pieces.

His companions were charging the skeletons, who responded with more arrows.

“Why archer skeletons?” Mel asked. “Tier Two skeletons aren’t going to kill a Tier Three without guns. Those aren’t even Obsidian Skeletons.”

“I know, but that's why our new friends feel safe splitting up to chase them. Delvers would be more cautious.”

The galleries were ten feet up from the floor, but that was no obstacle to any of the soldiers. They each leapt to a different hole, barely breaking stride. Only Daren was left behind to finish off the other zombie while he healed.

“Wait, they’re retreating?” Mel exclaimed. “Since when do skeletons retreat? They’re expendable!”

“Sure, but humans love to chase running things,” Kelsey said smugly. “Come on, I’ll take you to the next ambush point!”

Normally, Mel liked to fly around the dungeon, but time was of the essence. Kelsey just relocated them both to the point where all the gallery tunnels met up.

A skeleton burst out of a tunnel and ran to the door that blocked off Floor Two. It turned to make its final stand. It was soon joined by the rest of the archer skeletons.

The humans weren’t far behind. They shouted in alarm at hearing noises ahead of them, but they soon sorted themselves out. A few arrows from the skeletons quickly got the humans focused on their task.

The skeletons never stood a chance. The humans rushed in, covering their faces with their arms and relying on their armour to tank the arrows that hit them. Most of the skeletons went down in one hit.

“Now?” Mel asked. The humans were standing around, checking for wounds and bragging about their kills.

“Not yet,” Kelsey said.

A pool of light from Daren’s lightstone announced his arrival, last to the party.

“What in the hells do you idiots think you’re doing, charging into a dungeon like that?”

“Ah, it’s no big deal, Sarge,” one of them replied. “These skeletons went down easy!”

“Now,” Kelsey said. A switch was pulled, and one of her cheating electrical motors started running. The door to the next level swung open.

There was a sudden, brief chatter of automatic fire.

“I love soldiers, they’re so dumb,” Kelsey crowed. “I wonder if they’ll send me some more?”