Gamer Guild’s Dungeon (4th Floor)

--- Jon ---

He froze with a foot in the air, before slowly turning his head to the gamer teen. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“Uh,” Roxanne blinked while giving him an odd look for some reason. “The next floor is… cultists?”

Closing his eyes he inhaled deeply -even more so than when he’d seen Ying had burned down that village- before slowly exhaling. “Of course it is.”

“Am, am I missing something?” Roxanne tried to quietly ask Ying.

“He, uh, he has this thing about cults.” Ying admitted for him, even though it wasn’t really a thing so much as the simple fact that (I’ve yet to meet a cult that doesn’t deserve to be burned to the ground and forgotten forevermore.)

“So… What kind of cult is this?” He asked, through grit teeth as he began to march towards the stairs. (Demons? Dark magic? Eldritch horror? If I ever run into another sex cult it’ll be way too soon.)

“Um, it’s not a real cult.” Roxanne told him in an attempt to calm him down. (No, no, I am perfectly calm.) “Technically they’re just a bunch of dungeon dreams with a ‘cult theme’, and aside from some violent and scary imagery for halloween stuff they aren’t even all that bad. Don’t even have a real god to worship.”

“That’s good.” He nodded, telling himself he was overacting. After all, it made perfect sense for a fake cult to be part of a horror show. (Heck, there was even that one group of teens that got second place in that haunted house competition that me and ma joined a couple years ago.)

He shook his head with a smirk at that memory. (Thinking about it, those guys might’ve actually given us an actual run for our money if they’d used real blood.)

“Yeah, they actually came up with this really goofy fake god.” Roxanne laughed, seeing him less… stressed. “What do they call him… Oh, right! Cheshire, The Man in The Mask.”

“Of course they do.”

---

Exiting the safe room with their new potions -Something he bought out once he noticed the price had gone up, and Roxanne explained that the price would jump each floor now that they were past the difficulty curve.- he found that the hall to the next dungeon room wasn’t made of the same rock/cave like material as the last few floors but instead had actual grey stone and brick work with the occasional torch or red banner with a black rose on the wall.

(Do all cults have the same decorator because this is the third one I’ve found that uses these colors.)

As they neared the first door he could hear a faint chanting before they even entered the room and felt his eye begin to twitch as without breaking his stride he pushed the doors open and calmly walked into the room.

Inside he found five figures in red cloaks with curving daggers standing a fair distance from a sixth humanoid figure in a mask chained shirtless to a stone table in the middle of a star and circle that his mind idly noted would accomplish nothing as he strode to the nearest cultist.

The leader of these five who stood across the stone table from him, pointed a finger at him “Who are you that you dare to interrupt our dark- Grah!” Interrupted, the cultist gasped as their hands scrabbled at the throwing knife now embedded in their throat.

Seeing this, the nearest cultist turned to him a look of horror on their shadowed face before stiffening and slowly looking down at the knife now sticking out of their heart.

He idly shoved the dead cultist out of his way as he locked eyes with the third cultist backing away from him and towards their two compatriots.

Continuing his calm pace, he reached into his backpack and pulled out his axe before hefting it in his hand and making his way around the table, the blade of the axe scraping along the ground as he made his way to the three cultists cowering in a corner of the room.

---

“So… he has a… thing with cults…”

“Yep.”

---

Feeling much better with the last cultist… dealt with, he turned back to free the chained prisoner only to find a pile of coins and a potion vial laying on the table. “What happened to the prisoner?”

When he received no answer he glanced towards his party and found everyone -save Pix- staring at him in a mix of awe and fear, that he’d honestly grown used to seeing on the kobolds but was still surprised to see from Ying, Roxanne, and Wolf.

Seeing no one else answer Pix flew over to him before landing on his shoulder and using her illusions to show the prisoner exploding into lights and leaving behind the pile of loot.

“Huh, why’d the prisoner die?” He frowned, knowing for a fact no one had touched them.

“Um,” Roxanne coughed, seeming to snap out of her stupor before shaking her head. “The um, the sacrifices die when you kill all of the cultists.”

“But why would the prisoners die?”

“Um, they’re not actually prisoners.” Roxanne informed him. “They’re, uh, they’re cultist volunteers. In fact if you free them before killing all of the cultists they’ll turn into another enemy. Makes a nasty trick for those who think saving them is a bonus objective.”

“And what would happen if we let the cultists kill the sacrifice?” Ying asked.

---

One of the cultists stabbed their knife through the sacrifice’s chest, causing them to burst into a growing swarm of lights before recondensing into a large muscular creature with horns and a tail.

(That… looks nothing like a monster connected to the Cheshire.) He sighed, eyeing the creature before him while wondering if he should be happy about that or critique the GM about her lack of realism. (I mean this looks like some generic demon from fiction, while the Man in the Mask is a Madness entity so even if she doesn’t know his monsters look innocent until you get in biting range, her monsters should at least look like something by Lovecraft. I mean where are the eyes, the black blood, the tentacles, the teeth at the very least?!)

This entire floor had turned out to be more of an annoyance than an actual threat as far as he was concerned. All of the previous rooms having been easy clears since aside from the occasional fireball most of the cultists were weak grunts, and all of the floor’s potential seemed to have been spent on these demons and traps that were only marginally better than what the kobolds had made.

(But at least they’re learning.) He noted, watching as the kobolds used a rope and a decoy to throw a cultist to the ground where they proceeded to kill them.

A dark chuckle escaped the (generic) demon as it walked towards him on unguligrade legs. “Puny mortal, you dare-”

He quit listening at that point because honestly, “The GM needs to work on her lines, because I’ve had too many people ask me if I dare today.”

Blinking at the nonchalant interruption, the demon was not expecting him to walk up to them and kick out their leg before climbing up their body. Once he had a foot on the demon’s shoulder he jumped off of them while grabbing their horns before using his momentum to slam the demon’s face into his knee a blow that -with a bit of maneuvering of his weight- broke off one of the demon’s horns. Which he then proceeded to stab into the demon’s back, shattering it into a storm of lights and leaving him alone with one last cultist.

Meeting the cultist’s gaze he asked, “So you one of the ones who can throw fireballs or…”

---

“So what’s the Boss Cultist’s gimmick?” He asked.

“You know you probably should’ve asked me that before we entered the boss room.” Roxanne told him as they both ignored the Boss Cultist’s ‘you dare’ speech.

(I wonder if I can talk Roxy into filing a complaint on that for me?)

“Either way because of the curve bosses have two gimmicks now.” Roxanne sighed in resignation about something. “The Crimson Cultist’s first gimmick is that it can sacrifice any unit to summon a demon and the second is that it can summon these-” The gamer teen was interrupted as they were both forced to dodge a trio of wriggling black tentacles. “Those, it can summon those.”

“I see.” He nodded, watching the tentacles retract into a portal in front of the cultist’s hand. “I’m guessing he can pull and throw people with those.”

“Pretty much.” Roxanne shrugged. “I mean it’s fairly easy to dodge since the attack is choreographed, but with the other cultists throwing fireballs and trying to get to the Sacrifices.”

“Yeah, that’s a bit more to juggle than the previous bosses.” He admitted, since they had to stop the cultists from getting to the sacrifices while avoiding fire.

For most parties that would be a hard task to overcome, especially with the layout of the room. Even though the majority of the cultists were at the top of a set of stairs while their Sacrifices were along the walls of the bottom part of the room, it still meant that whoever challenged them had an uphill battle while under fire, both literal and figurative.

Luckily his party had a small army.

“Kobolds kill the Sacrifices before the cultists can.” He ordered before drawing his bow and shooting an arrow at the attacking cultists.

“On it boss!” Kenny called before he and his compatriots rushed the sacrifices lining the wall.

“Hey I’m the boss!” The boss kobold cried before Ying pulled her out of the way of a series of lashing tentacles.

“Job, you take the right, I'll take the left!” Ying called to him as lightning began to crackle along her skin. “Roxanne, you and the kobolds take the cultists trying to make their way down the stairs.”

“Right, Wolf, you think you can push the flames back with your wind?” He asked their four legged companion.

Wolf gave him a bark of affirmative before sending out a massive wall of wind and stunning the cultists along the top of the stairs just long enough for him to shoot two more cultists. At the same time he did this Ying unleashed one of her lightning bolts upon two others while Roxanne and the remaining kobolds took out three more as they began to climb the stairs.

Between all of them it wasn’t even minutes before only the Crimson Cultist remained, standing surrounded by several kobolds.

“You think you’ve won?!” The Cultist screamed, raising his knife into the air. “This is only the beginning!”

“Wait, shoot him!” Roxanne screamed. “He can sacrifice any-”

The Crimson Cultist plunged his knife into his chest before bursting into an inferno of lights strong enough to knock the kobolds back and shatter several more.

A dark laugh filled the room as from the inferno stepped a large demon twice the size of the previous one they’d encountered, with two leather black wings on their back and a pair of fireballs in their hands. “Ah, finally I have returned to the mortal plane! Bow before your new god!”

“Ying.”

“Yes Jon?”

“Mind lighting ‘em up?”

“Not at all.” Ying assured him as the scent of ozone filled the room.

---

“So, was the double boss supposed to be a thing or did something else happen there?” He asked, staring at the large scorch mark on the door to the floor treasure.

“Honestly, the Crimson Cultist’s demon wasn’t even that strong.” Roxanne admitted. “I mean it was stronger than the regular cultists and their demons, but compared to an actual Demon floor that guy was maybe an elite unit or mini-boss, but definitely not actual boss material.”

“Which explains why he went down like a bitch.” Ying nodded, watching as the glass of the potion vial she just finished dissolved into lights.

“Yeah, that’s kind of a shame. I was honestly hoping that would just weaken him and we could actually fight it out.” He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Eh, the next few floors will be better.” Roxanne promised. “After all this is when the floors start chaining bonuses.”

“Chaining bonuses?” He repeated.

“Yeah, basically from here on out each floor will get a bonus depending on what the previous floor was.” The more experienced dungeoneer explained. “That is what’s actually responsible for the difficulty curve of these last few floors, and it makes sure that returning floors don’t become stale to returning players.”

“Huh,” He blinked, thinking about it. “That actually sounds like it could be fun. What kind of bonus does the next floor get?”