Gamer Guild’s Dungeon (6th Floor, Safe Room)

--- Jon ---

Once Pix had finished healing everyone, downing a few blue potions in the process, they all passed through the gates and started down the steps to the safe room, half way to which he suddenly slapped his forehead.

“This floor looked like a rundown version of DeSade’s mansion!” He finally realized, before shaking his head with a smile. “Gah, that’s been bugging me all floor long.”

“DeSade has chains on his walls?” Ying asked sceptically to the bemusement of Roxanne and Wolf.

“In his weird dungeon cult thing.” He shrugged. “I think they’re from when his grandfather established it as more of sex cult than the magic cult he runs.”

“Ah.”

---

Sitting in a circle in the safe room their little party sat down for a sit rep.

“So the final floor is next.” Roxanne started them off. “And since the last floor kicked our butts at certain points I’m fifty-fifty on if we can take it.”

“Well, luckily we’ve plenty of potions and such saved up.” Ying pointed out as she set the ones she’d just bought onto the pile. (Not like we’re using the coins for anything else.)

“I know.” Roxanne told her dryly. “And you know that if you’d saved those you’d have gotten more prize points at the end of this, right?”

“Maybe, but personally I’d prefer to try and finish the dungeon out if we can.” Ying explained, as if she hadn’t spent their points to make that point a little more desirable. “I mean it’s not like we can die in here, no?”

“Yeah, no. If the dungeon decides you’ve taken too much damage to continue you’ll be sent back to the exit, but your current score will be halved in exchange for a really expensive heal.” The more experienced dungeoneer explained. “Which honestly I don’t really care about, given how many runs I’ve already made at this dungeon.”

“So that’s a vote to continue?” Ying checked.

“Sure, I still get the guild achievement for beating this place regardless of if I do it in a party or not.” Roxanne shrugged.

“Guild achievement?” He frowned.

“It’s a Gamer’s Guild thing.” Roxanne explained. “Basically it’s bragging rights, with a number of upgrade points for the guild’s power ups.”

“Which is your real prize should we succeed.” Ying nodded in understanding.

“Well that and this has been a lot of maddeningly good fun for me.” Roxanne admitted with a few too many teeth to her smile.

Even in the depths, surrounded by the dungeon’s own Madness, he could feel hers creeping just beneath the surface for a moment.

“What about you Jon you in or out?” Roxanne asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Um…” He turned towards Pix and Wolf, deferring the question to them. “What do you two say, should we keep going?”

Pix gave him a lazy thumbs up, not really caring one way or another as she munched on a cookie.

Wolf at least seemed to actually consider it for a moment before finally giving him a firm nod.

“How about you guys?” He asked the kobolds, not wanting to leave them out. “If you guys want to go back to your floor none of us are going to hold it against you.”

The kobolds looked amongst each other before the Boss Kobold stepped forward, “You think we’ll just abandon the mistress on the eve of her greatest victory?! What kind of fool are you?!”

Shaking his head, Kenny shoved the boss kobold out of the way, “What she means is we’ve already gone deeper into the dungeon than any kobold in the last dozen dungeons, we’re not backing out until we either beat this thing or reset.”

Susan, Anthony, Edith, Minnie, Bruce, and Jillian all gave him nods and murmurs of agreement, telling him that none of them intended to back out so close to the end.

“Alright then,” He clapped his hands together, unable to keep a smile off of his face. “In that case, win or lose it looks like we’re going to try and finish out this dungeon then.”

---

As soon as he stepped onto the floor something inside of him twisted viciously.

“Hmm, well this is certainly different from the previous floors.” Ying commented, as his eyes drifted up to the (false) moon looking down on them.

“Yeah, the GM occasionally does this towards the end of the dungeons when she gets sick of doing a room by room dungeon crawler.” Roxanne explained, as his hands clenched into fists as he stared at the (thing) above them. “She’ll take the entire floor and turn it into one massive room without real walls. Given what we’re looking at I’d say this is a… victorian city street?”

“What kind of monster has that floor theme?” Ying frowned, as he began to growl at the (monstrosity) so high above them.

“Eh, there’s a few, but given how it's halloween, the most likely option is that this is a love… Uh, is he okay?”

“Jon…? Jon? What’s wrong?”

Uncaring if his compatriots followed him or not he marched forward deeper into the dungeon floor that (reeked of iNsAnITy.)