Gamer Guild’s Dungeon (First Floor): The Rat Warren

--- Maya ---

While the gamer in her was tempted to take one of the weapon power-ups and unlock their class, the more practical part of her remembered the fact that the entire reason she’d come here was to test out her tech before dealing with the Bloodhounds.

(And I don’t care what Decker says I don’t entirely trust those power ups anyway.)

(Ooh, caution for once lovely.) Her inner reason applauded as she looked around the room.

“I guess if I’m not taking a power up I just go through these doors then.” She noted making her way to a second set of stone doors.

“To carve one’s path takes courage and might, continue on to your first fight.” The voice told her as the various power ups disappeared and the stone doors began to open on their own.

“Right, through the doors then.” She accepted, following the path down a dirt tunnel of some kind. “Wonder what the first monster is going to be?”

(Probably going to be something easy like giant spiders or goblins.)

A faint skittering sound filled the air, and she couldn’t help but glance around in search of its source.

(Actually, I don’t believe it has a source. It sounds similar enough to the narrator in location, that it’s likely a sound effect to hint at what we’re up against.) Her inner logic pieced together.

“That makes a certain amount of sense,” she nodded. “Seeing as how they probably need to set up atmosphere and stuff if we don’t just want to wander through empty tunnels for a couple of hours.”

(So, skittering means giant spiders, right?)

(Likely.)

Stepping into a larger cave room she found herself alone with not a giant spider but rather a rat, and not even a very large rat at that.

“Well, this is a let down…” She sighed, before shaking her head and idly blasting the rat with her hand cannons as she passed it by.

(Hold up.) Her inner child stopped her. (It dropped loot!)

Reaching down she picked up, “A rat skull?” and frowned.

(If it does nothing… then perhaps it’s a form of treasure for a shop or something of that sort.) Her inner reason suggested.

(Yeah, this is probably that junk loot that we sell for our early gold in a fantasy game.)

(But this raises the question of if we should buy equipment from the shop, since their wares are very likely similar to the power-ups.)

“Yeah, that could be a problem.” She agreed before tucking the skull into a pocket deciding that she could figure it out later.

Continuing through to the next room, she found a swarm of rats waiting for her in the center of the room.

“Well, that confirms the first floor being a rat theme.” She noted, before looking at the group of rats. “Think our hand cannon bursts are big enough to hit all of them at once?”

(Mm, not at this distance.) Her inner madness answered. (On burst mode they work more like a shotgun and can barely hit at a distance, and then our ranged mode would probably only hit a couple of them at a time.)

(True, but on burst our Sound shots have a fairly wider range so if we get close enough we should be able to get all of them at once.) Her inner logic added. (And well we are here to test our tech so…)

“Right.” Figuring that the rats weren’t a major threat unless she let them swarm her, she inched as close as she could before the swarm turned its attention towards her.

There was a second of silence between them as she and the rats seemed to just stare each other down for a moment, before one of them lunged at her leaping through the air and startling her enough to reflexively shoot it with a Sound Burst and a shriek.

“I did not shriek!” She argued in what could still be considered a shriek, as she fired off a couple more bursts to mop up the rest of the rats, shattering each one into the swarm of pixels she vaguely remembered from her fight with Decker.

(I don’t know, it did sound kind of shriek-y.)

Shaking her head with a light growl, she picked up a handful of coins that the rats had dropped before reloading her hand cannons as she made her way towards the next room, where she found something that drew her up just short enough to lose most of her embarrassed rage.

“That is a big fucking rat.” She said, staring at the rat large enough to give their pit bull Missy a run for her money.

(Yeah… Want to try shooting it from a distance?)

“If we’re doing that, electric rounds might be better.” She told herself, cycling the Hand Cannon and changing all of the LEDs on it blue as it reloaded with a different ammo type.

Raising her hand she pointed one of her hands at the giant rat fired a bolt of lightning sending it flying across the room but apparently not dealing enough damage to actually kill it as the dungeon monster was left spasming on the ground.

“Huh, figured we’d one shot it given how easily we killed Decker’s wolves.” She admitted, before firing another bolt at her stunned opponent, causing it to shatter into a swarm of pixels as it dropped another rat skull.

(If you recall, several of his wolves took more than one shot to put down, and we haven’t actually improved our Hand Cannons that much given how long we’ve had them.) Her inner reason reminded her.

(Yeah, most of our upgrades have been adding range and accuracy through aimbots or new damage types, but we haven’t actually upped our dakka’s damage output.) Her inner madness agreed for once. (That’s because we need more Dakka than just our starting weapon! New debuffs are fun and all, but we aren’t even getting the damage debuffs!)

She frowned, staring at her Hand Cannons as she realized that of her numerous inventions and upgrades, she really hadn’t done much to improve her firepower. With all of her upgrades having been focused on more defensive or utilitarian purposes than anything legitimately offensive. Despite now having three different elements she could use for her Hand Cannons, they all still had roughly the same energy input and damage output, neither of which were amounts intended for anything stronger than your average thug. (Which is probably why it took so many shots to take down that one Bloodhound.)

(Something we should probably aim to correct before we actually fight a pack of them.) Her inner logic warned her. (And even if we don’t upgrade our Hand Cannons at the very least we should figure out some form of offense to aid us. )

“Well, if we’re lucky they’ll be weak to light.” She grimaced, knowing how weak that argument was before shaking her head. “We’ve still got a few days, we can figure something out on that front, but for now we have to deal with-” A rat landed on her. “What the fuck?!”

Small claws began to cling and grab at her as the rat crawled all over her in her attempts to get it off of her.

(It’s in our hair! Kill it! Kill it!)

(Just keep calm and grab it!)

Eventually she managed to grab the rat, throw it onto the ground, and stomp it to death with her shoes, leaving her a panting mess as she slowly calmed down.

“Fuck you…” She gasped before looking around to make sure there wasn’t another rat hiding somewhere to try and jump scare her.

(There’s not but I’m seeing a treasure chest over there.)

Walking up to the chest she got ready to open it before freezing and giving the chest a suspicious look. “What are the odds that this thing is a mimic?”

(Given how it’s the first floor, fairly low.) Her inner reason figured.

(Never know, if Decker ‘s the DM he could screw us over here.)

(Perhaps, but that depends on how much control he actually has to change the dungeon. In all likelihood he’s stuck using whatever floor theme the dungeon already has.)

She considered it for a moment before readying her Hand Cannon with one hand and opening the chest with the other. When nothing tried to attack her she let out a breath of air before reaching into the chest and pulling out a red vial.

“Healing potion?” She guessed, shaking it as she held the liquid up to a nearby torchlight.

(Most likely. Though I’m curious as to if drinking this is safe given our limited understanding of the Gamer Guild’s power ups.)

(Ugh, yeah, even if this thing is liquid madness that’s probably not something we want to drink…)

“Maybe, but given how many people have been through this dungeon, I doubt it’ll kill us if we drink it.” She pointed out, before trying to find a place to stash the vial on herself. (Note to self get more pockets or pouches or something.)

(Noted.)

Eventually finding somewhere to stash the vial, she continued through the tunnels and into a large room with a set of stairs beginning halfway across and leading to a small throne with an even smaller anthropomorphic rat sitting on it while wearing a crown and wielding a scepter.

“I guess this guy is supposed to be the floor boss?” She figured looking the more unique rat monster over. “He’s some kind of… rat king?”

(Meh, the LCMs can kick his ass.) Her inner madness dismissed.

(Perhaps, but we shouldn’t dismiss him as a threat just yet.) Her inner reason reminded her.

“Yeah, a boss is a boss.” She nodded while wondering if she was close enough to snipe it from outside of its aggro range.

(Mm, we could but we might get an aiming penalty at this distance.)

“Well that’s what the aimbot is for.” She told herself, raising a hand and aiming it at the Rat King before unleashing a bolt of electricity and pinning it to its throne as electricity cackled between the two.

(You didn’t kill it but you seem to have paralyzed it at least.)

(Which means we can zap it again!) Her inner passion cheered for, (More Dakka!)

Seeing no reason not to, she readied her hand cannon before firing another bolt and finishing off the paralyzed dungeon monster in a small swarm of pixels.

“Well… that was anticlimactic.” She said, just barely realizing that what she thought was supposed to be boss battle music was dying before it’d gotten loud enough for her to hear.

(Pfft, just means we’re overleveled for this floor.)

“Eh, maybe, but I still feel a bit ripped off.” She admitted, walking up to where the boss had died to see what loot it dropped.

(Well, given how it was a ‘king’ boss in all likelihood it would’ve summoned more rats had we not instantly stunned it with our first shot.) Her inner logic pointed out.

“Yeah, that fits.” She nodded, before her inner Madness screeched as she spotted another Rat Skull. “What the fuck?!”

(I just realized we could’ve farmed the rat summons for loot!)

She paused with her hands on the skull. “That… they wouldn’t have let us do that, would they?”

(Um… In our experience that seems to vary a bit depending on what system the dungeon is using. Meaning… fifty-fifty?)

“No, no.” She denied. “They wouldn’t have let us farm the boss like that, at best they’d let us keep maybe whatever the first… summons… dropped…”

She inhaled deeply before letting it out slowly.

“...”

(...)

(...)

“Motherfucking son of a bitch! Pinche pendejo system of a… Fuck!” She spat, before running a hand through her hair and forcing herself to calm down. “Okay, okay, not a major problem. This is just the first level, missing a few common drops is a hiccup, but it’s not going to ruin our playthrough.”

(Unless they were supposed to drop a quest item of some kind, that we need for the final boss.)

“...”

(...)

(Right. Not helping. Sorry.)

Forcing herself not to think about it she made her way around the throne and quickly spotted a short tunnel that she could see a light at the end of. Making her way through it she found herself in another large room though instead of any items this time there were a trio of chests with a symbol of a sword, a piece of armor, and a round potion vial that looked notably different than the actual vials she’d found in the dungeon.

As soon as she stepped into the room the narrator from the very first room spoke up once more from all around her, “Congratulations hero on overcoming the first true hurdle of your adventure. Before you stands the reward of your valiant efforts, though be warned that you may only choose one of these prizes to make your own, be it a weapon to arm yourself, armor to defend, or potions to mend, choose one and choose wisely.”