Congratulations, due to your negative mana recovery and your tutorial completion time (#NaN) you have been drafted into a random dungeon war! Fight for your survival, or be devoured as resources.

Hidden in a hole on the first floor of it’s five-floor dungeon, adventurers just now entering the dungeon, at zero mana, and in the only pathway to the second floor, a black gem slowly flakes to pieces next to the uncontrolled creature holding it hostage.

“Oh fuck.”

“Language.”

“Oh scheiße.”

“Ok, what?”

“I just got a notification that I’ve been drafted into a Dungeon War due to poor performance.”

“Oof, too bad. Will that affect your availability for the trade partnership?”

“Depends on whether you can fulfill your end of the deal.”

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Through a vitrified tunnel, the adventurers come across a room with locked doors, chests, and an altar in the center of the space. The three of them cautiously approach the center, finding it to be a stone slab indented with shapes and surrounded by writing; ‘Sword stretched toward the sun, the adventurers split their focus to destroy the foe they most suit.’

“Puzzles,” states Shooty grimly.

“Don’t panic,” replies Stabby, gesturing toward the tunnel entrance, “this place wasn’t here last week, so the puzzles can’t be that difficult. It takes time for dungeons to build up, and this is the first room. Basically an introduction to what the place is about.”

“I bet the things that go in the slots are in the chests,” Smashy contributes.

Adventurers weren’t always the smartest when comparing them to the random monsters they fought, like slimes, goblins, and kobolds, but most of them could figure out to put the square box into the square hole.

“They’re puzzle chests,” Shooty moans morosely.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Outside the sealed stone double doors of the dungeon, the two creatures were on the top of the slope next to the body, but still not doing anything about it.

“All I’m saying is that we haven’t been explicitly told to fix this human.”

“And all I’m saying is that it costs me absolutely nothing to do it. If we get ordered to do it after we’ve wandered off somewhere, we have to walk back up that slope.”

“It does too cost you something. You don’t regenerate as effectively when you’ve got the field up, anyone could shoot you in the face and anti-life you.”

“Like who? There’s no one around to shoot me. Unless you’re planning on it.”

“And how would you know I’m not? Anyone could shoot anyone at any time for no reason whatsoever.”

“At least I know you don’t have a weapon right now. You’d be begging for healing if you did.”

“Unfair using logic to determine I’m not aiming for your existence. These kinds of arguments are for emotion and fallacies only.”

The first creature decides to use an emotional response to that, and smacks the other upside the head. An energy flows out from its entire being, and the body the two were bickering over has its wounds start to seal shut.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Back in the altar room, Shooty stares at the contents of the ruined chests. Smashy had a most expedient method of solving the puzzle chests, that being his hammer, but the results were less than heartening.

“Why are there five of each shape?”