Part Thirty-Three

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Idiomatic

Kris, the assassin dude, was waiting for me at the dungeon entrance and we set off towards Circe Jr's place right away. That surprised me.

"Aren't we a bit early?"

"Yes," he said. "The early bird gets the worm."

"But the second mouse gets the cheese," I countered.

He spent the next five minutes silently trying to puzzle out the meaning - he seemed determined not to use the codex. I asked what was up with that.

He did a tiny frown. "Ted doesn't. He says we're too reliant on the codex and it stops us thinking for ourselves. Stops us discovering the true nature of the World around us. Stops us asking questions. Stops us maximising our Perception."

This was unexpected. The NPCs were starting to rebel? To evolve? Something else? It seemed really interesting but I didn't know how to pursue it. It didn't help that I had almost no context. I tried to get some. "Who is Ted? Who are you guys?"

Amusement. "A better question is, who are you? How did you bend a dungeon to your will?"

I borrowed a line from a classic movie. "The details of my life are quite inconsequential." His amusement grew. I added, "You're famous, though. The dungeon knew you and was excited to have you visit."

"Not me. Not us. Just Ted. Maybe Beeny." He raised a hand to forestall more questions. "My role demands discretion. I really do not know what I can and cannot say. I do not intend to be rude."

"No stress. Tell me one thing at least. Was Konstantin a good choice?"

"To manage your..." He waved his hand around while looking for the right word. "Your amusement casino? Yes, almost certainly. But you were dismissive of his story. It’s been a long road for him. In Zenith, saying what he said could get him killed. Or worse."

It took me a moment to work out what he was talking about. We then had a tedious exchange where he tried to nudge me towards making sure Konstantin felt welcome 'despite' his sexuality. It wasn't the game being 'woke' - somewhere else in the world some other NPC was probably trying to get a player to fire/imprison/betray an NPC for being gay. It was just the engine testing everything out, testing our reactions, looking for data. It would create a far-right fascist hellscape if that's what resonated best with the players. I didn't like the feeling that my every move was being logged and aggregated.

"Listen carefully, everyone who's listening," I said, causing Kris to look over his shoulder. "I'm not interested in culture wars. I just want to exploit Konstantin's labor and get rich from him. Right now I only care about his attributes and skills. He's got Strength 7, which is low, but we're not hiring a bouncer. Intelligence 13 is really good; he'll learn fast and absorb all the new information. There will be lots of that. Wisdom 12, but I think he's got a Ring of Wisdom so maybe it's 13. That's going to boost all his customer service skills. And he's got experience working in a fancy hotel. On paper, he's perfect. End of thread."

Kris shrugged. Soon he got a sly look in his eye. "So... you have seen our Character Sheets?"

"Sort of."

"What is Celestial's Charisma?"

"Celestial is the elf, I'm guessing?" I was about to tell him when I saw a vision straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. It was five copy/pastes of Nicki Valentine's head, floating in a circle in front of me. Each one was saying something like 'that's my privacy' and 'you shouldn't know that' and so on. I shook my head like a wet dog. "I'd better not say."

"Is it higher than Ted's?"

For some reason I really wanted to tell him. But I resisted. "I'd better not say."

"Probably wise. Ah, well. Our destination is around this corner."

The Ambush

We rocked up at a plain wall similar to many other plain walls in the neighborhood. This one had a large, heavy door with one of those little prison-cell strips that could be opened from the inside while a bouncer demanded a password.

I looked around at the space - the windows of the nearby buildings, the overlapping shooting arcs, the potential for small groups of soldiers to block the alleys. Keeping us penned nice and tight in the killzone while arrows and bolts came thudding into us from all angles. "Nice place for an ambush," I said. Nothing happened. "Nice place for an AMBUSH," I yelled.

Kris gave me a quizzical look.

"Ambush?" I said, barely audible.

Kris banged on the metal door and I heard a bolt slide. The door opened, and his buddy Ted was there. "Not a trap," he said. He didn't seem happy about that.

"Told you," said Kris. He patted me on the shoulder, said "good luck" and then started off down an alley. The Ted guy raised his eyebrows at me and fell into step with Kris. They left. I never saw them in person again.

I was alone.

The Stakes

I passed through the gate into a courtyard. Ahead of me was an unremarkable building. It probably started life as a barn or warehouse and over time people had tacked offices and residential units onto the side. Every roof was dotted with little antennas and each antenna glowed a different magical color. I'd never seen anything like them in the game. The courtyard between the wall and the building was packed with raised beds, and dozens of different plants, shrubs, and trees were being grown. Gardening equipment was everywhere and I saw at least five heavy-gloved gardeners deadheading some plants and watering others. Bees and butterflies were zooming around, landing on sage, rosemary, lavender, and flowers of all sorts. One enormous butterfly landed on my arm and I stared at it, enthralled.

"It's a swallowtail," came a voice.

I looked up and saw Circe Polka Jr. He was standing on a balcony looking down at me. But instead of pointing a double-shotted crossbow right at my face, he was leaning on a railing, casual as you like. "Is it going to combine with all the other butterflies into one big one that I'll have to fight to get inside?"

"They might, I suppose. Wait there or come inside, as you prefer. I'll be down momentarily."

I chose to wait. It was a wonderfully peaceful space that became more cathartic the longer you spent there. I was a particular fan of all the little bee bros working hard for their hive and their queen, just like I did in my job, except they seemed to love their work and no-one timed how long their toilet breaks were.

Polka turned up. He looked chill. No visible weapons, but of course he'd have them secreted away on all parts of his body and under every desk and inside every book in every room. He took me through a Victorian study, through a billiards room, through a corridor flanked by a dark mushroom fruiter on one side and a bright solarium on the other. We emerged into a mad scientist's lair, spacious but dark. Delicate glassware curving back on itself, bubbling liquids atop flames, blackboards covered with chalky equations and notes. There were shelves covered with mana crystals, tables covered with strange instruments, and almost every free surface was covered with notebooks.

I saw the villain. The baddie.

He was the wrong side of middle-age, fairly plump after a lifetime of fine dining, and he had a round, stretched face that barely showed any expression. His clothes were tailored and tasteful. That said, there was something about him that was dangerous. A suggestion that he was the kind of person who had signed a lot of death warrants and thought nothing of it. But the first thing I noticed was a preposterous, drooping handlebar moustache that made him look like a walrus.

"Mister Bain, I believe? Allow me to introduce myself." He stood up from behind a desk where he had several journals, inkwells, and an abacus. He was about my height, except in this retelling of my story I am two inches taller than myself, making him slightly shorter than me after all. "I am Lord Thomas."

I picked up a beaker so that I wouldn't have to shake his hand. "I thought there wasn't any nobility here."

"It's my family name. One ancestor was a Lord, one a Thomas. Now. Your delightful friend told me you don't have much time to spare. So let's get to the heart of the matter. Your dungeon core is a cancer that must be excised."

I had questions about which 'friend' he meant. The only delightful person I knew was me. He must have meant Ted. I got the feeling the two men had already come to some agreement. I put the beaker back in its little stand. "My dungeon core is a seed that must be nurtured. It'll do more good for Auster than all your plants and hired assassins."

"My plants attract pollinators which allow crops to grow. They provide honey. Their leaves, roots, and stems are used in my experiments and in our kitchens. Some are used in healing potions. They live and by living they cultivate life."

"My dungeon will attract tourists. People will come from far and wide to spend money here. Tons of extra cash sloshing around the city. And the games are good for mental health. People leave happier and more relaxed than when they arrive."

"You think you have tamed your dungeon but you have not. Dungeons are rabid. Yours is a killer and it will kill in increasing numbers until it is stopped."

"Nope."

"You don't seem to realise that I have the data right here. I can calculate it. I'm a mathematician, you see."

That explained some of the things dotted around the room, like the papers covered with columns of tiny numbers and the 'I love Mathematics' poster. I picked up a folder and shook my head at the reams and reams of numbers. Something caught my eye on one of the blackboards. "WoM. Is that Winds of Magic?"

The guy's whole demeanor changed. He'd been participating in the conversation as though he was a ventriloquist's dummy and someone was speaking through him. Now he was vibrant and engaged. Present in his own body. "What do you know of the Winds of Magic?"

I shrugged. "It's the mana that swirls around the world. Wizards use it to cast spells. Some days there's more mana, so you get better mana recharge rates and can cast more spells more often."

"Excellent, lucid explanation," he said, nodding. "What would happen if the Winds stopped blowing? If the ambient mana of the World ceased to be?"

I pushed my bottom lip downwards while I thought. "People wouldn't be able to cast spells."

"Ah!" He raised a finger. "Ah. Not quite the heart of the matter." He began to stride around his lair. Polka stayed near the entrance to the room - the only entrance - and seemed to drift around so that he was always in my blind spot. I didn't much care for it. Lord Thomas picked up a mana crystal. "Nature abhors a vacuum. Were the ambient mana in this room to drop to zero, all the mana stored in this crystal would burst out, seeking to replenish it. To restore balance."

I nodded. "Scale that up, thousands of explosions all around the world. Bad. Got it."

That finger raised again. "Ah! But that's just the start. Beneath our feet - beneath all our feet - are gigantic, mountain-sized mana crystals. They would be drawn upwards, through our cities, through our farms, forming a new mountain range. A never-ending crystal mountain range covered with explosions." He rummaged through a pile of papers until he produced a drawing of what he imagined such a scene would look like. He wasn't a technically gifted artist, but he conveyed the horror of the thing pretty well.

"This is all fascinating, but - "

He interrupted me. "You don't respond to the visualization I have prepared. How about the raw data?" He produced reams of papers and handed them to me. Imagine a spreadsheet written by hand. Cell after cell of tiny, scribbled numbers.

"Which of the 80 columns should I be looking at?"

He snatched the papers away and tossed them onto a pile. "Never mind that. The World's ambient mana has been slowly decreasing for decades. I've been tracking it. Perhaps you noticed the mana catchers on the roof? My own invention. They tell me, with incredible precision, how much mana is flowing past at any given moment. I have data points for every 15 minutes going back over 30 years. The data is solid. Rock solid. The conclusion? Inescapable. The World's mana is dwindling. Mana zero is just a matter of time. Unless humanity acts. And it might already be too late."

There was something about the last phrases that rang a bell. I pretended to study some of the things he had shown me...

But then it clicked and I groaned. This was all some climate change metaphor, wasn't it? Now, look. I follow the science. Global warming? Global roasting, more like. There are days when my town is hotter than the sun. But I don't want to think about humanity driving itself off a cliff when I'm trying to have fun in the BetterVerse! I just want to kill orcs and hunt for epic loot and, latterly, to leverage the skills and talents of everyone I meet for my own personal profit and gain. I tried to save myself some time by predicting some of the details of the inevitable quest. "Let me see how much of this I can guess. Your family is Auster royalty and you're loaded." His eyes rolled up. "Rich as. Aaaand... you've been burning through the family fortune doing experiments and writing down these numbers and so on. This environmental change is happening, humans are responsible, and you're going to present your findings to the local elites and they're going to do something about it because if ambient mana hits zero, all kinds of bad things will happen."

"The end of the world, lad! The end of the world!"

"Sure," I said. I'd already been through one of those. I doubted the sequel would be better written. "Sure. Just please tell me the part that involves my dungeon."

His mammalian moustache trembled. "It's deadly in its own right. A killer. I'm told it presents one cute and cuddly face during the day, but I assure you it wears a quite different one when you are not around. It's a monster. But more than that - the pulsation of its core is Kryptonite to my research. How can I know the background mana levels if there is a huge, unpredictable mana output source nearby?"

I couldn't believe my ears. "Kryptonite?"

"Indeed." He suddenly looked worried. "Did I say it wrong?"

"No, you used it right. You mean it's lethal? It's killing your research?" He nodded. "I was just surprised to - oh." It dawned on me. "You've had these discussions before. With other people like me."

He looked me up and down. "Not exactly like you... But yes. They taught me the phrase. Those adventurers chose not to pursue the quest, however. Which is why I turned to... someone more dependable."

I felt a chill down my spine. I could feel that Polka Jr. was inches behind me, waiting for the go-ahead to end my miserable life. I tried to speak but my words came out in a croak. "He's right behind me, isn't he? He's going to garrote me." I have a tremendous, primal fear of my neck being damaged. I think I started trembling. Lord Thomas gave me a strange look and then his eyeline shifted. I turned to see where he was looking - Polka was in the far corner of the room lightly brushing a plant's enormous green leaves. "Oh." I shuddered and let the sensation of imminent death pass through me. I exhaled. "So... so if I understand what you're saying, the dungeon is interfering with your Winds of Magic readings?"

"Yes. That's exactly right."

I rubbed my neck where the imaginary garrote had cut into it. "Are you the one who kneecapped the dungeon?"

He didn't look up to check the verb 'to kneecap', which didn't make me feel safer. He wasn't being threatening, though, he was excited. He began to pace around. "Yes! By removing all its traps and monsters we took its power. We brought it to a minimal state. A predictable state. It was glorious! I could - finally - trust my readings. Clean data!"

"Why not just destroy him?"

He dismissed the idea with a gesture. "Dungeons are strategic assets. Killing it is not ideal. Once we solve the Winds of Magic problem we could allow the dungeon to restore itself."

"Why not just take your equipment outside the city? Somewhere where there's no interference?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Because I live here. I've finally got things just how I like it. Using the right sheets with the right duck feather pillows I have finally achieved near-zero itchiness. The baker brings bread with the crusts pre-removed. I have 3 twenty-two year old maids and each has a different massage speciality. Why should I move?"

Itchiness! When he said that magic word, I saw him in a whole new light. "You're the hero of this story! And me and 386, we're the villains!" I smiled at the thought, don't ask me why. "I don't get the sudden need to kill the dungeon now?"

"Two reasons. One. It's growing faster than should be possible and I can't adjust my computations. My current data is worthless. You understand that my analysis is of supreme priority. If we have to lose a valuable city asset for me to carry out my work, so be it. Two. It has started killing again. It recently went on a rampage of indescribable ferocity."

It was time to wrap this whole thing up, one way or another. I checked behind me to see that Polka wasn't about to jab me with a poisoned umbrella or whatever, then turned back to Lord Thomas. "The dungeon only kills in self-defence these days. I don't think he's killed anyone recently. The only person threatening him was your man, there."

Lord Thomas shook his head. "Look here. Look at the data. The numbers are clear."

He showed me a hand-written spreadsheet and pointed to one of the columns. The number - whatever it stood for - averaged around 4 for twenty boxes or so, then jumped to 30 and then into the hundreds. "When was this?" He told me. It clicked. "Ohhh! That was the Swords of the Scales. They volunteered. They're alive and well. You don't believe me." This guy was educated and had met some hourlies before, but he didn't understand us the way Ted did. He didn't know we couldn't truly die. "I'll get them to meet you. You'll see they're in rude health."

"But the data," he said.

"Yeah yeah yeah. But her emails. These guys who 'died', they merely lost some levels. They're out grinding right now, getting back to where they started. Let's put it this way - no innocent person has been killed. If someone has, I'll destroy the dungeon core myself. All right? Now, the other thing. The interference. Your little sensors give you a reading for the Winds of Magic, yes? And the dungeon messes up the readings. What you need to know is exactly how big the dungeon is every 15 minutes so you can strip that from your numbers to get a true value for the WoM."

"What I need is to kill the dungeon and have perfect data instantly."

"You'll get your perfect data. I have two things you don't. First, absolute clarity on how big the dungeon is at all times. Second, someone who loves mathematics even more than you and who is several thousand times better at it." I checked how long I had left. About 25 minutes. Time enough, if we hurried. "Lord Thomas, my man. It's time you met your worst enemy."