The start of a new dungeon…
“When do we start,” Marcus asked, sounding a bit eager.
“Tomorrow,” Janet asked, sounding hopeful. She looked and sounded tired.
“Might as well get a start on it today,” Nox mused, looking up at the darkening sky.
“A second,” Janet stated. She dashed off and when she returned seconds later, Nox winced and couldn’t help but stare. The woman’s equipment was a plank for a shield with a strap attached, and a wooden sword. Admitted it was better than her own utter lack of equipment, but still…
With the two knowing the city far better than she did, Nox let them take the lead and followed as they led her towards the center of the city to a set of dilapidated, wrought iron gates. Across the top in large, black letters were the words, ‘University of Mockery.’ Beyond the gates was what looked to be a rundown building.
“Hmm,” Nox mused, pursing her lips.
“No guards, so let’s go,” Marcus said, and stepped into the gates that were slightly ajar.
Inside Nox paused to look around. The safe room, which was usually the first room of any dungeon, was much like with the Dungeon of the Cyclops—a 20-by-20 meter room with a fire in the center. It certainly didn’t look like the simple, if crumbling, building she’d seen from the outside.
While wondering what sort of monsters this place would throw at them, Nox, without hesitation, walked around the fire and approached the inner doorway. Taking a deep breath, the woman wished she had a spear—but she’d checked the cost, and they were insanely expensive. A simple wooden one that would splinter in a single fight with a dungeon monster cost several silver. A more sturdy metal one cost several gold. At that price it was much cheaper to just hire guards to help her. So long as no one was charging them an entrance free to the dungeon that is.
The trio stepped into another stone room, and into the sights of a girl of around fourteen who had two elongated ears, long green hair, and two very pretty forest-green eyes. That girl glared at them, screamed “Delinquents,” and charged.
That charge was met with two blue darts forged of mana that took the girl in the eyes, causing one eyeball to burst. The girl flinched. “Hoodlums,” she sobbed pitifully. “Help, help! The school is being attacked by vicious hoodlums.”
Two more darts flashed in to strike her remaining eye, while Janet positioned herself between the girl—who appeared to be a hall monitor—and Nox who’d she’d been charged to protect. Nox noted that the woman was careful to not also get between Marcus and his target, but did seem prepared to defend him as well if need be.
It wasn’t necessary. Three more salvos of magic missiles—fired at two second intervals—caused the hall monitor to collapse, at which point Janet surged forward, placed the tip of her wooden sword over the sobbing girl’s ruined right eye, and shoved that sword in. The dungeon monster burst into a dazzling flash of blue light, while in the center of the room a pillar with a plaque on it appeared in a display of more blue light.
Gulping, Nox studied the spot where the girl/elf that’d been far too human-looking for her tastes had died a pitiful and cruel death. She gulped again, not sure what to think of this new dungeon. Fighting rats and slimes and ogres was one thing, but this caused her stomach to churn.
“The riddle will be on the plaque,” Marcus told the woman who was staring at the floor where the monster had flashed out of existence. “You have half-an-hour to solve it, else we’ll be kicked out of the dungeon until it resets when the day ends. Tomorrow, should you come back in, we’ll have to kill another monster, and there’ll be a new riddle.”
Nodding, Nox moved over to read the riddle that simply asked: ‘What are the first six digits of pi?’
She blinked.
“That’s a math question, not a riddle,” she pointed out.
Marcus nodded. “But it still has to be answered to get past this point,” he stated. “Everyone knows the first three digits of pi are 3.14, but you need to answer with six digits.”
He shrugged.
“The answer could be anywhere from 3.14000 to 3.14999, so there are a thousand potential answers. You can brute force it by listing all the numbers between 3.14000 and 3.14999, but that’s a thousand answers you would need to go through. And you only have half-an-hour.”
The man pursed his lips and gave another hapless shrug. “I’m pretty sure it’s a question that’s been asked before, and the answer might be recorded at the adventuring guild. But then again, it might not. See, to brute force such questions, a person might bring—say 10 people with them—and those people would call out the numbers as fast as they could. So even those who did it before might not know which person got the right answer.”
Nox scowled. “3.14159,” she stated, and there was a loud, almost eerie click from the chamber’s inner door.
Marcus blinked.
“Lucky guess,” Nox told the man.
In the back of her mind Nox was aware of a countdown that’d started as soon as they’d killed the hall monitor. It’d started at 1800, and was ticking down at what she guessed was a rate of 1 per second giving them half-an-hour before they were kicked out.
“Next room,” she stated, scurrying for the chamber’s inner door.
They stepped through into the red-eyed gaze of a young, muscular troll-like creature. If she had to guess, Nox would’ve put him at being around fourteen years old. “Give me your money,” the troll delinquent/bully roared, and hurled himself at them.
As before, two blue darts reached out to strike the troll in the eyes. This time neither burst and the trolled crashed into Janet who struggled to hold it back with the crude, makeshift wooden shield she had strapped to her left arm. The woman was sent reeling backwards, but her right arm, holding her sword, flashed downward between the creature’s legs, deftly tripping it. The troll fell on his face and when he looked up to again snarl at them, two more blue darts took him in the eyes.
The creature surged to his feet and hurled himself forward, again sending Janet reeling backwards. This time when she slipped her sword between his legs he refused to fall, and another ramming attacking by the troll sent the woman falling on her backside. She kicked out with her right foot and the troll also fell.
In the meantime more darts flashed from Marcus’ fingertip as he unflinchingly sent one salvo of mana darts after another at the monster. The creature’s eyes burst.
Back on her feet, Janet continued to struggle to hold back the troll who outweighed her by at least 3 to 1. Even if now blind, the creature seemed to sense her location by smell, and it again charged to ram into the slight woman with a shoulder, sending her flying through the air to go rolling on the ground where she immediately surged to her feet.
More blue darts flashed in and the troll stumbled. Janet dashed in and the creature perished in a burst of blue light when she rammed the tip of her sword through its right eye.
Nox blinked. This was a bit more extreme than she’d expected for a dungeon where’s she’d been told the monsters weren’t too bad.
The trio gathered at the pillar that’d appeared and together they read the plaque: ‘What are the first six digits of Dali’s Number?’
“Frig,” Marcus swore, shaking his head. “It’s like the pi number. You’ll need to brute force it.”
Nox blinked. As any good computer nerd, she knew the number being refereed to. In her old world the name of the person who’d discovered the number wasn’t Dali, but Euler. But when she’d been sent to this world, she’d been given/taught the language of this new world with every word she knew of her old language having been given a translation in the language of this world. At least where applicable. There was, for example, no word for computers in the language of this world. And as she read the plaque she automatically translated Dali—the name that was actually on the plaque, and the one who’d discovered Euler’s Number in this world—to Euler.
“Hrm, 2.71828,” Nox stated.
There was a click as the inner door of the chamber opened.
Marcus and Janet stared.
“Lucky guess,” Nox told them, and once again walked towards the inner door. She was afraid what the monster on the other side would be like this time. A troll-like creature that could send Janet flying. Or a cute elven girl who would cause her stomach to churn as the dungeon monster was brutally cut down.
It turned out to be a very large bee. Unless it was a reference to spelling bees, she had no idea why a bee would be in a school. Or maybe it was in search of some ‘honey,’ as one of the delinquents she knew liked to say. Either way, Janet and Marcus rushed into action. Only the bee was nimble and the mana darts Marcus threw missed, leaving Janet trying to tackle something that flew above her head. From its vantage point the bee flung back spells of its own which Janet blocked with her shield.
Even if unable to reach the creature, Janet’s antics drew its attention and Nox, trying her own skills, focused on it and cast inflict pain time and time again. Unlike with Marcus who had his right hand raised to point as he cast a mage spell, she merely had to focus on her target and activate the psi-related skill—which was nice since it meant she didn’t miss. Given the low level of the skill she also failed time and time again until, finally, it did activate. Stunned, the bee dropped from the air long enough for Janet to hit it with her shield, and for Marcus hit to it with two salvos of his mana dart spell, damaging its right wing.
Nox nodded, noting how Marcus seemed to have the mana dart spell prepared to cast each time they entered a new room, meaning he was fast on the draw. And how he knew to focus on a creature’s vulnerable spots. The eyes, to blind them. And now, with the bee he’d focused on the wings—as was necessary to keep the creature out of the air.
On the ground the bee was far less formidable, and with Janet blocking its spells with her shield, while poking with her sword from behind that shield, on top of spells from Marcus, it died without issue. The corpse burst into a spray of blue light.
Nox moved to read the plaque that’d appeared: ‘Sum the numbers from 1 to 217.’
“We would need some with a trade Blessing for this one,” Marcus mused. “They have the tally skill. But even so, they can only tally 20 numbers at a time, so they would need to write the numbers from 1 to 217 down, and first tally the numbers from 1 to 20, then 21 to 40, and so on. They would then tally the results to get the final solution.”
Nix blinked, and simply spoke, “23653.”
There was a click as the inner door opened.
Marcus stared.
Shrugging, Nox replied with, “A lucky guess.”
In actually there was a simple formula for such problems—namely the sum of the numbers from 1 to n was simply n * (n + 1) / 2—and with her calculate skill it was simple to solve that formula when it was fed the number 217 in place of n.
Turning, Nox looked at the inner door, but with a quiet, frustrated sigh she didn’t approach it. Around her, her two guards fell quiet.
“Um. That last fight was rather extreme,” Marcus said, “and I used up a lot of mana. I don’t have enough for another fight. Especially like that one.”
Nox nodded. While she wasn’t sure what level his skills were at, she had counted the number of times he’d cast mana dart, and during the last fight while he’d been trying to knock the bee out of the air it’d been extreme.
“Same here,” Janet stated. “I’m well pass the halfway mark on my stamina.”
It left Nox wondering about Ginger who’d seemed able to supply an endless stream of backstabs back at the Dungeon of the Cyclops. She figured the beastkin girl had been smart enough to use backstabs without activating the skill on those monsters that weren’t a threat, or who were otherwise disabled. And had only spent her stamina to activate the backstab skill given by her Blessing when the outcome of a fight had been in doubt.
Regardless, this was something of a problem. Mana and stamina only regenerated at one-percent per hour, or 25-percent per day. Before she could enter the dungeon again she would have to wait four days. On top of that, she would be paying for their services each and every one of those days. All for a dungeon where enough problems she couldn’t solve would end the whole endeavor.
Then, there was the issue of what happened when Marcus and Janet found other employment. Changing the structure of a team reset the dungeon back to room 1. So, should that happen, it would again be the end of the whole endeavor. It was insane the loops these dungeons made people jump through.
Nox sighed. Dungeon delving was a rich woman’s game. It also required someone who had far more patience than she did.
“Sorry,” Marcus said. “If I’d been able to aim better with the bee…”
“I’m ashamed to admit this,” Janet added, “But I think this dungeon might be a bit too tough for the two of us.”
