New Dungeons

“So we’re skipping school today?” I ask. She nods. “I don’t see a reason to go right now, I’m really comfortable.” She squeezes me gently to emphasise her point. I chuckle at that. “Yeah I feel about the same. We should probably let Skylar know.” I realise, getting my phone out and sending a quick message to Skylar to let her know that Mia and I won’t be in class today, and asking if she wants to meet us after she’s done for more training. She responds quickly in an affirmative, and I put my phone away, satisfied.

“Mia, can I use observe on you?” “Sure, why though?” “Mostly because I’m curious about what your relationship score for me is now.” I tell her. She shrugs. “Fair enough. Go ahead.” She says, and I take her invitation.

Observe lvl 6 (MAX): now shows extended character sheets for targets

I whistle in surprise. “What is it?” She asks. “Well two things, your score is high and I just got an upgrade to my observe skill. It now shows me a character sheet for you, similar to mine but slightly different.” “Wait what? Can I see the character sheet too?” She asks.

“I mean yeah, everybody in my party is supposed to be able to see their own character sheet.” “Um, how do I open it tho - oh.” Mia cuts herself off. I giggle. “You mean you haven’t been opening your character sheet up until now?” “Shush! I didn’t know I had one, I was using the party interface to check my level!” I laugh and boop her on the nose. “You’re cute.” I tell her. She smiles at me and my heart melts.

I turn my attention to the stats. I do some quick calculations and realise something. “Hey, your stats are different to mine!” I say. “Really? How’s that?” She asks. “I have 75 more than you. You have 5 per level, I have that plus 75 extra for some reason?” Mia looks at me, a deadpan expression on her face, for a few seconds before she utters one word. “Bullshit.” I chuckle at that.

“Your score is at 121 by the way.” I say. “What’s the maximum?” “It’s supposed to be able to go up to 200.” “That’s kinda scary, I really like you already.” She giggles unsurely and I get a warm feeling in my chest. Being able to adore somebody like this without worrying is awesome. “Can I kiss you?” I ask. “You don’t have to ask, you know.” She says, leaning in and kissing me. I kiss her back happily.

Looking back at Mia’s character sheet, I poke around a little more at the stats. “What are you doing?” Mia asks, confused. “Trying to find an explanation for why your mental stats are different than mine.” I reply. “I have Wisdom and Intellect as my mental stats, you have Spellpower, Intelligence and Mana.” I answer.

Mia looks at her character sheet again. “Oh, that’s strange…” She trails off, not really sure what to make of the realisation. After a couple of random clicks around the mental stats part of the window, I finally find what I’m looking for, when a window pops up.

“Well that explains that mystery.” I remark. “It’s rude that I only have 9 intelligence.” Mia complains, crossing her arms. “It’s okay to be an airhead.” I say, struggling to keep a straight face. Mia fixes me with an unimpressed stare. “Did you say that as a play on the fact that I’m an air elemental? If you say yes, I will hit you.” She deadpans. I keep silent for a few seconds, before saying a single word. “Maybe.” Mia hits me on the arm and I cackle.

“I wanna try something first, before we fight anything.” I let her know. Mia nods. “What did you have in mind?” “I want to spam the create and escape ID skills to try get them to level 5. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to finally get a choice in what kind of monsters I can spawn. I’m starting to get tired of the rats, I’d prefer something new.” I explain.

“I agree. After yesterday, I’d like the experience against something different too.” She replies. We change into our battle gear and walk outside, just outside the Burgess family barrier. I start spamming the two aforementioned skills, and it takes me a couple minutes, during which I use most of my mana. The popups are worth it though.

After taking the time to recover all the mana I used, we look over the small table together to decide what to fight.

“Wow, I really have a lot more control now.” I remark, while Mia and I look over the table. “I’m guessing the numbers in brackets are the levels?” “Dude you can make level 25 armoured chickens? That’s freaking hilarious, let loose some of those things on a gang and there’d be chaos!” She laughs. I chuckle with her. “Let’s not fight spiders.” She continues. “I agree, playing Skyrim in VR is enough for me in that department.”

“Nerd.”

“Shut it! What do you think about slimes?” I ask. “Slimes are usually only weak to magic, which means I wouldn’t be very useful against them. The only air magic I can do at the moment, involves using solid air as a kind of blunt ****, as well as gusts of wind to move things around. I don’t really have anything that doesn’t use physical ****.” Mia says. I nod, taking in her explanation.

“My spells would be effective against them, but I don’t have a lot of mana or very high regeneration. It would be slow going, and without any healers or any way to regenerate mana quicker, me running out of mana could mean we’re fucked.” I add after thinking for a few moments.

“We can use them to train magic based skills once we have more effectiveness in that department. For now, I think skeletons might be a better bet.” “Skeletons work for me.” She agrees. “Skeletons it is.” I click on the tier 3 version of skeletons and watch the barrier form around me.

I’m not even sure if I want that skill book. More skills is always nice, but something about necromancy doesn’t feel right to me. “There’s not going to be a lot of useful loot from these things, most of it is necromancy related.” I tell Mia. “Wait, you can see what loot they’re going to drop?” She asks in disbelief. When I nod in confirmation, she shakes her head in response. “Proving once again that you are Miss bullshit.”

The singular skeleton shambles towards us, aggressive in body language but seemingly lacking the strength to move quickly. Still, these are level 15 and I shouldn’t underestimate them. “I got this one!” Mia exclaims, rushing forward.

Gusts of wind buffet the skeleton as it falters in it’s step, nearly falling in the process. Mia jumps up and kicks it in the face, using her magic to boost her speed and correct the angle. She stomps on the monster’s skull once, twice, and the third time, it disappears into dust.

25xp

I note that these enemies give less xp, and take a moment to look around the dungeon. It seems heavily based on the dungeons from Skyrim. Stone walls surround us, etched with various spiral patterns that don’t really seem to mean much. The room is well lit with flaming torches, placed in brackets high on the walls. The ceiling is high, meaning Mia should be able to pull off some slamming attacks fairly easily.

The floor is cobblestone and I can see a few out of place stones around the fairly spacious room. “Watch the floor, the stones with patterns on them are probably traps!” I warn her. “Got it!” She calls back, taking down a second skeleton. I half expect to see draugrs, not skeletons.

That proves to not be the case, as I spot another skeleton emerging from behind a corner. I go on the offensive, firing a few icicles at it to see what it does. The spell doesn’t seem to damage it much and I grunt in annoyance. This is what I get for fighting enemies 4 levels above me. I grip my knife and prepare to lose some HP.

“So, do we explore, or do we go straight for the boss?” I ask Mia, scooping up the remaining loot. “I vote explore.” She replies. I nod. “I was thinking the same thing, but I'm not sure. This dungeon is different from the others I’ve created. There’s clearly at least a room here beyond the one we’re standing in. The others were all just forests.” The reason for this discussion is the window I got after Mia and I killed the last skeleton that attacked us.

The gate that the window mentions is on one side of the room. On the other, there is a short corner that turns sharply, leading hopefully somewhere. “Going straight for the boss would mean we get this over quicker. Exploration in games usually leads to good rewards though.” I muse. Mia nods. “Let’s explore then!” She exclaims enthusiastically. I smile at her enthusiasm, putting the last bit of loot into my inventory.

“Whatever you say babe.” I say, trying out the word. Mia looks back at me, apparently trying to decide on her reaction. “I’m not sure if I like that or not.” She says. “Should I call you honeybuns instead? Snookems? Pooky bear?” I ask teasingly. “If you start calling me snookems, no cuddles for a week!” Mia declares. “Well that’s not fair!” I retort. “Hah! Not fair she says. Don’t call me snookems and we won’t have a problem then, little miss ‘not fair’.”

I can’t resist.

“Okay snookems.” I say, unable to suppress a smirk. “You…I’ll deal with you later. WAIT! Stop making me be dominant! I’m supposed to be the bratty one!” She whines. “It’s called being a switch, honey.” I say, in a mixture of a dry and sweet tone.

Mia bats my arm in faux anger. Her facial expression conveys the kind of loving annoyance that can only come from somebody you’re close to, being annoying. “Brat.” She remarks, batting my arm again. I spread my arms in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”