Of Maps and Objectives

Opening Dungeon

As the world began to disappear in darkness, Ela’s eyes momentarily flashed from their normal blue to a vibrant green, and she looked around curiously. He guessed that had something to do with her precognition.

“Everything alright?” John asked, his own stomach voicing its discomfort.

“This is… much more intense than I had imagined,” she said, adjusting her grip on her axe.

“What do you mean?”

Before she could answer, the world exploded with color. Grays and blacks and blues flowed around them, pierced by a single wave of amber light. Everything started blurry, as if they were seeing it through a camera that was unfocused, before slowly adjusting to allow them to take in their surroundings. Ela gasped, turning around cautiously to take in their surroundings.

They were in a dark room, wrapped in windows, overlooking a vast stretch of bleak ruins and gnarled remains. The sky was blotted out with a cruel storm of unending blackness, which stretched as far as John could see in all directions. As he turned to look outside, a brilliant wave of gold passed him over from behind - the light of a lighthouse’s beacon.

The Gamer let out a choked sigh as he realized he had returned to his previous dungeon. The constant churning of the storm, the faint rumble of thunder, and the all-too-familiar humidity in the air brought back memories and emotions that he’d have rather left behind.

’At least the light’s still on…’

“Welp, here ya go!” he said, gesturing around them. “If you were wondering what the dungeon I told you about really looked like.”

The pair found themselves at the peak of the lighthouse, in the room where John had found his staff and [Escape Dungeon] gem. Part of the floor of the room had been cleared, and two sleeping bags had been laid out, as if a pair of adventurers had actually rested there overnight. Despite the seeming passage of time, no rays of light pierced the raging tempest in the sky, leaving the world of his dungeon drowned in darkness still.

“This is incredible…” the blonde trailed off, awestruck as she looked toward the horizon. “I- I have heard stories of Fateweavers training for a thousand years and never doing anything like this…”

She walked forward, placing an armored hand on the glass as she drank in the desecrated city across the bridge. The buildings were rotting and blown out. Some had collapsed, leaving conspicuous absences in the skyline. Distant silhouettes danced among the rubble. He joined her at the window, taking in the landscape himself.

In his desperation to get home, he hadn’t really taken the time to look at it all before.

“Don’t give me too much credit,” John said, gazing over at the ruins. “I just hit the start button. Pretty sure whoever gave me these powers is doing all the real work.”

“Gave you your powers?” She turned to him with a quizzical gaze.

“Right, I guess you weren’t there. Moira and Lord Brighton think that my powers were given to me by some divine entity. They kept my old magic focus to analyze, so maybe they’ll be able to figure out who it was.”

I have faith in them.

John smiled at that. “Oh, and sometimes my powers talk to me.”

Ela stopped for a moment, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. He assured her that he wasn’t joking, though he had no way of sharing the text of the messages to her.

“I am glad that the Order is looking into it. I will defer to their judgment,” she replied, turning to him with a wry smile. “You could have told me all that before we were in here, you know.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a bit of an idiot and didn’t think about it.”

“I thought you said you had a high intelligence stat?” she sang back, smile widening.

“Don’t ask about my wisdom score.”

They both laughed softly at that before returning their attention to the dungeon in front of them. The single concrete bridge connecting the lighthouse to the mainland was still standing, and seemed stable enough from a quick lookover, though one section looked notably rough. It was covered in the wreckage of abandoned vehicles and destroyed military equipment, but paths across remained. As far as he could tell, it was the only way to get to the city.

“Hey, John?” Ela asked, interrupting John’s thoughts. “I thought that you said your last dungeon was down on the beach below?”

“Yeah, it was, why?”

She gestured out the window. “Where is the beach?”

John turned, confused, following her line of sight. Last time, the lighthouse had been perched on a high cliff, overlooking a graveyard of ships far below. The climb up the rusty staircase had been seared into his mind. Now, all that was gone, swallowed by the waves.

The waterline had risen dozens of feet, maybe more, and almost the whole of the graveyard had disappeared beneath the water. Only the highest points of the tallest ships still dared to peek above the deep, inky blue of the ocean.

“Um, the beach was definitely down there before,” he said. “Basically the whole dungeon before this was down there. The ocean must be rising. Maybe forty or fifty feet, at least.”

“By that much? That is not just the tide… Do you remember anything last time which might indicate water magic?”

John shrugged. “No, but I still don’t know much about that kind of stuff. I knew way less yesterday afternoon, too, so maybe I missed it. Could just be something for the dungeon mechanically, like to prevent us backtracking.”

She crossed her arms, placing a single finger from her free hand on the side of her chin, mulling over his words.

’I hope that everything that was down there before decided to stay down there…’ He shuddered, phantom pain causing him to clench his hand tightly.

“You know,” John said, breaking the silence, “my last dungeon gave me a popup when I started, with an idea of what to do. Don’t think I got one this time.”

He smirked. “You wouldn’t happen to see one anywhere, would you?”

Ela shook her head at that, returning his smile.

“Well, we might be able to figure something out,” John said, racking his brain. “If I remember, the floor right below this one had some cameras and maps and stuff. Might be something useful.”

Ela nodded affirmatively, and the pair moved out from the starting room and towards the staircase.

“What kind of details did the popup give you last time?” she asked, following him downwards, her boots clicking and clacking on the stairs. “Do you have an idea of what we should look for?”

“Kinda? The last time, I got some kind of quote hinting that the lighthouse was important, and the final boss was a few floors below us now. Maybe we can piece something together from the stuff in here.”

John pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs, leading Ela into the second highest floor of the lighthouse.

The room they now found themselves in was in the same state as he’d first found it, panicked disorganization obvious in the mess. Cameras and binoculars and a few scavenged telescopes were pointing in various directions, though he now noted that most were pointed towards one end of the city. Maps and charts covered the floor, with a large one pinned up on a table in the corner.

“I didn’t bother to look through all of this before, so there’s potentially some important notes lying around. Just too tired last time to check.”

She nodded. “We should start with the map. Perhaps there is a clue on where to go.”

The two moved over to the map, taking a moment to identify any landmarks that John could remember, mostly oriented around the lighthouse and its bridge. Based on markings on the map, it seemed as though the survivors who had lived here had spent a long time trying to find different ways through the city. Many of the streets were marked in red, with boxes and the like drawn over them, seemingly indicating where collapsed buildings or other obstructions had blocked their path.

“Doesn’t actually seem like they were trying to find a way out,” John said, tracing various routes on the map. “There are a few places here that might have taken them out into the suburbs, but they never tried them.”

“The storms stretched as far as I could see,” Ela replied somberly, now searching nearby shelves. “They may have given up on leaving.”

“Or something might have stopped them…” he trailed off, not enjoying that pleasant thought.

Ela discovered a notebook, which she began to flip through as John continued parsing the map. There were several points of interest labeled throughout, though they’d only found a complete path to one of them, a hospital. The lighthouse’s residents had been planning to try and work their way all the way across the city towards a military base, but they’d not found a suitable route. John took note of a factory at the midpoint which he thought might be interesting.

’There’s really only the one that’s complete though,’ he thought, ’Looks like we’d have a pretty solid guide to try and get from here to that hospital, which I’d guess might be at least one way to get through this stretch of dungeon.’

“Find anything?” John turned from the table to address his companion.

She nodded. “This was a woman’s journal. She and her family lived here, in this lighthouse, before the storm. They were fortunately spared whatever happened outside. Once the worst had passed, they began to gather other survivors, trying to rebuild.

“Seems like she must have been an Abyssal herself, if such a thing exists in this world,” the blonde continued, walking over to John. “She talks about developing magic to fight those monsters you found before.”

“I think that tracks,” The Gamer replied. “If I remember correctly, the sword and staff I got last time were made to protect this place… Not that they succeeded. Anything in there that would explain why they might have been trying to get to a military base all the way across town?”

“I have not seen anything about that, but there is a lot here to read. I would need more time to try and look. It might take hours to sort through it all.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I was expecting.”

He sighed, stepping back from the table and rolling his head around. “What do you make of all this? As much as I’d love to learn all the backstory for this, I’d rather not take all that time waiting right now.”

“...Mmm. There is a fascinating amount of detail here,” Ela said, flipping the book closed, “but it is probably best if we try to complete the dungeon quickly. I can read all of this in my free time once we are home. In here, we have no idea whether monsters are aware of our presence.”

John nodded in agreement, taking a picture of the table’s map with his phone. He and Ela walked over to the windows which faced the coast. A quick look through most of the telescopes and such revealed that they were pointed towards the locations the two had identified.

“Considering the state of the lighthouse at present, if anyone made it out, they probably followed the one path that’s fully tracked and went to the hospital. The fight, if I’d even call it that, clearly went badly, so they might have needed medical supplies or something.”

Ela put her chin in her hands, pondering that. “I think I would agree. That is our best guess, for now. We can follow the marked path and look for survivors. ”

With that said, a small line of text printed in the middle of John’s vision. Simple gold letters, typed in one at a time.

Current Objective: Reach the Hospital

’I guess that’s our answer,’ John thought, as the text shrunk and moved to the side, right underneath his health and mana bars.

Looking over, he realized that Ela was looking at the same place in front of her. “You get that as well?”

“Yes. It seems as though our objective is clear.”

Checking his UI, John opened a new notification, and passed a copy to his companion.

“The levels are a lot higher than last time,” he said while she read the window. “I’m underleveled for this whole thing now… probably scaling because you’re here. You should still be about as strong as anything in this level range though.

“Well, as far as my system is concerned, at least…”

He sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I wonder if the question at the end is a hint? Maybe we were always supposed to go searching for survivors…”

“Or, perhaps, that is a result of our conclusion,” Ela mused, dragging the screen in front of her around idly. “You mentioned thinking that there may have been multiple paths to the lighthouse before. Maybe if we had reached a different conclusion, the dungeon would have been different.”

“Hmm...” John took a moment to consider the implications of that while Ela walked back over to the large map.

“Before we go, we should pack up what information we can. I can fit it in my bag, I think.”

“Oh, yeah, good call,” he said, walking back over to the table with her. “Um, I could try to fit your bag in my inventory, if you want. You don’t need to carry it all.”

“No. I need to carry my bag; my medical supplies are in it. If you were injured, and could not open your inventory to bring it out, I would be unable to access them. The medic carries their own additional supplies, as long as they are able.”

“That’s… really smart.”

“I did train for this,” she sang, rolling up the table size map and storing it away.

The pair spent a couple minutes gathering everything they could from the top floor - pictures, maps, books, etc. - and packed it all away before descending the tower.

“How much more can that thing hold?” John asked, as they walked through the next floor down.

“Not too much. It is relatively small. My axe and armor would probably be too much for it now.”

Once they were done, the two resumed walking into the old boss room. The remains of the final waves of ice had melted, leaving the floor with odd mushy patches in the blood-stained carpet. The pile of steel that had once been the chandelier had settled into a depression in the floor, a fitting centerpiece.

“All these poor books…” the blonde muttered, standing frozen in the doorway.

“I don’t exactly think the zombie hordes care much for literature preservation.”

“Hmph. This looks like it was quite the battle. I am glad you won.”

“Me too!” He laughed.

The two continued down through the lower floors, pausing occasionally to examine the remains of the meager defenses for clues about who had lived there. Ela was interested in all the history that the ruined rooms implied, lamenting the lack of time to explore everything. Walking out the front doors of the ground floor, they stepped out onto the cracked pavement of the parking lot.

The area was still deserted, leaving John to nervously wonder when the enemies were going to arrive. He found himself checking over his shoulder more than once at even the slightest noises. The lot was devoid of most life with only the newest fuzzy green just beginning to poke through the shattered concrete and car wrecks pushed to the sides.

Piles of bloated fishermen were still stacked by the vehicles, giving off a truly heinous stench far worse than he’d recalled encountering last time. A salty ocean wind ripped past as the pair ventured forth, greeting them with the scent of the decomposing dead.

John coughed and sputtered as the acrid smell hit his nose, unprepared for the sting of sulfurous rot. ’Geez, that’s nasty.’

Ela scrunched her face, waving her free hand around. “What a wonderful smell.”

The Gamer took a second to gather himself as his companion quickly crossed the fenced off area to a set of ruined chain gates that connected the lot to the bridge, her armored boots scratching and crackling against the shattered pavement. She looked down and narrowly avoided stepping on a flower that had worked its way upward in search of sunlight. Cautiously, she tested the front gate, pushing it open with a pained, rusty screech.

Turning around, she shot him a teasing look. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” John coughed, jogging to catch up.