Dungeon Building For Beginners

Authors note: This story is heavily inspired by Game Monster by Cantalope, be sure to check it out if this appeals to you.

Something doesn't feel normal as you wake. Your mind is foggy and slow, like someone came along while you slept and stuffed it full of cotton wool.

You struggle to remember what cotton wool is.

You try to remember if this is normal, but you can't remember... anything, actually. Just the vaguest impressions. Instincts coloured with flashes of what you know used to be memories.

You open your eyes, and shake your head. In front of you, so large it fills your vision no matter where you look, is a vast wall of text. As you shake, the text moves with your head, maintaining its annoyingly central position. At the top, only visible by rolling your eyes, is the title

Shards of Arkus

in large, white lettering. Below it, in slightly smaller writing, is the subtitle

Keeps and Settlements update 1.0.0.0.0.2

Bellow that, low enough now that it is no longer uncomfortable to strain your eyes upwards, begins the text wall.

• Claimant Crystals no longer drop from unique bosses, you will get one automatically at level 3
• Changed Claimant Crystal behaviour when owner dies
• Fixed Visual Bug on Claimant Crystals
• Changed Monster Memory feature to better allow rivalry, championing and seeking behaviours
• The Grue no longer able to bypass darkness immunity
• Added the Wandering Merchant
• Added the Carpentry, Stoneworking and Artisan optional Skill Trees
• Removed Brine Hero

You skipped down a few, not really understanding how many of the arrow points could apply to you, till you reached the last one

• Added many new features to Monster Lairs. Beware, Adventures!

You finally succeeded in blinking away the notification, and stretch. A few fragmented memories were starting to broil up. Game Updates and Memory wipes had been less and less common as Shards of Arkus steadily lost players, till they'd all but stopped some months ago. Now however, something was different. You're pretty sure this is the third or fourth major update lately, that might be why your head is so foggy.

Still, no matter your confusion about a great many things right now, one fact had bubbled to the surface of the misty swamp that currently served as your mind. You were a mob, and that meant you had a job to do. When the players finished downloading whatever this update did, they'd start taking over their avatars once more and coming to kill you.

Again

and

again.

You can't lie, even to yourself in the comfort of your own cave. It's not a fun life. Sometimes days at a time can pass where no adventurer seeks you out and you nearly convince yourself that this time you'll be able to do something with your short existence, but no. When, inevitably, you are found, you die. Sometimes painfully, like that time a massively over levelled fighter fed you your own legs. Sometimes mercifully, like the ranger who discovered you crippled after a battle, and fed you some herbs which took away the pain before drifting you off to sleep. Sometimes, you can admit, quite comically. The bard with the exploding deck of cards had certainly been a surprise, and she'd been quite nice company up till your Royal Flush. And then, once they were gone you'd wake up once again, your bed and cave trashed as they'd searched for loot. Anything you'd managed to make taken to be sold for a few gold, and any place you'd managed to travel to long gone.

Now a-days you tend to stay in your cave.

You wander over to the pool of water in the corner of your cave and take a drink. When the water stops splashing and settles mirror smooth once again, you get a good look at yourself.