Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (best way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

on the central door, meaning that it could only be opened when the left and right chambers had both been cleared. Then, I created a lock on the left door so that it could only be opened when the right chamber had been cleared.

“Now the dungeon adventurers will have to run the dungeon in order,” I said. “They’ll get progressively better loot in each chamber, and progressively harder monsters too.”

Selena nodded. “When you looked at the original dungeon stats, there was an option for ‘boss level,’ wasn’t there?”

“That’s right,” I said. “I figure that the dungeon bosses available will increase in strength as the dungeon levels up.”

“That’s so fucking cool!” said Selena enthusiastically. “What are you going to do next?”

I thought for a moment. “Let’s work on creating loot first,” I said. “Then we can begin thinking about monster distribution.”

Now that I had created a bunch of chambers, I found that I had opened up options for items that I could place throughout the dungeon. These appeared as little pictures, a seemingly endless array of low-level items that I could select and place. As far as I could tell, the only limit on these items was that they were all fairly low-level. When I scrolled down to the bottom of the list, I found many grayed-out boxes with little lock symbols over them.

“Those must be the higher-level loot items that I can unlock later,” I said.

“How about starting with some chests?” Selena suggested, pointing to an iron chest on the menu.

“Seems as good a place to start as any,” I said with a shrug. “We’ll do that.”

I selected the ‘chest’ symbol and was presented with a rectangular, three-dimensional box of bright blue lines on the floor in front of me, which I found I could move with the force of my will alone. I considered for a moment, then walked over to the wall nearest the right-hand chamber door.

“Here,” I muttered, and placed the blue line box against the wall. It glowed brightly for a moment, then transformed into an old, weather-beaten wooden chest with dulled brass grips at each corner, and a heavy, ornate iron lock holding it in place.

Use lock?

Yes?

No?

I decided to use the lock. When I selected ‘yes’, there was a snap as the lock mechanism closed fast. I stepped back and admired my handiwork.

“You’ll need to leave a few lockpicks lying around,” Selena suggested.

“Lockpicks?”

She sighed. “Well, yeah? Otherwise, how are they going to get the chest open? Have you never played any video games in your life?”

I chuckled. “To be honest, I’ve always been more of a strategy gaming guy than a dungeon running RPG guy.”

“Well, lucky you’ve got a dungeon running RPG girl here to help you get the basic right.”

We both laughed at that. She was right. I would lean on her guidance. Selena seemed delighted to be able to help, and it was nice to spend a bit of time together. We’d always made a pretty good team, even back when we lived together, before the mansion had come to change my life forever.

Now, we worked together well again, and I wondered what her feelings were about me. Back when we’d lived together, we’d once had a kiss, but we’d both been a bit drunk and had never taken it any further. Only recently had I found out that she had been prohibited from following up her desires because she was an undercover EDI agent, keeping an eye on me as part of the mission to get me joined with Kyrine the dungeon.

Perhaps now that we knew the truth about each other, we would be able to rekindle that old flame? She was certainly a very good-looking woman, and her enthusiasm and excitement were endearing as she ran about the chamber, directing me where to place chests, loot crystals, and furniture to fill the entrance space.

We worked for what seemed like hours, and when we were done, the entrance chamber bustled with stuff to explore. There were tables, chairs, shelves with parchments and old Eosorean books, gold coins hidden under bales of moldy cloth, in pottery jars, and in the locked chests.

I created weapons under Selena’s direction, choosing swords, bows, axes, daggers, knives, and leather and plate armor from my list of items and placing them in chests and on the walls, and scattered about the floor.

“You need to give the dungeon adventurers options,” Selena explained. “Most of this stuff will be too old-fashioned for them, and they’ll probably just see it as decorative. Most adventurer teams will bring their own gear, and it’ll probably be better than anything you can create here. But if there’s gear lying about, they might use it as a backup.”

I frowned. “It would be good to be able to make stuff that was going to be preferable for them to use. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that the more stuff they interact with in the dungeon, the quicker we’ll be able to level it up.”

“One thing at a time!” laughed Selena. “The more you do, the better you’ll get at it. Don’t forget that we still need to find some adventurers to run the dungeon. As far as we know, nobody even knows that we’re out here yet.”

“That’s true,” I mused. “I’d forgotten that. We’ll have to come up with a way of getting the word out there.”

“When Belinda comes back, she’ll have an update from Agent Fallon. If anybody can help us get the word out, it’ll be Fallon. There’s a lot of political stuff bound up with the dungeons, I think. Lots of people would probably be against the return of dungeons if they knew about it.”

I made a face. “I’ll leave that shit to the professionals,” I said with feeling. “I hate all that stuff. Politics, wheeling and dealing.