My second life as a dungeon

About ten minutes later I reached their door and gently knocked on it a couple of times. At first there was no answer and I was about to turn away and leave them alone when I heard a tiny voice whisper ‘Come in.’ At this I turned back around and opened the door before taking a few steps into the room. I had never been comfortable in emotional situations like this one because I knew that I had to be careful but not what that means.

As I was walking in the room I took a good look at them, when I had found them they were incredibly thin, to the point that I worried they were malnourished, but I had been feeding them plenty and they looked quite a bit healthier, although I was still worried about them. I had replaced their torn dress with a plain one that I had materialised but other than that they were still as dishevelled as when I found them.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked once I had gotten to a chair by the bed and sat on it. ‘Are you ready to have a chat with me?’

‘I am fine thanks to you.’ They said with uncertainty in their voice. They took a few slow breaths as they thought before saying, ‘Yeah I think I am ready.’

‘Well first let’s start with introductions.’ I said with a small smile on my face, ‘My name is Liz and I am a new dungeon master. In fact you are currently on my first floor.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know there were any new dungeons around here.’ They said calmly, ‘My name is Val, I don’t really have a profession, I just tend to do whatever needs doing.’

‘Mm news tends to move slowly around here.’ I said, ‘well you can stay here for however long you want to.’

‘Thanks’ they said, clearly a little relieved that I wouldn’t be kicking them out as soon as they were healed. ‘If you hadn’t found me those goblins would have definitely killed me’

I was about to say that it was no issue when their stomach growled so instead I just chuckled to myself before asking ‘Are you hungry?’ to which they gave a small nod. ‘Ok I am going to go cook us something to eat and we can chat about why you were in the middle of nowhere over a warm meal.’

Usually I would just materialise the food but I wanted to give them some time to calm down so I cooked our meal from scratch, just materialising the ingredients as I needed them. I hadn’t cooked anything since my old life so I had forgotten how relaxing it could be, I even lost track of time until about half an hour later I was outside of their room with two bowls of leek and potato soup.

‘Hey, I hope you like it.’ I said as I opened the door with my elbow before handing them one of the bowls ‘I’m sorry that it's nothing interesting, we can talk later about what you like and the next time I cook you something it’ll be more to your tastes.’

‘It’s fine, it looks delicious.’ They said before taking a spoonful and slowly enjoying it before swallowing it. ‘Thanks, it tastes amazing. I don’t know how I can ever repay you for saving me and taking care of me.’

‘You don’t have to repay me, I didn’t save you for a reward, I did it because if I was in your situation I would want someone to come save me’ I said trying to calm them down. ‘Although I really am curious about how you ended up in that situation if you are ok with sharing the story’

‘It’s a long story and I wouldn’t want to bore you.’ Val said

‘That’s fine, I have nothing but time and it has been a while since I have had a chance to properly chat with anyone in a while.’ I said

They took a minute to go through their story in their head before starting, ‘Well it all started about five years ago…’ 

It took about an hour for Val to tell her story and by the end I was filled with a maelstrom of emotions. A part of me was furious that her parents did that to her, another was sad that she had to go through something so awful. The last part of me felt kinship with her because, while they never did anything as bad as locking me in my room, my parents also refused to accept me for me.

I wished that I could go find her parents and beat them up as retribution but then I looked at Val’s face and realised that my time would be better spent giving her a home where she could be herself without worrying about anyone ridiculing her. ‘I am so sorry you had to go through that.’ I said, I knew it was cliché to say but it was true, ‘When I said that you are free to stay here for as long as you wish to I was being serious.’

‘It’s fine, I got away from them and I doubt they’ll find me here, wherever here is.’ Val said, waving her hand as she looked around.

‘I am not really sure where ‘here’ is, honestly, I mentioned before that I was a new dungeon master but that was it.’ I said, worried about how she would react once she found out where I came from. ‘I died more than a month ago and was reborn by the goddess Shonu to help adventurers train to defeat the demon lord.’

‘What?’ Val said suddenly a lot more excited than when I told her I was a dungeon master ‘You aren’t originally from this world? What was your old one like? I have so many things I want to know.’

‘Calm down, I will tell you everything. Just give me one question at a time and I will answer them as best as I can.’ I said, trying to calm her down ‘Yes I am not from this world. Honestly my previous life was quite similar to yours except with a few differences.’ 

This seemed to calm her down as she only asked me one question and waited for me to answer it. We ended up spending the next hour talking about random stuff like her childhood friends and what my old world was like before we both started yawning our heads off and I decided it was time for us to go to bed. I must have been more tired than I thought I was because as soon as my head hit my pillow I fell asleep.

I was woken up about twelve hours later by someone knocking on my portal, which had now changed due to the addition of the second floor. The right half of it was still the same light green with vines growing around it but the second half had become a cracked grey stone with lava flowing through it.

The person outside my portal was quite old, if I had to guess I would put him in his eighties although the system can slow down ageing if you get strong enough so I wasn’t sure. He had short grey hair, wrinkles everywhere and had a walking cane. He still looked intimidating as under the wrinkles was a mass of muscles that suggested a lifetime of weightlifting and he was by himself which suggested that anything in the forest wasn’t a threat to him.

I didn’t want to make him wait so I got up and dressed as fast as possible before rushing out of the portal to greet him. When I arrived he was just sitting on the ground next to the portal waiting patiently.

‘Hello, I’m Liz’ I said nervously ‘who are you?’

‘I’m Simmond, the master of the local guild branch.’ Simmond said as he got up and looked down at me, at full height he was easily a head taller than me, maybe more, ‘I heard that you wanted to have a chat. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here, making a new branch requires a lot of paperwork’

‘Oh! I was expecting someone a bit less important’ I said, I was very flustered as this was quite unexpected. ‘Maybe an officer but certainly not you, do you want to come into the dungeon or do you want to chat out here.’

‘Out here is fine,’ the guild master said, not moving at all, which just made me even more nervous. ‘I’m sure you understand that I would prefer to chat on neutral ground.’

‘Of course’ I said, I wasn’t really sure why he didn’t want to chat in my dungeon but I certainly wasn’t going to try and force him to say ‘I am new to this so I am not sure how our ‘chat’ will work.’

‘Oh you don’t have to worry, why don’t we sit down and we can get started’ he said as he went back to sitting on the grass. ‘I am just here to find out how to best move forward with our arrangement. When the Guild and a dungeon work together a contract is made between them that details how each side of the agreement will treat the other side.

‘There are three main contracts we use that you can choose from, if there is anything in particular you don’t like about the contracts we will see if we can come to a good compromise. Before we start though you should know that you are under no obligation to work with us as we won’t harm you unless you start killing people.

The first contract is an exchange of resources, we will send in farmers 24/7 that will just go through your first couple of floors and gather as many resources as possible and in return you will constantly get an increased amount of DP to expand your dungeon. The second contract is an exchange of knowledge where you will become a training dungeon, you will have to keep your floors relatively easy so that rookies will be able to beat them, in return we will teach you how to use your resources efficiently.’

Simmond said before pausing for a minute to gauge my response and to grab a breath ‘For the third and final contract we will advertise your dungeon to any adventurer that we deem is at a good level to challenge you and send a constant stream of adventurers your way. This will allow you to grow bigger at a faster pace but in return you will have to make sure your floors are challenging enough to make them grow stronger.’

‘These contracts seem interesting.’ I said once Simmond had made it obvious he was finished talking ‘Could I have a look at what exactly the third contract says?’

‘Of course’ Simmond says before opening his backpack and rummaging around for a minute. Eventually he pulls out a rolled piece of parchment and hands it to me, ‘Here you go, take as long as you need to read it.’

I accepted the parchment and rolled it out and started to read it. At the same time I asked, ‘So why should I bother signing any contract, it seems like you are getting quite a bit out of them and I am sure adventurers would eventually find me even without your help.’

‘I am sure you would but the amount of adventurers that you would see would be barely anything compared to what you would get if you signed one of our contracts’ the guild master said, still smiling at me ‘also if you forge a contract with us then we will protect you to the best of our ability, your core might be hard to break but it isn’t indestructible.’

‘Ok that sounds good,’ I said. I thought about it as I finished reading the contract. In the end I couldn’t find anything wrong with it so I said, ‘I think I would like the third contract, while the other two are interesting they both don’t fit what I want to end up doing with the dungeon.’

At this Simmond gave me a small smile and said, ‘All right, sign at the bottom of this please.’  I quickly signed where he pointed before Simmond took it from me and wrote his name under mine when all of a sudden it burst into flames.

‘The contract has been enacted, now nothing can break it and if either of us try to not keep our end of the bargain we will be severely punished’ Simmond said before getting up and walking away ‘It was nice meeting you, here’s to a long and prosperous partnership’

As he was leaving I thought about calling him back and asking about Val and if they could help her but I still didn’t trust him enough for that. If Val was comfortable with them then she would have asked for help ages ago.