NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: A Pressing Shield
Munera wades through its many thoughts and ideas, refining them until it comes to one in particular that seems like it would be an ideal match for its desired future.
The system window comes and goes, as the dungeon-core stares out at the corpse-filled pit inside its domain. It took a little work, dragging in all of those bodies from the battlefield — nothing that a few monsters couldn’t handle. But now it has quite the collection.
Munera scans the literal pile of corpses it has collected, all in various states of dismemberment and wounding. Its eyes wander over them, looking at its prizes. There are humans and there are elves, both the light skinned and the darker toned variants, there are dwarves, and there are a few fairies too. They’re clearly part of some set of rivaling factions — humanity has a few of those — and have lived their lives out in pursuit of the betterment of said faction’s wholeness.
However, this was their goal before their death.
The bodies can sit here in the corpse pit for a while. It doesn’t matter if they decay a little. Munera can pick out the ones it likes to resurrect from the dead for its scheme. If the new ability works as intended, they’ll come back no matter what. So it’s fine. In essence, this hole is a body closet, for whatever it wants to wear today.
The grimness of the situation does appear in the dungeon-core’s thoughts for a minute. It was a human once before, after all.
However, it quickly shakes the idea away. These people are already dead, right? So what’s so bad about taking their rotting corpses away from a field? It’s not like anyone was using them.
And it’s even doing them a favor, really.
Vague, foggy tendrils drip out of the walls, wrapping themselves around the ankles of a pair of corpses atop the heap and dragging them lovelessly across the ground, through the tunnels, towards the newly built arena.
— After all, it’s bringing them back to life.
If humans like anything at all, it’s being alive!
The humans do not like being alive.
They writhe and scream, rolling around on the dusty floor of the arena, clutching their faces and bodies as they let loose unnatural howls from the depths of their souls, crying like mangled animals being eaten alive.
Uh…
The dungeon-core stares at the two warriors; it had hoped to provoke them into fighting each other so it could watch.
They are non-compliant.
Oh, right.
Munera returns its focus to the corpse-pit, dragging out a small fairy dressed in the vestiges of a priestess. It pulls her into the arena too. She is in pretty good shape for a dead person. No broken bones or severe rupturing of any kind.
The fairy opens her eyes and sits upright, looking around herself in confusion for a moment, holding her head.
Munera speaks to her, placing one of the foggy tendrils into her ear and whispering its bargain into the disoriented creature.
“Heal them,” says the dungeon-core, explaining her orders after it finishes transferring the knowledge of the situation into her. She looks up at the ceiling and then all around herself, not able to see it. But this much is obvious; there is no ‘it’ to see. Munera is everything. It is the floor the fairy sits on and the walls that muffle the screams of men, it is the emptiness of the air they breathe and the sharpness of the cold nipping at their skin.
She wobbles to her feet, looking down at herself and back at her wings, buzzing them for a second to see if everything still works.
The deal is simple. She gets to stay alive if she heals the combatants when needed. It’s not like anyone can die in the arena, but it’s also no good if they just lay here screaming forever.
The fairy rises into the air, holding her hands out over the two men, one of whom was on her side prior to this and the other of whom would be considered an enemy. But those are old designations; they mean nothing down here in this place. The games of the social division of the surface world are in the way. Down here, all that’s going to matter is who is stronger. That’s it.
No politics, no strange social rules, no history, no old blood — it’s just the sport, the fight, the game.
The fairy priestess heals them, their screams finally coming to an end.
- Finally.
Munera feels as if it were smiling. Now that they’re healed, they can finally start fighting again!
They have not started fighting again.
It’s been about half an hour.
Munera would scream if it had a mouth. The humans, now restored, have risen to their feet, and instead of returning to their prior trial of death, have just… started exploring and cooperating? They’re walking around the room, checking the walls for a way out. They’ve tried climbing out, but it made the walls higher to stop them. The fairy tried to fly away, but it blocked her with some magic.
Enough.
They WILL fight.
The annoyed dungeon-core channels its energy into a small chamber attached to the arena, condensing it together to create a heap of flesh and bones that are pulled together to make the form of a hobgoblin, a monster that is a large, lanky, and very violent version of a goblin.
The humans turn their heads, looking at the metal portcullis across the arena that gray, lanky hands grab a hold of, shaking the metal. Looking at one another, they stare down at their banners of different colors on their chests and then instead look away, grabbing weapons from the walls.
YES!
This is it; they’re finally getting the idea now!
Munera watches in glee, as the metal bars of the arena rattle, the monster crawling down into the sand to crawl beneath the gate to get out even faster, spit and froth leaking from its gnashing mouth as it eyes them from the distance, its long limbs violently clawing at the sands to move on the hunt.
“Left!” calls one man, running to the left with a pike in his hand. The other man goes to the right, a shield in his hand. The hobgoblin breaks free, running at the man with the shield, who — instead of holding his position — charges right towards it.
…Huh?
He and the monster slam into one another head on, its long, gangrene claws reaching around the wood, swiping as it tries to tear off his face.
And then, a second later, there is a wet thud as the man with the pike pierces the distracted goblin from behind, pressing the needle-point through its spine and into the front of the shield that it is now skewered to.
…They’re… cooperating?
The hobgoblin splutters, dying as its spine is severed. The man lets go of the shield because of its incredible weight with a full body on it, and it just falls over. The other man lets go of the pike, which remains stuck in the monster's back, and the two of them look at one another.
“Not bad,” says one man.
“Not bad yourself,” replies the other.
What is this?
Why aren’t they fighting with each other? Munera had hoped this monster would spark conflict’s blaze, but instead they just fought the monster and that’s it. They’re not moving on to each other’s throats now at the same time.
They were fighting each other to the death outside of the dungeon an hour ago, so… why not now?
The dungeon-core watches them in deep annoyance and curiosity, thinking back to its old days as a human, and then it understands after slipping into that mindset for a while.
‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
Oh.
It understands now. It didn’t just bring them back from the dead; it brought them back from the dead together. It didn’t just make them fight one another; it gave them something to fight together. The two of them aren’t fighting each other simply because they have no reason at all to fight one another.
Just as it had been intended, the laws and happenings of the outside world mean nothing here, in the pit. But that has the downside that there is no spark. They have no reason to fight each other. There’s no bait, no goal, and no incentive. These two humans in particular lack the warrior’s drive it had seen in the champions outside, those who fought for the sake of the fight. These two here are just humans. They’re trying to survive. That’s their highest goal at the moment.
Munera thinks, its vision shifting as it gets its idea.
Of course, it would be ideal if everyone wanted to fight for the sake of the fight, but those souls appear to be rare things that it must work hard to attract to this place. However, for all of these normal men and women of the blade — they need a little incentive.
- That’s it!
Munera reaches into the corpse pit, dropping a few dozen other corpses down from the air around the two extremely confused humans and one terrified fairy, who does her best not to get squished. Just as before, they all come to life and are healed, and Munera makes sure to make things clear now.
This is a learning period for all of them. The rules of the game need to be learned by the players as well as by the master, after all.
Foggy tendrils appear in the air, garnering the attention of the freshly resurrected, as they come together to produce a message that is clear for them to see.
Murmurs move through the crowd as people come to terms with what’s happening.
The world shakes, Munera making its intentions clear as the arena shifts, grand pillars moving aside to make room for gated tunnels that lead to a series of common areas and chambers, filled with beds and all the necessities needed for living creatures such as these.
There.
It got ahead of itself. Of course, just setting up an arena wasn’t enough to get them fighting. It needed to give them something to fight for.
— Freedom.
The humans can fight for their freedom. Those who succeed in the arena can earn the ability to leave the dungeon forever and go back to wherever it is they desire to be in the surface world.
Those who fail, well, they’ll just have to stay down here until they get it right. With time, Munera is sure that they’ll all sharpened into competent fighters.
It will let them take a little time to adjust and figure out their situation. But then, well, it will be time for the games to begin.