NOVEL NEXT Cycle 8 (8)
Dear Diary,
So, between the floor with the glyptodon and the lavender field there’s a maze with walls that are covered in blood. And elves live there.
Steel is friends with the elves.
I didn’t know any real players were friends with any NPCs. But yeah, they saw him and came out to say hi! We all introduced ourselves, and I made them pizza. They had an oven to bake bread in, but they didn’t have any cheese.
This is absolutely terrible. I gave them a whole bunch of cheese. All kinds, too. And in payment for the cheese, they showed us a series of secret portals from the entrance to the exit. The portal is supposed to be NPC-only, but… meh.
Anyways, they asked why we’d taken a glyptodon through the maze. Apparently they’ve been super curious about that. They also asked about the wolves, but the wolves are all clearly enjoying themselves. They kept licking the walls, which was just a liiitle bit gross. So we told the elves about how our Admin trades information for entertainment.
That interested them. They asked what kind of entertainment, and if we thought their Admin would do the same. We didn’t. But we told them exciting entertainment. Things based on finding loopholes in rules.
Before we left they said they were going to try finding loopholes in rules.
I kinda feel like we should have told them not to. That maaaaybe doing things bad or wrong would get them in trouble. But oh well. We don’t have any way of contacting them, so it’s too late now.
I mean, no way of contacting them unless I wanted to write our Admin asking him to ask Admin 4 for the elves’ numbers, which I don’t. It would take way too much explaining. I am in favor of not explaining things. At least, not when I might get in trouble for it.
Speaking of getting in trouble for explaining things! Fire told Steel about the energy drinks. Kimi said we are very much banned from making them. Steel asked why, so Avi described it. He… made it sound pretty disgusting. I mean, fish and espresso won’t ever be a good combo, and I will admit it ended up a not-great color.
But hey, it gives people energy, soooo…
Oh, Fire still refers to Kimi and I as sisters. Steel has started doing it, too. Now that I’m used to it I kinda like it. There aren’t a whole lot of families here. Like, in our old dungeon the Sams were the only set of siblings I knew of. There was a pair of cousins in the kobold’s group, but that’s about it. Even people who knew they’d had siblings before… never met up with them.
So yeah, having a family connection is nice. Even if it’s totally made up.
I wonder if anyone else is making new family connections. Probably. Strong connections would form in smaller groups, and they might decide to be family. And in bigger groups people usually find one or two people they’re super close to.
I’m glad to have found a group I can call family.
Goodnight, Dungeon!
*****
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The director looked over Admin 6’s “players”. She wanted to find the ringleader.
Among the ten people there seemed to be three groups. One group was really a pair that switched between the two other groups when necessary. The Director checked to see if they were listed as solo players, and was surprised to see they weren’t. Odd, but irrelevant.
She decided to call the other two groups the Light group and Dark group.
Light group consisted of Mika, white, Aya, yellow, Samuel, orange, and Samurai, pink. Among them, Mika was on the outside the most. She seemed to be developing a relationship with one of Admin 2’s players. Mika held little power. Samuel and Samurai were siblings. They were very close, but neither held more importance in the relationship. When orders had to be given they looked to…
Aya was quiet, but when she spoke everyone seemed to listen. None of her plans had ever gone wrong as far as the Director could tell. Everyone respected Aya as a leader.
The Director wrote down that Aya was the leader of the Light group. But did she have any control over the Dark group?
The Dark group consisted of two couples. Y, black, Kimi, red, Avi, silver, and Nikki, green. Y was the oldest by far. On paper it would seem he was the smartest. But he had… issues. Kimi took care of him, but she also deferred to him when he said to do or not do something. They were equals. Avi had apparently done something fantastic to earn silver magic. What that something was, the Director had no idea. He was small, weak, pathetic, and the only thing of note he’d done in her dungeon was tame a hellhound. He was absolutely not in charge.
Nikki, however… Admin 6 had written that she needed her full food inventory to feed the group and make them happy. She wasn’t just feeding her group, though, she was feeding half the dungeon. Pizzas, onions, sushi, cake, she made food and gave it to mobs simply for the joy of feeding people. She provided meatballs and some sort of ranch-filled pastry for other players to give to wolves, dinosaurs and slimes. When Y had panicked the first time, Nikki had been the one to put him to sleep. The first cycle, Nikki had been the one to get the button on Floor 60. And she made some sort of pudding out of Admin 5’s ridiculous chocolate that was taking the dungeon by storm. Not to mention she helped convince players from Admin 4’s group to take monsters from their floors. Nikki wasn’t actively in control, but with minimal effort she could be.
The Director spent some time reviewing Aya and Nikki’s actions. They both held power, but in different ways. It was difficult, given the differences in personalities, but finally she made her decision.
The person in charge of Admin 6’s players was the chef.
Nikki was the Director’s principal enemy.