Magical Engineering

“Dave, come on, wake up man.” My eyes shot open to see the brothers standing over me, Cecile having been shaking me.

“Wha,” I mumbled, barely awake. The dream was fading away. Had that really been my dad?

“You were talking and shaking a lot, got worried, sorry,” Cecile said.

“No, it’s okay, weird dreams I think, hard to remember,” I said. As the sleep started to clear from my mind, I realized that I felt oddly refreshed. I wish I could remember what the dream had been. I didn’t usually toss and turn like that, as far as I knew.

“Come grab some breakfast. We made your favorite,” Cecile said. I pushed the sleep haze further away and forced myself out of the tent to the smell of eggs. They were a little burnt but better than nothing. There was something on the tip of my tongue that the eggs had reminded me of, but I just couldn’t wrestle it to the surface.

My mana had recovered a bit from yesterday, and my core was full enough that as long as we didn’t run into anything as bad as the diredeer I figured we could handle it—still no quests for finishing the dungeon. I hoped what we got in the end was worth it for Cecile and Elicec. I doubted it would be for me. That was the downside of abusing the simulator, all levels, no mana orb growth.

“I can hear the water, so we can’t be too far from the last dungeon,” I said once I’d finished off my food, helping the brothers get the tent packed away.

“Good, I really want to be back in the archives by the end of the day,” Elicec said. The forest seemed to have bothered him more so than his brother, though neither of them liked it.

“Agreed, I’ve got a lot I want to take care of before we tackle our last two dungeons,” I said. I needed to have a long discussion with Mel and get every question I still had on my mind answered as best I could, then have a nice long talk with this dungeon core that was supposedly so apologetic.

It was a quick walk to the beach. The forest came to an abrupt end, with about thirty feet of sand separating it from the water. I guessed it was an ocean from how big it looked, but that was no guarantee, I didn’t even know if anything was saltwater on this planet. It was entirely possible the concept of saltwater bodies was rare throughout the Spiral. Those thoughts were forgotten as I stepped into the sand and felt the now familiar sign of a dungeon.

Hundreds of tiny red crabs popped out of the sand and started running towards us. We jumped into action, swatting them away, crushing and burning everything that could be hit, but it seemed endless. No matter how many we killed, more took their place. We fought on, killing crab after crab for what felt like hours. The exhaustion was rising again. I was sure if this lasted much longer, we were going to have to retreat.

Then I saw a strange blue crab surface just long enough to be crushed beneath Cecile’s hoe. The rest of the visible crabs disappeared with a pop.