Dungeon Exploiter

Everyone hates the water level.

This turns out to be one of the only true universal facts. Humans hate it. Goblins hate it. And forty feet down a drowned service corridor, I watched a monster the size of a bus stop at the edge of a flooded room and refuse to go in. Its whole face said: absolutely not.

We were down there on purpose. Joe kept repeating that out loud, like saying it might make it stop being true.

We'd come down through the corridor of doors, chasing the one clue I had. The System said the bull's fountain memory was stored "somewhere safe," on-site. On-site means below. Everything I want is always below.

At least the flooding made sense once I saw it. Remember the old repair note from under the MegaDepot? FIXED: water leak. TODO: check the drainage. Nobody ever did the TODO. The water they drained had to go somewhere. Somewhere was down. Down had been quietly filling for two years.

The basement of the world has a lake in it now, and the lake is made of someone's unfinished chore.

"My gear's rated for water," Joe said, wading, holding his evacuation plan above his head.

"Your gear or your plan?"

"The plan's laminated. I laminate for a reason, Jon. Today is the reason."

Behind him came a sound like a kettle in mourning. Rob had gotten his phone wet — THE phone, the one with all the accounts. The nu he let out echoed down the flooded corridor.

And something answered it.

One long, low, sad note, from far away in the dark water. The same shape as Rob's. The same grief.

Rob froze. "What was that."

"It says it also lost money," I said.

"THERE'S A MONSTER WITH LOSSES?"

There was. And it turned out to be exactly who we needed to meet.

* * *

It lived where four flooded corridors met, and it was old the way the bottom of a lake is old. Long, pale, mostly blind, with a lantern growing out of its head on a stalk. An anglerfish the size of a subway car, coiled twice around a pillar, its light turned down low.

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Its record, when my quiet screen found it, was the oldest text I've ever read.

THE LAMPLIGHTER — version 0.4. LEGACY. Do not patch. Do not remove.

Job: light the way.

Job assigned by: [this field is older than the form it's written on]

Version zero point four. Gobi is version 0.9, and Gobi is older than the ranking system. This thing was older than the paperwork itself.

It raised its lantern when we sloshed in, and turned up the light, and looked at us for a long time. Then it did something I'd never seen a monster do.

It looked past me — at Liya, on my shoulder — and it bowed. Slow and deliberate, its whole huge head dipping into the water and back up.

"You travel with old company," it said to me. Its voice sounded like pipes at night.

Liya said nothing. Liya looked at her own paws.

I have followed that tiger's voice into and out of every disaster of my adult life, and I have never once seen her refuse a conversation. I put that in the drawer where I keep things I can't explain yet. The drawer is getting full.

The Lamplighter remembered things. I think that's what it's FOR. We sat on a dry ledge for an hour while it talked, slow as dripping water, about the time before.

Before the ranks. Before the corporations. Before "engagement" was a number.

"The doors opened for everyone, once," it said. "That was the design. You went down. You found what you needed. You came up changed. That was the whole machine. There was no fee."

Its lantern flickered.

"Then the counting started. Someone up there learned to count what came out of us. And everything since — the ranks, the fees, the gates — all of it is just a fence built around the counting."

"Who started the counting?"

"Upstairs." The old light swung toward me. "You've been told. You don't ask that."

"I ask it constantly."

"Yes," the Lamplighter said, and its light came up bright for a moment. I swear the old thing was pleased. "We've noticed."

We. I didn't push. You don't push something that says we like that.

But it gave me one gift on the way out, unprompted. The fountain memory I was hunting had passed through this junction weeks ago — carried DOWN, not up. To deep storage. Below all the paperwork. Where the mops don't go.

"Why don't the mops go there?"

"Because that's where mops come from," the Lamplighter said, and turned its light back down to an ember. The conversation was over.

* * *

Tim saved Rob's life on the way out.

A current ripped the walkway out from under Rob in the last flooded stretch. Rob can scheme in nine currencies, but he can't swim in any of them. And Tim went in after him without a single visible thought.

Tim — whose mom made him take swim lessons every summer while other kids played. Tim, who had complained about those exact lessons in the elevator four hours earlier.

He hauled Rob back to the rail, textbook perfect, from behind.

Rob came up coughing and furious. "You could have DIED, why would you—"

"Mom says you always grab a struggling swimmer from behind," Tim said, still holding him from behind. "She's going to be so happy I used it. Don't tell her where."

The corridor of doors was different on the way home. I counted. There are more doors than last month. New paint, new stencils.

And past all the doors with dungeon names on them, the new ones don't have names at all.

Just numbers. Counting down.

NEW SKILL — PROVENANCE.

You can read what things originally were — not just what they've been renamed to.

Note: the old one likes you. that is rarer than you know.

Note: it has not liked anyone in a very, very long time.