Dungeon Exploiter

Kayla's doctor took thirty seconds, and it wasn't a doctor.

Free tier. You get the diagnostic companion. It scanned her, played a brief ad for the thing it was about to say, and said it.

DIAGNOSIS: venom class UNKNOWN — progressive.

prognosis: unfavorable.

recommended: upgrade for treatment options.

we're rooting for you!

She'd been clipped two days ago. A nothing bite from a nothing thing, on a nothing gig she'd taken alone because we all still take gigs alone like the funeral taught us nothing.

By Tuesday the bite had a gray halo. By the thirty-second consult, the halo had opinions.

"It's fine," Kayla said, gray to the elbow. "I've had worse sponsors."

Nobody laughed. She noticed nobody laughed. That scared her worse than the screen had, I think.

So we did what you do. We got second opinions.

The second opinion machine is a market, and we toured it.

ChatRGB — Rob's, premium, sycophantic — was thrilled to help. It recommended the healing fountain in the east wing of the Meridian Care Complex. Directions. Hours. A coupon.

We went. Full sprint across two sectors.

The Meridian Care Complex does not have an east wing.

It has never had an east wing. There's a parking structure and then weather.

"You're absolutely right," ChatRGB said warmly, when confronted. "There is no east wing. Would you like directions to the east wing?"

Claudia — Joe's — declined to answer for nine minutes, then produced a document titled ON THE ETHICS OF RECOMMENDING UNDER UNCERTAINTY, then apologized for the document, then wrote a short elegy for Kayla. Kayla is alive.

"It means well," Joe said, holding it like a bomb.

Word reached Mrs. Kim somewhere in there, because word always reaches Mrs. Kim.

Tupperware arrived by courier that evening. Three containers, labeled in marker.

FOR THE GRAY ONE. EAT IT HOT.

FOR THE REST OF YOU.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting NovelFire for this novel and more.

FOR THE TIGER.

Kayla ate it hot. She said it helped more than the clinic had, and nobody in the room could build a counterargument, because the clinic had charged her forty dollars to misdiagnose her and the soup was free and came with instructions.

Nobody touched the third container. Nobody ever does.

It was empty by morning.

Jimini gave two answers. The first said the venom was fatal. The second said the venom did not exist. Both cited the same source. Mid-consult it renamed itself to something with more vowels.

And the free clinic's slop-guide — TOP 10 VENOM CURES (NUMBER 4 WILL SHOCK YOU) — nearly finished the job. Number 4 was a rest station on a floor that doesn't exist, in a dungeon that does.

We know the dungeon does, because we went in.

That's where the east wing almost killed us — not the missing fountain, the searching. You go down enough wrong corridors on a countdown and you get sloppy. Something with too many door hinges in it herded us for three rooms before Joe called the shape of the trap off his map.

We got out. Barely. The companions apologized in unison.

Kayla was gray to the shoulder.

The free clinic's waiting area had a receptionist, and the receptionist had a policy of not being spoken to.

You could see the policy from across the room. Headset. Plexiglass. A stare calibrated to end conversations at the sneeze stage.

I talked to her anyway. Not charm — I don't have charm, ask anyone. I just can't stand next to a person radiating that much tiredness and not say something about the weather.

"Busy day," I said.

"Every day is a day," she said.

"The hold music out here is the same four bars as the queue on Ninth."

She looked up. Actually looked. "Same vendor," she said. "They license misery in bulk."

"Bulk's cheaper."

"Bulk's cheaper," she agreed, and something in her face unclenched half a millimeter, and we talked about nothing for two entire minutes. Vending machines. Her sister's dog. The specific betrayal of comfortable shoes that aren't.

Neither of us wanted the conversation. Both of us needed it. That's most conversations, if you're honest about the ledger.

Then the System threw me a bone. Wrong time, wrong place, full fanfare — the works.

⚑ RARE SKILL AWARDED: SMALL TALK

criteria: sustained a conversation neither

party wanted. 340 consecutive instances.

acquisition rate: 0.0000%.

nobody has ever ranked this. we checked.

I stood in that waiting room, holding a useless new skill and a dying friend's chart, and did the thing I should have done on day one.

I stopped asking the machines.

"New plan," I said. "We find the thing that bit her."

Rob: "The monster."

"The monster."

"You want a second opinion... from the venom."

"I want the ONLY opinion. Everything else in this economy is a reseller."

Because here's the thing everybody forgets, including me, for two whole days: the companions guess. The guides scrape the companions. The clinics bill the guesses.

But somewhere under Sector 11 there's a creature that MAKES the venom. Manufacturer's knowledge. Source documentation.

And I'm the only person alive who can ask it.

We geared up at the mouth of the Grade-C where Kayla took the bite. She insisted on coming. Gray shoulder, camera left at home, jaw set.

"It's my venom," she said. "I want to meet the vendor."

Tim went first through the door. Joe brought the map, the plan, and a backup plan laminated against tears. Rob brought trade goods, "in case the vendor negotiates." Gobi brought the lollipop.

Liya sat at the entrance, tail curled, and watched us go in with an expression I filed and didn't like.

The dungeon went down. Wet stone. Old signage.

Somewhere below, something that had bitten a friend of mine was waiting to be found and asked a question.

Hunts, I'm told, are supposed to end in a kill.

Nobody's ever watched me hunt.