CWD: OE ~ Sixteen

Firefly Potstickers danced overhead, lighting up the room as Nacho and his friends gaped at the ruins of a See’s Candy store. Shattered glass from ravaged display cases crunched beneath their feet as they eased across the cracked floor tiles, highlighting the fact that all of the candy was gone. Yet wrappers, boxes, and other packaging littered nearly every surface. The place had clearly been ransacked, even though the sweet, lingering scent of candy remained. Two oversized wooden doors offered them choices for further delving, one on the left, the other to the right.

A System message blasted into their brains, causing each of them to flinch, and a slight trickle of blood erupted from Jennifer’s nose.

Welcome, Player, to the Sweet Skillz Welcome Dungeon! It’s not a Welcome Dungeon for you, Earthlings. This is a big warm welcome dungeon for the friends, strangers, and murderers visiting from what you call the CrossWorld. They call it CruxTerra, which has a certain irony to it.

All you need to know is that the CruxTerrans have beaten their Welcome Dungeon and acquired a bunch of cool new abilities. To be totally fair, a certain CrossHuman with a cool curved sword cleared out much of the place himself, so there aren’t many monsters or loot deposits left.

Even so, there are some goodies still waiting in the deeper levels.

But you don’t want the deeper levels, do you?

You want a quick trip through.

We can offer that, and we can sweeten the pot.

Get through this dungeon without making even a single kill, and we’ll give you twenty-five thousand credits each! When we say kills, we mean no kills—no murdering monsters, other humans, CrossHumans, or each other.

P.S. They didn’t find the entrance to the Starvation Dungeon. Not yet. Are you able to do it?

Be warned: the Starvation Dungeon is the next big event! Your Worlds hang in the balance!

“Ah, blast it.” Jennifer snapped her fingers with a dramatic swing of her arm. “I was going to murder all of you in your sleep. Now it’s not profitable. Hey, you guys would have gone to sleep if we’d found a bed in here, right?”

“Edgy jokes from the new girl.” Reuben’s characteristic laugh carried a hint of concern. “Still waiting to find out whether they’re actually jokes, or if she has been genuinely threatening us since she first met us?”

Brie was less optimistic about the dark humor than the guys were. “Say something like that even one more time, and I’m going to have to take the threat seriously. Don’t make me do that.”

Jennifer choked out a small noise that could have been a nervous laugh. ‘You got it. Not joking.”

Nacho couldn’t help but smile smugly. “You’re not joking? You do have a plan to murder us.”

“Not a good one,” Jennifer sighed wistfully, her tiny smirk replaced by a pained yelp as Brie’s lacrosse stick swung out, took her legs out from under her, then whipped up and around to crush the downed woman’s head.

The cook casually blocked the strike with his knives braced in an ‘x’ pattern to disperse the force. “Sorry, Brie. That was my fault; I goaded her.”

“I warned her,” the Berserker reminded them coldly, eyes still on the dropped newcomer. “Next time, I won’t stop after one hit.”

“That would have cost us a hundred thousand credits cumulatively if it landed,” Reuben pointed out casually. “Blood and cheese, absolutely. Gotta protect your friends; I’m on board. Still, maybe we all take a nice, easy step back, and relax into the dungeon theme.”

From further up the stairs, the clank of armor reminded them that they were neither alone nor safe. Almost immediately, the stink of zombies swept over them in a cloud of aerosolized decay. Grimacing, the cook grabbed Jennifer’s hand and hauled her to her feet. “Necromancers likely have skills to heal their creations, which means they have probably recharged their army and are sending them down. No time for relaxing, it seems.”

Without a thought, Nacho chose the door to the right, shoving it open and leading the others through a corridor lined with smashed glass shelves. He directed half of his potstickers into the darkness—revealing a grimy dirt corridor with a dusty packed floor, glittering with piles of pulverized glass.

“Marching orders, big boss man?” Jennifer questioned with a wary glance at Brie.

Yoo-hoo, Player! Did someone say marching orders? People listen to you? On purpose? Would you like to add Jennifer Ales to the Dinner Party?

Yes / No

Jennifer knew what message he’d just gotten, and she could see the hesitation in his eyes. “You don’t have to add me to your party. You don’t know me; I get it.”

“No, that would be pretty sucky of us not to add you in.” Nacho made the call, and a moment later, Jennifer’s basic status information appeared in their party view. Not much else changed, except she could see how many credits they had pooled together, and it would be easy to show each other their Stat Sheets when the time came.

Nacho motioned for their Berserker to take point. Up front, she could protect them, though they had to try not to kill anything they came across. That reward was tempting. He paused mid-step, realizing what was really going on. “Everyone, I think that we need to be extra careful, and if it comes down to it, don’t hold back from killing anything that needs to die. Those credits aren’t a reward… they’re a challenge to make the dungeon harder. Way harder. If we can’t do it and keep all of us alive, don’t bother.”

“Now that you mention it, that seems like a lot of credits for a quick stroll through a cleared dungeon,” Reuben affirmed consideringly, nodding at Nacho in clear approval.

“I’ll be in the back.” Nacho slammed his Skillet of Turtling into place. “If those zombies come up faster than we expect, I can tank the hits. Any fire blasts will fail against me as well.”

They crunched across the shattered glass for a few steps before Reuben paused and looked back the way they had come. “Make sure to close all doors we go through. That way, they might get lost, or otherwise be unable to follow us. At minimum, it will slow them down.”

Judging by the clamor filtering through the wooden door, the Walking Fists had made it down to the entrance room. Armor-clad zombies clanked, and the whispers of the Mind Players echoed way too loudly for it to be a natural effect.

Nacho wondered what kind of offer the Walking Fists had gotten as a Welcome message. Were they promised the same twenty-five thousand credits each for no killing? Or did the Patrons make them an offer to end Eli ‘Nacho’ Naches for the same amount?

It wasn’t clear, but one thing that the cook did know for sure was that the Patrons weren’t throwing them a bone. Something else was going on in these tunnels.

The corridor of brutalized shelves ended in a four-way intersection. The packed earth gave way to a blank concrete floor. The walls had become plain, white drywall. Overall, the dungeon so far felt like walking through the back hallways of a local shopping mall, only, the ceiling above was still hard-packed dirt, and the sweet smell of chocolate and cookies lingered in the air.

“Lot better than undead stink, smoke, or whatever filth was seeping through the portal. Kinda hard to believe this place can smell so good when literally everything else in the area smells terrible. Jennifer, sorry to say you are included in that list, through no fault of your own.” Reuben warily regarded the bare earth overhead as Jennifer held herself back from sending a cutting remark his way. “Speaking of things all around us, while I’m not exactly claustrophobic, I don’t want to be buried alive. You know, it’s something I’ve tried to avoid nearly as much as making the IRS angry.”

“No money means no IRS, and also the tax is applied to our guild automatically, so there’s no need to set up anything similar in this world,” Brie reminded the group quietly. “Please keep your head in the game, guys. We need to decide which tunnel to take. Or do you all prefer we fight the zombies and necromancers behind us? If so, we should grab a bite to eat first.”

“Let’s not fight,” It took Nacho an uncomfortably long time to settle on his final choice. “We should save our food for our CrossWorld trip. We just need to hurry, and avoid killing anything if we can get away with it.”

“Right, good call.” Reuben shook the sausage clips on his wrists. “No Cooking Magic and No Positive Vibes means less of a chance that we’ll kill something if we need to slap it out of the way. I’m only doing seventeen damage per punch without any buffs. Wait… I forgot, I do double damage against any food-related monsters.”

“Which we’re bound to run into in the Sweet Skillz dungeon.” Jennifer smiled as she caught where he was going with his leading statement.

“Good, love the rapid choices we’re making.” Brie tapped her foot impatiently. ‘All of this is fascinating. Back to my original question: which way are we going?”

Nacho tried to picture where the entrance of the dungeon stood in relation to where the Portal should be. “Straight. Go straight.”

Brie jogged ahead as silently as possible, with the rest of the group falling in behind her. The central corridor widened, and the cement floor ended only twenty feet after they’d entered the passage. Nacho and his friends abruptly found themselves standing on the edge of a slimy mud pit with crystalline stones placed in a path crossing the room. The white walls were gone as quickly as they had appeared, replaced by thick mud and crumbly dirt. The ceiling expanded into a stunning array of jagged crystals, each one gleaming in the light of the fluttering Potstickers.

The sugary smell was almost stifling. Nacho paused, taking a closer look at the area they were in. “Those rocks look a bit too brightly colored… that’s not mud on the ground. Look. The particles are too grainy, and there’s a white substance mixed in.”

The crystal pathway through the murk ran straight across the wide room before splitting into passageways, once again offering a choice of going to the left or the right.

“Let’s keep to the right,” Brie directed, taking Nacho’s points into consideration. “But we’re going to have to cross on the stone path, so be wary.”

“You know what this looks like?” Jennifer tapped her chin with her combat spoon, then swished it at the ceiling. Even with the tool, the lowest stalactite was too far up for her to reach. “Rock candy, not real rocks. Maybe that’s where the smell is coming from?”

“Then… could this be…” Reuben crouched and stuck a finger into the mud bog. He sniffed the sludge, then licked it, making everyone wince, and Brie gagged. “This isn’t a mud bog. Well, not just a mud bog. This is made at least partially from Oreos… we called it dirt cake, and-”

He cut off with a yelp as something shot out of the murk at his face. It was anaconda-sized, and it wasn’t alone. Others wriggled up from the sweet depths of the cookie pit, and Nacho and his friends were unexpectedly thrown into Active Combat.

Even Nacho, terrible cook that he was, remembered dirt cake. He had been able to buy it fully made, after all. It was a mixture of chocolate sandwich cookies, fudge-flavored pudding, whipped cream, and powdered sugar. He’d heard complaints that the recipe didn’t call for powdered sugar, but he’d dust it on top anyway. That way, he could claim that he had ‘made it’ for anyone that wanted a bite.

There was one final ingredient that usually made its way in: gummy worms.

“Get across; I’ll keep them busy!” Brie spun her lacrosse stick in her hand and sent a wave of energy cycling across the roiling cookie bog. Her Defensive Whirl deflected giant gummy worms around her husband—barely in time to save him from getting mauled by the round mouths full of jagged teeth.

“What kind of gummy anatomy do these worms have?” Reuben had recovered and was racing across the room, shouting his confusion for all to hear. “Is the stomach acid of the monster sweet? What about the brain?”

Brie’s thrown Defensive Whirl had stunned a bunch of the monster worms, but another one appeared at the other end of the dirt bog. Reuben waited until it slithered close enough and threw a punch, hitting the worm so hard that it dropped and began to flail and flop around, flinging cookie dirt everywhere. Reuben laughed darkly as he cracked his knuckles. “Instant concussion on Tier one monsters! Seventy-nine Health each, just as a heads up. Have I mentioned that I love double damage?”

Reuben cleared the way with a flurry of jabs, quickly reaching the other side where the rock candy path split. He hurried to the right, then held back to let Jennifer and Nacho run past him. It was clear that he wasn’t going to leave the room without his wife.

The cook started to calculate whether he needed to join in the action, but Jennifer kept her paddle and spoon ready in case something came for them out of the darkness that lay ahead. Both were unneeded, as Brie Combat Dashed across the room, clearing the way by directly knocking aside anything that got in her way.

“Getting across the dirt cake is going to be a real challenge for the Mind Players and their zombies,” Jennifer commented as she watched the worms writhe a little more before sinking back into the delicious danger dessert. She pulled Nacho down the passageway to the right so that Reuben and Brie had enough room to stand on the rock candy stones in the cookie dirt.

Brie snatched a tube of Life Hack yogurt and pinched it, sucking it down with a single gulp. When she caught Nacho staring, she shrugged. “Don’t worry. I won’t double-stack the Fitness increases. Just the one.”

“Love that you’re able to open your throat like that.” Reuben whistled softly. “Not a skill many people have, being able to take a full portion with such ease.”

Brie squinted at him as she retrieved a peanut butter ball. “Why do I feel like you’re being gross?”

“Was that Go-Gurt?” Jennifer questioned as Brie tossed the used tube to the side. “Still can’t get over the fact that littering is fine now.”

“I do love how clean everything stays.” Brie made a face as she considered the food she had just taken in. “It’s kind of like Go-Gurt, with cottage cheese added. All prepared by someone that doesn't understand flavor profiles in the slightest.”

Jennifer wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. “Yikes. Back on Earth, I was lactose intolerant. That sounds bad enough even without your cook measuring it out to keep things balanced.”

“Careful, now…” Reuben cautioned her as Nacho winced and slapped his forehead. “You’re around the three cheeses here. Let’s all try to be very lactose tolerant of the people around us.”

“Is that what I’ve been missing? Measuring cups and stuff?” Nacho’s mutter wasn’t nearly as quiet as he had thought it was going to be.

“What do you mean?” Reuben, normally the voice of reason, sounded cold. “Have you just been eyeballing your recipes?”

“What’s the real difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon anyway?” Nacho was still lost in his own thoughts. “You use both of them to stir a cup of coffee. Either, I should say.”

“I can help him, I think. Brewing is all about exact measurements as well.” Jennifer’s offer earned her a warm smile from Reuben, and a much kinder considering gaze from Brie. “Also, they’re catching up.”

The first of the armored zombies shuffled into the room, only to immediately step foot into the bog and get swarmed by gummy worms. Nacho’s stomach fell as he watched: he knew two of the zombies. Remy Radix, and Stephen Grote. They must’ve died during the CrossHuman attack.

Reuben recognized them at the same moment. “Nacho, I’m sorry, bro. Those two… we knew we took casualties, but to actually see the casualties walking around after we lost them is pretty messed up.”

Nacho watched as the bodies of people he once knew were turned into worm food. His jaw tightened, “At least now we know that the Necromancers can turn regular people into their Tier one zombies, not just CrossHumans.”

“Let’s go. We can’t do anything for them here.” Brie soberly led the way, and Nacho followed after one long moment where he considered taking out all the Necromancers as they crossed the bog. Only the fact that he was alone made him turn and follow.

The rock candy path brought them into another cavernous room, where the floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of the glistening rock candy. A surprisingly ornate rock candy fountain burbled a bright yellow liquid into a ruby red basin. From the smell, it was lemonade, and they all hoped that was the case, since Reuben walked right up to it and took a *slurp* with no hesitation. He gave them a thumbs-up. “Not a sewage line!”

The ceiling and walls were a swirled mixture of lemon candy and lime candy, yellow and green, though the floor was pink and the fountain dark red. A bright blue door waited on the other side of the room, and the sheer number of clashing colors hurt Nacho’s eyes.

A menacing *sucking* sound echoed off the hardened candy surfaces as a lime-green slime monster reminiscent of a living Jell-O salad peeled off the brightly colored ceiling. Inside its translucent mass, instead of marshmallows and fruit chunks, floated the remnants of other players. Brie held up one hand and took the measure of the monster. “Those look exactly like those grubling sacks from the Deep Buggy Darkness. You think those are real bodies inside, or are they just a thematic thing?”

The System threw up the Active Combat message as the Jell-O monster’s tentacles lashed out, catching Reuben around one arm. He took the damage and swung his other fist into the tentacle. The food-related monster took a whole lotta damage, and the remnants of its tentacle splattered across the room.

“Same plan as before!” Brie shoved Jennifer forward to get her moving. “I’ll clear the way, and then I’ll use Combat Dash to join you. Run!”

“I wanted to taste that lemonade, too,” Jennifer joked as her feet started pounding across the sugary surface. “I’m sure it’s delicious.”

“It was,” Reuben confirmed cheerfully. Another Jell-O slime, this one yellow, peeled away from the wall and lashed out with jiggly tentacles, only for Jennifer to smack them away with her spoon and paddle.

Nacho had his cleaver and skillet out, and he hacked into the tentacle of a third monster, this one another lime green. His blade struck, but the monster’s limb wobbled away without any visible damage.

Damage dealt: None! This creature is immune to slashing damage!

The Patrons had straight-up lied about the dungeon being mostly dead. Two rooms had already unveiled two sets of sticky-sweet monsters. The Sweet Skillz Welcome Dungeon was definitely alive and kicking.

Between the boosts they could bring to bear, Nacho and his friends would have dealt with the slime monster easily enough, but… the reward was tempting. Brie threw her Defensive Whirl across the floor, which slapped away all the tentacles with a cyclone of energy. Nacho, Reuben, and Jennifer sprinted along in its wake and flung open the bright blue door, followed easily by Brie, who used a Combat Dash to join them.

The Walking Fists’ forces would have to fight their way through the gummy worms, the Jell-O slimes, and whatever else had spawned. It was unlikely that they would be able to avoid the fight like The Dinner Party was managing to do, which allowed Nacho to relax slightly. If the four of them could just focus on the dungeon, and not worry about the people chasing them, everything would be that much easier.

They passed through multiple other treat-related rooms, culminating in having to duck away from rocky candy golems. They kept moving the entire time they traversed the dungeon, all the way until they discovered candy mosaic steps that led up through a back exit and emerged into the forest above. Once again, Nacho noticed a huge portcullis that had been retracted into the ceiling. If that had been closed, they wouldn’t have been able to escape the dungeon. He wasn’t sure what the gates were for, or what was required in order to close them.

In the end, they emerged from the Sweet Skillz Welcome Dungeon without killing a single saccharine assailant, resulting in a clamorous *cha-ching* as each of their balances grew twenty-five thousand credits richer in an instant.

It was a sweet little bonus, and the shortcut had helped them lose the necromancers. However, they found themselves in the middle of the forest fire, and they were forced to walk up candy steps that were half-melted from the heat. Jennifer had a pained look on her face as she observed the flaming devastation she had set off. “I feel bad for this. Should I feel bad? I mean, it’s not an Earth forest, but it is a forest.”

“A monster forest, filled with zombies, Necromancers, and CrossHumans. Probably some trees corrupted to the point of becoming actual threats in their own right as well. Feel bad for nothing that died in the fire,” Nacho gently reminded her. “Only thing is, everything has Putrid Mana in it. Cover your mouths, and try not to breathe in the smoke. All those trees had the chance to grow into Tier three monsters someday, so I think a forest fire is just fine if it actually manages to slow them down.”

Reuben coughed, going slightly pale as he clutched at his chest. “Okay, while I love our banter, we need to get going before this smoke makes me puke.”

“It’s this way.” Brie pointed for effect, but all of them knew where to look. Even with the stifling smoke assaulting their senses, the unmistakable stench of the Portal was far stronger. As they walked through literal fire toward a new world, Nacho couldn’t deny he felt nervous. No human had ever gone through the Portal and returned to tell the tale. He shook off the worry and steeled his mind. “I’ve already survived one new world. Just have to make sure we survive another.”