Dungeons & Deliveries - A Post Apocalypse Comedy Adventure [Book 1 Complete]

"You know, [Mo], you aren't such a bad guy after all," Alex complimented [The Motivator] by his preferred name as they walked back through the halls of the Dungeon. His stomach cramped again, but he ignored it. Probably adrenaline comedown.

"Sure, yeah, you try and exhaust Adventurers with brutal workouts before grinding them with a modified treadmill thing, but you know what? We all got a job, right?"

[The Motivator] finished a set of perfect lunges while carrying Alex's mountain of video games with zero effort. "Oh, yes," Mo answered. "You just gotta keep that core tight, keep your heart open, and put your best foot forward! It's all just a set, anyways."

Alex shook his head. "Man, you are terrifyingly positive."

The walk back through Honest Ed's took a while. Mo taught him more about Monster life in thirty minutes than he learned his whole life. Apparently, the Monster spent most of his time doing three things. Working out, upgrading his death-trap room, and partying with other Monsters in their private, Monsters-only areas of the Dungeon.

Not a bad life, I guess?

Another cramp twisted through his belly, harder this time. He winced and pressed a hand as if that would help. Something was off.

"Hey, Mo?" Alex asked, with the sudden urge to summon Brody to his current location. "Does the Dungeon feel weird to you?"

Mo paused mid-step and glanced around the hallway. His giant shoulders squared and he became more serious, dropping the workout instructor act. "Let me scout ahead. Freeda will kill me again if I don't protect you on your way out."

Before Alex could protest, the buff Monster made of weights and women's spandex clomped ahead around the hallway. Somehow, he managed to flex his glutes the whole way.

Mo's voice floated back. "No, nothing weird! Though this place could use a lot more—"

A vicious crack split off his sentence. Like a death howl, it lasted only a millisecond, but in that moment, it chilled Alex right down to his bones.

Then came a crash, a hundred plastic cases of video games exploding across the floor. A second later, the heavy, horrifyingly loud thud of a giant Monster made of weights slamming into the concrete followed. There had been no warning, and definitely no fight. Alex hadn't seen, but the bottom fell out from his upper intestine and he knew. Something had attacked and killed [The Motivator] with a single Skill.

"Damnit, Harold!" An angry, high-pitched voice called. "That's not him!"

Alex knew that voice.

"Oh," Another sounded. "Well, I just reacted. Quick, help me hide the body. Use that eating Skill you have, Barty. He'll be here any minute."

Barty?

"No, you idiot," Mr. Mystical barked. "That was a Monster. The Boss already knows that we're here now! You stupid, System-forsaken book!"

Alex shifted his feet ever so slightly to prepare running the hell away.

"How can you be so—" Mr. Mystical paused before whispering. "Did you hear that?"

His heart hammered in his chest. A single drop of sweat dropped off his forehead and hit the concrete floor. Breathing heavily, Alex frantically checked to see how much Essence he'd cycled into his Core during his casual walk back to the front with Mo. Some, but not very much at all. And now Mr. Mystical was somehow here, in the Dungeon with him, just a corner away.

Creaking his neck without moving his feet, he looked back down the hallway and spotted a door. Probably to some other part of the Dungeon he hadn't visited.

CRACK

The same death howl sounded. Before Alex could even turn around, he reacted by pure delivery instinct. With his barely recovered Essence, he activated a [Phantom Step] back down the hallway and away from the corner. A millisecond later, he reappeared and sprinted as fast as he could towards the door. The wall of the Dungeon hall exploded and simply ceased to exist.

Alex sprinted away right toward the door back into the depths of the Dungeon.

"Freeda!" He shouted. "Help! FREEDA!"

There was no way he was calling Brody. His [Illusory Copy] was far too weak, and he wouldn't risk it.

RUNNNNNNN!

A jagged hole of nothingness remained where the wall had been. Since Dungeons were their own pocket realities, stitched together by a Boss's will and stabilized by the System, Harold's [Reality Disruptor] blasted through it. All that remained was a depthless absence of erased existence.

"Oh, for the love of the SYSTEM!" Mr. Mystical whizzed around the corner on his Persian rug with Harold flapping aggressively ahead like a bird.

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Alex yelled bloody murder and sprinted right through the door, entering The Bins Room. Mimics, who hadn't gotten the news that the delivery boy wasn't to be eaten, awoke. Blood-toothed worm maws erupted out of giant blue bins and tried to get a meal. All manner of thriftable goods were swallowed quickly, as there was much better flavour to be had in meat. Alex just yelled for Freeda and sprinted for his damn life.

Both ghosts chased Alex as if their own undead lives depended on it. It wasn't easy to kill a ghost, but the Collector had Mr. Mystical's obsessive purpose for living in his possession. That was motivation enough.

Brody was running on fumes. He was hurting and exhausted. His legs burned and his arms felt like they were swinging weights. Being stuck in the Unspace and subject to Mr. Mystical's torment had taken its toll on him. He wasn't perfect any longer. But that didn't matter.

Through the Link, he felt everything Alex felt.

The looping "oh shit oh shit oh shit" in his his skull. The spike of panic, and every close call with death. Most importantly, the animalistic instinct to run the hell away from a terrifying presence. A presence Brody knew too well. The stupid flapping book and the blathering Mr. Mystical.

His best and only friend was in serious trouble. Brody needed to get to him. He didn't think on what would happen to him if Alex perished, only the need to help his best friend.

He leapt six feet over a [Fabric Ant] and landed on its wide back like a springboard. Using it as a launching pad, he sprinted three steps and jumped into a double-flip. Just for good measure, he smashed his heel into the head of a second Ant, cracking whatever lay inside under layers of rough denim jackets. A hop left and a skid right, followed by a perfect matrix style duck under projectiles, he pushed himself to his physical limits. Soon enough, the mutated Fabrics section of the famous thrift store was behind him.

He pushed the Link again, harder this time. Alex wasn't summoning him. The idiot. Probably worried that Brody would also be in danger if he did. If only his friend could feel his reaching, calling screams to be let in.

There had to be more to [Illusory Copy.[ There HAD to. He could think, couldn't he? He had thoughts and feeling and wanted things. Brody even made choices. He was a person with a name! Right now, all he wanted was to GET TO ALEX and KILL THE STUPID GHOSTS.

Brody roared wordlessly while slamming his fist through a massive plastic-container boulder blocking his path. It crumpled under the first strike, and he broke his knuckles on the second. But he also tore into the plastic shell and ripped out a beating plastic steak like a heart and screamed as he dashed off.

His breath was heavy, and from the exhaustion, his vision was blurred. Even the perfect illusory copy of a perfect delivery boy has his limits. Yet he still reached again and again, clawing mentally at the wall of the Link with Alex.

LET ME GET TO HIM.

LET ME GO.

LET ME---

The Link shook, which surprised him as he vaulted over a washing machine with more knife teeth than reason. Body slamming a refrigerator with a thing for getting trucked, he ran as fast as he could down the hallway.

LET ME IN! He demanded.

And the System felt something in the Planar Fields. Recognizing it as sufficient, It thought for a nanosecond, and pushed out a Title.

What a curious little creature, It thought.

Brody stumbled and fell as the Title was rewarded to him, skidding to a halt on the concrete floor. Despite how exhausted he was, he laughed in his guttural way and began to pick himself back up.

[Title Rewarded: Ride-or-Die Replicant]

[Nothing gets between you and your friends. Not Monsters, walls, or worlds.]

[This Title Grants: No-Matter Step]

Doesn't Alex have [Phantom Step]? Brody thought as he faced the wall. Alex was in that direction, he could sense it.

Like his friend, without any caution, Brody active his first use of [No-Matter Step] and phased twenty feet through the wall and into Endless Aisles of Luxury Goods. He cracked his neck and shot off, grinning and flexing his broken hand as the first bags descended upon him. Alex was closer now, but he still needed to fight his way to him.

Through the Link, he felt Alex howl as Monsters forced him in the direction of another door, with vicious Skills exploding right behind him.

But Brody smiled and punched through a [Bag Monster] worth fifty thousand Credits. He'd get to his friend much faster now. And he had a whole world of hurt to deliver to a couple of ghosts.

Emilio grunted and unleashed a bolt of lighting at the door to The Collector's Domain, Bits and Bobbles. He'd always known the Lich was there. After all, he saw everything in Toronto from his sky perch. He had allowed this pesky little pest to play games for far too long. The attack banged against the metal door and only spiderwebbed it.

Shocking.

He crouched, big rump wiggling, and blasted a second bolt. That one shattered the frame. Then he [Zoomied] forward and blasted through the door into the dusty shop.

Smoke billowed and he'd destroyed a display of Relic Coins and Keys. Completely melted them with his attack. But where was the main course? Where was the cowardly Collector who used others to hunt?

The cluttered shop was silent. Thousands of Relics pinged his eyes as he searched and crouched. Emilio flicked his tail while listening for the smallest twitch of live, or undead, prey.

Nothing.

He spun and hopped silently onto a stack of tomes, sniffing for any hint of scent. It was just dust and sad, twisted Magic. Stale prey too long dead to enjoy. But there wasn't the scent of a Lich.

They were undead, not dead dead. There was a difference that Emilio could pick out with his perfect nose and sharp eyes. But in the shop, there was nothing. No sign of movement, no twitches, no nothing.

A low growl built in his throat.

He spun, suddenly activated, and scanned every shelf and shadow. Still, there was no prey to be found. Finally though, with his all seeing eyes that sent him an endless barrage of System information, he caught something on a high shelf. It was a book.

He knew that book. Had walked past it since they moved into the house. Until the ghost inhabiting it decided it wanted more than a comfortable life in his house.

The hair on his back stood straight up as he realized what had happened.

[Harold – A Permanently Dead, Traitorous Book]

Energy ripped from his paws as he bolted from Bits and Bobbles, rushing into the night with his top speed. He'd been tricked by prey that had convinced him that the it always stayed in its Domain.

The Collector was gone. He swore he'd seen him there just a short while ago when flying over.

Emilio didn't wonder why, or how. He leapt off the ground while onlookers gawked at a fat cat taking off like a jet and sailed in the direction of his Companion. Searching through his Companion connection with Alex, Emilio felt fear as he realized how much terror Alex was in. It grew to anger as he pushed harder across the Toronto skyline, a chunky glowing missile of fur.

Many photographs from phones were taken of the mysterious flying cat. For a week, a flying Emilio, with a paw extended like a famous superhero, was the number one post on the entire post-System internet. No one ever caught another photo of him again.