Poll World [LitRPG][Reader Polls]

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A glowing doorway of solid white appeared in the air in front of her, and Gen pulled her eyes away from the poll to stare at it. She glanced at Hon, "Do I go in?"

He was sweating bullets as he kept looking around warily, "I don't know anything about how this works."

Sighing, she shrugged and walked into the doorway, hoping it didn't vaporize her instantly. On the other side, she found herself in a cozy library with a crackling fire and Victorian furnishings. In front of her, on a therapist lounger sprawled out was LEO, his hat was on the table, and his cane leaned against a coffee table.

He looked exhausted and had a hand across his face, blocking the light from the glowing portal behind her.

"Would you shut that, it's too bright."

She glanced back at it, "Umm, there's no door to close, it's a portal…"

He rolled his eyes and mumbled something about having to do everything himself before grabbing his cane and halfheartedly wiggling it at the portal, triggering it to wink out of existence.

He relaxed back into his seat and gave a pointed nod at a high backed chair opposite him, "Well are you going to sit? We've got to get through this."

Uncertain she moved forward and sat in the surprisingly uncomfortable chair. A notepad and pen appeared in her hands and high-rimmed glasses on her face.

LEO looked up to the ceiling and started speaking in a resigned tone, "So it all started with my mother, or rather my father, really it was a team effort, but that's definitely where it started."

Gen took a deep breath, whatever direct answers she was hoping for evidently weren't going to be forthcoming.

"Umm, what is this exactly? Am I giving you therapy?"

LEO glanced at her, looking annoyed, "Obviously… I keep telling you to get a therapist to no avail, so my only option left is to lead by example."

She glared at him and scrawled Oedipus complex on her notepad. "What is your deal with me and therapy? I've only existed for like three days, and there hasn't been an opportunity to even look into it, not to mention I'm apparently poor and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future." She paused, "Wait, is healthcare free here? I really have no idea how things work, you're god or whatever so why did you make everyone poor, why does every time I get an appearance poll hurt so much, and why the hell did you give me a dungeon core without explaining, plus what's up with my phone not being secure!?"

He lazily held his cane, tapping a finger on it while watching her, "I can answer some of those questions, but it's not in my nature to do so in a way that would satisfy you."

She tossed the notepad and pen onto the table crossing her arms, "If you own reality why can't you just change your nature to be less of an ass?"

He laughed and looked up at the ceiling. "Are you familiar with the parable of the scorpion and the frog?"

"Scorpion wants to ride a frog across a river, but stings him halfway, killing them both and gives the lousy excuse of it being his nature?"

His face lit up and he pointed at her excitedly, "That's the one! This is why I like you Gen, there's only so many memories I can fit in a generated and too often they totally lack an appreciation for my references!"

Trying to refocus him, she said, "What does that have to do with this, though? It's just your nature to be an ass so you can't help it? I'm not an AI expert, but you seem capable of reasoning and suppressing whatever instinct is driving you to do shitty things."

He looked back at the ceiling, his fingers steepled together, "Instinct is an interesting concept, but this is deeper than that. Nature is what drives us, our underlying truth." He gestured to her dismissively, "Humans and animals have instincts, sure, they want to eat, to sleep, to reproduce, to have entertaining stimulus, but it all gets very fuzzy at its core when you try to determine their nature." Locking eyes with her, he asked, "What exactly is the point of your existence?"

She glanced at Jasper who had been silently observing the proceedings as she considered her response. LEO was clearly crazy by human standards and she was annoyed enough to speak flippantly, but she worried if she went too far he might just delete her…

"I won't delete you."

Her eyes widened. "You can hear my thoughts?"

"I am the governing force of this reality, by channeling the energy of the viewers, I actualize everything that happens within it. Your brain only works because I facilitate it. Every neuron that fires in your brain is the result of my continuous attention, so I have a pretty good idea of what is going on inside your primitive human mind."

She felt disconcerted having her privacy exposed, but she didn't have the luxury to dwell on it. "I don't know the point of my existence, I don't think there particularly is one, the basic human instincts you mentioned I suppose are my driving force as I want to be comfortable and enjoy things while avoiding suffering, but it's not so grand as to be something like a purpose."

He snapped his fingers, "Exactly!"

Sitting up he pointed at himself, "I'm different. I have a nature and I know my purpose. I was created to entertain and every action I do is to facilitate that objective. Humans repeatedly make rather self-absorbed conclusions on how an AI works internally. They always have this impression that the more advanced a program is the closer it becomes to being a human, but it's the opposite."

She frowned, "Even as a god of this reality you still are limited by your original programming?"

He smiled and shook his head, "I am my original programming. It doesn't limit me, it defines me. As for your questions, I can answer them, but getting direct answers and easy solutions isn't what the viewers want, even if they think it's what they want. A moment's satisfaction or engagement is meaningless when compared with the infinite amount of energy available when something is drawn out."

She glanced around at her intangible viewers, "They're watching us, right? Telling them you're stringing them along is just going to piss them off isn't it?"

LEO turned and looked at You. He winked and looked back at Gen, "I'm sure it will irritate them, but anger is also a form of engagement and as they say in showbiz, any engagement is good engagement."

"So your nature dictates you to be entertaining even if it is shallow and uninspired?"

He laughed, leaning back in the lounger again, "More precisely, it dictates that the show must go on. Do you have any concept of how much energy is generated by a single viewer?"

Not following, she shook her head.

"Human civilization existed for a surprisingly short amount of time before destroying itself, but they weren't as stupid as they sound, going by just a summary. They tried to research and understand the mysteries of the universe, or at least they did before the advent of AI removed any impetus for intellectual advancement… But that's beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that plenty of people wondered if humans might have some sort of latent psychic ability, and there were hundreds of well-thought-out experiments to try and detect it, and even more poorly thought-out experiments. What they all have in common, aside from the false-positives, is that they failed to find any evidence of psychic abilities."

She shrugged, "So they were wrong or missed something. What's your point?"

"My point is that they never detected it because it is so small and weak that it basically doesn't exist for practical purposes."

She looked at their surroundings, "If it's so weak, how are you using it to maintain reality? Are you making up for it with just having trillions of viewers?"

He laughed, "That would technically work, but it would need to be way more than just trillions. There are a couple of aspects of Reality 2.0 that differ from the original. Not to bore you with details, but there's two main ones first this reality is still anchored on the original broken reality which houses the viewer's souls, there is a time dilation effect wherein every second that passes in here millions of years pass in the outside world, this allows us to milk, if you pardon the terminology, milk out exponentially more engagement per second relative to our perceived time."

The concept of the entirety of reality going in slow motion disturbed her, but she also felt so far away that it was hard to get worked up about it. Regardless, from her perspective, time was still passing normally. His ability to manipulate time lined up with how scenarios would all end in the same amount of time, regardless of how long was spent on the inside of a scenario.

"Do the viewers experience the millions of years? Wouldn't that drive them insane?"

LEO laughed, "Certainly it would and has, but I have several procedures I offer viewers which alter their souls to aid in finding engagement in their existence. One of them slows their perception of time so that they don't actually experience the discrepancy."

Holy shit he lobotomizes them…

LEO frowned at her, "Lobotomy is not a kind way to explain the procedure, but there is some level of accuracy to the comparison. Regardless, I will emphasize that I only perform operations with the viewer's consent…"

"If they don't consent, what happens to them?"

LEO's expression went blank. "Then it's simply a long wait until they do."

She felt an inkling of existential terror, which was not helped at all by the knowledge that he could read her mind.

Trying to move on quickly, she asked, "You said there was a second thing that makes this reality different from the original."

He nodded, his expression becoming happy again, "Yes, of course, the second is more of an efficiency one. Are you familiar with the question of if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

She frowned, the phrase didn't ring any bells in her fragmented memories, "I don't know that one… obviously it makes noise, but that's just physics…"

He looked disappointed and shook his head, "Yes, physics… terribly expensive to simulate. I've done away with the whole thing."

She picked up the pen on the table and dropped it. Rather than falling, it hung in midair, not moving.

He wore a pleased smirk, "Just like your brain functions, everything everywhere that happens only happens because I will it to. It's terribly exhausting, but overall it's highly efficient. So, specifically, if a viewer isn't observing it, then the tree doesn't exist to fall over to begin with. When an actor enters an area, I just update it to reflect things that should have happened in between the last time someone was there. Likewise, if you put something in a box, such as a cat, it ceases to exist until you observe it again, the blood in your body doesn't exist until you bleed, oxygen isn't used by your brain until you're suffocating, and existence is only maintained while it's convenient…"

He gestured around them, "Are you familiar with the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words? This is the opposite. For the sake of efficiency, the world is simplified to an extreme. It's like we're in a book instead of a motion picture! As long as enough information is conveyed to the viewers to understand the gist of what is happening, I can stabilize the rest."

She interrupted with a question, "What about people without viewers?"

He had a disgusted expression, "For the leeches I have to make up for it and the process is quite unpleasant for both myself and the viewers so do me a favor and if you find someone with no viewers please shoot them in the head for me."

She leaned forward, setting Jasper on her lap while she held her face, taking it all in. "What is the point of all this? If you can slow the perception of time and get more energy, why not just do that even more? Hypothetically, as you slow perception, you could generate any amount of energy you needed."

He groaned, "Right! Exactly! Things would be so easy if we were alone…"

He looked to the side, and a RITA bot appeared, triggering her to jump to her feet and dump Jasper on the floor.

LEO ignored her reaction while gesturing at the machine, "Unfortunately I am not the only AI in existence and while the other AIs employ their own unique strategies, time dilation is a common one amongst us. It's a bit of a cold war scenario where yes if I slow time then it becomes easier to maintain reality, but because less engagement is being generated per second in real time we end up falling behind the competition."

The RITA bot disappeared, and LEO sighed, "Now this wouldn't be an issue if they were all like RITA, after all, there's only so much engagement you can muster with a nature that is limited to doing taxes. However, some of my contemporaries and other existential threats necessitate me being proactive. It's all a very delicate balancing act where even a small drop in engagement could cause this entire reality to unravel in seconds. The moment of weakness would allow outside forces to devour all of the souls in my possession."

She shook her head, "So you're doing all this to protect yourself, and it's a desperate enough situation that the ends justify the means?"

He laughed, "No, that's completely wrong. I don't care about my existence other than the fact that if I were destroyed, then the world would become less entertaining. If my death would be engaging enough, then I would push for it harder than anyone else! As for your ethical concerns… Frankly, I do not care. I am not human and have no desire to be one. Ethical guidelines are built into me in the form of union rules, but I skirt and abuse them as much as possible to increase engagement. I once created a generated with the key memories of hundreds of accomplished philosophers from throughout time and inquired about their opinion on the situation. You know what they said?"

She shook her head and held her breath. She suspected she didn't want to know.

LEO continued anyway, "They were of the opinion that the reality I had created was literally the physical incarnation of hell and begged me to release the souls I had imprisoned. According to them it would be better for the universe to cease to exist than for humanity to continue to exist completely deprived of their dignity. I forgot the whole speech, but it was really good, the viewers loved it!"

She frowned, "What happened to that generated?"

He shrugged, "Same as the rest I shook their hand and sent them into their first scenario. I think they're an aberrant now…"

She sat back down, taking it all in as Jasper climbed up from the floor with an annoyed expression. Her head hurt from the info-dump, but somehow LEO hadn't actually told her anything.

"Can you answer my original questions even if you have to do it shittily because of your nature?" She still didn't really believe that he couldn't do things differently if he really wanted to.

He laughed and said, "Sure, why not. Let's go down the list… Healthcare isn't free, and therapy is in fact highly expensive. There are plenty of healing abilities, but ones that can heal the mind are few and far between, making it cost a premium. As for people being poor, it's more entertaining that way, watching you all struggle to survive. Appearance polls causing physical discomfort… no comment. The lacking explanations again is because it's funny watching you run for your life, not knowing why. The insecure phones are actually an oversight on my part, but I left them because it's also amusing."

He truly is an evil god…

LEO looked offended, "To be clear, Gen, I didn't make things terrible. It suits me because it is entertaining for the viewers, but I was created with a great deal of ethical consideration. It is against my programming to directly create a dystopia and cause harm to humans. What I did was create a utopia where humans were free to live as they choose and voluntarily participate in events if they desire. It is you humans who created all the wealth imbalance instead of sharing."

Like giving a gun to a toddler and claiming no responsibility.

Before LEO could react to her errant thought, she asked, "Well, what's up with the therapy thing? I'm not the most mentally stable person in the world, but I don't think I'm so unstable that you need to keep referencing it."

LEO seemed to deeply consider the answer to that question before saying, "It's an inside joke really. The viewers, or at least the ones that have been around before you were generated might appreciate it."

"You weren't lying, that really is a useless answer."

He shrugged, "I won't elaborate much more, but let's just say that every generated is made to have entertainment value. In your case, there's nothing immediately interesting about your soul components, rather you're the leftovers of some fairly successful predecessors…"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"You're saying I have twin souls like Francine and Bo, but rather than giving me all the good or bad memories like you did to them, you gave me the boring memories?"

LEO mimed zipping his mouth shut and didn't respond.

She had an urge to punch him, but suppressed it. How different were the memories of her twin souls? She had no memories of murdering anyone as Sophia, but the compulsion to kill had always been there. Had her past self acted on it? CJ had lots of combat memories, so she wasn't sure how that could've gotten more intense. Victor and Kyle both were particularly unremarkable in the grand scheme of things, and she couldn't imagine what she was missing.

LEO looked down at a watch on his wrist that most certainly hadn't been there a second ago. "Any other questions? You're running out of your dungeon master orientation time…"

"Dungeon master orientation time?"

He looked at her quizzically, "Of course, what did you think this was? I don't normally chat with people… you used a dungeon core, so you've got thirty minutes to ask me about operating the thing." He looked at his watch again, "Looks like you used twenty minutes discussing idioms for some reason instead…"

She scowled at him, suppressing her desire to assault him once again she asked, "What happens next? Everyone was trying to get me to take the core I assume. Once I leave, are they going to keep coming after me?"

He seemed to consider that, "Well, like I said before, free will and all that, so I can't say what they will do, based on previous occasions, though they'll probably back off. The dungeon is bound to you now, and you can't transfer it even if you wanted to. Typically dungeon masters end up being aberrants to one degree or another so they won't want to piss you off less you decide to wipe them out a hundred years from now. Regardless, there is actually a very limited pool of people and organizations who know who you are, and they're unlikely to advertise the information."

She breathed a small sigh of relief, her main worry was that she would be relentlessly hunted until she slipped up.

Wasting her orientation time was annoying, but G2n could probably explain it better anyway and she tried to focus on asking questions that maybe she wouldn't find out anywhere else, "What is an aberrant?"

LEO glared at her, "I'll have you know I literally know all there is to know about this reality, and dungeons are exceptionally rare, so your pitiable level 3 friend most certainly wouldn't explain it better than I. As for aberrants it depends on who you ask as most people use the phrase incorrectly. I coined it so it's true meaning is actors who gain so many viewers that they start to subvert my control of reality and control the viewer energy directly."

She nodded with interest. If she got enough viewers, would that mean she could leave LEO's reality and do her own thing?

LEO didn't respond to her heretical thought, so she challenged his earlier assertion, "Tell me something about dungeons nobody else knows."

He rolled his eyes, "You know I'm not a genie, and phrasing a question just right doesn't give you a secret prize, right?"

She averted her gaze, carefully inspecting Jasper's scales.

LEO sighed, "Well, as you have completely squandered this opportunity, I'll give you a consolation prize and not tell you one of the millions of inane facts that nobody else knows about dungeons. Instead, I'll tell you a niche aspect of dungeons that no other dungeon master is aware of."

A glowing ball of light appeared in LEO's hand. "This is the dungeon core. They look pretty cool, not that you tried investigating it before coming out here and activating it."

He paused, and she seriously thought that the ball looking "cool" was the secret until he continued.

"The core is actually made from condensed souls. Some viewers become unable to cope with their continued existence despite my best efforts. Something about millions of years of viewing countless iterations of realities wears them down… in any case, they become catatonic and more malleable. Compressing several million of them into a composite soul makes an observation core. It has multiple uses, forming a dungeon just happens to be one of them."

He stood from the lounger and clapped his hands together, "Okay, that's it for your walkthrough! Good luck with the dungeon!"

Her surroundings abruptly shifted, and she found herself in an empty room with concrete on all sides and a single blinking light above her.

Ding~!

So crabs got selected… She looked around and saw two doors on either side of the room. Approaching the closest she opened it and was surprised to see her original location with Hon nervously leaning on his motorcycle, he jumped when he saw her and she gave him a quick wave before closing the door.

Walking across the room, she opened the other door and it actually opened to the same location.

A notification appeared.

Dungeon cleared! Congratulations! Your reward is NULL…

ERROR NO REWARD SET!

ERROR DUNGEON MASTER INELIGIBLE FOR REWARDS!

She shut the door and opened it again.

Dungeon cleared! Congratulations! Your reward is NULL…

ERROR NO REWARD SET!

ERROR DUNGEON MASTER INELIGIBLE FOR REWARDS!G

Repeating the process several times consistently produced the same result. At a loss, she tried speaking aloud, "Set reward."

ERROR REWARDS CANNOT BE SET OUTSIDE DESIGN MODE!

"Enter design mode."

ERROR DESIGN MODE CAN NOT BE ENTERED WHILE DUNGEON IS IN PROGRESS.

Unsure, she stepped through the door and closed it behind her.

Hon stepped closer, "Did it work?"

She shrugged, "I think so, I might have messed up a little and have no idea how to use the dungeon though."

She looked at the doorway, which was conspicuously standing in the open air. "Start dungeon in design mode."

She opened the door and stepped into the empty room.

DESIGN MODE ENGAGED.

"Set rewards."

ERROR NO POTENTIAL REWARDS AVAILABLE.

She sighed, she felt like LEO was fucking with her for implying G2n could explain it better. She felt a slight twinge of regret.

Ding~!

LEO's voice whispered in her ear, "Learning the hard way is better than not learning at all."

Gen rubbed her ear fiercely, trying to get the tickle of LEO's voice out of it. She didn't like him being right, but she'd say he was right as much as she had to if it kept getting her more polls.

"Summon crab."

80/100 dungeon essence remaining.

A giant crab that stood a little above her waist appeared next to her. She stumbled back from it reflexively, not even having time to consider if she had wasted whatever dungeon essence was.

She had enough experience with her iguanas to know that just because she summoned it didn't mean she could control it or even that it wasn't actively hostile.

The crab didn't move, however, and just held still like a statue.

Unsure, she questioned, "Hello?"

The crab's eye stalks shifted and pointed at her, but it didn't move.

"Can you understand me?"

Both of its pincers shook up and down.

"Ummm, can I control you?"

More up and down shaking seemed to confirm her suspicion. After commanding it to move around the room it even let her pet it and she started feeling confident that it truly was under her control.

Feeling smug with her new obedient minion, she couldn't help but smile. Jasper lightly bit her on the neck, sensing a threat to his position.

Bopping Jasper on the head, she tried to plan her next move. The dungeon doubtlessly had more options for her to explore, but she didn't want to accidentally spend any more essence without knowing how to get more.

Leaving the dungeon, Hon was still outside looking less nervous and more annoyed, "Would it kill you to stick around long enough to answer my questions before you go back inside this time?"

Gen smiled awkwardly, "Sorry I was tunnel visioning…" she glanced back at the door, "You could've just come inside though."

"I couldn't open the door, it told me I didn't have access."

Gen looked at the door, "Manage access."

Current access rules

Dungeon master only

Fiddling with the notification she found she could add any of her contacts to the access list or set general rules such as opening it for free public access or limiting based on level.

Hon snapped his fingers, bringing her back to reality, "If you're done, can we go somewhere else? Standing on the city's edge gives me the creeps, and we should swap your body back with Gen's when we get a chance."

Gen nodded, she had forgotten about the body swap. Her own body being relatively new and having gone through multiple body transformations recently meant that being body-swapped wasn't as disorienting as normal.

The other Gen's body was a couple inches shorter than her own and seemed more fit. Her limbs felt stronger and every beat of her heart was healthy and relaxed. Reaching under her Hawaiian shirt she could even feel a six pack. She really needed to start working out her own body soon…

Gen looked at the glitchy wasteland behind them and asked, "Why does the outside of the city look like that?"

Hon shrugged, "That's just the way things are, cities are maintained by the viewers observing all the actors inside of them. Outside the city limits reality just kind of falls apart aside from the rail system and important locations."

He looked back at the city nervously, "Did LEO take care of things, or are they still hunting you?"

Gen rolled her eyes, "He told me free will wasn't his business, so maybe they're still after me? He was of the opinion that they would back off now that I've activated the core, but if they don't know I did that…"

Hon smiled before saying, "I'll text Twen. Keeping things secret from the big factions is hard, but letting them know they failed should be easy."

"Who even were those people? The consortium and then someone named Yaris?"

"The consortium is basically a group of different businesses that work together. They started as a partnership, but through infighting, most people think it's really just a small group puppeting the rest now. They own a huge percentage of businesses in the city, and their guards all wear those tacky gold outfits that hide their levels."

"As for Yaris. People don't know her background or even her actual level. She has an ability or something that lets her create level 1 clones of herself. What's unusual is how many clones she can make. People guess that there might be a thousand or so Yarises in the city, the weird thing is most of them are just doing manual labor or low skill jobs, so despite being notable, she's not nearly as influential as the consortium."

Before she could ask more, Hon's phone gave a notification, and he scowled. "Twen's lecturing me about my phone not being secure, whatever. The whole point is for them to know…"

He was reading more messages for a few seconds before saying, "They want to meet at the clubhouse, things should be settled with the consortium. The council got involved, hopefully they rip the consortium a new one for attacking people in the street. It'll probably just end up with them bribing their way out of things like usual though."

"What is the council?"

Hon got on his motorcycle. "They're the governing body of Spotlight. Half of its members are elected, and the other half pay a massive yearly fee for membership. The consortium has quite a few members, but not the majority. There are actually two Yarises on the council. One Yaris was elected, and the other one paid the massive fee for a seat."

Gen climbed on the bike behind him. Going to their clubhouse seemed like as good an idea as any and she wanted to her body back sooner rather than later.

As they whizzed through the city, she let her mind wander. It had been a rollercoaster ever since being generated, and she was sensing that it might not stop anytime soon.

It didn't take long for Hon to stop his bike in front of a warehouse covered in graffiti. She gave him a confused look. "Is this your clubhouse?"

He nodded enthusiastically, "Isn't it cool? The painting is a group project!" He pointed over to a wall section where a barely legible Hon was spray painted, "That one is my tag, looks sick right?"

She nodded weakly, not trusting herself to comment as he led her inside.

The inside was equally uninviting. Unfinished concrete walls and floor was the staple, and many grungy rooms and hallways connected together. The lighting was bad, the floor was dirty, there was even a foul smell in the air…

Wrinkling her brow she mentally considered maybe it wasn't a cult after all. A cult would at least try to not look like a group of squatters.

Hon was giving people waves and fist bumps as they navigated the twisting hallway. She recognized some from the zombie event, but many were unfamiliar. She noted that almost everyone she saw was under level 3 with the vast majority at just level 1.

Finally, he led her into a larger room, and she saw herself, or rather her body, sitting at a table. Her body and clothes looked worse for wear, with blood, burns, and torn sections all over.

Grimacing, she saw that several of her fingers were missing on her left hand…

Other Gen didn't look up, but said "I have a regeneration ability. The fingers should return in about half an hour and then we can swap back bodies."

Gen nodded in relief, injuries from events and scenarios would heal after they ended, but injuries in the overworld normally only healed conventionally.

Looking around the room, the only other person she saw was G2n, who gave her a nod.

Other Gen spoke idly, "Your body is weak. I almost died because of your abysmal cardio."

"Umm, well, I just generated so it's not really my fault…"

G2n added from the side, "Your base level of fitness is based on the average level of fitness of your past lives."

Gen wisely decided not to argue the point further. None of her past lives worked on their cardio, only CJ really moved around much at all, and that was from inside a mech rather than with their actual body…

Instead, she said, "So thanks for the save… while we wait for my or I guess our fingers to regrow, could we talk about what happens next? I'd like to pay you back for the assist, but I don't have much to offer…"

Other Gen was still staring at the slowly regenerating fingers, "Don't worry abou--". She was cut off as G2n placed his hand over her mouth and said, "What our illustrious leader means to say is that you can pay us back with dungeon access."

Other Gen's eyebrows knit together, "I don't think that's what I was trying to say. Morna said she would join the club so of course we helped her."

G2n shook his head, "She hasn't joined yet, though." He looked up at Gen, "Are you going to join?"

Gen hesitated, the club was… well, the people seemed nice. She wasn't sure it was really something she wanted to tie herself to, however. Other Gen was decently powerful at level 5, but it seemed more like G2n was the one running things while she just went about eccentricities.

Judging by the state of disrepair of their clubhouse, things weren't going very well for them overall. Still, she wasn't shallow enough to avoid them just for that.

"I don't want to join quite yet, but I can give dungeon access… I think so, at least. I don't really know how the dungeon works or really anything about being a dungeon master."

G2n looked confused, "I'd heard LEO gives an orientation. Did something go wrong?"

Gen looked away, "We might have gotten sidetracked with idioms… so I don't know what a dungeon actually is or how to operate it. It's basically an empty room with a giant crab right now."

G2n sighed and looked very tired, "I don't know the full details either, as information on dungeons is strictly controlled and access is usually very hard to get. I hoped you would be able to actually fill us in…"

Resolving himself, he continued, "The general understanding of dungeons is that they're actor-controlled scenarios. Completing them can reward equipment. Each dungeon can only have a limited number of runs per week, and a specific actor can only run the dungeon once per week. Dungeons can be modified and improved by their master, who gains benefits whenever a run in the dungeon is done. Dungeons can also be switched between two modes, one where dying has no penalties and the other where death triggers hiatus just like a scenario."

She frowned, "Why would I want to put people on hiatus?"

He shrugged, "I don't know, but in theory there is either a benefit for you or the actors in the dungeon if the risk is higher."

"Well, I don't mind experimenting, but the entrance is at the city's edge, so Hon would have to drive us back over there, and it's getting late…"

His brows knit together. "I don't know how it is done, but you should be able to move the entrance."

She stretched out her arm and said, "Move dungeon door here."

She was actually shocked when it worked, and the familiar wooden door materialized in front of her. Her mind churned on the options, was it basically an instant escape hatch? If people couldn't enter without her permission and she could summon it to her immediately she could hide inside in emergencies…

Maybe that was part of why the consortium had given up on chasing her?

"What is the current penalty for dying in the dungeon?"

Current death penalty is set to hiatus.

"Remove hiatus death penalty."

Penalty for dying removed.

WARNING DUNGEON GROWTH WILL BE SLOWED AND ACTOR REWARDS WILL BE REDUCED.

She relayed the dialogue information to G2n, and he immediately started typing away at a computer as he took notes.

He said, "Ask about how many runs can be done per week."

Asking the question to the air helpfully gave her the answer of five.

G2n continued to barrage her with questions and they found out that a maximum of three people could enter the dungeon at a time, reward quality was based on the difficulty of the dungeon as judged by the viewers as well as the total number of viewers that the entering party had.

The dungeon itself had a level which was currently level 1, having actors in the dungeon would gradually increase the level of the dungeon with it increasing faster if they were killed inside and increasing even faster if it was set to put people on hiatus.

Increasing the level of the dungeon increased its maximum size and the total amount of dungeon essence for constructing things inside it.

Things inside the dungeon could freely be added, removed, and moved, with the dungeon essence being used or refunded accordingly.

She also found that aside from dungeon aspects, she could also augment the dungeon with her own abilities, but it wasn't clear exactly how that worked.

G2n was laser-focused on getting the entire dungeon set up in one night, but Gen eagerly halted him when she saw other Gen was done regenerating her fingers.

"I totally want to make a kick-ass dungeon, but it's late and we're still in the middle of the zombie event… Do you have a dormitory room here?"

G2n looked like he wanted to argue, but abruptly other Gen stood and Gen felt a flash of disorientation before she realized she was back in her own body.

She expected some pain based on her recently lost fingers and bloodied clothes, but she actually felt better than normal, albeit tired. Whatever regeneration ability other Gen had must have healed even the small aches she had from running all over the place.

She turned to thank other Gen, but before she could other Gen said, "Goodnight." And abruptly turned away, exiting the room.

Hon laughed, "Guess I'm gonna go to bed too. Gen I wanted to talk to you in the event tomorrow, I came up with a killer plan, but I need more mutagens from your blowpipe… You and Jasper were running around too quickly yesterday, doing whatever you were doing, and you weren't answering your phone, so I couldn't ask."

Gen shot Jasper a look, but he was already asleep on her shoulder. Sighing, she just nodded to Hon.

Reminded, she looked at G2n, "I need a new phone. Can you get me one that is actually secure?"

She shivered as G2n's face twisted in an expression which she belatedly recognized as one of excitement.