Prepper's Dungeon

POV: Sarah.

It was snowing again. The white crystals falling softly but steadily as they blanketed the city. Turning all the sidewalks to ice and all the roads into brown streaks of running, mushy slurry.

Worse, the city had barely done anything to salt the roads or clear away the snow. Thinking that it wasn't really at the top of the list of priorities.

On the on hand, that was a pretty awful way of thinking for a city where taxes were so high.

On the other hand… well… they were kinda right.

The leaked Robertson files kept going on and on about doomsday being two and half years from now, but that was just a formality. The world had ended a little over a month ago here in Detroit and no one had any doubts about that.

Yeah, monsters weren't running rampant across the world like Robertson the magic time traveller said they would, but that didn't change the way people looked at things. Two months ago, before the Green Halloween, people who said that magic was real would be laughed out of the room. At best.

You were either socially ridiculed like those people who said the world was flat or else a white van would drive up and two male nurses in white would step out. Being all casual and asking if you'd taken your meds yet or if you'd like to try out this new jacket with long sleeves.

But now those people were the smuggest bastards online and you couldn't scroll through Ourtube for two minutes without coming across a 'Witch' or an 'Astral Meta-Sorcerer' or a 'Chosen one from another world' peddling a bunch of rhymes they claimed could make food grow and launch fireballs.

To no one's surprise, those people, and calling them people was being generous, were full of manure. But Magic was real and monsters were real, so there was still interest in the fake stuff and the stuff which might turn out to be not-so-fake.

"Man." I sighed. Putting away my phone. "I miss the days where the most we had to worry about was inflation. Those were the days."

"Sarah! Stop moping and come over here! The forums got updated!"

I sighed even deeper.

Moving over to where my friends were going over the laptop.

"Why are you guys so obsessed with those kinds of sites?" I asked again. "You just know half the people there are trolls who've never even been to the Dungeon and the other half are scammers who want you to buy Pineapple store gift cards."

"Nuh-uh." Ronnie spoke up. His eyes glistening with expectation. "At least some of them are catfishing lonely delvers with party invites. But anyway, take a look at this. Some people are saying they know who's running the Dungeon."

"No one is running the Dungeon stupid." Jack scoffed. "The Robertson files are the only legitimate source of news about Magic we really have and they clearly say you can't control Dungeons. They're just naturally forming ecosystems. That are also alive. And that scramble the DNA they scan off living things to create monsters."

He lit up a cigarette. Still deluding himself that smoking made him look tough. Just like he thought growing that little rat hair moustache made him look tough.

"If anyone was capable of running a Dungeon, then Carlyle Robertson would never write anything down about them." Tanya countered. "The guy's like the illuminati or the lizard people. He had plans to get the entire world under his thumb. For goodness' sake guys! He's a literal time traveller!"

"He's not a time traveller." Jack said while blowing a ring of smoke towards her. "That's just something he said to get started with his little cult. Better than saying you got Magic and that you got early readings of what was about to happen. That and mind-reading. If he really could time-travel, then he'd be able to just go back before the leaks and kill whomever did it."

"By the way, do we know wo was behind the leak?" I asked.

"That Japanese guy. What's his name." Jack answered.

"The trench coat guy with the hairdo and the helicopter." Tanya added.

"The dragon-copter." Ronnie closed his eyes as if savoring a piece of steak. Or a really charge vegetable.

"Oh, my goodness. What I wouldn't give for a dragon-copter."

"Get real Ronnie. You can't even afford that run-down wreck you got right now. We're helping you pay off the car."

"Yeah and you get to use it every other day so shut up. I'm the one paying insurance."

Ronnie looked sour at that, but soon went back to looking blissful as he browsed the new articles.

"There have been so many new updates guys. That wizard in Ireland said he figured out how to make real wands with spells charged into them. He's got a video and everything."

He clicked on the link and I we were soon treated to the least believable AI deepfake in the history of the world. It looked so fake that old 2-d animated flicks came out looking hyper-realistic by comparison and I could only conclude that this was a very low-effort scam made to weed out anyone with half a braincell from the get-go. All so this fat bastard, who for all we know is a dirty slob who scams old grannies of their retirement money, can pawn off a few sticks he found out in the yard for hundreds of bucks apiece.

"There is no way anyone is falling for that." Jack said and for once, I agreed with him.

"Buying one right now." Ronnie said with an eagerness that left me baffled.

"Dude!" I shouted. "You can't be falling for this crap when you're barely old enough to drive! At least wait until you're old and senile! What's wrong with you!?"

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you?" He countered. Having the gall to look offended.

"We are literally watching history being made. Right here in our city. There are literal magicians now. Coming out of the Dungeon beneath our feet with Cores. And you know what they found out when the government scanned them using the Robertson method?"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"That they had really bad Cores." Tanya answered.

"Yes! Exactly! Stages 3 and 4!"

"I read somewhere that's not too bad." Jack countered. "They said the worst thing that could happen was you not having any kind of Core in the first place."

"Yeah stupid. They did say that. But we've seen the Robertson records and we know what it really takes to be the best. The old guy and his family are all Stage 7. And their teleporters were all Stage 6. That guy who the military brought for a demonstration? The guy who ate a missile to the face? Stage 5 Core. [Conditioning]. At level 8."

Ronnie shook his head.

"Maybe if you didn't ride the back of the short bus, you'd understand what's at stake."

"Hey! Fuck you Ronnie!"

Ronnie shrugged in a way that made his face at least twice as punchable.

"Say what you want. You know I'm right. Yeah, Stage 3 or 4 is okay, but that's going to be the new average very soon. Heck, people who don't have access to a Dungeon to train might not even get that far. We…"

He pointed at the four of us in turn.

"We might not get that far. They're not letting minors in the Dungeon anymore and they're being a lot more careful about checking IDs since they caught those tourists coming back up. The leaked files said that you could get stuck without a Core if you reached level 1 without proper training. How long do we have until that happens? How long until we get stuck with a Stage 1 or Stage 2 Core? This ain't like getting a bad grade on a test Jack. You can't just ignore this and hpes it goes away. And I for one, have had enough living like a medieval peasant for one lifetime."

He clenched his fists. Then waved his arms about the emergency tent.

"I don't want to share a fucking tent with twenty people anymore! I don't want to get through this after working my ass off in school and in my job, trying to earn a scholarship to a half-decent university while saving up a few dollars here and there, just to end up getting what they're calling 'Working Class Cores' I mean, did you even…"

He started coughing again, but his fingers were still doing the quotation marks in the air.

"Did you even see what some people are getting? Cores like [Chef], [Tailor], [Smith], [Cleaner]!"

He reddened. Fists clenched.

"There are people out there who got Cores that made them magically better at cleaning! At cleaning! Bro! Bro! I've done enough cleaning at my job! I didn't bust my ass this far to get a Core that makes me a super-janitor!"

"Doesn't the [Cleaner] Core get a piece of the [Water] Core?" Tanya asked suddenly.

"Yeah, I saw the video. That guy had a Stage 3 Core and he almost killed the dude with the big sword in the military tournament." Jack added. "I think whoever names them is really bad at their job. I wouldn't want to mess with anyone who had the [Cleaner] Core. Dude turned three people's blood to water when he made them bleed. That shit's overpowered as fuck."

"But it isn't going to last!" Ronnie shouted. "Can't you see? Everything we've worked for until now means nothing if you don't have Magic! I can already see what's going to happen. In another five years, all the guys who got good Cores will be the ruling class by virtue of being able to kill monsters and protect the rest of the population and the rest of the population, even the ones with education and money, will all be thrown out like trash!"

"Dude, I think you need to chill." Jack stopped him mid-rant.

"And also, what does that have to do with the scammer over here?"

"Because I'm trying to get in on the Magic train early Jack and I don't know for sure that he's a scammer. What if he's secretly a wizard in disguise trying to pass off as a scammer while recruiting students?"

I laughed in his face. Then Tanya and Jack joined me soon thereafter.

"Ronnie, bro. You can't be serious."

I pointed to the screen.

"That guy looks like white windowless vans will be invented just for him and I'm pretty sure talking about his 'Wand' in public has gotten him in legal trouble before. Just accept that he's a scammer and save yourself the hundred bucks."

"Or I could go out into the new farms the governor put up." Jack offered. "I'm pretty sure I could find you a nice stick to play with and I'll only charge you fifty."

Tanya took the mouse from Ronnie, who was too busy looking sour and angry, and started scrolling through the forums.

"This guy says he's got a guide of spirit summoning. This girl says she can speedrun getting a Core with essential oils. This girl is saying you can cast buffs on yourself before going into the Dungeon using scented candles. This other guy says he can do better with homebrewed potions."

"Click on that one." Ronnie said hopefully.

Tanya did so.

"Okay let's see here. Potion X-3. Temporary super-strength and speed. Enhanced reflexes. Let's see the comments. Tested in a lab. Ammonium hydroxide? Wait, that's what's in meth right?"

"Click off of it." Ronnie snapped. Annoyed.

"Okay, I got this thread here discussing the kinds of Cores people can get."

We saw a bunch of people saying that skull shape decided what kind of Core you got. Then a bunch more saying that no, it was in fact astral signs that decided what kind of Cores one got. Then we started seeing a bunch of people saying that all the guys who got Cores were actually lizard people pretending to be human and that the Dungeon was being run by the father of the lizard people and that the lizard people were even in government and that they were the ones telling the governor what to do and what to say and that they were the ones making the super-food.

So we clicked off of that nonsense and tried to look elsewhere.

"Go back to the people saying they know who's running the Dungeon." Ronnie demanded.

"Didn't we just see that?"

"No. The other one. The one that went over the Dungeon in North Korea."

The article was relatively new and posted by an anonymous user. It detailed how the individual Carlyle had found to grow his crops was, in fact, a 14-year-old named Cecil Fowler who'd been kidnapped alongside his family in the summer. Apparently, he had school records from the local school in Carlyle's version of Jonestown, but they were sporadic. Starting late in the school year and only when the large number of Korean kids started. Unlike them, he had apparently stopped showing up to school right before the party where he had decked that Japanese guy. And then… nothing. At least, nothing until yesterday, when he and another girl suddenly showed up in attendance again to take remedial classes on top of their schoolwork.

"How did this info get out in the first place?" I asked.

"Congress." Ronnie answered. "Part of the agreement to release Carlyle Robertson on bail was that he'd hand over all his secret info to Nato. And to post intelligence officers to watch over his town. And to send the people of his town all over Canada and the US to make sure all of them got exposed to the real world."

"To make sure none of them turned into crazy cultists when doomsday came." I reasoned.

"Only smart thing the government's done in a while." Jack nodded.

"Yeah, keep thinking that jackass." Ronnie spat. "The kids who were forced to transfer out left open spots and those open spots were filled with… you guessed it… the kids of the rich and powerful trying to cozy up to Robertson. They're going down their Dungeon as early as 13 but we…"

He wagged his finger in the air.

"We have to wait. For our own safety they say. I'm telling you right now if we don't work hard to get a leg up now, those guys will all come out of there with Stage 9 Cores or something and they'll stay at the top forever. While we clean up after them!"

He was huffing and puffing then. Looking redder and redder by the moment until he resembled a ripe tomato standing out in the open for all to see.

"I guess your application for a transfer there got declined?" I asked.

"Yeah." He confirmed. "Apparently all their slots were full. Imagine that. I even tried applying to the new school in North Korea now that they're going capitalist and merging with the south, but surprise surprise, all those spots were taken by the kids of super rich people from the south or the families of the old money from the north as they lose the commie colors."

His fists were clenched so tightly that I could see the veins in his thin arms throbbing. His brow reddening to levels that should not have been humanly possible.

"Everyone online keeps telling us how lucky we are to be living in Detroit, but I haven't even gotten a single chance to fight a monster yet. All we're doing is these stupid exercises that do nothing except make us look stupid while we're wasting time!"

He stood. Suddenly looking at the rest of us.

"Well I'm not having it. I'm telling you right now that I'm going into that Dungeon one way or another and nothing is going to get in my way."

He eyed us each in turn. His redness dissipating as his eyes became harder.

"And how are you planning to do that?" Tanya asked. Sounding worried.

"The good old-fashioned way." He spoke.

Opening his locker and revealing a newly-purchased shovel.

"The only way they've left me."