The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

Practically collapsing into her chair, S can't help but to let out a long and tired sigh as she spins around a few times in her newly bought, pre-owned gamer chair turner office chair. She got it for cheap from an online resell marketplace. Just a bit worn on the edges and some of the stitching is going, but it has character. Plus, she just loves the pink color design and the fact that it reclines, so even though it still cost her more than what she was looking to originally spend, she just couldn't say no and had to have it for her new office.

That's right. New office.

Not a cubicle crammed into a large room full of thirty-plus other people all working around and on top of each other. An actual, Twins blessed, private office. A room all for her and only for her. All for S! The door even has her name and position on it!

Oh, S can still remember the happy looks on her parent's faces when she told them the news. They went out and celebrated at a hibachi restaurant.

Still waiting on that pay raise though… But Mr. R says he is still in talks with HR, so it is bound to happen eventually.

Regardless, being back in her new office, with her new/old chair, her own desk (A metal one they pulled out from storage.) and her potted plant by the window is really helpful for getting S to calm down some and relax after the last couple of hours of stress she just had to endure.

Did I mention the window?

No?

Well it's great! It's not like one you'd find in a corner office or anything like that. Or even all that big for that matter… But it's a window! An office with a window! And best of all, if S looks out of it at just the right angle, she can see the ocean past the branches of the World Tree!

Amazing!

But back to business…

"Haaaah… Wish I could just fire him already. Giving more write-ups is clearly not doing anything. But seriously, who in their right mind would let rats in on purpose?"

Stopping spinning around in her chair, S drags her hands across her face to try and physically pull the exhaustion out of her brain – It doesn't work. – and then logs into her work terminal.

She had just spent the better part of three hours locked in a meeting room with her boss, her boss's boss, four HR reps, and a very agitated Dungeon Manager who was very pissed and had plenty of complaints to give to his higher ups.

117 got torn into and threatened by the higher ups, he shot back and let loose with the complaints, S, as his direct supervisor, got caught in the crossfire. HR tried to keep everything from falling apart, but honestly, when has HR ever been helpful? Plain and simple, it sucked. S didn't want anything to do with any of it, and the entire time all she could think about was how to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. It was hell, and S is honestly surprised that both herself and 117 had managed to walk out of there without losing their jobs.

Though, again, if she could, S would be more than happy to fire that Dungeon Manager and have a new one replace him. But she can't.

Mr. R is worried that it would ruin the test. And besides, who in their right mind would want to take over that Dungeon now? Half destroyed, systems falling apart and failing, and with a pissed off Gremlin Necromancer going postal through the halls? No thank you.

It doesn't help that 117 seems to be figuring out that he is a part of a test now either. He hasn't claimed it outright yet, but watching the angry Dungeon Manager at the meeting, S could tell that he is figuring some things out.

Maybe we should tell him? I know they want to keep it secret, so we can see how the Dungeon responds without the knowledge of it being a test effecting their actions, but honestly… I just hope they don't do anything stupid like this again. Seriously, rats of all things! Just thinking of what could have happened if a Dungeon in the network had become fully Chaos corrupted…

S tries to hold down a shiver and continues working away at her terminal. Because of this mess, she has a lot of extra work to do now. Probably going to translate into plenty of unpaid overtime.

"Damn, 117… mrmrmm~ Maybe I should get some coffee…"

Bright side though, this whole mess did prove one thing. The test is working.

In all the time that the System and the Dungeons have been up and running, this is the first time in history, THE FIRST, that Dungeon employees have ever considered actually allowing the rats into a Dungeon.

Never before would they have thought to do that. It would have been impossible. Hells, one of the reasons even for the existence of Dungeons in the first place, is for fighting the rats. To keep those chaos spreading buggers underground where they belong. The Dungeons all have several other purposes besides that, but the rats are a big one.

And yet, here they have a Dungeon that had lowered its defenses and purposefully allowed rats to enter the facility. All as a work around so they could attempt to summon a Cleaner because they had been locked out of using them normally.

And for all intents and purposes, they succeeded. Sort of.

Yes, Bug survived. But at the end of the day, the Dungeon staff had managed to get their Cleaner, and they had cleared out every single rat from the Dungeon afterwards. If Bug had died, it would have been a complete success for the Dungeon staff.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Minus the property damage…

But, for the purpose of the test. An unintended exploit has been found, and a fix is already planned and being worked on to be hopefully pushed out in the next Update. For this reason at least, the higher ups are quite pleased.

I just wish it wouldn't turn into so much more work for me. Plus, I'm not too happy with them trying so hard to kill my little Bug… I mean, I get it, but still… At least I was able to convince Mr. R to let me give Bug a reward for surviving all of that. I just need to get it signed and approved, and then I can push it out later. Bug had been asking about getting her Ghoul, System access, so I hope she will be happy with this reward.

Getting System access before the official Beta is a very special privilege, and while normally this wouldn't work at all for a human, or anyone not born from a Dungeon for that matter. Susan luckily isn't one anymore. As a Ghoul, she falls just enough in a grey zone where S and her boss could work her in. Plus, she was technically (re)born inside of the Dungeon. So that helps.

Mr. R's argument for accepting it was that it would bring them more data, and also argued that the Ghoul would be too weak to properly challenge the later floors of the Dungeon without it. S is just thankful for the help and for any rewards she can send Bug's way.

Going for another spin around in her chair, S decides to leave the report she is righting off to the side to wait for a bit and opens up her work email. Procrastination for the win!

J has a birthday coming up. S will probably volunteer to bake a cake for the party, as she often does. Only way she'll get invited…

More complaints from the staff. Just going to send back a boilerplate response and deal with that later. Actually, let 117 deal with it. Jackass deserves it.

Assistant Dungeon Manager Briant sent in another request for transfer. Denied. Next.

What else… Weird Crown?

…

S reads through everything that was sent. Watching recorded footage and squinting as the feed gets filled with static and noise. Watching as the rats fight desperately to put it on Bug's cute little head for some reason. In the end, it gets eaten by Bug's pet Mimic-turned adopted daughter, but something about that crown sends a horrible shiver down S's back. Watching it on the screen, it is almost like she is watching a ghost about to climb out of her monitor and get dirty well water all over her carpet. Thing is just creepy.

"Why would they? Although… Chaos." S says with a little shrug.

Typically, trying to understand why the rats do anything is just a waste of time. You'd be better off trying to predict the exact pattern of a million drops of falling rain. They literally worship chaos after all.

But curiosity compels S to go back through the footage and run it through some software. Cleaning up the corrupted audio that sounds like accordions and french horns playing in the distance and voices trying to speak in reverse through the static. All of that should be ignored. People have tried to see if any of it means anything, and all who have tried have been driven insane. It's all just Chaos corruption, and paying too much attention just welcomes Chaos into your head.

Cleaning and more cleaning, isolating audio and filtering out explosions and screaming, and then running it all through a translator because the rat is speaking in their weird language instead of Common, S finally manages to finish one section of the footage as the female rat in a tattered white dress is trying to hold Bug down and force the crown onto her head.

Listening into her headphones, S can't help but to sweat a little as she watches that rat's lips move.

"Be still my love! Be still! It's not too late. If you become the Dragon of Chaos, we can overcome this situation. Any situation! No one will be able to stop us, my love, hahahaha~!"

S narrows her eyes, "Dragon of Chaos? What would Bug have to do with Dragons, she's just a glitchy Gremlin? Still, I should push this up the line and let Mr… R?"

S slowly stops talking to herself, her eyes stuck on the screen, watching the paused image of the rat.

It should have been paused after playing the clipped section of the recording.

Why isn't it paused?

Slowly, the rat on her screen turns her head. Slowly, shakingly, her movement are like she is fighting to move through thick syrup. But she is moving.

Everything else is frozen. Bug on the ground, still pinned and locked in a scream for help. Susan still in the distance running over. Mimmie still just pretending to be a chest on the ground.

But the rat is moving. Her head turning until she is looking dead into the camera, her eyes locked straight into S's own through the screen.

Her lips move and her voice fills S's ears through static and noise and the sounds of what might be a busy café on the side of the road with people chatting over a hot cup of coffee and fresh baguet.

"Hello ELF. Enjoying the show?"

The rat smiles and S can't help but to move back in her chair, her eyes going wide with fear.

"You know… It's rude to EASEDROP, ELF!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

The rat screams and takes off with explosive force from Bug's prone body, the screen filling with static as the rats gets closer and closer and bigger and bigger with every step, her rage filled screams blaring through S's headphones and rattling her brain with its high pitch.

"Nope!"

Screaming herself, though she can hardly hear her own voice over that of the rat's own screams, S immediately lunges forward and slams her screen shut just as the horrid creature is about to reach her. With the rat still screaming in her ears, S rips the entire terminal off her desk, tearing out cords in the process, and throws it to the floor. With a clatter of plastic and metal hitting the floor, the terminal smashes against the floor. Glass breaks and something inside audibly snaps, but the screaming voice of the rat only grows louder in S's ears as she starts to stomp on the terminal with her high heels.

Out of desperation, she grabs her new chair and uses it to start clubbing the terminal, hitting it over and over again until it is left as a dented and broken mess on the floor.

The voice in her headphones just starts to laugh. Finally S drops her chair and then rips the thing off her head, her long pointed ears stinging in pain as the sound of those screams are still ringing in her head like an echo.

Before she snaps her headphones in half and tosses them to the floor, the last thing she hears is, "Stupid ELF, hahaha~"

…

Shaking, breathing hard, her little office now a mess with her stuff scattered everywhere, S has to take a moment to calm herself. Once she checks around to make sure that the rat hadn't somehow magically gotten into her office and is hiding in a corner or something, S takes a calming breath and then grabs her phone off the desk.

"… Ah, yes… boss? Uhm, ye-yes, this is S. I-I'm going to need a new terminal… yes… yes… I broke it… Sorry. Also, uhm, we p-probably need to run a check through the System now, for Chaos corruption, now… Why? Uh… I-I think we might have a rat loose… in the System…"

S waits as silence fills the line, her shoulders dropping even further when her boss finally responds.

With a defeated sigh she responds, "Ahhh, yes sir. I'll head to your office right away…"

*click*

Hanging up, all she can do is drop her head in defeat.

"Dang it, 117. Why did you have to let them into our Dungeon? This is going to be so much unpaid overtime… Gods, I wish I could just fire him, ahhh!...Haaah, I hope Bug gets him…"