The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

"Wha-what in all the bloody hells!? Ah!"

Alarms blaring, red lights flashing, tangled in his own sheets and falling out of bed with curses spilling from his mouth and drool on his chin, Assistant Dungeon Manager Briant wakes up with half his body on the floor and his legs still stuck in his bed. Quicky wresting with the clinging fabric, Briant gets up, his hooves clicking against the wood floor as he rights himself in a hurry.

Adrenaline pumping from being so suddenly and rudely awoken, brain still foggy with sleep, he scrambles over to his terminal in his small studio apartment/ work home office, furiously clicking on the keyboard as warnings and notifications pop up on the screen.

"Twins damn it, I knew this was a bad idea! What the hell went wrong?!"

Before Briant can even get fully signed in to the company app, the blaring alarms get suddenly cut out as the facility intercom system cuts in on the speakers.

"All staff, all staff! All staff currently on floors above floor twenty-seven are to immediately evacuate to the lower levels! I repeat, all staff above floor twenty-seven are to evacuate, now! We have a tier nine threat in the facility. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill! SHIT! Impact in 10, 9, 8-"

The countdown continues working down to zero, Briant recognizing the woman's voice as VixCat#98723, one of his coworkers down in the control room. Why it is that she had never given herself a proper name instead of the one the System had randomly generated for her, Briant will never know. She isn't even a cat related species, but avian.

Not something to worry about right now.

"Zero, brace for impact!"

The facility shakes like it just got punched by a god, Briant nearly falling over himself as he catches his desk with both hands and nearly headbutts his wall with his horns. On the other side of his room, one of his shelves falls on the floor and some his prized anime figures become a sad mess of broken plastic and shattered dreams on the floor.

"NonoNO! My limited 1st edition MagiGirl Sakura! Ahhhh!"

The intercom in his apartment cuts in, VixCat#98723 frantically calling in. "Briant, we need you down in control, now! Please hurry! Nonono, crap!" The intercom switches off from his apartment and back to the whole facility again. "Everyone above floor twenty-seven, move faster and evacuate, now! Drop everything you're doing and leave everything behind; the next attack is charging up! MOVE! Briant, get your furry goat ass down here, we need you!"

"FUCK!" Briant curses. "I said this was a bad idea. I damn told him! But does he ever listen to me? No! I'm the Dungeon Manager, I know what I'm doing Briant. I was literally made for this job. Dumbass!!!"

Quickly snatching some jeans that haven't been washed for a couple of days off the floor, Briant hops around as he puts them on one leg at a time, make his way over to the terminal at the wall and yelling into it.

"I'll be right down. Keep everything running till I get there!"

"Hurry!"

With his pants on and buckling the belt that hadn't even been removed from his jean last night, he quickly pulls a button-up shirt from a hanger in his closet and throws it on, not even bothering to button it up yet. Moving as fast as possible, he makes for his desk and grabs his laptop, practically ripping it away from the power cable in the process and slamming the lid shut.

With laptop tucked into his armpit he makes for the door to leave, but quickly turns around and sees his other shelf still on the wall, having thankfully not fallen, yet. His eyes settling on a hand painted and delicately crafted figure of a certain fox girl character from his favorite H-game. Barely clothed in a shrine maiden's robes, the beautiful little piece of naughty art had cost him nearly a whole month's salary!

"MMMMmmmmahhh! Quickly!"

Quickly, but carefully, Briant scoops all his remaining figures off the shelf and deposits them on his bed, the fox girl still giving him that smile that Briant loves as she blushes and tries (and fails) to fully cover herself with her big fluffy fox tail.

Please don't break!

Sprinting out his apartment and only just taking enough time to shut his door, the alarms still blaring and making his ears hurt, Briant heads for the nearest elevator and starts to furiously clicking the call button. The elevator thankfully arrives quickly, being intended for higher level staff members to quickly get around. So, he luckily doesn't have to concerned with this one being clogged with people fleeing the upper floors.

When it does arrive, the doors arrent even fully open before he is pushing himself in and slamming the button for the lowest floor and then furiously and repeatedly clicking for the doors to close.

On the way down he tries to awkwardly button up his shirt with one arm still holding his laptop. Over the intercoms, VixCat is counting down again for the next attack. Briant braces but is still almost sent to the floor as the world suddenly shakes and the lights flicker. For a while it almost feels as if the elevator is going to suddenly start falling as it lurches and jumps before eventually going back to moving smoothly.

"Fucking hells, what is happening up there?"

Shirt half tucked in and half hanging out, Briant immediately heads through the doors as soon they open. Half running/power walking through the corridor, Briant comes a scene of chaos as he enters the facilities command center. People of all sorts of shapes and sizes and of different demi-humanoid races are all talking over one another and frantically typing into terminals or yelling into mics. Off to one side of the office, a Minotaur in a suit and tie very nearly punches his monitor as he screams into a phone.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I don't care what you have to do to get it done, get that elevator fixed, NOW! What the hell are we even paying you for!?"

"Fires have broken out in sections 27d through 28h. Advising that we push the evacuation to deeper levels."

"Confirming casualties at twelve and rising. Damnit, Engineering Chief Lissa just flat lined!"

"Main power has been lost on the east side, switching to emergency backups."

"Warning, its getting ready to fire again! Get everyone out of there!"

Quickly making his way to the back and entering the command room overlooking the entire office, Briant finds VixCat at her desk in the back, speaking into the intercom system. Near the front by the windows overlooking the rest of the center is Zenti and Dangonabergia who are both pounding away at their keyboards as they work as quickly as they can. Briant looks around, but the Dungeon Manager is nowhere to be found.

"Where the hell is 117? Why isn't he here right now!?"

Dangonabergia, whom everyone just calls Bergi because her name is a mouthful, lets out a stressed hiss, her forked tongue darting in and out as the Medusa just shakes her head.

"Dumbass got himself called up to corporate. Probably getting his ass chewed out right now. I hope he gets canned!"

Zenti, a hyena based Gnoll with dark rings under his eyes from a clear lack of sleep, tries to suppress a cackling laugh and takes a sip of lukewarm coffee from a brown disposable paper cup. "Bastard has it coming, hahaha! What the hell was he thinking, inviting those rats to set up shop in our Dungeon."

Briant just sighs and clutches his head.

"Of course corporate cares more about chewing him out than helping us. What should I expect?"

The whole facility shakes again, and even down here so far underground, everyone has to brace themselves to keep from falling on their asses.

With Zenti letting out an uncontrollable bark of a laugh, Braint moves for his own desk and starts logging in, calling for a report from the others so he can get caught up to speed.

"What the hell happened while I was asleep?"

Bergi turns around in her chair and looks at him through her thickly tinted sunglasses.

"The rats failed to do the job and things started to get weird. Suddenly, they stopped trying to kill her and then she somehow ended up leading some kind of… rat revolution? Even watching it from here, we don't know exactly how it happened."

"No point in trying to figure that out. We all know that Chaos has a way making things go off the rails without rhyme or reason. Just cut to the chase."

"Right. Since the rats failed, we figured that the backup plan would kick in eventually. Chaos levels would get too high, and the System would automatically send in a Cleaner to destroy everything, regardless of the lock they put on our Dungeon…"

"Yes, and?"

"The Chaos levels started to skyrocket. Before we knew it, we had a reality convergence overlaying the Boss Room. Whole place suddenly looked like a bustling metropolis city out of nowhere; it sent our system going haywire trying to record everything. Then there was a wedding, and the priest pulled out this weird crown?"

Zenti cuts in, "After that the Chaos levels really started to spike. Hahahaha, straight off the charts! I think we found a world record, hahahahaHAHA!"

Briant curses, "By the Twins, what the hell was he thinking? And the crown?"

Bergi hisses, "No idea, it doesn't match anything in our database. We still took readings and sent everything up the line for evaluation though. Aside from that, at least the backup plan still happened at least. A little too well…"

She turns her monitor and shows the live feed to Briant. What he sees has him hanging his head and involuntarily letting out a stressed goat's bleat as he sees a floating blue diamond piece of machinery that can only be described a perfection through geometry. Straight lines, perfect angles, body shifting and changing constantly and rhythmically to form new and fascinating shapes like origami being folded by the hands of a god.

"Bergi… why, by all the Gods, is there a Deus Ex shitting Machina in our Dungeon?"

All Bergi can do is shake her head and shrug. Zenti just laughs like a hyena, though it hardly sounds like he is enjoying himself right now.

Bergi shrugs and sighs again, "System sent it. I guess it felt like it was an appropriate level response to the situation at hand."

"A level 999 Cleaner is an appropriate response? What the hell is the System thinking, this isn't the front lines in the underworld? This isn't another invasion from the Void! Does that look like an alien mothership, again!? It's just a single rat city. Hell, it hasn't even been here for a whole week! How the hell is this an appropriate response!? That's it, I'm putting in another transfer request, again! I swear by the Demon Queen's bouncing tits, if they don't accept it this time, I'm going to riot! I thought a small Dungeon in the Garden would an easy assignment, but jokes on me I guess!" Briant rants as he quickly works on his laptop, practically slamming away at the keys.

The others all cringe as he lets out his pent up anger, not wanting to say anything in case they just end up making it worse.

Looking to do literally anything else, Bergi returns to her terminal and clicks through the camera feeds.

"… Oh. I found Bug! She's still alive."

Briant just sighs. "More great news… Please tell me the Cleaner is about to get her?"

"Hmmm, sorry boss. I don't think so… They just jumped and-"

Behind them, VixCat yells into the mic, "Prepare for impact!"

The facility shakes as more of the Dungeon is suddenly erased, the whole place feeling like the ceiling might suddenly come crashing down on their heads.

Bergi manages to keep watching her terminal as everything shakes around her, "Falling, falling… OOOh! Nasty landing… aaaand looks like she survived. Sorry, boss." Bergi apologized.

"Hah, more good news."

Zenti perks up as he pulling himself back up from almost falling out of his chair, "Hey, I finally have emergency controls over Deus, haHAha!"

"Thank the Gods! Have it kill that glitch already."

"Can't, all I can do is send it away… hahaha. The restrictions on our Dungeon are keeping me from-"

"I don't care, fine! Just get rid of it already before it brings the whole Dungeon and all of Silest down on our heads." Briant sighs again as he pinches the bridge of his long goat nose. "I knew this plan wouldn't work… We need to get on with the repairs. Zenti, get some people on ensuring we don't lose power. Bergi, I want all hatches sealed, Gods forbid if any of those mushrooms from the upper floors end up finding their way into the backrooms. VixCat, get whoever you can and try to search for survivors, and keep everyone away from that glitch, I don't care how confident they are that they could take her. Last thing we need is her finding some way of using them to access the backrooms and get to us… Hah, this is going to a long day…"

On the screen, Bug and Susan are passed out and sleeping like couple of corpses, Mimmie held protectively between the two of them as their bodies slowly mend and heal.

Briant walk out of the control room and calls out to everyone else in the office, "Alright everyone, emergency's over, for now. Time for rebuilding. Let's get this shit show on the road. Pollollop, get me readings on structural integrity, we need to know where to start reinforcing first. B.B.B, make sure that none of the tunnels have collapsed and seal off any that look too damaged. Plantui, I need-"

Another day comes to a close, but even half destroyed, the Dungeon never sleeps. But it's yet to be seen if Bug will be able to finish the job. Let's find out?