This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“You’re a very good gardener,” said Isra.

“Just a bit of self-deprecation.” Verity smiled. She had a lovely smile, made more lovely by the fact that she used it sparingly.

“The other thing I wanted to talk about, when it came to rushing, was knowing when to call it quits,” said Alfric. “But we can save that for when we talk about the bear.”

“We don’t need to talk about the cyclops or the deer, right?” asked Mizuki. “I mean, Isra killed the cyclops right away, what’s there to talk about? And we already touched on the deer things.”

“I think the cyclops is a really good example of when to hold back, actually,” said Alfric. “The basic assumption of a dungeon is that there’s a single monster or group of monsters in a room, but ‘room’ isn’t necessarily the fundamental unit of a dungeon, and sometimes monsters will come in from elsewhere, either as part of their normal behavior or when they hear fighting. Mostly what sets them off is presence, but not always. So Mizuki, it might make sense to let Isra fire a probing arrow and see how that affects things before you lob a fireball.”

“It’s easier to hit something that’s not moving,” said Mizuki. She had her arms folded across her chest. “Besides, I’m limited by the room, it’s not like there’s a point in saving it. Isra can only shoot a bow a limited number of times per day, especially if we’re tearing through the dungeons as fast as we can.”

“That’s what I was talking about,” said Alfric. “You want to save the aetheric imbalance in a room for when it’s most needed, especially because there’s no way to get it back. It would be saved for tactical retreats or adds—additional monsters.”

“I get it, I guess,” said Mizuki. “Still seems like the kind of caution that could bite us in the butt.”

“Maybe,” said Alfric. “Something to think about, anyway. I’m only relaying conventional wisdom. Adds are one of the most fundamentally difficult aspects of a dungeon, and we haven’t had to deal with that yet.”

“We had those wolves,” said Mizuki.

“That’s different,” said Alfric. “But yes, we did well to contain them before they got out of hand. Isra, you did particularly good work there. I don’t know what kind of limiter they had, if any, but fast action seemed like it was the only way to get out of it. For my own part, I think being more verbal about what was happening might have gotten that fight done sooner.”

There was more discussion, and for Isra, it was a bit too much. She imagined sitting and talking about things like it was a muscle you had to exercise regularly and which you could build up strength in. For her, that conversational muscle was underdeveloped. She had come over to the house and spent some time talking with Verity, then some more time in the kitchen before dinner, and then the dinner itself, and it was all adding up to make her a bit anxious. Perhaps Alfric sensed this or was feeling the same because he moved the topic of conversation to something he seemed to really want to talk about.

“We shouldn’t have fought the bear,” said Alfric. “I think doing it got us the majority of the value in the dungeon, but I still think, in retrospect, that it was a risk we shouldn’t have gone for, and the fact that it worked out perhaps sends the wrong message about what the acceptable level of risk is.”

He waited for a moment, and there were some glances around the table.

“I think you may be right,” said Hannah. “And I’m sorry for pushin’ the matter. We were ridin’ high off a series of rooms we’d handled well, and—”

“I think we’d have been fine if I didn’t knock out Verity,” said Mizuki.

“Well, that’s another thing,” said Alfric. “We need to be able to handle the unexpected. Being a dungeoneer is about the unexpected because you’re always seeing things that haven’t been seen before and being put into situations that, at best, share some common features to things other people have seen. In this case, the unexpected thing was an accident of magic, but in the future, it might be something else, an entad misfire, a monster, a dungeon feature, or something like that. There’s a saying in the dungeoneering world—every dungeon is your first dungeon.”

“What kind of sense does that make?” asked Hannah.

“It’s a warning against complacency and overconfidence,” said Alfric. “By the time you’ve done twenty dungeons, or a hundred, you might have lost that edge you had in the first dungeon. You might let your guard down. But dungeons, almost by definition, can surprise you. The bear, if that’s what we’re calling it, really should have been killed by Mizuki’s overpowering strike, but the truth is that anything could have happened, and a large creature is usually more dangerous, just by virtue of his size. The bear could have split in two, or been powered up by the assault, or shrunk down, or… anything, really.”

“How close to death do you reckon we came?” asked Hannah.