Duelling Dungeons

“Talia!” Calliope snapped as a giant crab claw ripped down the wall of my blanket fort.

“Calliope? How did you find me?” I asked, jumping to my feet and getting tangled in the blanket I’d laid over top of my hideaway. “I didn’t answer any of your calls.”

“I am aware,” the girl grumbled. “Just for future reference, if you want actually to hide from people, a giant pile of pillows and blankets isn’t the most subtle hiding place.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that everywhere I go, it seems like someone wants to know about the new rules. Since Kass left to visit her family, and Bella’s taking a couple of days to visit other dungeons to watch some live matches, I don’t have anyone to help me deal with everyone. Hence the hiding,” I explained as I finally got a hold of the heavy grey wool blanket and pulled it off my head.

I quickly glanced around the room, making sure that we were alone, before finally turning towards Calliope. The siren was sitting cross-legged on the back of her giant king crab Toto, like usual. As she pushed the single grey lock in her luxurious black hair out of her eyes, her hair sparkled in the light. From this angle, I could actually see the silvery-purple pearlescent sheen on it. She was wearing a full sundress, instead of her regular bikini and sarong, which probably meant that she wasn’t practicing today.

When George finally dug himself out of the pile of blankets at my feet, he growled at Toto like a dog protecting its territory. Toto’s eyes slowly swiveled forward and focused on the massive spider for a minute before blowing a few bubbles and gurgling dismissively.

Since the two were approximately the same size, George always seemed to be eager to try to start some sort of rivalry or pick a fight. Toto, on the other hand, never seemed to take the Spider seriously. He was always more interested in escorting Calliope around than in some ridiculous contest.

“How did you find me?” I asked suspiciously. “And even more importantly, how did you get in here? I’m pretty sure I reserved this lounge for twenty-four hours; no one else should be able to get in.”

“Kassandra told me where to find you before she left. She asked me to check in on you to make sure you were eating properly, and you didn’t stay up all night working on your tablets. She even gave me full boss permissions so I’d be able to get to you, ” the girl explained. “So… have you?”

“Of course I have!” I replied defensively. “I had a light dinner when I got back from the adventure plaza, and after breakfast, I’m planning on having a quick nap before announcing the proposed rule changes to everyone.”

Calliope stared at me for several seconds through half-lidded eyes before shaking her head.

“It’s four. And not four AM, four PM,” she told me.

I very slowly raised the tablet I’d been working on and checked the time in the corner. Sure enough, it was already four in the afternoon.

“Uhhhh… I guess I lost track of time. Again,” I admitted.

“Yeah, I got that,” Cassandra replied dryly. She slowly stood up on Toto’s back until she loomed over me. “By the powers vested in me, I declare this blanket fort condemned until you get the proper food and rest! Toto, please do the honors.”

Bob hisse, as he attempted to protect what was left of our little hideaway, but Toto just scuttled to the side and brought one massive claw down on the load-bearing pillows, causing what remained of the shelter to collapse.

“That was unnecessary,” I grumbled.

“Orders are orders,” the girl chirped as she dropped back to a seated position on the crab. “Now… are you going to come to the cafeteria quietly, or is Toto going to have to carry you?”

I glanced down at George, who was suspiciously silent at the threat. “Aren’t you going to protect me?”

The big spider huffed before skittering around Toto and rushing out the door.

“You’re seriously going to abandon me over a plate of meat?” I yelled after him. When I didn’t hear him coming back, I muttered to myself. “Traitor.”

“Come on,” Calliope prompted. “A good meal and a couple of hours of sleep will do you good.”

“I need to make one stop first,” I said, holding up my tablet.

“And that is…”

“The control room so that I can send the proposed rule changes, and my personal thoughts about them out on the staff news channel,” I said.

Calliope cocked her head to the side, a sudden gleam in her eye. “They’re done? You wouldn’t mind giving me a sneak peek, would you?”

“I’ll do you one better, I’ll explain them personally if you allow me to stop at the control room,” I replied.

“Fine…” the girl said, finally relenting. “It’s only a couple extra feet. It can’t hurt.”

She gave Toto some sort of silent signal, and the crab scuttled to one side so I could pass. As soon as I was outside, the giant crab turned sideways to fit through the door and rushed after me.

“Alright, spill,” Calliope said, turning sideways on Toto so she could look at me. “What are the changes?”

“The vast majority of the changes have to do with unique mechanics and special cases, so I won’t bother going over all those and instead concentrate on the three most influential changes,” I said, falling into lecturer mode as we sauntered down the hallway.

Calliope nodded and gestured for me to continue.

“The first two changes go hand in hand. The first is that subbosses no longer count towards a floor's troop limit, but dungeons are limited to bringing four subbosses to a match,” I explained, “and the second is that some units may be designated either as elites or hordes, which changes how they’re deployed.

“The main thing that cropped up during the first few matches was that there was a serious discrepancy between the smaller, more elite dungeons and the larger horde dungeons. By limiting everyone to the same number of troops, without taking the quality into account, they put the horde dungeons on the backfoot. Now, if a unit is designated as a horde unit, it can field twice as many staff members in a single unit. We don’t have that many of those, mainly just the slimes and spiders, so it doesn’t affect us as much as it does the undead skeletal horde dungeons.”

“Okay… that makes sense to me,” Calliope muttered. “Does that mean elite units can only field half as many people?”

“Close. We’ll need to dedicate two slots to a single unit. I suspect this’ll hurt us much more than the Horde rule. We relied heavily on the Revenants' last match, and if the Anthophilans evolve, I suspect they’ll count as elite too. That’ll really tie up our resources,” I said.

“But it’ll hurt other dungeons even more,” Calliope pointed out.

“True… the hope is things will even out in the competition. No more fielding seven subbosses and an army of elites against a couple of small packs of skeletons.”

“That didn’t happen… right?” Calliope asked, prompting me to shake my head.

“Thankfully the matches were fairly balanced, but anyone that was paying attention could see that some dungeons were way more prepared than others,” I said. “The Last Bastion fielded squads of paladins against the Tombs of the Last Dynasty and completely wiped the floor with their troops. Thankfully, the Dynasty relied upon subbosses as buffers and subcommanders, so they had a solid core to fall back on. It was still a brutal fight.”

“What about the third change?” Calliope prompted.

“Ahhh… the third change is that an independent third party must review any dungeon-specific mechanic, and the dungeon must make changes to the mechanic if the panel deems it necessary. While some mechanics are novel, others can be match-ending, as we saw in the match between the Elder Wood and Black Sanctum. They’re not going to force anyone to abandon a mechanic completely, but they may ask them to adjust the time limits, or magnitude of the effect.”

It took me a moment to realize that our brief discussion had lasted all the way from my reserved lounge to the atrium, and there were a lot of curious glances aimed my way.

“Just let me run this upstairs,” I said, gesturing to the room suspended above the middle of the atrium, surrounded by large crystalline windows. “I’ll ask Joseph to send it out to the info boards while I make an announcement, and let everyone know it’s available. When that’s done, we can finally get some food.”

“Before George ruins the cafeteria. Again,” Calliope muttered.

The smile fell from my face, and I took a couple of steps towards the central stairway. “I’ll be quick.”