Chapter 51: Any Games Like It?

"Long time no see. No idea what beef you've got with this goblin, but he's MY servant."

Sharlock released the octopus demon's hand as if nothing had happened, pushed xX_ShadowBlade_Xx behind him, and simultaneously loosed his own dominating aura — locking the three players behind him speechless and motionless.

To the three players, of course, it wasn't Sharlock's aura that had locked them up — clearly the game had started playing a cutscene.

"Sharlock..."

The octopus demon looked at Sharlock, opened his mouth, closed it, then turned and left without another word.

Once the octopus demon was gone, Sharlock beckoned to the three players:

"That one's an annoying piece of work, but he's got little to do with our Eternal Kingdom — hopefully we never cross him again. Come along, Arthur, Sylvana, xX_ShadowBlade_Xx. Your quest is complete; we've secured ample funding and honors at the conference. Time to head back to the Eternal Kingdom."

Sharlock's whole purpose in coming had been financial help — a loan or an investment. But loans were a dead end, and investing was a long shot; as for "sharing experience" with those dungeon lords? What was I supposed to share — my hard-won wisdom on putting up with idiot users?

Still, the conference had been genuinely fruitful: he'd found a commission that might be a perfect fit for his dungeon — or rather, for those otherworld players.

As for buying anything else, or recruiting talent in magic-item crafting, alchemy, enchanting, gem work and the like — Sharlock had taken one look around, seen the beautiful price tags (four or five zeroes a pop), and thought better of it.

He'd originally planned to bring the three players along as helpers, letting them showcase the otherworld players' death-defying spirit during the loan talks to squeeze out a little extra credit — but that was clearly unnecessary now. One: no loans to be had. Two: another way to make money had already presented itself.

Sharlock wasn't going to waste more time here. He needed to get back and work out how to approach the Undead Academy about cooperation — and to draft the next storyline quests, aimed, of course, at the players. Sharlock was coming to realize more and more just how important these otherworld players were to him.

They work, they take no wages, they stay motivated for ages off whatever trivial throwaway rewards — and now they could even bring him foreseeable magic-stone income!

What possible reason could Sharlock have NOT to love these otherworld players?

The three players, for their part, clearly hadn't seen enough of the manor — and they were deeply interested in the shockingly rude octopus demon who'd just shown up.

Oh yes — interested!

"That octopus-face was menacing as hell. Ten bucks says he's the first big boss of open beta."

"Could happen. And he's clearly got history with Locke — Locke wouldn't explain it, either. Definitely a hidden quest."

They kicked topics like that around the whole way back.

Sharlock, as per usual, didn't respond. He whisked the three players back to Frostlake City and wasted no time returning through the portal hall to the Eternal Kingdom dungeon — where they were greeted by the players' rapturous attention.

Attention aimed mostly at Arthur, xX_ShadowBlade_Xx, and Sylvana.

Everyone was dying to know: the three of them vanish for a few hours — what kind of quest was that? What was the Frostlake City Dungeon Lord Experience-Sharing & Exchange Conference actually like? And so on.

xX_ShadowBlade_Xx, practically the moment he got back to the dungeon, found a spot, flopped out flat on the ground, and logged off.

Obviously he was racing to the forums to write his post — fresh off a trip to the conference with Sharlock himself. You better believe he had material.

Not long after xX_ShadowBlade_Xx logged off, Arthur followed suit — leaving Sylvana alone, mobbed by players firing questions from every direction.

NovelPhoenix is the author's posting place for this chapter; this copy was made without permission from them.

Player-to-player communication was obviously not wrapping up anytime soon. Sharlock, meanwhile, finished insuring the six pieces of gear, then handed out the other ends of the teleport devices to the three players who'd won gear at auction — anywhere within the dungeon counts as a valid endpoint for these mini item-teleport devices.

Arthur had already logged off, so his would have to wait until his next login.

Chores done — plus patching up a few players who'd yolo'd themselves into non-respawnable condition along the way — Sharlock returned to the dungeon core and started plotting what main storyline to write for the players next.

At one point he called Bru over to help brainstorm, but Bru's answer came back fast:

"Main storyline? Whatever works. As long as the players feel awesome — feel like the chosen ones, like without them the whole Eternal Kingdom, no, the whole Underworld might straight-up collapse — just write toward that. Oh, and pick things players already love. That main quest you wrote last time was a huge success: slaying the kobold chief Kramo, terror of the entire Underworld. Same energy — flashy, classy — and you can't miss! Anyway, gotta run — buried in code over here. This banking system is genuinely brutal..."

Then, silence.

Sharlock couldn't count on Bru and tried brainstorming solo. After roughly three minutes of intense brainstorming, Sharlock solemnly opened the official site and, wearing his forum-moderator hat, typed out a few words:

The thread collected replies in no time:

Sharlock refreshed a couple of times, and everything below rapidly turned into beta-key begging.

"Bru." Sharlock closed the forum and asked: "What's the Civilization series?"

"A single-player game — quite high quality. The content follows the march of civilizations in the other world, I believe. Would you like to download it and give it a try?" Bru's voice sounded surprised.

"Not to play it — I'm only after inspiration for the main storyline."

Sharlock explained himself.

"I see... Though I would advise waiting until you genuinely have free time to download and play it. That game is enormously popular in the other world — and once players there start, they typically can't stop for a good ten-plus days."

Bru offered this advice with utmost sincerity.

"You think I'm like those otherworld people? I'm a DEMON."

Hearing that, Bru went quiet a moment, then said:

"Very well. If you insist, my lord."

Presently, a download icon for 【Civilization series.rar】 popped up on Sharlock's screen — but the speed was visibly slower than before. A quick check of the clock said the full archive would take over fifty hours.

"My apologies, my lord — the banking system still needs enormous amounts of mana for the programming, so I can't allocate much to resource downloads. If you're in a hurry to play..."

Bru sounded genuinely sorry — but Sharlock cut in:

"It's fine. Just let it download slowly in the background."

Whatever else was true, his own dungeon came first. Sharlock minimized the download window and clicked back into the official site to keep browsing.

A few players came by wanting to buy private plots and beds in the meantime, but the numbers were small — hardly a drag on Sharlock's time.

And sure enough, threads about the Dungeon Lord Experience-Sharing & Exchange Conference were already live on the forum — posted, as expected, by xX_ShadowBlade_Xx.

A thread titled 【Quest: The Full Story of the Dungeon Lord Experience-Sharing Conference, Plus Some Theories About This Locke NPC】 rocketed to hot-thread status in no time — even Sharlock's own 【Any Other Games Like the Dungeons Series?】 got instantly shouldered off the front page.

Sharlock opened xX_ShadowBlade_Xx's thread. It was packed with photos — every creature and scene the man had laid eyes on along the way — and under each one, xX_ShadowBlade_Xx's personal commentary and annotations.

The main body recounted everything xX_ShadowBlade_Xx had seen and heard in Frostlake City and at the conference, with two points given top billing.

One: Locke appears to have a distinctly ambiguous relationship with a certain succubus NPC — the two of them very likely share an unusual story just waiting for players to excavate it.

Two: a demon with a face straight out of C'Thun is very possibly a version boss — bound for an instance sooner or later. He, too, shares a mysterious connection with Locke; the way he said "Sharlock" those two times was absolutely dripping with grudge.

Intelligence this juicy, obviously, detonated the forum on contact.

...

The players were burning hot on xX_ShadowBlade_Xx's thread, and the discussion blew wide open into the worldview of Dungeon: The Eternal Kingdom itself.

Browsing forums makes time evaporate. The players active outside gradually thinned out, logging off one after another.

Sharlock switched over to check the Civilization download — barely five-odd hours in, and ages left to go.

Maybe squeeze in a little more Dungeons?

Just as Sharlock was weighing it, a flame flared up on the core, spat out a letter, and dropped it neatly onto his desk.

The envelope bore a skull, and read —