Book Eight, Chapter 26: Dungeon Clearing

As much freedom as we had found at Kimberly’s loft, it could never make up for what we had lost when we could no longer call Camp Dyer home.

The open spaces, the views of nature, the distance from town, the feeling of safety you got from knowing that there were a hundred other players there with you at any time, ready to come to your aid or, at the very least, go through hell with you… that was hard to do without.

But Halle’s Castle was a step back in the right direction. We had enough players there for four teams. The place was neither packed like the loft nor deserted.

Sure, since the apocalypse was going on, we were a bit on edge, walking the walls by habit to make sure there were no beasties or murderers about to climb over. But in the weeks since we had made the castle our home, that had slowed down. All those monsters that ran from the apocalypse had either found places to hide while they waited it out or had killed each other.

The point was, things felt safer, and not just because we had gotten used to the presence of danger.

The radio reports from inside the circus were nuts to listen to. On the surface, they sounded like advertisements for different acts, but, being that this was Carousel, some of them were odd, others were quite troubling. There had been a trapeze act where a loose bolt had led to some untimely falls without a net, and it just so happened that the audio of all that was picked up really well. We had to switch the radio off after that.

Still, the large rooms and winding corridors of the castle made the danger feel distant. Except, of course, for when the power went out. There wasn’t a lot of natural light inside, and even though we told ourselves that getting the electricity back on wasn’t worth fighting against random goblins and other dungeon dwellers, we quickly learned how important basic lighting was for our mental health—and refrigeration.

That was important to me because, as usual, my breakfast was cereal. I sat at the long table in the dining room, eating a bowl and slowly coming to the realization that even if we had enough milk to last out the apocalypse, it still wouldn’t work out because milk was perishable. We hadn’t thought to get powdered milk, and even if we had, how would that taste in cereal? Whatever the case, I knew suffering was coming soon.

People filtered in and out of the kitchens, fixing themselves breakfast and occasionally cleaning up afterward. We really needed an Adeline who could keep people in line with basic chores, but we didn’t have one, so we traded chores like valuable collector cards.

Camden ate toast while examining the Atlas.

“Killers Rowe is actually a pun,” Camden said. “It’s not just as in, like, the row of killers. It’s because there are multiple killers in the Rowe family.”

“So little Caleb is just lonely out there,” I said. “Mom and Dad away at the circus, and he’s left to fend for himself with his sword.”

“Something like that,” he said. “I am so tempted to just look up the spoilers. What are the odds that we ever end up doing that storyline?”

“This is how it starts,” I said. “This is how you wind up being spoiled to every major storyline and not able to level up.”

“I could stop anytime I wanted to,” he said.

We had to put our conversation on hold because the circus radio playing in the kitchen suddenly cut out, along with all of the lights.

“That’s not so bad,” Camden said. “What was that… six days?”

“Five and a half,” I said. “You got the cameras working, right?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “This is Carousel. All you have to do is make sure the wires plug into the right hole, and it’ll work.”

One thing we had noticed when we were at Eternal Savers Club was the extensive home security cameras available. They were a bit out of date, but fortunately, by movie logic, they would be just fine. The footage would be a bit blurry. Oh well.

We got up from the table and made our way to the wine cellar. Somehow, we had been beaten there by Michael and Antoine. Lorne, the Bully-Bruiser from Nicole’s team, showed up just after us, along with his teammate Kelsey, the Final Girl who dressed like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That was our party. We decided to do this particular chore in shifts, except for Camden, who would always go because he had a particular set of skills that made him invaluable, which was to say that he had the Battlefield Intuition trope. It allowed him to use his Savvy to predict the tactics enemies would use, which proved invaluable in the dungeons.

Michael also went on every run, but only because he wanted the fight.

“Better to rip it off like a bandage,” Michael said. He had been saying that a lot, especially when people started talking about just waiting for the dungeons to clear themselves, which they allegedly would, according to Avery’s writ.

Camden made his way to the shelf where he had put some monitors for his security system. With the flick of a switch, he was able to get his cameras and those monitors back online from battery backup. How he knew how to do that, well, he just plugged it in and said that’s what he was doing, and it worked. It looked like he had incorporated a car battery into the mix. It was exactly what you would expect to see on a TV show for such a setup.

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“All right,” he said as he looked at the screen. “We’ve got the knight in shining armor. I knew he’d be back. Riley says not to look inside the armor, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. We had seen this guy before; he was some type of ghost or enchanted armor or something that wanted to steal your soul. While I couldn’t always see the tropes of monsters and other enemies outside of storylines, because they didn’t apply outside of storylines, I could see a few. Combine that with Camden’s trope, and we figured him out real quick. The fact that he was called Dark Knight of the Soul on the red wallpaper was also an important clue.

“Science zombies coming from Halle’s lab,” Camden said after a few more glances around the various camera views, “and we’ve got a slime. The way it’s not moving, I think that’s one of the exploding ones.”

Sometimes you could see creatures on the red wallpaper when you saw videos of them, but that wasn’t always true. Either way, we were prepared. This was a basic hack-and-slash operation or, in my case, snip-and-trim because I was using my hedge clippers with the Sha-Shing trope. As goofy as I looked, they were super effective in close combat. I also brought my knife made of silver that I had melted down from a spoon. Its trope was called Selective Sharpness, which prevented me from accidentally cutting myself.

Not that I would ever do such a thing.

“Antoine, Michael, take the lead,” Camden said. “Kelsey, you’re in the middle with that spear. Riley and I will be just behind you, with Lorne behind us covering our rear.”

Camden quickly enabled the mechanism to open up the secret entrance in the wall, and we made entry.

“First room clear,” Antoine said as we walked into the dungeon.