“Is this one giant city?”
He nodded. “The Over City levels are a tradition in Dungeon Crawler World. There are hundreds of small, scattered villages surrounded by wide swaths of abandoned city. It’s all connected. As far as you’re concerned, these urban areas appear every three levels.” He stomped his foot on the rickety ground. “Most of this is just window dressing. You’re still below the surface of your planet. That isn’t really the sky of some distant world. There isn’t really a massive volcano under our feet.”
“Volcano?” I asked, looking down.
“We’ll get to that. Think of this as a stage set for the benefit of the viewers. This and all the following floors will be significantly smaller than the first two, with the exception of the ninth floor. This one is probably about the size of the state of Arizona. About 300,000 square kilometers. Most of that is the ruins.”
“What about these NPCs?” I asked.
A pair of dwarven girls, no older than teenagers, were practically swooning at the sight of Mordecai. They said something, trying to get his attention. He growled at them, and they scattered, giggling.
“Oh, they’re very real. They are living, biological creatures similar to some of the mobs. Most have been engineered by the Borant Corporation, and therefore are owned by the Borant Corporation. This is the only world they know and have ever known.”
“That’s really fucked up. Do they know what they are?”
“Their minds are altered every time they are regenerated. The next time this floor is formed on some distant planet, these NPCs will wake up like it is just another day. But they will have also been changed, planted with false memories. Inconvenient memories—like some crawler sitting them down and explaining to them that they’re props on an intergalactic television series—will be erased. Take those goblins you told me about, for instance. They were addicted to meth. They were fighting the llamas over it. That storyline didn’t exist in the previous season. That was added for this world and this world only. Next time they’ll be addicted to solar berry extract or something like that. Or they’ll be fanatics of some god. Or something else.”
“What the hell?” I asked. That was just as bad, and in some ways worse, than what they were doing to me and my fellow humans. “But these are still living creatures? How is that legal?”
“Borant created them, so they own them. One can’t alter the memories of naturals. People who were born in a natural biological process. Not unless they sign away their rights.”
“And people are okay with this?”
“Most are. The galaxy, as a whole, has plenty of other things to worry about. The rules regarding this stuff are pretty strict, almost as strict as those regarding AIs. These biologically printed mobs and NPCs are not allowed to exist outside of a Syndicate-monitored production. Using them for any purpose other than sanctioned entertainment is highly illegal. It’s basically considered a war crime.”
“So, there are no intergalactic brothels filled with genetically-engineered women?”
Mordecai grimaced. “Not legal ones. But there is one place where such things do exist legally.” He pointed down.
“But you said…” The realization struck me. “Oh, so the deeper floors?”
“That’s right,” Mordecai said. “This third floor won’t have any tourists on it. Most of them are on the 18th floor. It’s like a billionaire’s luxury retreat. The galaxy’s rich and elite congregate on the 18th floor to party and gamble and satiate their most base desires.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I assumed the 18th floor would be hell on earth filled with dragons and lightning giants and shit. What would happen if a crawler managed to get there?”
“Nobody ever has,” Mordecai said. “So, I don’t know. The same with the 15th floor. Borant and the system AI are required to have a plan in place, but nobody has ever gotten that deep, so nobody knows. That sort of thing is way above my pay grade.”
As we walked, we passed multiple shops and guildhalls and inns. The inns were listed as Saferooms on my minimap.
Mordecai spent some time explaining class and skill guildhalls. Donut and I both could train at Rogue guildhalls. Donut also had access to Bard halls, and I would have access to Fighter halls. Sometimes there would be special halls for certain races, too. He said he’d never seen a Primal hall, but it was possible it existed. Quadrupeds generally didn’t have halls.
We reached the end of the street where a small fence had been erected. A pair of the well-armored guards stood by a small gate about as high as my waist. The two guards were decked head-to-toe in plate mail, and I couldn’t tell what sort of creatures they were, only that they were bulky and tall. Each was armed with a long, steel blade. I examined one.
Village Guard Swordsman – Level 75
Everyone likes the strong, silent type. In order to find out what’s underneath that helmet, you’ll have to first kill the guard. Go ahead and give it a try. I double dog dare you.
Village Guards are tasked with protecting the population centers of the third floor from the creatures who roam the Over City Ruins. They are only on duty when the sun is up, so don’t go whining to them for help when it’s dark.
The guard was unmoving. He stood there like a statue.
“He’s kind of scary,” Donut said as we paused at the gate.
“Don’t mess with the guards,” Mordecai said. “Don’t attack the NPCs. Don’t try to rob the stores. Don’t get drunk and pass out in the streets. There is no jail here. Only the death penalty. If you run afoul of the guards, don’t try to fight them. They are slow, but there are a lot of them. Run from them and into the ruins. They won’t follow you there. You will never be able to return to that particular village.”
Beyond the gate were more buildings, but they were decrepit and abandoned, made of crumbling, moss-covered bricks slumping in on themselves. A rolling fog obscured the distance, but even in the shadows of the fog I could see faint buildings of all shapes and sizes.
“Okay,” Mordecai said, indicating the area beyond the gate. “The ruins. It’s the same as the dungeon, but it’s all old, rotting buildings, abandoned and overgrown parks and so forth. There’s this whole storyline about the existence of the city. It’s all based on a children’s story that never made it into your earth’s culture. Basically, there’s this massive, dormant volcano, and a magical world existed solely inside of the volcano. That world consisted of six layers. The very top layer is where we are now, the Over City. It is where most of the people lived. A great monster lived at the bottom of the volcano and breathed out poison gas one day and killed or transformed 90% of the volcano world. The descendants of the survivors live in these villages. The resulting monsters live in the ruins.”
“That’s quite morbid,” Donut said.
“So, we’re on top of a volcano right now? In the game's story, I mean?” I asked.
“Yes. This floor is supposed to span the length of the volcano’s crater.”
“What’s the next level down?” I asked.
“For you, the fourth level is just a random dungeon level. Same with the fifth. But the sixth floor is also part of this volcano city storyline. For the NPCs here, it is the next level down. It is called the Hunting Grounds. It’s another urban level with similar villages, though the villages are much bigger, and the original residents were much wealthier. The ruins are jungle-like and filled with vines. And it’s the first level where brave and insane tourists can go to hunt crawlers. Not too many do it because it’s both expensive and dangerous. There are no protections for the hunters. They’re in real danger from both the mobs and the crawlers, and every season a handful of rich dumbasses get themselves killed.”