"How did you know where to go?" she asks. "The dungeon is a mess of empty corridors, and you just led us straight to a summoned building. That shouldn’t be possible. Every couple of hours, the dungeon shifts the locations of buildings."
She stands there, waiting for an answer.
I tell her, "That's a rather personal question. But I don’t really care. It’s an ability that lets me sense a building every four hours."
It doesn’t matter to me that she knows—it’s a useful ability, but nothing extraordinary. If I’m more than a hundred feet away, it just tells me there’s nothing there. Though, now that I think about it, every time I’ve used it, I’ve found something. Maybe my Luck Enhancement is causing more random buildings to appear around me. I’ll keep that part to myself.
She seems dissatisfied with my answer but lets it go.
"Alright then, show me the wound you want sewn up."
I peel the gauze from my face, revealing the cut. She winces at the sight of it—probably because it’s still packed with cotton. She’s right—it doesn’t feel great either.
I ask Monty for the medkit, and he walks over, handing it to her. I then search through my bag and ask if she can do anything with the vials from the ambulance, but she declines.
"I don’t know the right doses," she says. "If I get it wrong, I could kill you. You’ll have to bear through the pain."
I nod, already expecting that answer.
She opens a sterile packet to start the suture and grabs tweezers, carefully removing the cotton I stuffed in the wound. Then she rinses it with clean water from my canteen.
With the wound clean, she opens a plastic tube of antiseptic liquid and pours it over my face. It stings, but at least the area is properly disinfected.
Then comes the stitching.
I clutch the armrest of the couch as I feel the needle pierce my skin, thread pulling tight as she loops through one side of the wound and out the other. She ties a double knot and moves on to the next.
It takes eight stitches and half an hour to close the wound.
I thank her, and she leaves to search the building.
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While she’s busy, I take the opportunity to go through the bag of the man who tried to rob us. Inside, I find:
- Three boxes of 5.56 ammo
- A couple of cans of food
- A bottle of oxycodone pills
Junkie.
At the bottom of the bag, I find random items—a fuel gauge, PVC tubing, duct tape, copper wiring, and a desk fan.
I frown. Why would someone need a fuel gauge in the dungeon? Was he trying to fix a car?
I shake my head and stuff everything back into the bag. Right now, I have more pressing matters.
I glance at Monty, who’s looking through a box of bad ‘80s action movies.
“Hey Monty, you alright?”
He turns toward me, looking confused. "Yeah? Why, is something wrong?"
I hesitate for a second before saying, "Monty, you killed that guy pretty violently. Did you know him or something?"
Monty sighs and stands up. "That man was a criminal. I saw him on the news. He did something that—" He pauses, his expression darkening. "Even thinking about it now makes me feel sick."
He clenches his fists before continuing.
"Then I see that same man harassing a woman and a kid, and knowing what he did, I couldn't let that happen to this girl too."
I piece together what he's saying—and if that guy did what I think he did, I’m not going to push Monty on it any further.
I’m about to speak, but Monty cuts me off.
"I don’t feel bad for killing him. He was a worse monster than the actual monsters we’ve seen here, and I won’t feel sorry for him."
I grab his shoulder and tell him, "I don’t care that you killed him. You already had a good reason before you even told me this. I just wanted to know if you were alright. But if you’re good, then I have no problem with it. Just—next time, give me a heads-up. That scared the shit out of me."
Monty looks at me, then nods.
"You're right. We have to work together and not keep secrets. Grant, I think—" He stops mid-sentence, looking at me like he’s about to drop a bombshell.
I stare at him, suspicious. ‘The fuck is he about to say?’
He stays quiet a little longer. Then he finally speaks.
"Your sister is hot."
I blink.
"Yeah? Well, fuck you too. I can't even tell your sister and her dog apart."
Monty bursts out laughing, and I can’t keep a straight face for long either.
The stress of the last few days melts away as we sit there, joking around and talking about what to do next.
“I think it’s time to start searching for a permanent base,” Monty says. “We need somewhere to put our stuff. I can’t keep carrying this much gear.”
I nod. “It would be nice to have a real place to rest and stock up. But we don’t know how it works—if we claim a place, will we have to come back up to this floor every time?”
Monty thinks about it, then says, “We could ask her if she knows how they work.”
We both glance at the woman, who’s helping the kid find a new jacket.
I shrug. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
I stand and head over to her.
Before I can even say anything, she looks at me and starts talking.
"When you claim a summoned building, it becomes bound to you. Once it's bound, you can summon it. But think carefully about when you summon your base—it will attract every monster in the area."
I stare at her for a second.
"Wait—you heard everything we said?"
She rolls her eyes. "You two should really be quieter. How long have you even been here? That’s something we learned in the first week. how long has it been since you two got summond?"
I turn to Monty. He holds up four fingers.
I frown, then turn back to her. "We’ve been here for… four or five days? So we’re still pretty new to the dungeon."
She gives me a look like that explains everything.