She Rules the Dungeon

"Let's see... the cutscene function goes here. Oh no! I forgot to set the select option at the beginning! Where was that section again?"

It was already four in the afternoon and Otta had forgotten to eat lunch, too engrossed in creating her first dungeon. This was the third day and making a customised dungeon certainly was harder than one chosen from Roomscape's preset library.

On the first day, Otta had drawn up the sketches of the dungeon layout and drafted the storyline. A lot of planning went into the dungeon mechanics. Otta didn't want to create a single-time play dungeon with one fixed ending each time. Sure, battle dungeons had endings calculated and delivered based on the player's achievements in the dungeon. The rewards came in the form of credits that can be exchanged for money. That was how most adventurers earned their keep.

Otta was bored of that. She wanted something with more impact. Every adventurer should decide their own quests. Life is an open-ended question and adventurers should live true to their names. Adventuring is so much more than simply killing and fighting. It is about discovering the unknown and resolving conflicts. The road chosen by an adventurer should never be smooth. In fact, the greatest adventurers should be carving a road of their own. Hence, Otta decided to redevelop a dungeon's identity.

She'd dubbed the dungeon as "Five Lives". The storyline was simple as Otta didn't want to fix too many details that might confuse adventurers from the task at hand. Simply put, they had to pick a side and a method to resolve the conflicts between two countries. With the Roomscape, the dungeons didn't have a player limit. Otta designed Five Lives with that in mind.

In Five Lives, adventurers chose between the Surfers and the Divers. Surfers were characters with the special ability to fly. Surfer adventurers will align their loyalties with the Glinoer kingdom of Valkyrie and Berserkers and start their adventurer by gaining Odin's blessing. Divers were characters with the ability to pass through any object. They will align their loyalties with the Yael kingdom of Assassins who start their adventurer by learning a secret art after completing King Kalon's secret quest.

At the start, there will be a compulsory scene played out to ease the adventurers into the new dungeon's setting. The storyline was simple. The adventurer had been summoned by the almighty goddess Telesia. Telesia explains that the adventurer has been summoned by her to save her world. Glinoer and Yael were at war and developed many items that threatened to destroy her home, the Great Forest that has become a battleground for the two. Telesia explains that she would like the adventurer to aid in ending the war and offers the adventurer two choices. To join the Surfers or Divers. Of course, Otta added a secret option should an adventurer choose neither. It's an easter egg waiting to be found. An adventurer was able to try the job class of both Surfers and Divers by viewing a cutscene demonstration in a first-person perspective to experience what it is like to fight as a Surfer and Diver before they make their choice. Of course, if an adventurer is dissatisfied with their job class after playing the game, there was an option to change their job class but all progress made would be wiped out. As compensation, the system will assign them bonus status effects that will stack whenever they undergo rebirth after a certain progress.

Death wasn't permanent in the game and all adventurers who did not choose to reset their progress will respawn at a chapel of their ally kingdom after death. It's a fairly common feature in many other dungeons. However, Otta added a twist to that in Five Lives. An adventurer is given Five Lives a game day to revive upon death when in a party. The number of members in a party is limited to five so it was really up to adventurers to strategize how many party members they want to recruit. They could recruit adventurers of the enemy kingdom if they wanted to but Otta wasn't going to explain it and allow adventurers to find that out on their own.

Quests were handed out by various NPCs. Otta had created only a few for now but intended to expand on them once the dungeon grows bigger. As it was a dungeon and not an RPG, Otta didn't dare to add too many functions like player trading and arenas.

The NPCs added were a nomad merchant who sold food and potions and will buy certain dungeon drops, a blacksmith to sell and repair weapons or armour, a librarian who will charge for new skill books loaned and a priest who will greet an adventurer who revived at the chapel. Other than these dungeon NPCs, Otta made a separate dungeon space for all three adventurer class. Odin's throne room for the Surfers, King Kalon's private study and Seer Reina's tavern.

The second day flew by just creating the NPC dungeons, NPC responses and in-game currency system. Otta was proud of herself for accomplishing so much in two days. The first day was character design and safe space setting. It gave the red-head a massive headache but she persevered. At the end of the second day, the dungeon was finally coming together. On the third day, Otta was making the actual dungeon and some quests. Unfortunately, the current limit of Roomscape was three hostile dungeons. Otta had to reach a certain rank as a dungeon owner before that limit was increased. She couldn't wait to increase that limit. There were currently over two thousand registered dungeon owners for the new dungeon system. It wasn't easy to move up a rank as ranks were calculated based on the profits shared with PJP. The more profits shared with PJP, the higher a dungeon maker's rank. While Otta was struggling with creating her dungeon, many other dungeon owners have started launching theirs. Adventurers were flooding to well-known ex-adventurers and there was no way Otta could win against that level of competition.

Not discouraged, Otta put in more effort into enticing long-term customers. However, there was one thing Otta was suffering from. It was the lack of ability to program. Hence, she couldn't do many complicated things in Roomscape. The most Otta could do was modify the input for certain pre-made commands and add them in. It was frustrating but Otta ignored it. Grace was waiting for the good news after all. Otta wanted to give adventurers the option of additional skills like cooking their own food and making their own potions so they need not buy it from the nomad merchant. However, due to her lack of programming abilities, she couldn't do so.

It was now seven in the evening and Otta's stomach protested loudly. The red-head finally looked up and frowned at her clock.

"No wonder! I completely missed lunch! Let's get some nutrition pills in you before I continue. Let's see, there's still monster creation, dungeon mission and storylines, boss behaviour and loot system to complete... so much work and so little time."

Sighing, Otta popped some pills and swallowed. She drank some water and looked at the Neru-Neru. The doll didn't say anything but Otta felt as if her favourite virtual idol was cheering her on.

Patting the doll on the head, Otta gave it a tired smile. "Thank you Neru-Neru. I'm all fired up now!"

With a stomach that no longer protested, Otta focussed all her energy and hammered away at her computer. It wouldn't be long before the dungeon was ready for testing.

***

Two weeks passed in a flash and Grace was worried. Was Otta doing alright? Was she pushing herself too much? Maybe she shouldn't have told her friend about the idea of flying in a dungeon. Perhaps the new dungeon creation system wasn't easy to use. Knowing Otta, the woman wasn't very good at adapting to new technology. The first time she bought a phone, she'd thrown it against the wall in frustration. Grace hovered a finger over the call icon on her phone, hesitant to call her friend. What if Otta was in the middle of an important session? She knew how Otta was whenever the redhead's train of thoughts was interrupted. Otta would never recall what she was about to do and turn sulky. It was worse when she was concentrating on a task like writing an essay or solving a math problem. Grace sighed and put the phone away. She didn't want to disturb her friend. Maybe she would try again in another week if she doesn't hear from her.

***

"Finally!" Otta screamed with joy. It was close to midnight but she couldn't care less. After so many trial runs and failures and tweaking, the dungeon design was ready to be submitted. Three dungeons complete with a storyline, Otta was confident that her dungeon would be revolutionary. She didn't spend all her time working on just Five Lives. She'd researched on her competitors and they were all disappointing. Sure, there were new monsters and custom battle systems out there but there were no dungeons like hers that offered an RPG-like setting. Most dungeons out there were grind-for-money types and Otta secretly rejoiced. Of course, there were dungeons that didn't have monsters. These new type of dungeons were well-known PVP arena dungeons. The adventurers duke it out in the PVP dungeon and other adventurers or the public could bet on the match's outcome. The owners of these dungeons rose up the ranks fairly quickly. It was getting out of hand and Otta wondered how that was different from gambling.

Dr Whitestone was delighted to hear that Otta had completed the alpha release of her dungeon. He was going to review it tomorrow and Otta decided to turn in early for the night. She couldn't wait to hear what Dr Whitestone had to say about it.

***

Silence.

Dr Whitestone was silent. He didn't even twitch after Otta explained her dungeon's concept and demonstrated some of its features to him. The man didn't respond even after Otta had called out to him twice and it made the redhead nervous. Was this not good after all?

Suddenly, tears ran down Dr Whitestone's face. Otta was shocked. Was it really that bad?

"Brilliant..."

What?

"This is brilliant! A masterpiece, I see so much potential in this. I'll personally recommend this to the team, I'm sure it will be approved."

Otta felt the tension seep away and energy filled her. "Thank you Dr Whitestone! I'm hoping to hear the good news soon. You have no idea how much this means to me."

The scientist grinned widely. "You have a lot of potential in you, Otta. You see things that others do not. With this new setting, it is guaranteed to bring in a lot of invaluable data. It's not simply about the experience of simulated flight and passing through objects. There is the human factor that has been missing in so many dungeons. We've been trying to understand the flight or fight instincts in humans but even after the creation of dungeons, a huge chunk of data is missing. That's because it lacks reality. With this, we can finally bridge that gap and take another step towards understanding the sixth sense!"

Otta didn't quite understand what Dr Whitestone was rambling about but she was glad. The dungeon she spent two weeks creating isn't getting rejected.

"Oh yes, I think I should present this to the board. Ms Olley, you've worked hard. Please take a good rest, you look like you need it."

Otta smiled. It was true that she'd neglected her health while working on the dungeon but it was worth every second. "Thank you, Dr Whitestone. I'll head back to rest now."

"Please do, I foresee a lot of work for you in the future. At the first word of good news, I will contact you. Rest well!"

Otta waved goodbye as Dr Whitestone scurried away excitedly. She made her way out of the meeting room and dragged her tired feet. Time to head home for a well-deserved rest.

***

"What?"

"I said, you can come over tomorrow. It's approved. I haven't launched it live yet, there is still advertising to do but it's ready to play."

Grace could feel her heart race in excitement. After one long month of waiting, Otta finally gave her a call.

"Are you sure? Is it good? Any hints?"

Otta grinned. "Nope. It would defeat the purpose. But yes, you can fly if you want to. It was tricky to do but I managed somehow. It's not a permanent ability to fly because of the system limitations. However, you definitely can lift off into the air for a good amount of time and distance without falling."

"Can I go over now? I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight if I have to wait until tomorrow."

Otta frowned. "No. It wouldn't be ready. I'm still waiting for the approved program to load. I have not set up the navigator headset either so it's pointless for you to come tonight."

Grace groaned. "I'll wait. We can have a sleepover!"

"No means no! You can come over with lunch tomorrow, no earlier."

"Meanie," Grace pouted but agreed anyway. She was going to bring Otta the papaya smoothie she loved so much. Flying was a dream that Grace never thought would come true and Otta had done so much. There wasn't anything Grace wouldn't do for her friend at this point.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Don't stay up too late!"

"Same to you," Otta smiled. "Try to get some sleep."

The call ended and Otta looked over her shoulder at the completed set up. She lied. The program was already loaded. She just wanted Grace to come over tomorrow so that she could schedule the live playthrough. She'd scheduled the news of the live playthrough on her social sites to her followers. The game was scheduled to launch at noon tomorrow for adventurers to download but Grace didn't have to know that.