Dungeon 42

Catering Confusion

Chp 93

With my reply sent, I felt a small amount of motivation return. It was time I got back to my actual work, as well as some planning. Since the test for the illusion of life was successful, I decided I would do some mass skeleton upgrades next. That meant freeing up mana.

I reviewed the raid footage and found it was about as unhelpful as I expected. The party didn’t really fight well, for the most part. Really, the only thing watching did was highlight the odd moments where they’d tried to resist the spell controlling them. It was pretty sad.

Since I didn’t have any new information to work from, I wrote up a two week plan. My priority was expanding and refining the stub layers into full ones.

While I was laying out my to-do list for the week, I thought of something interesting. Dipping into my items shop, I picked out paired communication stones. They were similar to walkie talkies. I put one half of a pair in the room with Mina and Andrea, along with a note explaining its use while I kept the other one.

I sent two sets to Elim so he’d have options for contacting Tiller and his family, if he chose to use them. I considered giving Mira and Hetcha a pair, but elected not to just yet. I was still considering how I’d approach them and that seemed like a bit much for the moment.

With that little burst of inspiration exhausted, I got back to the more grinding work of planning floor layouts. I had some rough sketches already, but wanted to refine them a bit. I felt like they lacked personality, which didn’t sit right with me.

“Hello?” A female voice inquired. Hearing a voice that wasn’t mine echoing in my chamber of machinations caused me to jump several feet into the air. It took a moment for me to remember the communication device I’d given to the girls.

“Hello, this is 42, how can I help you?” I said after composing myself. It came out kind of politely fake, but it was the best I could do. I hadn't been expecting anyone to call, let alone after only a couple of hours.

“Oh, hello… Can we request a different dinner?” Mina asked. I only knew it was her because I’d spied on the pair while they were talking a few times. I kept that to myself.

“Uhm, sure. I have two alternative salad dressings, pork, beef, or fish main courses, and a selection of soups,” I replied, knowing my inventory of food pretty well. They had been eating what I sent since their own rations had run out. It had only taken them a day to break down and eat the hot meals I offered once they got hungry enough to give in and try the rations I provided.

I wondered if something had happened that might have specifically prompted the call. I’d sent them salad and roasted chicken which Elim liked. It had seemed like a safe choice.

“One pork and a beef… I guess surprise us with the soup?” Mina continued. She misunderstood the actual number of options since I’d said it poorly.

“Hang on…” I said. I started constructing a menu and an order slip in my image editor using pictures from my inventory. It would be time-consuming to do an ingredients list though, so I skipped that. As such I limited the options to what I could write out in a few minutes then placed them in the room.

“Do you have any allergies-” I started.

“What the hell? Mina! We agreed not to!” Andria’s voice came through loud and clear along with a yelp from Mina. The sound of a stone hitting stone followed but the connection didn’t cut out since I was still holding mine. Not that I needed it to spy. I immediately opened a window to check in on them.

“What does it matter if I ask for different food?” Mina demanded defensively. She was facing off against Andrea, both of them looking pissed off and tired.

“If we start talking to them, they’ll figure things out!” Andria countered. A reasonable argument, since she didn’t know I had Mira as an alternative information source. Though what she thought she knew that I’d care about was anyone's guess.

“I’m sick of chicken!” Mina shouted, and sounded on the verge of tears. Being confined wasn’t easy no matter how comfortable the conditions were. The disdain for chicken confused me though.

Like a creep rather than ask I went straight to my event log. Scanning the past couple of days, I wanted to kick myself. I’d been lost in thought and sent them the chicken dinner for every meal for a day and a half. I could see most people’s resolve weakening in the face of that kind of monotony.

“Sure, ask what they fucking did with Lillian and Reiner’s bodies while you’re at it,” Andria shouted. Her original personality had started to assert itself aggressively once the Lilly pedant was removed. She was quite the hothead from what I’d seen. It must have been absolute hell to be forced into such a contradictory set of behaviors.

I felt bad for Mina, but it wasn’t like Andria was wrong not to trust me. If our situations were reversed I could see myself intentionally being a nuisance to my captor. These two had just kind of moped.

“I placed them in marked crypts in a small chamber,” I said. I couldn’t leave the bodies near them in the open without health consequences. It didn’t change that taking them away had been a bad move for trust-building. I could have placed the crypts in the safe zone if I'd been thinking about it.

“Why!?” Mina demanded. I was wondering if she thought I was lying and regretting asking for a pork option for dinner.

“To preserve them. You can bury them later. Or carry out whatever sort of funeral is appropriate. Once we can reach an agreement anyway,” I offered.

“I’m aware this will sound bullshit, but I’d actually rather let you two go. The problem is that I need some binding promises before that. I won't put myself at risk by letting you go without them,” I added, needing the conversation to move forward.

“Such as what?” Andria asked and I was tempted to just send her a contract. The fact that she’d likely close it without reading it and waste my time was all that stopped me.

“You won’t talk about what happened here beyond some broad strokes. Also, no coming back to try to take revenge or going through a proxy,” I said, not sure if they’d thought that far ahead.

“I can get behind that!” Mina said in a grumpy tone.

“I guess we can think about that much. I want to see the written terms first though,” Andria said. Her response was more reasonable than I expected. I created a contract then copied it over to a parchment document. I dropped it into the room as I removed the unwanted dinners.

“Alright, so take a look at the menu for now. We can worry about the contract when you aren’t hangry-” I said and cut off as a gasp came through the other side.

“Hangry!? How do you know that word!?” Mina demanded.

“From my old world-” I started only to get cut off again by a squeal of joy.

“Did you get transported to the game world playing a VRMMORPG too!?” Mina demanded and my orbs flickered a couple times in confusion. What the fuck was a VRMMORPG?

“Wait, do you mean a virtual reality massive multiplayer online role-playing game?” I asked as the acronym started to untangle itself in my brain. I knew what all of the worlds meant singularly, but getting my head around the combination took a second. That kind of stuff was scifi to me.

“YES!” Mina shouted, looking excited.

“Oh, wow, nooooo. I died when 4k TV’s were still a thing,” I replied feeling a bit stunned.

“What’s a TeeVee?” Mina asked.

Either something was getting lost in translation or, from another world or not, we were from very different places.