Dungeon Sniper

I spent the rest of the night through a restless, shifty sleep. I thought about sneaking into Elysia's room and share the bed, but it was only a thought.

Next morning, with the silent, tenebrous Mataki's Blade on the table, the three of us—Benedikt, Elysia, and I—prepared to talk plans and strategies over energy bars and drinks, mushy and murky respectively, and both tasting like some fruity version of alkaline batteries. I noticed the color of our food seemed familiar—and out-of-place.

Then I recognized the color. The bluish, violet hue of the most precious, if not the only, mineral in this Level.

"Are these—"

"Don't ask how. Just shove them down your throat if you want to live," growled Benedikt as he chewed the energy bar with the color of a general washer fluid. Not that they had one in this world.

"How?"

"You really want to know? Snapped Benedikt.

I thought for a second and decided that it would be for better that I stayed ignorant.

After a brief, uncomfortable breakfast, we finally began to talk.

And it took us exactly thirty seconds before we hit the roadblock: the numbers.

"One-f.u.c.k.i.n.g-million versus the grand total of three on our sides. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like we already lost."

"There's still hope," said Benedikt broodingly.

"Yeah? What have you got, old man? A nuclear bomb?"

"What's a nuclear bomb?" Benedikt blinked back.

"And there's your answer. Nuking them is a no-go."

"I've got bombs. Quite a lot."

"But they're no nukes. I thought you were a genius, Benedikt. How could you not have invented even a hydrogen bomb during your eternity of a stay down here?"

"Not eternity. Just fifty years."

"That's an eternity."

"Just what is this 'nuclear bomb' thing that you're obsessed with?"

So I explained to Benedikt how nuclear bombs worked, at least to my best knowledge. Something something atoms doing some serious explosive reaction and boom, long story short, a mushroom, fallout, and radioactivity—the triple threat.

Okay, I knew nothing about how nukes worked. I barely graduated high school to become a professional gamer. And no school in the United States taught kids how to create a bomb, let alone its mechanism, because, safety first. I might have been a gifted, willing, and violent shooter, but I only shot guns inside the computer games. My whole obsession and proclivity to blowing things off? That started at Minetown for the first time ever. I still did not understand what exactly happened to me there.

Despite my poor explanation, Benedikt caught a few keywords like atoms, fallout, and radioactivity.

"What you're suggesting involves some pretty serious understanding of advanced theoretical physics. And I'm just a mechanic. An engineer," frowned Benedikt.

"Again, I thought you called yourself a genius."

"Everyone calls me a genius, are you kidding me?"

"Can we move on? We've got to come up with something," intervened Elysia before either Benedikt or I, or both, started throwing mean words at each other, or any sharp, solid stuff lying on the table.

"It takes minimal intelligence to notice, and appreciate, a genius in others. And I've watched you for over a month and figured you're not the sharpest tool in the shed. It's no wonder you fail to recognize my brilliance."

"Are you calling me stupid?"

"You want me to say that again slower this time so you can understand better?"

"All right, I may not be the smartest guy around, but at least I'm not obnoxious."

And it was Elysia who inhaled sharply at my side.

"Well—"

"Not now, Ellie," I stopped her in time.

Benedikt had a highly erratic personality. One moment he was a merry, laid-back drunkard, and next moment he became this cranky, antisocial freak with a hint of Asperger's and a vibe of caricature mad scientist. More than anything, he seemed incapable of sounding friendly. He was rude, cantankerous, and arbitrary, as if he forgot how to be and act civil.

I was about to suspect the long years he had spent down here by himself might have been the cause, when Benedikt opened with a line that, to my subtle surprise, coincided with my thought at the time.

"Fifty years I've been holed down here by myself, but I haven't been completely alone, you know," smiled Benedikt, rubbing his hands together.

"You seem excited."

"I told you there's still hope. For us to win."

"You said that, but not with that creepy smile."

I turned to Elysia and saw that she too did not find Benedikt's off-timed grin agreeable.

Benedikt rummaged through the junk pile on the table and picked up a remote controller. He had lots of remote controllers. It seemed as if he had a remote controller for each device in the lab. And there were at least a couple of hundred gadgets around us. Hence, the junk piles.

Were all geniuses this messy and disorganized? I expected geniuses would have some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder to go along with their lovely (sarcasm alert) personality.

But not this one, apparently.

Benedikt pressed the button on the controller and a trapdoor beneath our feet opened with dusty steam. I could see a staircase leading down to the dark below.

"Follow me. I want you to meet my babies," said Benedikt, stepping down.

.

.

.

I was looking at rows and rows of machines standing in lines like well-trained soldiers before marching—communist style.

Not just any machines. They had wheels for feet, but other than that, they seemed like—

"Drones. Your babies are drones," I said, with a mixture of awe and relief.

"Not drones. 'Dwarones.' And yes, they're my children," said Benedikt proudly at the drones glinting under the bright lights that extended for at least a hundred yards on the bas.e.m.e.nt ceiling.

"Thank goodness. For a moment I thought you were going to pull up some creepy Dwarf s.e.x dolls."

Now one could see why I sighed in relief.

Benedikt did not seem to have heard my remark as he went over to the nearest line of the drones and began to introduce each 'battalion' excitedly.

"Notice that they're shaped all differently?"

I could not at first. But Elysia's sharp eyes did.

"So they serve different purposes on the battlefield?" said Elysia, her eyes catching the minute details even to the ones standing far away from where we stood.

"Not so much as purposes. Different styles of combat," answered Benedikt with a passionate nod.

"I see six rows of uniform designs lined up."

I still had trouble discerning the differences. The 'Dwarones' still all looked the same to me.

Until Benedikt clapped his hand, and the Dwarones, in an eerie, mechanical unison, began to whir into life and extend their 'arms'—which did not hold weapons but were weapons themselves.

The Dwarones had weapons for arms. And there were six different types of deadly weapons spinning and running before my startled, impressed eyes.

"So this is your darkest secret. Your unspeakable hobby."

Despite my casual tone, I was wowed.

"Geniuses create in ways that pedestrian minds cannot bear to fathom," said Benedikt haughtily.

"You're right. Who needs a s.e.x doll when you can have an army of drones?"

"I could have made a s.e.x doll if I wanted to, you know."

"I believe you... Is that safe? That thing keeps puffing fire through the nuzzle."

I pointed at the drone in the front line puffing intermittent fire through its flamethrower of a hand.

"Of course it's totally safe, and that 'thing' has a name. He's Scorchy. Scorchy-1."

Then Benedikt began to introduce his 'sons' in order. The first line of drones with spinning blades was the Slashy brothers. The Shooties had rotary cannons for arms. The Sparkies flaunted multiple electrical wh.i.p.s from their sides. The Smashies had just one arm each—a giant hammer that could swing in any direction.

The last line of the Dwarones was called the Stinkies.

"The Stinkies let out chemicals. Toxins, gases, acid, you know, the nasty kind."

"You really had your fun down here, didn't you?"

Six types, one hundred for each line. That was six hundred total Dwarones ready to slash, scorch, shoot, spark, smash, and suffocate the enemies.

"I could kill some time, yeah," shrugged Benedikt modestly.

I was picturing the Goblin Crawlers with limbs cut off, running around in flames, bullet holes everywhere, flattened down to the ground, and faces melting...

But six hundred was still not enough.

"They look great, but six hundred is still far away from being a viable 'hope.'"

It was Elysia who spoke on behalf of my troubled vision. She was thinking the same thing as I was.

"That's why I saved the best for last," said Benedikt confidently as he led us away from the Dwarones and toward the vacant space. He then pressed a few more buttons, and the floor opened with a roar of a platform being elevated from the further below.

"Just how deep down does this place go?"

Benedikt did not answer, and I did not mind either, as I was staring up at a giant machine that emerged from below.

The twenty-foot behemoth had the whole package. The blades, the guns, the flamethrower, the hammer...

Benedikt turned to us and raised his hand to the metallic beast with a flourish.

"My last born, and the masterpiece. The Dwarfighter."

.

.

.

"For a so-called genius, you've got quite a lot of areas to work on. First, the theoretical physics, and then there's your naming sense."

I had gotten over the initial shock and amazement at having witnessed the towering 'robot,' the Dwarfighter.

"I thought about going for 'Dwarf.u.c.ker,' because it Dwarf-ucks everything?" smiled Benedikt warily.

"Yeah, let's stick with Dwarfighter," I shook my head firmly.

"Oh, don't act like you're so amazing at naming stuff? Seriously, Muk?"

Benedikt was hanging high on a maintenance crane, torching a loose plate on his precious lastborn.

"He once named a kitchen knife 'Kitty,'" said Elysia, leaning against the Dwarfighter's trunk of a leg. She did not seem impressed by the gigantic robot as I was.

"A very serviceable and life-saving kitchen knife. Dwarven made, too," I retorted, in memory of a dear kitchen knife that had gone missing. I had lost it during the failed assassination attempt of a particularly unpleasant Elf, and I had never gotten it back. Hopefully, a loving family would put it into good use, for cutting cheese, not each other's throat. Kitty deserved better.

"Well, we do make great kitchen knives," muttered Benedikt absentmindedly.

"Why is this one bigger than the others?" asked Elysia. She seemed bored, but that was impossible. How could anyone look so bored in the face of such a sight?

"It's bigger, sturdier, irreplaceable—"

"I just want to know why it had to be so big. It seems too great a penalty even to implement all weapons into one body."

... No. Elysia was not getting the significance of the Dwarfighter. She failed to see why it had to be big, big enough so that—

Benedikt blinked uncomprehendingly and turned to me while pointing at Elysia as if she were some alien, uncivilized being.

She was not. But then she was an Elf so he was not so far off.

"Does she know—"

"No, I don't think so," I jerked my head tersely.

"What don't I know?" Elysia raised her eyebrow.

Benedikt and I exchanged looks.

"The reason it's so big is because it has to contain a c.o.c.kpit for a pilot to operate. I'll be operating it from the inside."

"And me, occasionally," I added.

Benedikt turned sharply to me.

"You're not operating my baby."

"Maybe not now. But later—"

"Never. End of discussion," Benedikt shot me a threatening look, as a father would to a to-be son-in-law, and at a shotgun wedding.

"I don't know, wouldn't it be more sensible if you controlled it away from the battlefield? It's definitely safer," said Elysia as logically as she thought she was being.

Both Benedikt and I broke out a pitiful laugh.

"What now?"

Elysia crossed her arms challengingly.

"Elves, am I right?" scoffed Benedikt.

"Ellie, dear, let's just say you never turn down a chance to pilot a giant robot. And I mean, never," I said, unable to stop myself from sounding like cooing to a five-year-old.

"I don't get it," frowned Elysia.

"I didn't expect you would."

"Oh, because I'm an Elf?"

"No, because you're a girl,"

Elysia blinked, not confusedly, but murderously.

Swinging some fifteen feet from the floor, Benedikt chuckled contentedly.

"You said it, kid. For once, you sounded cultured. Spot on."

I used the opportunity to look away from a lovely, and scary, Elfina and nodded back to the Dwarf hanging by the crane.

"Thanks, Ben," I smiled.

And there it was again. The unpredictable mood shift of the genius mastersmith. I once knew a fellow pro gamer who suffered from a mild form of autism, and he had his share of mood swings, which happened to coincide with my bipolar disorder, so we were good friends. I got sidetracked, but the point was, even I had my limits to put up with the guy's capricious temper.

"What did I tell you about addressing me with respect? I'm not your buddy, kid, you get that straight," barked Benedikt.

Silence fell afterward. Elysia looked at me worriedly. I was not hurt or anything.

If anything, I was anxious.

"Does that mean that when we do become buddies, will I get to operate the Dwarfighter?" I asked with hope.

"No!" bellowed the old Dwarf.

"You can't stop me forever from riding your son! ... Okay, that sounded wrong. Let me go back."

"No means no, you dimwit. Don't even dream about it!"

"I can at least dream about it, can't I?"

"Don't you dare defile my baby in your dirty dreams!"

Just as I was about to say something back, I saw Elysia shaking her head and tapping her hand gently on the Dwarfighter's leg, clearly mocking us.

"Men, am I right?" said one beauty to the other.