The cheers from the arena had faded, but the consequences of my victory lingered.
Specifically, the consequence of having spent almost all my money on a single, glorious, twelve-second flex.
FaeLina had set up her "war room" chalkboard again, but this time, it just had one, sad number written on it, circled several times in angry chalk.
"Only Forty-seven Dungeon Points, Mochi!"
FaeLina wailed, her voice echoing with the despair of a bankrupt accountant. "A single, basic, DLRB-approved spike trap costs fifteen DP! We can afford two rusty spike traps and a single wobbly floor tile! That’s not a ’Labyrinth of Lethality,’ it’s a minor home repair project!"
She was right. The other dungeons would be showcasing horrifying flesh-eating slime pits and complex, soul-shattering illusion mazes. We were going to show up with a couple of holes in the ground and a wobbly stone.
’FaeLina is looking at our DP balance,’ I thought, and a slow, clever idea beginning to formin my mind. ’But she’s looking at the wrong resource. Our real treasure isn’t Dungeon Points; it’s the two beautiful new skills I just earned.’
In my mind, I looked at them gleaming in my status menu: [Bureaucratic Judo] and [Loophole Abuse].
FaeLina saw a problem of money. I saw a problem of definitions.
’The tournament rules said the labyrinth had to be ’lethal’,’ I mused. ’The quality of being able to cause death.’ But what if an adventurer’s will to live dies a little? What if they are overcome with such powerful annoyance that they wish they were anywhere else in the world? The rules are wonderfully vague on this point.’
FaeLina saw the dangerous, creative spark in my mind. "Oh no," she whispered. "You have a terrible,but brilliant idea, don’t you?"
I couldn’t afford to buy new monsters or high-tech traps. I had to use what I had. I did a full inventory check of my dungeon’s most powerful, low-cost assets: an endless supply of tea, the ability to create off-key music, the grumpy gargoyle statue, and the offerings from my "cult," including the legendary damp sock.
"We are going to be humiliated," FaeLina groaned.
’Not humiliated,’ I corrected her. ’Innovative.’
I began to build. I spent my remaining points not on traps, but on excavating a new, temporary ’Tournament Annex’ chamber off the main lobby. Inside this plain, newly-formed space, I designed not a labyrinth of death, but a gauntlet of pure annoyance.
The next morning, I gave my team a pre-tournament tour of my creation.
The first room was the ’Corridor of Mildly Inconvenient Slopes.’ The entire floor was tilted at a barely noticeable but deeply annoying two-degree angle, forcing anyone who walked on it to constantly feel like they were about to lose their balance.
The second room was the ’Chamber of Unpleasant Noises.’ I had Clank record the single most annoying, repetitive children’s song he could find in Pip’s storybooks. I then played it on a continuous loop, magically amplified and just slightly out of tune.
The third room was the masterpiece. I called it ’The Gallery of Questionable Art.’ I had placed the Duke’s grumpy gargoyle statue in the center of the room. I had then conjured walls painted in clashing, awful shades of pea-soup green and bright orange. And on these walls, I had hung dozens of Sir Crumplebuns’s signed, heroic portraits, all slightly crooked. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ nοvelfire.net
"It’s... it’s horrifying," Gilda said, her face pale as she looked at the clashing colors.
The final room, the goal of the labyrinth, was a small, empty chamber. In the very center, on a single, dramatic pedestal, sat the final "treasure."
"The damp sock", which I got as a holy offering.
FaeLina stared at my creation, her mind struggling to process it. "Mochi," she said, her voice trembling. "This is... a labyrinth of minor inconveniences and bad interior design. It’s not lethal."
’Isn’t it?’ I projected, a deep sense of satisfaction filling my core. ’After experiencing this, won’t any adventurer’s soul just want to die a little?’
A final system notification appeared as I put the finishing touches on my masterpiece of annoyance.
[New Labyrinth Created: ’The Gauntlet of Grievances’.]
[Lethality Rating: 0.0]
[Annoyance Rating: 99.9 (Legendary)]
My team looked at my creation, then back at me. They were completely unsure if I was a genius or if I had finally, truly lost my mind.