Chapter 425 [419] 5.43 Oceandepths Manor IV

Of course, nothing in this world can ever be simple.  What was envisioned as a simple jaunt to the entrance of the main complex of the dungeon has been made considerably more complex by the fact that this dungeon, of all the dungeons out there, happens to have a goddess-damned puzzle component.  And no, my [Unlock] glyph didn’t work, despite trying three times!

I grumble in frustration that the System has seen fit to stymie my attempts to bypass these wastes of time.

So instead we’re left looking at an array of squares on a grid twenty-four high and twenty wide.  Six of them, all in the center of the board, are colored, while the others are a sort of translucent gray.  Of those remaining six, three are black, and three are white, forming a hexagon or maybe a star shape with two open squares contained within, depending on how exactly one sees the formation.

Chloe clicks a button in the corner of the grid.  It lights up in white for about half a second.  Then an irritating screech flashes as the color fades back to the same grayscale as all the others.  I try another button, this one next to one of the other lit-up squares.  The same failure, the same cacophonous noise, the same fade back to gray.

“Really?” Lindsey says.  “That’s what the System is making us do?”

“What is?” Chloe asks.

“You’ve never played Othello before?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember how to play that.  I’ve played it with Sera a few times back in the day.  We don’t really play board games together anymore.”

It’s so obvious in retrospect that I can’t help but be embarrassed that I didn’t see the connection myself.  “With any luck, it will take longer than a single game of Monopoly.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Chloe says.  “You want to hear about embarrassing stories, let me tell you about the first time the two of us played Monopoly.  I think it was just after my tenth birthday, when–”

I do my best to turn my focus inward as my face turns beet red out of humiliation, but Chloe, fiendish woman and seductress she is, also transmits the story mentally via our bond, her mental voice far too sultry for a story about a game in our childhood.

“It must’ve been Seraphina’s most unlucky day ever.  Okay, well, one of them, at least.  I got the die roll to go first, and then, on my very first roll of the game, got doubles twice in a row, picked up two of the light blue properties, before finally landing on the first orange tile.  And Seraphina, for the next three turns, lands on every one of the properties that I had just bought.  By this time, I’d already passed Go for the first time and managed to get my third and final light blue property.”

“Oh gosh, did you then put multiple houses on the square, and she landed on it the next go around?”

“Twice in the same cycle, Lindsey!  I hit Oriental Avenue on one roll, then rolled a three next turn and got my sorry ass on Connecticut Avenue to get fucked by another three-house rent payment!  I told that damn goddess of luck that she needed to play fair and not cheat with her die rolls, but she just gave me the most indignant look that she hadn’t been cheating!  And the worst part is, that she hadn’t been cheating!  No, she’s just got the best goddess-damned luck ever.

“Do you know how many times I’ve beaten her in a board game with a luck component, Lindsey?  In the sixteen years we have known each other?  Once!  One time!  One time in sixteen fucking years, Lindsey, and by one goddamned point at that!  Even when we play games of skill like Scrabble, she gets great bingo tiles while I keep drawing the infamous ‘U-U-W’.  And this was back before the word ‘waifu’ was added into the official dictionary!”

I shake my head.  “Fucking hell, Lindsey.  I must have used all my luck the last time around, because I sure as hell never can win against her in this lifetime.”

“And yet you still love me, Sera.”  Chloe kisses my cheek.  “Even if you did flip the table when you went bankrupt in just five minutes and ten seconds.”

“And yet I still love you, Chloe.  Even though you seem to remember exactly how long it took”

“Alright, Miss Drama Queen,” Lindsey says.  “Assuming that you have properly gotten all of that out of your system, shall we focus on winning this game here?”

I know just the basics of the strategy for this game.  The key is to secure as many of the corner squares as possible, none of which can then be recaptured.  The dungeon’s artificial intelligence, however, seems to understand this principle as well.  With every move it makes, it is boxing my number of moves lower and lower.  None of the choices available is very good, and all of them at this point have counterstrategies that the dungeon’s intelligence finds and exploits in the span of milliseconds.  I lose, and it’s not close.

“I guess board games just aren’t your specialty,” Lindsey says.

“I guess it’s my time to shine,” Chloe says.

She presses the first tile.  The dungeon’s computer, for lack of a better word, responds, followed by Chloe making a second move that I would have considered odd at first glance.  It leaves her with only a few tiles, but on closer inspection, the computer doesn’t really have any good moves.  All of her tiles are isolated, the computer can take only one of them, and there are paths to get at least four or five more tiles next turn, including several on sandwiched diagonals that can’t be easily taken.

The computer chooses a move that seems sensible enough.  Chloe chooses another tile that again seems random at first glance, but has a few advantages that appear upon closer inspection. She’s currently outnumbered by a wide margin, but she has the advantage in that her tiles have been positioned along the exterior of the growing matrix.  The computer captures one of the tiles, but Chloe counters with a new tile that sweeps across the diagonal and captures nine tiles in a manner that the computer cannot easily take back.

It tries, but I see the pattern that Chloe has identified from the beginning.  If the computer plays for the diagonal, Chloe can keep the pattern going all the way to the edge of the board.  The computer recognizes as much and chooses a different strategy.  For an instant, the board glitches.  Lindsey smirks the moment the computer makes its play.  A moment later, a smile escapes my lips.  The play, again, was not bad on the surface.  But it made the sort of critical error that isn’t apparent until several turns later.

Chloe captures the first corner, down at the bottom left.  The computer’s strategy shifts toward defending its numerical advantage and attempting to end the game prematurely.  For a moment, I think I see a strategy that will lead to its victory.  Chloe reaches out her hand and the machine glitches and then it makes another move that looks facially off.  Chloe responds immediately with the obvious solution, and there is no tricksy response that the computer saw and I don’t.

The computer pauses for the first time.  The flow of Ether in the surroundings shifts for a reason I can’t immediately determine.  The computer then makes a move that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and Chloe capitalizes on the error.

My attention turns to the rest of my surroundings, expecting there to be something lurking, planning to pounce when we’re so busy watching Chloe absolutely demolish an AI algorithm that seemed positively impeccable when I played against it.  I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but maybe Chloe is, in fact, just plain lucky.

Another glitch in the literal matrix precedes another mistake, and Chloe doesn’t need Lindsey or me to tell her how to capitalize on it.  What had a few moves ago been a board that looked dramatically in favor of the dungeon core now is so lopsided in Chloe’s favor that I’m not sure I could lose it from this position even with my ass-end luck.  She’s got three of the four corners, with one still left to be taken, and it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the pieces flip.

Chloe wins by a score of 363 to 117.  An absolute rout from a position that seemed lost by about move twenty.  Chloe, far from being excited about her victory, just watches with nonchalance as the board disappears into the ground.  A few seconds later, a chunk of blackened metal appears in its place.

This strange alloy looks vaguely like Inferniron, though I don’t think that’s what it actually is.  It emanates a strong, light-absorbing aura and possesses incredible Ether conductivity.  And I want it.  I want it bad.  It will make an ideal substrate for a reforged swordstaff when next I have the opportunity to commission it.

Chloe picks it up and hands it to me.  “Here you go,” she says, then gives me a kiss on the cheek.

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, I’m not going to use it.  It’s radiating something fiercely unholy and it makes me uncomfortable even to touch.  But I know you’ll make good use of it.”

“Thank you, love.”  My words are little more than a whisper.  With a flicker of a deep silver light that is cloaked in darkness, it slips away into my [Inventory].

“Alright, I have to ask,” Lindsey says.  “And don’t give me some bullshit about just being extraordinarily lucky, Chloe.  I saw that you were doing something to the dungeon during that game.”

Chloe sighs.  “I don’t fully understand it myself.  So, what I do know is that when I reached Level 96, I got a General Skill called [Lady Luck].  It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect.  It gives me small but noticeable boosts to my [Agility] and the chance that my strikes randomly strike weak points in an enemy’s body— muscle microtears, gaps between scales, and so forth.  It also supposedly, and I haven’t really had a chance to test this part, increases the drop rate of items from enemies and dungeons.”

“We did get a good haul from Godzilla’s Electric Eel cousin,” Lindsey says.  “Though I’ll reserve judgement about whether that was actually the cause until I get more proof.  But it doesn’t explain why you were able to start fucking with the screen like that.”

“I have an idea,” I chime in.  “Admittedly, a lot of this is speculation, and I don’t want this getting out to wide audiences.”

“I’ll keep it in confidence, just as I have with everything else you’ve told me about yourself.”

“Well, what I’ve since learned about ｢The Anomaly｣ suggests that it’s some sort of artificial glyph designed to hack the System.  And thanks to Chloe and I both reaching the third ascension, as well as the fact that we recently got engaged, has caused our bond to grow more powerful.  I think that she may have inadvertently tapped into my innate power and synchronized it with her own [Lady Luck] to cause some fortuitous ‘luck’ in the form of the game glitching out and the dungeon’s artificial intelligence system making moves ranging from the suboptimal to the downright awful.”

“It’s a plausible enough explanation that I can buy.  As plausible as the three of us having discussions about board games and embarrassing situations earlier and then getting caught up in a puzzle that was just playing a common Earth board game.  I have to wonder if other species and cultures on other planets get puzzles in a similar vein.”

“I don’t think anyone can really say,” I say.  “But I have a feeling that we might be able to pose that question at some point in our lifetimes.”

“Perhaps.  But we should avoid putting the cart too far in front of the horse.”

I can only agree.  While having a bit of a fun time and even getting a piece of rare loot without putting my life on the line is nice, we do still need levels and Skills and stat points if we are to reclaim our freedom from our once and future servitude.