The Plan (Doors of the Dreamer, Chapter 4)
Process of elimination
Author’s note: For the month of July I am challenging myself to write and post one chapter a day with minimal planning and outlining. You can read the first chapter of Doors of the Dreamer here.
After the dullahan was out of sight, Lance said, “For what it’s worth, I do have a plan.”
“Hold that thought.” David still had two bottles worth of water in his body that wanted out.
As he relieved himself, his mind kept returning to the same question: How much could he trust Lance? The man had saved him from almost certain death, and for that he owed him a great debt. He did not seem to be lying about anything and openly answered David’s questions, even if most of his answers boiled down to “I don’t know.” But a speck of doubt remained.
Problem was, no matter how trustworthy, Lance was the closest thing he had to an ally in this place.
David finished his business and found his new companion still leaning against a tree, watching the highway. “You mentioned a plan?”
Lance nodded. “Before that, what class are you?”
David blinked. “Cleric.”
“Good. I’m a knight, as you probably guessed.”
In Doors of the Dreamer, knights were heavily armored vanguards, always a party’s first line of defense. Clerics, on the other hand, were a support class that used spells that healed and applied stat-boosting buffs.
“I’ve tried nearly everything,” Lance said. “I’ve cleared 236 dungeons. I’ve killed hundreds of monsters. I’ve spent hours experimenting with crafting and items. I’ve traveled halfway across the country, exploring every city and suburb I came across. I even tried more abstract things, like uninstalling the Doors of the Dreamer app. Nothing has brought me closer to returning to our world. Nowhere have I seen even so much as a clue as how to leave. By process of elimination, there are only two things left to attempt.
“The first is a raid.”
David raised an eyebrow. “Okay, but where are we going to get two more people? You said it’s been over a year since you found someone in here.”
“We aren’t.”
“What?”
Lance looked at him. “I have to get out.”
David felt a pang of sympathy. Lance’s expression remained stony, but his tired eyes betrayed just a bit of the hopelessness he must have been feeling.
“Alright, let’s put that aside for now. What’s the second thing?”
“Suicide.”
David opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. The air was still and heavy—there was no wind in this world. Spending three years, almost all of it alone, in an alien, hostile place like this…
“I won’t let it come to that,” David said finally.
Lance almost smiled. “Right. Thus, the plan.”
David’s stomach growled.
“You said something about food, right?” he asked sheepishly.
Lance handed him his phone. “Take your pick.”
The Doors of the Dreamer app was open and Lance’s inventory was pulled up. David began scrolling, and his eyes grew wider the further he did.
“Are you the type to hoard items when you play video games?”
“Only when my life might depend on it,” Lance said. “Open the ‘consumables’ tab.”
David did. In the original game there was no concept of food, only various kinds of potions, but now Lance’s screen displayed a smorgasbord of both.
“Everything will be fresh, so don’t worry about that.”
“How?”
“The inventory preserves the state of the item when you store it. I’ll show you how to use it later.”
David chose a burger patty along with a slice of cheese and a bun—really he was craving fast food, but Grill Shack had apparently not expanded its franchise to this world yet. Lance used the crafting system to instantly cook the frozen patty and retrieved silverware from his inventory.
“The mechanisms unique to this world are as useful as they are fascinating,” he said. “Crafting in particular is very powerful. It took me a while to figure out all the rules.”
David was too preoccupied with his burger to respond. Lance took the opportunity to explain his plan.
“I believe completing a raid with two people is achievable. Obviously both will need to be geared as optimally as possible. Our class synergy is something to consider also—we have no dedicated damage dealer, but I have gear that can compensate for that and enable a more aggressive front-line playstyle. A cleric’s healing should be able to cover for my decreased survivability, not to mention the offensive buffs and spells. Based on my experience in the dungeons here, our biggest enemy will be exhaustion. You can’t simply press a button and watch your character attack and dodge in this world. We’ll start with lower level dungeons to get you used to fighting and work our way up to more advanced ones when the limiting factor becomes gear. Ideally we’ll be ready for a raid within a month.”
David finished his food and licked his lips. “Just to warn you, I’m pretty new to Doors of the Dreamer so my gear isn’t the best.”
“All the more reason to start with easier dungeons.”
“What are you hoping to find? I mean, do you think the raid boss will drop a potion or something that will teleport us home?”
Lance shrugged. “If you have other ideas, please share them.”
David scratched his head. “What about this Dreamer character?”
“What about him?”
“That fiend,” he jerked a thumb toward the highway, “said it was taking me to the Dreamer. That he wanted something from me.”
“I heard similar things.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as being important? Like, the guy’s name in the title of the game. Seems kind of like final boss territory, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t make me remind you that this is not a video game,” Lance said, narrowing his eyes.
“I know, I know. But then again, you just cooked a burger instantly by pressing a button on your phone. We’re talking about fighting bosses and getting loot. Even if we aren’t ‘inside’ Doors of the Dreamer, this place is somehow based on it. Video game logic is the law of the land here.”
“To an extent.”
“You really don’t think this is worth investigating?”
Lance sighed. “If what the monsters say about the Dreamer is true, that would make him more powerful than any opponent I’ve faced so far, which means I want nothing to do with him.”
“That’s just speculation.”
“Calling him a ‘final boss’ is also speculation.”
David nodded. “Forget about the Dreamer then. What about the door?”
“Which one?”
David frowned.
“You haven’t seen them yet?” Lance said. “Doors pop up all over the place here. You must be talking about the black door.”
“I am, but what’s this about other doors?”
“They’re not exits, if that’s what you’re thinking. If it was that easy I wouldn’t be here.”
“Then what are they? Where do they lead?”
“They lead back to our world, but passing through them puts you in a kind of liminal state in which—” Lance shook his head. “It’s difficult to explain. I’ll show you next time we find one. All you need to know is that they aren’t exit doors.”
“And the black door?”
“My hypothesis is that the black doors are one-way entrances used to trap players. I have not seen any since first arriving here. It stands to reason that there is a kind of corollary exit door; the question is how to find one.”
More speculation. David rubbed his forehead. “Okay. Let’s just go with your plan.”
“Good. Now, how many push-ups can you do?”
“What?”