| Combat Initiated
|
| Dark Sage Park Lumberman, Tamer Claudia Pekarest & tamed beasts, Shadowhand Samantha Swiftblade, Fighter Corvin Omklen and Citywatch Recruits Lerin Airleaf and Holgur Moog
vs.
Silverfox A, B, C, D, E and F
|
Corvin simply smashes the silver fox that attacks him against the wall with a backhand blow of his armored fist, while the sabretooth lion bites another fox in half. Park and Sam also kill their foxes quickly, but the two recruits have more problems.
The Sky Arrows watch the fight where Lerin and Holgur both need multiple hits with their swords before the battle is finished.
| Victory Result
|
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
Silver Fox Cadavers can now be taken as loot.
|
"What? Why are the spawns bodies considered loot instead of dissolving? And Holgur and Lerin had more problems than they should have with floor-two-spawns. Claudia, please check on the foxes while I check the room and the floor details. Corvin, on guard for roaming spawns." Park doesn''t like it if a dungeon doesn''t behave as his experience tells him.
Claudia kneels down and checks the silver fox corpses while Park looks around.
Five illusions in this room alone - one on each exit making them all look like regular corridors, including the stairs up that should be there. And the last illusion on the column with the decorative floor around it. Why is that fifth illusion there? Oh right - its the same size as a node and its magic circle, which means the floors node is hidden behind one such illusion. And in total the illusions on the exits work hand-in-hand with the floor effect "Misdirection".
After a few minutes Claudia stands up again. "Interesting - I''ve never seen it used that way. Everyone, these silver foxes carry the modification [Loot] that is usually only found on traps and trapped chests. And as usual it increases the level by one, making these spawn be level 3 on floor 2. The cause of the loot is that their teeth and claws are laced with real silver. That also gives them a slight enhancement of combat strength, but since the silver comes from the loot modification there is no extra battle modification needed or mentioned.
With the silver, the high quality fur and the meat it adds up to a value of around 40 copper for each of these cadavers."
"More than two silver for fighting half a dozen foxes in the first room?" Holgur is surprised "I know quite a number of recruits that would be interested in clearing these rooms for that money..."
"That explains much" interjects Park before the discussion can turn to loot "including why the Necromancer Apprentice was overwhelmed. He expected to face several spawns of the first level, but instead he got spawns of level 2 equipped with the equivalent of silver weapons. With the silver giving a chance of dispelling [limited] magic the foxes must have gone through his simple skeletons as if they weren''t even there.
And that is not the only trick this dungeon has. Look around."
"Huh? Where are the stairs? Every exit of the room is a regular corridor and they go in all directions..."
"There are five illusions in this room, let me dispell them." Park chants five times and each time an illusion vanishes. One exit now shows the stairs going back up, directly opposite to it is just an alcove with a chest. But the two corridors to the north and south don''t change despite the illusions dispelled, and the column also remains the same.
The female recruit, Lerin wonders: "Why waste power on an illusion that shows the same thing as reality?"
"It isn''t wasted" Park answers "The floor effect is misdirection, and with illusions into every direction you can''t even use detect magic to get your bearings. You need to dispell everything unless you are high enough in rank to ignore the misdirection and have good maps to know where you are. This floor will provide quite a challenge to [Limited] adventurers, requiring a lot of mapping skills and counters to illusions. We''ll probably have to raise the minimum entry level for adventurers to four or five for this floor or we''ll loose a lot of them to this dungeon."
At that moment the discussion is suddenly disrupted
| System Notification: The Dungeon''s public title has been changed. |
What? thinks Park [Dungeon Details][Floor Details]
| Dungeon Details |
| Dungeon Name
|
general |
| Public Title
|
Trickster
|
| Title Effect |
All attempts to see through any distraction or illusion (magic or non-magic hiding) are at -2 penalty. |
| Dungeon Rank
|
unknown
|
| Floors reached
|
2
|
| Floor Details |
| Floor Number |
2 |
| Floor Name |
not set |
| Details |
not set
|
| Floor Environment |
Medieval Cellar |
| Environment Rank |
[Limited] |
| Details |
Rough stone masonry walls with functioning torches.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.No effect other than Light |
| Floor Effect |
Misdirection |
| Effect Rank |
[Limited] |
| Details |
The Mapping and Direction Sense skills are reduced by one [Rank] in effect, and all skill rolls of direction sense and mapping are at a penalty of -2 while under this effect. |
Park groans. "OK, at least we now know that the dungeon core survived. It changed the title exactly after we learned what this floor does and it changed it into one that makes dispelling these illusions more difficult. I can still handle it, but dispelling dozens of illusions with that penalty will drain even my astral power a bit.
Sam, have you checked the chest? If you''re finished I suggest we go north."
The Shadowhand holds up a black coin "Yes, and it was only level 1 with only a single dungeon token inside it - probably a placement instead of a random floor chest. The token has a number 1 on front and three stars on the symbol side. I have no idea what it is to be used for."
The party goes to the north, quickly dispatching the six silver foxes that wait for them in the next room. Everything looks identical to the first room, including illusions on all four exits and on the column.
Samantha looks around "That [Misdirection] effect will really cause people a headache if every room looks the same. Park, can you dispel the illusion to the right exit first? If that is the dungeons size limit it would also be a fake corridor."
Park casts the spell and the group looks at an alcove again, this time with a half-meter hole in the floor and some planks and basins on the wall.
"Huh? [Embarrassing Pitfall Trap Level 0]" Samantha wonders "What is this idiocy? You just need to fold down this damaged plank and no one can fall in, because the hole in the plank is too small. Think this is something mutated Park?"
*snicker*
"This trap doesn''t make any sense at all, the only one to be embarrassed with it should be the dungeon itself."
*snicker*
"Something funny, Claudia? Or why are you snickering this whole time?"
"Oh Sam, just think about it - where do you normally see a seat with a hole in it and a basin of dry leaves next to it? Then you''ll also know why it would be extremely embarrassing to fall down into that pit..."
"AN OUTHOUSE???? Why would a dungeon even bother with that?" Samantha shouts in confusion.
Into the following silence Corvin says "The dungeon does have office furniture on the safe floor as well - it seems to have been programmed with options about making an adventurers life easier."
| "OK, General, what is it really? You made that while you were still closed and under an energy limit, but you have never wasted a limited budget on conveniences before on Earth."
"I don''t know what you''re talking about, Gunny. I can give you on good authority that this is nothing but a simple restroom for the poor adventurers travelling through me."
"General...." Gunny gives THE LOOK toward the core.
"Ok, Ok, I give Gunny...
This restroom and a second one like it on floor three are exactly what they seem to be - mostly so that the adventurers exhaust their curiosity and identify skills on them and then ignore the third restroom that is also on floor three.
One of the absolute system rules is that all rooms in a dungeon need to be physically connected somehow, and since I had only three floor crystals to create floors at the same time, that connection had to have been on the third floor at the latest.
I knew from the beginning that I would block the corridor as soon as I had something deeper, and the current connection on floor 5 will also be closed as soon as everything is ready on floor eight. But a blocked corridor is not the same as a corridor that was never exvacated, and a fake wall can be detected sooner or later.
So the former connection on the third floor ends inside that third restrooms pit.
Let them use the rooms for a few weeks and no one will climb down there to look for a fake wall anymore."
|
After a number of identify skills and spells on the embarassing pitfall Park grows tired of it. "There seems nothing to it, the only magic on the bottom is a slow absorption pattern and a smell illusion. Let me continue with dispelling the illusions in this room."
Park casts another dispell on the illusion of the column - and suddenly there are stones flying everywhere, followed by a short firewave.
"Ouch" "Look out" "What the hell" "Iiieeks"
None of the high-ranked Sky Arrows is really hurt by the trap, but Holgun needs a healing potion for the burns on his face, and they all need a minute to put out the tiny flames on their equipment.
Samantha looks up to the hole in the ceiling. "That is a rockfall trap with a Loot-bonus to make it level 3. The cone that is here instead of the column made the stones scatter in all directions instead of only falling down. But why was it triggered by Park''s magic, and where did that firewave came from? No trap on floor two should have secondary effects."
"When I cast the [Dispell] on the illusion, I detected that there was a shield spell directly under it. But I thought nothing of it and dispelled both, because anything protected by the dungeon should lose that protection. Unfortunately the shield-spell was basically used as a plug to keep the rockfall trap closed. But I have no idea where the fire came from, there was nothing magical about it." comes from Park.
Lerin speaks up "I think I know what it was - look at the stones. It''s another case of a carefully selected loot - those rocks are heavy coal and can be sold for some copper. But coal means coal dust, and coal dust with open fire like the rooms torches..."
"Claudia, your Taarna is already sniffing into the next room north. Should we check it?" Sam asks.
At that Holgun looks surprised "A further room in a straight row? OK, we haven''t gone into the corridor to the south so there might not be another room in that direction, but isn''t this at the size limit for a floor 2 of a low level [high] or [very high] dungeon?"
The Sky Arrows exchange quick glances, remembering their discussion from the previous evening. Park answers "We can probably rule out a [high]-ranked core by now, but this should be possible with a [very high] ranked dungeon. Let''s check it out."
The group proceeds into the next room.
| Bad idea, Park - you should have removed the illusion on that corridor to see what it really is...
The General grins to itself |
"Another room like everyone else, with another group of six silver foxes, although two of them have minor mutations from the energy cycle. It''s surely nice for adventurers looking for loot, but somehow I expected something more out of a dungeon that has been cunning with its spawns and traps so far." Corvin sounds a bit bored when complaining about that. "Park, is the column real or another rockfall trap?"
"I think neither - but I can''t make head nor tails about the traces that I can detect through the illusion. One moment, let me dispell it." Park casts the dispell again and the group is given an unexpected sight.
Under the illusion was no column, but a statue of six foxes standing next to and even on each other. They are extremely life-like as if they had been frozen in that position. Before anyone can touch them however Shadowhand Samantha calls. "Wait - that''s no statue, they are caught in a stoning trap."
"That makes no sense, Sam" Park answers "A stoning trap needs an [Average] rank to function properly, it can''t be placed on a [Limited] floor and still function."
"It doesn''t function - my [Identify Traps] allows me to see its restrictions and conditions, and it is completely harmless to us. I don''t know what the core thought when it created that trap, but the first restriction is that it cannot trap adventurers, only spawns can be trapped." Samantha shakes her head "and the second restriction is that all caught will be automatically released when there is no danger and no life around for more than five minutes."
Everyone looks at each other confused. That really doesn''t make any sense.
There is something about the way those conditions are worded - it''s something that doesn''t fit ... But before Park can complete his thoughts, he hears another call from the recruit Lerin
"Your cat is too curious, Claudia - she''s already on her way to the next room again."
Another room in a straight line? something doesn''t fit here, let''s look. Park calls to Claudia "Make sure Taarna stays in the next room, this is too easy and we need to check more carefully."
"Only a single Silver Fox this time" calls Corvin while trying to backhand the spawn into the wall as usual. But this time the spawn evades.
| Combat Initiated
|
| Dark Sage Park Lumberman, Tamer Claudia Pekarest & tamed beasts, Shadowhand Samantha Swiftblade, Fighter Corvin Omklen and Citywatch Recruits Lerin Airleaf and Holgur Moog
vs.
Silverfox A
|
Corvin strikes with his sword against Silver Fox A and hits, but despite the wound the fox makes its own assault against Taarna and bites her into her front paw. Her retaliationary claw strike also hits, but it takes the additional trident attack from Claudia and a knife throw from Samantha to finish the Silver Fox.
| Victory Result
|
| Recruits Lerin Airleaf and Holgur Moog each gain 10 XP (reduced due to high-ranked help).
Sky Arrows gain no XP due to high rank difference.
Silver Fox Cadaver can now be taken as loot.
|
"What the hell was that? Single enemies usually have two levels more than a group of spawns, but that was no level 5 fox. It has to be of at least level 11 for the victory message to change like that." Corvin is now really angry "Claudia, how did that fox get to that level?"
Claudia lists the result of her identify beasts "Node Guard Bonus +2 levels, Stair Guard Bonus +3 levels, Single Enemy Bonus +2 levels, Loot Bonus +1 level, Base level ... that can''t be right - base level three???"
Park begins to dispell everything in the room and finds the node as well as a natural cave corridor going steeply down - only that the way down is in the south alcove where they should have come from since they were always going the north corridor. What? How did we get lost that easily? The [Misdirection] alone is too weak to do this to us on our levels.
Sam uses the silence that follows the surprises to check the floor details. "We are indeed on floor 3 instead of floor 2, and that cavern corridor there will go down to floor 4. How is that possible, I don''t remember going down any other stair?"
For a minute or so the room is filled with confused shouting before Park stops it. "CALM DOWN!!
OK, the dungeon got us lost and no I don''t know how either. But nothing here can really harm us, we are too high-leveled for that. We will handle our task here and retrace our steps dispelling every illusion, that should allow us to find out what happened.
Before that, Samantha, Corvin and I will go check the fourth floor if it has the core node and if it has different effects than the first two floors or the same misdirection. Claudia, keep guard here and especially check if the dungeon releases any Lifeforce here while we are down to the fourth floor."
| "No need for any cheating or respawning so far, Park. The list of surprises is still long...."
|
2.2.4 Mapping Hell, Second Half (Sky Arrows PoV)
2.2.4 Mapping Hell, Second Half (Sky Arrows PoV: Dark Sage Park Lumberman)
The way turned into a natural cave instead of the stairs of the upper floors, and Corvin, Park and Samantha slowly made their way farther down. In the cavern room at the end they found only a single extremely large crab charging them, only to be obliterated by an overpowered void bolt cast by Park. It''s obvious that the [Dark Sage] is currently not in the best mood.
They stand in a rather large, wet and natural looking cavern, with the floor''s node just a few meters ahead. It''s a regular node, so Park doesn''t even need the crystal to check for the core node, this dungeon has to have at least one more floor.
[Floor Details]
| Floor Details |
| Floor Number |
4 |
| Floor Name |
not set |
| Details |
not set
|
| Floor Environment |
Water Cavern |
| Environment Rank |
[Limited] |
| Details |
A natural cavern with some flow of water in it, usually an underground river.
Allows placement of water-based spawns and traps. |
| Floor Effect |
Defender''s Advantage |
| Effect Rank |
[Limited] |
| Details |
Whoever is in a room gains a bonus +1 to physical protection against any fighters entering the room. |
"This floor will probably be something for fighters - a floor effect that will increase the armor of the spawn, with spawns that were selected for an already existing armor. I never heard of that floor effect before however, it is probably something modified down from an higher-ranked effect." Park tells his friends about the analysis.
"Let''s go back, we now know what we wanted to learn here and we still need to find a way back to the stairs up on floor 2. I can''t believe a [Limited] dungeon floor has tricked us into losing our position."
The three quietly ascend the floor again, arriving in the final room of floor 3. Claudia just finished administrating a bandage to Holgur. "Hey guys, while we were waiting I had Holgur and Lerin try out the treasure chest in the alcove there. The trap has triggered the half-life-message for both of them, which means they will now count as escapees when we leave. The chest contained just the usual random floor treasure of a dungeon, nothing special. It lies there" she points a bag in one of the corners.
She then continues "The node is a rare one that is usually found much deeper into a dungeon - which is also why it is almost useless. It creates silver, but its energy and matter limits are so low that it can barely create tiny grains of silver. Some people will probably still use it as they have no chance to get to deeper levels where those silver nodes usually are. It''s probably here to help with the spawning of silver foxes. Other than that, this is basically a floor end room" she guestures around.
To the north is another alcove with an outhouse instead of a treasure chest. With the corridor to the lower floor at the south that means the only entrance to the room is to the east. Claudia continues "Somehow we must have gotten turned around because we got here from the east despite always going north from the entrance. I had some inkling that we went in the wrong direction in the room before this one, but I thought it was a failed direction sense due to the misdirection effect of the floor."
"Good work" answers Park "I had the same feeling, but as you I had thought it was caused by the [Misdirection]. That means there is something else around here that can mess up our direction senses, something that even got us into the wrong floor without an outward sign. Let''s try to retrace our steps."
The six adventurers and four tamed beasts make their way back east through the only corridor that leads to the node room.
| Combat Initiated
|
| Dark Sage Park Lumberman, Tamer Claudia Pekarest & tamed beasts, Shadowhand Samantha Swiftblade, Fighter Corvin Omklen and Citywatch Recruits Lerin Airleaf and Holgur Moog
vs.
Silverfox A, B, C, D, E and F
The Silver Foxes have surprised the Party |
"What the fuck?!?!?"
Despite having a surprise attack the silver foxes fail to do much damage. Corvins platemail protects him from two attacks and the other foxes only get in minor bites before they are killed with quick strokes.
| Victory Result
|
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
Silver Fox Cadavers can now be taken as loot.
|
"Claudia, why didn''t you tell us that the dungeon respawned the foxes here??"
"There was no Lifeforce wave at all, this can''t be a respawn." Claudia defends herself from Corvins accusation.
Lerin interjects at that "Are we lost again? Did we get to a new room while trying to retrace our steps?"
"Everyone calm down" Park takes control again. "The dungeon details still show nothing of a broken or mutated status, so there has to be an explanation for this. Wait a moment - the statues are gone...
Oh shit, I knew that there was something funny about the way the conditions of the stoning trap were phrased. It''s a prepaid respawn. The dungeon creates a group of foxes and has them stoned. While the timer runs, it spawns another group preventing the original foxes from de-stoning.
Then adventurers come and kill the second fox-group. Since the adventurers are alive as well, the stoned foxes remain stone - until the adventurers leave. Then five minutes later they become alive again, effectively respawning without spawning costs because those costs had been paid long before."
Corvin continues from there "And since the Systems [Party Rules] only prevent a higher number of spawns at the same time but specifically allow for respawning, the dungeon has effectively a lot more spawns without the common compensating LifeForce recharge to the adventurers as well as an additional blockade of fights for adventurers on their way back after a delve."
"And as we have seen this can even add more confusion to the question where we are because we remember which rooms were cleared and which not. This dungeon might not have broken the system rules yet, but it bends them into pretzels to get every advantage possible." Samantha adds as well. "Park, please dispel the last illusions here in this room. We need to find out how we were tricked to get here."
One minute and four dispels later Park groans again. "Gates! Magic gates hidden behind illusions of regular corridors."
"Yes," Corvin remembers "the dungeon has far-reaching gates hidden behind illusions for its four entrances, so it shouldn''t have surprised us to find hidden gates connecting points inside its floors. We came from that direction, so this gate should get us back to the second floor - anyone wants to guess where the gate in the south alcove leads?"
"No" Parks stops the discussion "If that gate in the east gets us back to the known rooms on the second floor, then after that we will only follow the physical corridors until we have the positions of all gates. We can''t get a correct map if we continue to jump around."
Five minutes later the party stands in the entrance room of the second floor where the stairs go up. After a bit of reorganising Park starts again. "OK, let''s begin mapping for a second time. The room to the north of here has a gate in the north alcove that ends in the west alcove of an unknown room on the floor below, and a regular corridor going west. We will now follow that corridor and map only floor 2 until this map is complete."
The room to the west of the gate had only one quickly dispatched silver fox. Dispelling the illusions the group finds another exit west and two alcoves, one with a regular treasure chest and one empty. The stone column in this room is massive and doesn''t vanish on dispelling. Samantha approaches the empty alcove with a suspicion that proves correct when she finds a trapdoor. Safely triggering it she looks down into it.
"Hmm - seems as if gates are not the only way to get down by surprise, this pit is deeper than a simple pitfall, it seems to go down to floor 3. It''s one and a half meter wide and long - difficult but not impossible to climb back up depending on what is below, but it''s to dark to see. One moment."The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She takes a small pad of oilcloth from her backpack, ignites it and drops it down the pit. "Yes, about five meters down and looks like one of the regular corridors down there."
The party continues exploring to the next room to the west, where the dispel of the column shows another set of stoned foxes waiting for them to leave to respawn. Dispelling the illusion to the north, another gate is revealed, prompting Park to comment "As you can see a dungeon can''t really mess you up if you work methodically and reveal all hidden traps and gates before continuing. Next [Dispel Illusion]"
Lerin and Claudia are checking the newly revealed gate so they only see a very strong flash from the side before a string of curses and profanities erupts behind them. Turning around they find all their comrades temporarily blinded by the flash that came when Park dispelled the illusion to the west.
Claudia can''t help but snicker after she checks that there is no more danger "You had to tempt fate, didn''t you Park? I remember someone telling us years ago to never get complacent or it would bite us in the back. Who could that have been, someone with black skin and blue hair if I remember correctly..."
After a few minutes of healing and cleaning their eyes Park checks the now empty alcove to the west. "That light was not magic, I would have detected that. There is some form of alchemical residue on the entire back wall - that must be the leftover of whatever has created that light. It might be something for D''vol and Cleev to check, or it would probably best if Orven hires an alchemist to check this."
| "Correct, Park" Gunny smiles "I really like flashbangs, and my secondary class Alchemist came through for me on that one."
|
The physical way now goes to the south, where they find another gate and the floor''s node after killing the single defender. Park approaches the node and accesses it.
| Node Access Menu |
| Rank |
[Limited] |
| Type |
Matter: Silver |
| Matter Storage |
100/100 |
| Matter Creation |
2/hour |
| Node Creation Options |
| Tiny Grain of Silver |
| Cost |
20 SP, 10 Matter |
| Effect |
silver grain (value 10 copper) |
| 1 Silver Coin |
| Cost |
200 SP, 100 Matter |
| Effect |
coin (value 1 silver) |
| Small Silver Bar |
| Cost |
2500 SP, 500 Matter |
| Effect |
Silver Bar (value 10 silver) |
"Like the one on the floor below this is also a silver node. And like you said Claudia the [Limited] floor rank places too extreme limits on storage and matter creation for it to be really usable. But it probably gives the core a discount for the silver foxes so it is of some value, even if only a cheaper respawn of the lootable silver foxes. Let''s continue."
An hour later the party comes to a stop in the south-east room and Park summons up their results. "nine rooms on floor 2, arranged in a 3 by 3 grid pattern. Eight of those rooms make a loop, with the ninth room being the floor-end-room with stairs down in the south-west. Five gates are scattered among those rooms, and everything else but this panel in the east alcove here is already known to us.
Any chance finding out what it is, Sam?"
"Five differently colored lines around a metal token glued to the wall. It looks like the token from the first chest with three stars on the visible side and completely black. When I touch the token, one of the lines seem to light up for half a second. Let me experiment a bit."
The others settle down for a few minutes while Samantha touches the token and the lines. Sometimes the lines light up, and sometimes they hear a curse and see Sam wiggling her fingers. The entire process speeds up more and more, until suddenly the token drops into her hand and the lines vanish. She adresses her friends "That was a test of both [Body-Flexibility] and [Mind-Power]. I had to remember a sequence of lights that got longer and faster with each try, and touch the same sequence before the time was up. A failure gave a small zap that is harmless for high-ranked adventurers, but could become problematical if repeated by [Limited]-Rank people. After I succeded with a ten-signal-sequence, I got the token with the number 5 on the other side and the wall went dark."
At that Park calls everyone "OK, now let''s go down to floor 3 and see that we can map it as well. And once we have all gate positions we''ll check where they go."
Mastermage Orven Windrider, Rivansea Dungeon Councillor and Guild Leader Travellers/Adventurers Guild
Nine hours after they went into the second floor, Orven watches Park Lumberman and his companions climb back up to the first floor. All members of the first party are overloaded with corpses of silver foxes.
They look tired and a bit frustrated - something on the delve wasn''t as easy as we assumed. Of course not - we never had a dungeon with four magic portals on its first floor, so we can assume things are different below as well.
"Welcome back - did you get to the core floor?"
In a very frustrated tone Corvin answers "No, we spent nine hours in Mapping Hell. The others will get there tomorrow - unless that dungeon has some other surprises for them as well."
At this Park sends the other Sky Arrows away "Go back to the inn, I handle the rest. And lighten up, you can get extra wine for your share of the loot. Orven - is there some place where we can talk about it in peace?"
"Follow me" Orven leads his old comrade from his adventuring days to a sideroom of the first floor. "This room is another mystery, because it contains symbols of Bareen on the walls. It is not a shrine, but priests have confirmed that Bareen has really blessed these symbols, and no one knows how that is possible. But for now it is empty and has no purpose. So what can you tell me about the dungeon?"
"It survived the energy cycle. The title it activated makes the second and third floor a lot worse, and it activated it directly after we understood the problem of the second floor." Park takes a flask from his backpack and draws a good drink from it. "It isn''t broken, but it bends the system rules to get the maximum effect possible from it - we''ll have to set the minimum safe level for adventurers to seven or even eight for the second floor."
"What? Usually someone is mostly safe if he has three levels more than the floor number, why do you need that high a safety limit?"
"Look at this corpse, the only spawn type on the first two dungeon floors. Somehow the dungeon modified the loot option to be used with spawns, and that gives all spawns an extra level beyond the regular floor base. Additionally the second and third floor are interconnected with magic gates that are hidden behind illusions like the entrances themselves. You have to give both floors the same safety limit due to that.
The second floor has nine rooms in a 3x3 pattern with five hidden gates, the third floor sixteen rooms in a 4x4 pattern with seven gates hidden behind illusions. Some illusions hide an alchemical flash that blinds you if you look at them, while other illusions hide needle-throwers that you need to look at to evade them when you dispel the illusion. Adding to that..."
Orven listens to Parks story of the first evaluation and mapping expedition. The most important thing is that the core survived without going dormant or mutating - if it is exceptionally strong that is rather an advantage in the long term, especially after we control it.
"I think I got the important parts, the rest can wait until you turn in the maps and the detailed descriptions. I had someone patch up Lerin and Holgur and asked them to wait before leaving, so that we can check if the dungeon has any special reaction to the first ranking escapees from its limited floors. If it is as cunning as you describe it, it should realise that it needs to get to floor 11 to solve his experience blockade. Let''s go to the Rivansea entrance to check."
The two old adventurers walk the thirty meters to the entrance gate where the two recruits wait for them, now properly patched up. Orven orders them to leave and return to the city for rest, then waits if the dungeon reacts to them leaving.
About one minute later a LifeForce wave passes them and Orven begins to speak "That wasn''t something special, it felt as if it was a regular respawn-effect. A bit large for a respawn of floor two and three, but you already explained the extra respawns. So..."
At that another tiny LifeForce wave passes them, quickly followed by a third one before a really big fourth wave passes them.
"OK, the last massive wave had to be the creation of a new floor - but what were those two tiny waves before that? Park, you are absolutely right that this dungeon does things differently than we are used to. Any Idea what that could have been? It has to have used up all energy left from the cycle as well as everything it gained from your delve."
Park only shakes his head "No, I assume you''re right about the first and the last wave. But I have no idea what the other two tiny waves could have been. I''ll now let you handle your administrative tasks, the day was especially long for me with all the dispels."
One hour later Orven leaves the dungeon and approaches the tent where the new Dungeon Council had its temporary seat until the buildings are finished.
"Greetings, fellow councillors. I bring good news as we seem to have a real treasure of a dungeon at our hands. At a first calculation a complete clearing of the second and third floors should net loot for a value of around one gold, about twenty times of what similiar floors on other dungeons yield. And that is without using the nodes, which are rare silver-nodes on both floors, nodes that are usually only found much deeper in other dungeons.
The reason for this is that the dungeon uses the loot-modification in really excessive numbers. That of course also means that we need to make sure our adventurers and other collectors are strong enough to handle the added levels, but this should only be a minor administrative restriction..."
2.2.5 A Watery Floor (Sky Arrows PoV)
2.2.5 A Watery Floor (Sky Arrows PoV, Leader Ranger Tom Blueeye)
Carefully we move down the walkway between the third and fourth floor. The fighters Corvin Omklen and Holgun Hammerdorn are in front, followed by myself and Channeler D''vol Blackthorn. Our back is guarded by Graverobber Gladia Evelarn and Elementalist Cleev Imral.
"When we get to the first room or cavern with the extra-large crab, please make sure to only kill it. Yesterday Park''s Voidbolt didn''t leave enough for identification, and we are hired to provide full data on these floors." I remind my comrades.
"Yes, I heard that Park got a bit frustrated. Getting lost on floor two of a dungeon at his levels - it''ll be quite some time before he lives down that one. But don''t worry, my hammer will make quick work of that crab." is the answer from Holgun walking in front of me. I don''t need to stop the bickering however as Corvin is faster with his answer.
"You weren''t here yesterday, Holgun. Do you want to make a bet on how long until you regret those words? Because although we think that this floor focuses on fighters due to its effect, I rather doubt that it will be a simple one after what the dungeon pulled on floor two and three."
We go around the end of the tunnel and enter the large first cavern - it''s a bit egg-shaped with a length west to east of around fifteen meters and a width of around seven or eight meters at maximum. The node is visible to the side in the middle of the room, a rather large exit is visible at the east end. In the center of the room is a rather large crab that turns around to the west to look at us and charges.
But since we prepared and planned for this since getting the description yesterday evening, the fight isn''t a problem. A single blow from Holgun''s hammer stops the charge, while the rest of us use this to get our own strikes in. I go to check its carcass - the central body is three meters in diameter and it was standing to a height of one or one and a half meters on its legs. The claws are surely big and would be a problem for unprotected adventurers.
"Nothing special" I explain, "it doesn''t have a loot bonus and will dissolve regularly within one or two hours. It seems to be a modification of the spearcrab that is common in the river and lake around Rivansea, so we can see that as confirmation that there was a spawn scout through rock island as well. It lost its bonespear when being modified for giant size, so it is nothing but a simple tank to fight. The added protection from the floor effect will make its own armor a problem, but with only four extra levels due to single node guard it isn''t too much for a prepared party.
Anything about the node or the cavern, Gladia?"
"Nothing directly - but I suspect we have to face even more water than usual in a [Water Cavern] environment. Usually a limited floor is too low to have that environment give more than a tiny brook, but the node got enhanced with cheap lake water as the fourth option, and there are traces that show it has been used to create a lot of water that flowed down both to the east exit and to some cracks in the north wall."
While giving this explanation, Gladia is still checking something in the tiny ring of water around the bottom of the node. Finally she stands up and continues: "Yes, the dungeon is definitely up to something. The waterflow here was too much to be from the environment alone, and indeed there is a very tiny gate in that puddle that gets the water here from elsewhere. That water gate is just a millimeter wide and twenty centimeters long, but it adds a lot to the regular environment."
Those cracks in the north wall are also tiny - nothing but water can flow through there. And the exit in the south is much larger than a regular corridor - three to four meters wide instead of the usual two meters. But the dry part in the middle is only one meter wide, with the rest on both sides rather wet and covered with a tiny sheet of flowing water. Well - we know that we have to be careful when going deeper into the dungeon...
"OK everyone, make sure that your lightstones are charged and then we go on east." I begin to reorder our party "I think for now we try to stay on the dry part of the corridor, Holgun first and then Corvin and myself. Cleev, do you have anything to check the water?"
The elementalist Paut''a thinks but quickly answers "Nothing much aside from protections against it. I might cast a freezing to turn it into ice that I can control better, but icing the floor would cause other problems."
"Then do nothing for now, a small film of water can''t get through our boots." I consider the corridor going east "One advantage of our own lights is that they reach farther, the tunnel turns left after about eight meters or so. So let''s go there, and stay on the dry center if possible."
Slowly our party goes along the corridor. At the turn it becomes even wider than before, it is now six meters wide with a center dry area that is sometimes one and sometimes two meters wide.
| Combat Initiated |
| Snow Owls A, B, C, D, E and F
vs.
The Sky Arrows
The Sky Arrows have been surprised |
On silent wings a group of snow owls attack from above, going for hairs and faces. Some of us shout through the cavern in surprise, and all of us try to evade the attack. Cleev stumbles while taking a step to the side, but Holgun''s reactions are much better and he kills one of the owls with his hammer when it tried to scrape his face.
Not all of the others are equally successfull, but I can''t see what they''re doing because I''m suddenly going under the water in a hidden hole when I step to the left to evade the owl attacking me.
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns. |
Luckily I invested in a waterproof version of my leather armor a while back, or that would have been a problem.
Slowly I climb out of the two meter deep water hole - fortunately it is only one by one meter wide or it would have been more difficult to climb. "OK, what exactly happened in the few seconds I was under water?"
"Nothing much" answers D''vol "we were surprised by those snow owls because we were all watching the floor for more crabs instead of flyers attacking from above, but the owls themselves were not much. And no one had seen that the previously shallow waterflow has hidden several deep water holes. The scattering on the attack from above made those holes a real nuisance, but they were too small to be more than inconveniences for Cleev and me."
| "That is correct. Gunny, please make a note and remind me for deeper floors: I''m still too humano-centered. When designing the traps I was only concidering human adventurers, not people on four or eight legs with larger bodies. And that despite having read about them and having Naga myself."
After a short pause the General adds "That is nothing against you, Adria, Meriol, Ivri - it just means that in the world I lived in before there were only humans, no other intelligent races."
|
"This dungeon is extremely cunning, it always tricks our expectations like we were expecting more crabs due to them being perfect for the floor effect. Please watch everything." I warn the others again.
No - it''s even worse. I think it somehow has knowledge of how people behave and has build its floors exactly with that in mind. But how can a newborn dungeon core already have that knowledge? [Sapient] Ability is usually at level 81, and I''ve never before heard of a dungeon with more than one special ability outside the level advancement. And the magic portals at the entrance are already a special ability...
"Let''s go on - the cavern goes further north, longer than the first part."
*Splash*
Corvin kneels down and reaches into the water, helping a sputtering Holgun climb out of the hole. We all take a step back on the dry ridge above the water on both sides and watch how something that looks like a continuation of that ridge above the water to the north shimmers and dances until it again looks like a dry way on the water.
"What?!?!" Holgun shouts angrily. "I''m no mage, but I have at least learnt some [Below Average] Magic Perception during my past dungeon delvings. And after what Park described I especially made sure to look for magic. There is no magic in that illusion of a walkway! How can a dungeon on a [Limited] floor completely hide a magic illusion from a [Below Average] skill? This can''t be, this dungeon is somehow broken and doesn''t follow the system rules..."
Before Holgun can continue his tirade, Gladia speaks "Holgun, you didn''t detect any magic because there is none. This isn''t a magic illusion, it''s a water reflection of sculptures on the ceiling and on the north wall there..." She points into the directions.
She''s right - another variant of the dungeon playing on our expectations to really kick us in the arse. Nothing a copper-ranked or higher party can''t handle, but it adds up to make this extremely difficult for the [limited]-ranked adventurers normally working on these floors.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
"And fourty meters after commenting on Park getting lost on the second floor, Holgun takes his yearly bath..."
On that comment from Corvin Holgun''s face becomes redder and redder. But instead of exploding he suddenly chuckles himself. "I earned that one, right. But this dungeon is really something else - nothing really dangerous at our rank, but it has already caused more delays and disruptions than six low-level limited-rank floors on any other dungeon."
| "Oh thank you, Holgun, I aim to please expectations..."
|
The west of the corridor opens to a large cavern again, probably double the size of the first cavern. We can see four giant crabs slowly walking around in it.
Four? A regular spawn group has six spawns under the systems party rules, where are the other two crabs?
"Two snow owls above" Gladia calls out.
Five minutes and six dead spawns later the Sky Arrows once again change their order and plans.
"That mix of different spawns will really be a problem for [Limited]-ranked adventurers. If they focus on the crabs the owls attack their faces, and if they defend against flyers they leave themselves open to ground attacks by the crab. Any group here needs at least two ranged attackers to take care of the owls, or their fighters can''t form a line against the crabs. And it looks as if there is a similiar group in the next big cavern to the north of this one."
Three short corridors lead to a similar cavern north of this one - one of those corridors hides a large deepwater hole that we ignore and another is trapped with a rockfall. After checking we advance on the next cavern and dispatch the spawns there quickly with the tactics we tested here. But after that the dungeon placed the first fork to chose our way deeper in.
"Let''s follow the right wall for now - we need to come back and check the other caverns later to complete the map anyway, but let''s stay systematic for now." I decide.
The corridor we follow turns right to the north a few meters later, and there is another corridor forking to the left again a bit later. Continuing north we get to a cavern the same size as the first one that goes to the west, populated by three giant crabs and three snow owls. At the west end this cavern continues into a similiar cavern that just runs north-south instead of east-west and has its spawns killed as quickly as well. But after that we come to something new.
Two metal poles shimmer in the walls, lightning crackling along them and between them. Strong lightning - we might be able to force this, but no one below [Average] has even a chance of surviving it. But I have only eyes for the circular indentions on both poles that are free of lightning.
This dungeon definitely doesn''t do things like it is supposed to do I think by myself while listening to Holgun''s rant.
"A token barrier? No dungeon is supposed to have a token barrier above floor 21, they simply can''t understand how to create token barriers until they have that much experience."
Gladia interjects, probably as tired of the ranting as I am "That might be normal for other dungeons, but we can safely say that this dungeon is more dangerous. Anyway - this barrier needs two tokens, and there are two corridors we skipped. And according to the map both corridors are probably short because the last two caverns are around a rather small part of the floor where those two corridors lead into it. So I suggest we check those two corridors and I bet anyone that we''ll find one token in each corridor."
I just nod and we all jog back. Wisely no one took the bet because of course we found one token in each corridor, guarded by one snow owl each - in fact the tokens were bound to their feet, so there was no way to get them without fights.
Behind the token barrier there were stairs going down about a meter or so into a slightly lower part of the floor - and that floor is submerged for about that meter in the water. At the bottom of the short stair we stand at an intersection with one corridor going into each cardinal direction. But the three new corridors are straight lined instead of simulating the bend walls of natural caves.
"Gladia? You''re the one with the best mapping skills, what is your opinion on this?" I ask.
"Tom, I guess we have mapped exactly one half of the floor, with this intersection just a bit north of the true center. What we see in front is still the same floor and with the same [Water-Cavern] environment, the dungeon just stopped pretending it looks like a natural cave and made simpler corridors. And the water here is not part of the environment, it has to have been created with mana."
I look around, there is no difference between the three corridors, all of them seem to open into larger rooms after four meters - our lights shine several meters into those rooms but that doesn''t show anything but that the water level is the same everywhere. "Any suggestion or preferences about where to check first?"
"So far the right wall always resulted in the shortest way to the exit while following the left wall would make the walk the longest but also cover everything." comes an answer from Gladia.
| "She can''t see it yet, but unfortunately she is right for the entire floor. Please make another note, Gunny, I can''t allow myself to become predictable."
|
"We have to map everything, so let''s go left wall. Everyone, the rest is over"
The left corridor is a dead end - a room six by eight meter. There is something that looks like a chest in one edge however, so we continue on.
| Combat Initiated |
| Spearcrabs A, B, C, D, E and F
vs.
The Sky Arrows
The Sky Arrows are surprised |
"Ouch" "Hey" "Damn Crabs"
The [Bone Spear] of the crabs can''t really harm or kill any of the Sky Arrows, but with the surprise they can sting and hurt quite a bit - especially because the adventurers have problems detecting the one meter crabs in the opaque waters, and splash around a lot trying to hit them while standing in the water themselves..
"Cleev, D''vol, end this fight with magic" I command after overcoming my own surprise. The crabs don''t survive much longer.
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns. |
"OK, these are the original Rivansea Spearcrabs, and this one-meter-waterlevel is just enough to allow them to charge the pressure for their bone spears while hindering our movement and perception.
Everyone please use your [Life Perception] or [Danger Perception] while we are in this water - it pains me to use copper-ranked skills on floors of the first black rank, but we are not here for fighting experience or fairness.
And mark down for our report that not only Rivansea was scouted without anyone finding a trace, they also use the crabs in ways that makes this floor dangerous even for adventurers that are higher in levels than the floor number suggests. I think that regular adventurers should be [Very Low]-ranked before being allowed into this dungeon''s [Limited] floors.
And the only thing they can get on this floor is fighting experience, the loot in this first treasure chest is far below what is usual for the fourth floor of other dungeons." I don''t like ordering the skill use, but we have the energy to spare and we are here for evaluation only. "Everyone, let''s continue to check the next corridor."
The next corridor goes to a total of two submerged rooms populated by spearcrabs, with only one treasure chest in the second one - but an added long corridor branching from the first room. This corridor is a dead end with something pecular at its final wall. Gladia already squeezed herself to the front and is investigating.
"This seems to be the same as the game that Sam found in that room on the first floor. It looks as if the dungeon has one of these token games on each floor but the save floor. Let me try..."
Before I can stop her, Gladia already pushes the buttons - and the entire party gets zapped as a result.
"Gladia, next time please remember that lightning magic and water do not mix. Now let us get back ten meters before you try again."
The game really is identical to the other two found on the higher floors, giving a dungeon token with the number 5, and another few minutes later we stand at the entrance to another flooded room - this one much longer than regular, but still only having six spawn scattered through it as our skills tell us. Holgun pushes ahead through the water.
"Looks like the larger room will make things easier - two rooms of half the size would have allowed for two groups of crabs" *Thunk* - Holgun stops as he has run into something in the water "Me and my big mouth..."
I watch as Holgun searches the water around him, even ducking under it for a few seconds. Then he comes back to the entrance to report.
"There are a lot of metal barriers turning this room into some form of maze. The tops are sharp blades just a few centimeter below the water level, so climbing over them is not a good idea - you might fall into the next one.
They are anchored on poles that are just wide enough apart that the crabs can move under them, but crouching down that far will leave anyone vulnerable that tries to do the same. Adventurers will have to navigate the maze while the crabs are almost free to attack and retreat anywhere.
However if they wait too long before attacking they will lose the floor bonus [Defenders Advantage] because we will have been long enough in the room to not count as invaders anymore."
Again an example of getting more difficulty out of what should have been easy. But we are here for evaluation, not to clear the dungeon. So a change of tactics is in order...
"D''vol, Cleev - we three will be on guard against rushing crabs only while Gladia, Holgun and Corvin map and navigate this blade-maze. Cleev to the north, D''vol west and me east to watch."
"No, Tom, I have a better idea." Cleev says and begins to cast one of her elemental spells. "There - I have frozen the water along the metal barriers only, and then entrapped four of the crabs in the dead ends where they were waiting. Only two of the crabs are on the main way through the maze. Let''s go."
The next room was an even larger flooded maze, but that only meant that Cleev had to cast her spell twice and that all crabs could be contained without a fight. And on the southwest end of that room some stairs finally get us up again to dry ground. While everyone dries out their clothes, I ask Gladia to check up on her map.
"The floor is rather extremely packed with rooms and caverns, and the remaining area would be this wide cavern down south to a section that could hold one or two large caves at maximum. But Tom - that entire floor area so far fits into 55 meters, the regular floor size for a [very high] ranked core on limited levels."
"What? We know it has a higher rank, why didn''t it use that extra floor space here? This floor could have been even more difficult with added space."
| "What? How can they know this? I made sure that all sizes fit to a [very high] dungeon, and they haven''t even started preparing for an identification ritual on the entry rooms. And such a ritual would need a few weeks anyway..."
The General is not amused - nothing can ruin plans faster than when the enemy has intelligence you didn''t expect him to have.
"I really need to find a way to spy on the adventurers outside the dungeon..." |
2.2.6 Water is a good Defense - NOT
The core room is currently on floor 11, the first of the [very low] ranked floors and the deepest the General has available at the moment. The room looks incomplete - a large part of the pattern on the floor is missing tiles, one doorway on the wall leads to a stone wall because the next floor doesn''t exist yet and several columns throughout the room look as if they''re completely missing their decoration.
Instead there are several cushions and stools scattered around the core node, with three naga and four lizardpeople watching the illusion that the General has cast into the center of the room - the illusion showing the Sky Arrows how they get their clothes in order again after climbing out of the partially submerged northwest rooms of floor 4. The still glowing silver fox and its guards are under a desk to the side, where another lizardwoman sits to record the conversation. A fifth lizardman touches me and the core node to repeat what I transmit to him for everyone to hear.
"We can''t do anything at the moment to find out how they got that knowledge of me being higher than [very high] in rank, so keep a note but let''s continue. Does anyone think we need to do something about that ice magic freezing the maze? It seems to be a rather high ranked magic, so there might not be a need to handle it for regular parties later."
At that Orslesh, the Shaman of the lizardmen tribe answers first. "I agree, that is a rather high powered spell and not something to be expected from regular surfacers entering. Similiar skills or magic will be used by other high-ranked adventurers when they want to break through to deeper floors, but we don''t have to worry about that until the portal system activates with the next [safe] floor. Then they will go through to trigger the teleport access to that second safe floor and be able to skip the lower floors later, leaving them to low-ranked trainees.
But I have another question, core: Why are you this calm? All system knowledge says that cores often panic when faced with higher ranked adventurers going through their defenses."
"It probably has something to do with the fact that he knows they have been commanded not to reach him..." comes from Gunny Parkinson.
I''m silent for a while before answering "Yes and no. Knowing that they will abort before reaching the last core room does help, but a lot of it is also experience from Earth.
I know that there will be death in my floors and that I have to kill people sooner or later. As the saying on my old home goes - any soldier knows that you can''t make omelette without breaking some eggs. So I do aim to make the floors as dangerous as reasonable under the system rules. But any good officer also knows that you need to preserve the lifes of your soldiers and of civilians as best as possible. And any good general knows that this also goes for the enemy if you want anything long-term.
Military power alone can never hold control for long-term. That is a lesson all military powers of my past have learned in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. It was especially bad in Afghanistan where my side send in black ops to train the so-called Taliban in military knowledge while they were fighting against the Russians, only to have them turn against all sides with that knowledge after the Russians left their country.
So I know that I can''t win by simply pushing against their power. Unfortunately I still don''t have something else to add into the equation. I need more time and knowledge about the situation to find a long-term solution. And that is why I like the concept of professional evaluation teams that will prevent idiots from carelessly entering. Because that will also prevent another spiral of anger and hatred that would only cause problems long term."
Reena the huntress of their tribe steers our attention back to the screen "Look, they finished studying the traps and killed the giant crab in the last room. They seem to be lost at where to go next."
"No, they just found it. But what gave the entrance to the next floor away is the fact that I''m constantly casting this illusion. They traced the resulting tiny LifeForce wave to the bottom of the small lake in that cavern and are now preparing to dive in. Let''s see how they handle the next floor."
I watch how they take some variants of diving goggles or diving masks to cover their eyes out of their backpacks and then jump into the lake, diving to the bottom where the corridors fork into a true maze with underwater plants hiding the way as well as the crabs and barracudas defending the floor.
This will be a nice obstacle even for the Sky Arrows. Hmm - why didn''t they add some breathing equipment as well, only goggles?
We watch a few minutes how the Sky Arrows basically float through all obstacles and opposition without any problem, not even needing any highranked skills or spells. I become more irritated the longer this goes on.
What? How? What''s going on?
"How can they speak and coordinate their actions underwater? Park even casts his spells without problems - how is that possible?"
Adria, craftswoman and head of the naga population asks me confused "Why not? Why should being underwater stop them from speaking or spellcasting? You didn''t place any effect to stop that there, or did you?"
"No, but they need to breathe to talk - speaking of which they didn''t even use breathing gear, just googles"
"Breathe? I don''t know that word, what does it mean?" comes from Ivri, the naga caretaker.
What?? "One moment please. I think we all only understand part of this discussion. Adria, Ivri, Meriol - please come to the node and touch me so I can speak to you directly. The Lizard spawn can still repeat what I say to the others, but we need to clear up this misunderstanding first.
Ivri, we never had problems communicating with each other before, and now you tell me that you don''t know what the word ''breathe'' means? Is that a translation problem between languages or what?"
"No one of us knows what the word ''breathe'' means - or ''translation'' or ''languages'', that are also words you haven''t used before, General Core."
"One moment, let me think first." What the hell? They also don''t know what a language is? OK, let''s start with that.
"Language is a word to describe the set of all words everyone in a population uses to talk with each other. Different populations that are far away from each other can have developed different languages, that means different sets of words to talk to each other. Translating is the action of changing the words from one set to the words from another so that people who don''t understand the other words can now understand what was said. Can you understand that concept?"
The fighter Meriol answers to this "yes, of course - but there was never a need for such a thing. Everyone in the sphere has always used the same words for as long as the system existed. It is the same set of words - the same ''language'' that you have spoken to us in as well since you created us. The last few minutes are the first time when you used words that were not known to us."The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"It has to have been that [Xenotic Conversion], General" Gunny speaks up "It must have given us the language without us ever understanding that this happened. But I think that is secondary for now compared to the failure of the underwater floor."
Yes - I can think of some uses for secure communication if I ever manage to teach other languages to someone in the sphere, but Gunny is right.
"Gunny is right, everyone, so back to what ''Breathing'' is. Usually everyone has to breathe to survive, and being underwater should have prevented that. I put a lot of Mana into creating that water because I thought it would stop them from breathing and cause further delays and slowdowns when they try to get around that limitation."
The three naga look at each other, still mostly confused. Adria asks me "OK, that explains why you did that but still doesn''t explain what that breathing is that they have to do."
I try to explain again "You need to breathe to take in air, and you need air to both live and speak with each other."
"Ah" Ivri looks as she finally understands "So this ''air'' is a Need, like the Need for food, water and rest? And ''breathing air'' is the word to replenish that Need, like ''eating food'', ''drinking water'' or ''sleeping for rest''?
That explains a lot, but I''ve never heard of that Need - not even demons have any Need for this air. It has to be something that is only required by you Xenotics who live even lower in existance than the demons."
At this gunny stands up and goes to one of the torches in the wall. He examines it and then speaks "That is probably the easiest explanation for anyone born here in the Sphere. General, the torches give no smoke either - I don''t think that there is any air around here."
So we are in a vacuum without even realising it due to that [Xenotic Conversion]? What else is messed up here?
Good that I haven''t wasted any mana on experiments with steam yet - probably better if I try electricity first since lightning magic exists around here. But on the other hand I should really start a lot of basic experiments as soon as the mana regeneration block is gone, comparing physics might show the key to what''s going on.
"Ok, everyone. It looks like I really messed up with my plans on floor five. To prevent that from happening again I would like your opinion on an idea I have for floors twelve to eighteen. I can''t build them at the moment, I''ll have to wait until I can level up to get rid of the EXP-Overcharge that still remains.
If everything goes as intended they will be a big stopper and delay after they are all finished - but I have to admit that until they are all placed, it will actually be easier to reach me. We''ll have to...
Hey - what''s going on there under the desk?"
[Ping]
| System Processing "New Entity" complete
|
- remaining mutation energy removed from core "New Entity"
- fusing of incompatible requirements between class core and beast core complete
- assigning new classification to core type "New Entity" as "demi-core beast/class"
- demi-core will be fixed and unchanging like a beast core, but contain intelligence and some skill abilities like a class core. Experience collection as regular.
|
The glow on the silver fox stopped - and going from that message it will become intelligent but with only limited abilities compared to regular people.
| New Template gained
Name set as "Kitsune" based on the memory of core "general". |
| Kitsune
|
| Rank and Type
|
[Limited] Cored Spawn
|
| Placement Cost
|
600 MP (includes cost for demi-core)
|
| Description |
Kitsune are sapient foxes that have some limited abilities with Illusion magic. They can create the illusion of any humanoid race around their body, but it will remain an illusion and not change their body.
|
| Restrictions |
- The Kitsune can never be created with a placeholder spawn core
- The demi-core can never be replaced by beast or class cores
|
| Abilities |
- Animal Body (Fox)
- Sapient
- Personal Illusion
- Light Illusion
- [Limited] Mind
- [Limited] Body
- maximum rank [????]
- may uprank demi-core if conditions are met
- may learn skills of [Limited] rank if conditions are met
|
Sky Arrows PoV, Leader Ranger Tom Blueeye
"This floor is easy, just a bunch of fishy and crabby distractions" Corvin calls to his friends.
"A [very low] ranked adventurer wouldn''t call this ''easy''" Gladia answers "The underwater plants are perfect hiding places for those barracuda swarms. But I agree that the dungeon has not yet shown any special trick on this floor, not like it caused problems for us on the first three floors."
None of the Sky Arrows has any problem continuing the discussion while they were plowing through any opposition on the floor. D''vol walks halfway up a wall while contributing to it. "And the herbs scattered between those regular plants are a good treasure as well for alchemists and healers, but not as excessive as the silver foxes on the first two floors."
"I still don''t trust this floor. The dungeon was too cunning in the previous floors to simply play nice now, there has to be some kicker ahead" shouts Holgun.
All Sky Arrows are wary as they agree with Holgun, but nothing special happens on the floor. One of the [Embarrassing Pitfall Traps Level 0] as the system calls the outhouses is found even here, but completely useless as it is as flooded as the rest of the floor. The Sky Arrows only comment on how lucky they were that this was never used before the floor was flooded, then they continue to swim deeper. And after a fight against a giant crab that retained its bonespear in the last room, the Sky Arrows climb out of a pool to another stairway down.
After a short rest to clean up their equipment and stow away the diving masks the party continues down to the next floor. Gladia checks her mapping. "After two water-themed floors below the two levels of Mapping Hell we now approach the sixth level. It seems to be a high level as these stairs go down farther than usual. I hope - hey, Tom, check this."
She points to a place on the wall where a number of black lines interrupt the masonry of the stairwall. The lines go around the entire stairwell and are between half of a millimeter and three millimeter thick. Looking at them seems to cause some form of vertigo in everyone.
Tom and D''vol check the lines as well "It almost looks like a wall where the environment was retracted from the dungeon - but that would never be so small and collapse the floor anyway. What could this be?"
"I don''t know but it can''t be good considering the rest of this dungeon. Everyone, be extra careful and let''s continue down to floor six."
The stairs go a lot deeper before they can finally step away and onto a stone masonry platform to a sight no one expected.
"What by the Seven Gods is this???"
Interlude 2.2 The Rogue Contract
Interlude 2.2 The Rogue Contract
| Configuring Contract Requirements for Rogue Contract
|
- Person needs to be deeply disappointed with the "Establishment", resulting in wish to judge everything him/herself instead of following "everyones" judgement.
- Person needs to have some experience in dungeon delving, preferably good contact with adventurers
- Person needs to be independent and have experience on surviving on his/her own for some years
- Person must not be under command or influence of any country or organisation
- Person needs to have his/her own sense of honor and stand to bargains and friends
- Person has to be able to travel to reach a meeting point at the border of the Blackshale Swamp within three weeks of accepting contract
- Person may ask for modification of contract rewards before agreeing
|
OK, the first condition is the best way to look for someone who can accept working with a [Xenotic] without telling it directly, and the other conditions should filter out people who can''t help me... the General thinks by himself.
So let''s send it out.
The General confirms his acceptance of the contract wording and the system begins to work. As a result someone somewhere on Logronal suddenly receives a system message.
[Ping]
| You have been offered a Dungeon Contract
[Accept] / [Communicate] / [Decline]
Communication allows you to ask for modifications to the stated contract
If you decline, the contract will be offered to a different person and can''t be reclaimed by you.
|
| Rogue Contract
|
| Details |
A [Sapient] Dungeon Core has send out a system request for a rogue to work for it.
|
| Requirements |
- Rogue needs to be deeply disappointed with the "Establishment", resulting in wish to judge everything him/herself instead of following "everyones" judgement.
- Rogue needs to have some experience in dungeon delving, preferably good contact with adventurers
- Rogue needs to be independent and have experience on surviving on his/her own for some years
- Rogue must not be under command or influence of any country or organisation
- Rogue needs to have his/her own sense of honor and stand to bargains done
- Rogue has to travel to a meeting point at the border of the Blackshale Swamp within three weeks of accepting contract to meet another Contractor of the dungeon
|
| Rewards/Payment |
Free and safe access to the Dungeon as required by Contract Conditions, Loot and further rewards depending on missions
|
| Contract Conditions |
- Rogue may ask for modification of contract rewards before agreeing.
- Rogue will get his primary class changed to "Dungeon Rogue"
- Rogue will get food and a safe room in the dungeon for accepting contract and future missions.
- Rogue will get additional rewards and loot for fulfilling future missions, to be discussed depending on each mission specifics
- Missions will include spying on adventurers, pretending to be an adventurer and obtaining requested templates.
- Rogue is allowed to fight and kill dungeon spawns if agreed and neccessary
- Dungeon spawns may attack or mock fight the Rogue, but will not be allowed to cause serious harm.
- Rogue is forbidden to reveal details of the dungeon to others unless specifically allowed to do so by the Dungeon Core
|
A sapient dungeon core offering me a contract through the system? Sir Marken once said that tamed dungeons are often made to offer those contracts to selected people because they can make those people a lot stronger, but this is obviously an untamed dungeon. Those should usually be rather automatic and primitive if they''re freshly sentient, and this one already made a mistake or I wouldn''t have gotten that offer.
And I can communicate to haggle as well...
[Communicate]
"I want the safe access and food extended to my sister and my friends, and I have several additional questions and demands. For example, why I am allowed to fight spawns and why is the usual absolute protection from spawns not part of the contract?"
It takes about twenty second, then I hear an answer through the system
<
>
<>
<>
"What would the three most common types of missions be, and what would be my rewards for them?"
<>
<
>
<>
<>
"Is the three weeks for the meeting fixed or can the time be adjusted? And who would I meet then and where exactly?"
<>
"Let me check with the system for that." I start trying my orientation skills and check what I remember of the map from the bridge post.
Hmm - should I haggle more? I can''t risk losing this because without at least some help we won''t survive. We are already on our own because we couldn''t pay the tax for the inns in Kaarg and Sir Marken''s Party wanted to go into a dungeon deeper in Kaarg.
"We can get to the position in about a week - I can''t promise if it is seven, eight or nine days however as that depends on foraging luck. And I want to be able to refuse or modify a mission if I consider it too risky. If that is acceptable then I agree to the contract."
<>
Oh? This dungeon is somewhat better at judging people''s behaviour and reasons than I thought...If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
"OK, I''m willing to agree to the contract under those modified conditions."
<>
| Rogue Contract Accepted
|
| Primary Class "Message Runner" from "Acrobat" Class Tree changed to Dungeon Rogue (fixed class, no class tree available)
Secondary Class "Torch Bearer" from "Adventurer Support" Class Tree unchanged, but increased chance for class improval and class change on level-ups and rank-ups
Maximum Rank Potential adjusted based on Dungeon and Contract
|
Ok, let''s see what this contract really gave me. [Status]
| Equipment/ Inventory |
Infos/ Titles |
Skills/ Abilities |
Quests |
Gallery/ Knowledge |
History/ Log |
| Status |
Race: Human |
Primary Class: Dungeon Rogue |
Type: Traveller |
Secondary: Torch Bearer |
[Locked] |
| Name |
Jason ''Briar'' Seaton |
max Rank |
[Mythical] |
| Level (L) |
5/120 |
Experience (XP) |
237/500 |
free AttrPts |
0/5 |
| Body-Power (BP) |
2/120 |
Endurance (EP) |
10/60 |
Needs: |
| Body-Density (BD) |
2/120 |
Health (HP) |
10/60 |
Food (FP) |
46/100 |
| Body-Flexibility (BF) |
10/120 |
Physical Rank (PR) |
[Limited] |
Water (WP) |
73/100 |
| Body-Kuor''Tel (BK) |
2/120 |
Kuor''Tel (KP) |
24/120 |
Rest (RP) |
89/100 |
| Body-Aura (BA) |
2/120 |
Control Rank (CR) |
[Limited] |
|
|
| Mind-Power (MP) |
2/120 |
Astral (AP) |
12/60 |
|
|
| Mind-Density (MD) |
2/120 |
Soul (SP) |
12/60 |
Weights |
| Mind-Flexibility (MF) |
9/120 |
Mental Rank (MR) |
[Limited] |
Equipment |
1/4 kg |
| Mind-Kuor''Tel (MK) |
2/120 |
Kuor''Tel (KP) |
24/120 |
Storage |
1/2 kg |
| Mind-Aura (MA) |
2/120 |
Awareness Rank (AR) |
[Limited] |
Astral |
0/6 kg |
| Regeneration and Gain Values |
| EP (10% BP/hour) |
0.2 |
AP (10% MP/hour) |
0.2 |
KP (1% MKP/hour) |
1.2 |
| HP (10% BD/day) |
0.2 |
SP (10% MD/day) |
0.2 |
[Locked] |
|
| Temporary Status Effects |
| Name |
Effect |
| Malnourished |
Reduced Endurance and Health-Regeneration (50% effective only) |
|
|
"M...M...My...Mythical???????"
Shocked Briar stares at his status sceen. He has been ranked-up to mythical as a result of the contract''s class-change. Slowly he begins to smile.
Let''s hope that I can handle the tasks the dungeon core will give me - but even if the dungeon core wants to cancel the contract, it can''t do that without compensation or it will lose the contract. And this boost will help us with foraging until then - Shandy needs more food and meat, her malnourish state is almost to the second level.
So I''ll try to get two rabbits today and hope that we don''t get bad luck until my energies are recharged.
Briar continues his slow and silent walk through the forest until he comes to a glade. he can see a pair of deer and a number of rabbits and squirrels scattered through the glade, most of them eating or collecting nuts.
He slowly takes his sling and selects one of the rabbits on his side of the clearing. He swings the sling and releases the stone that flies toward the rabbit. There is a slight shimmering in the air and then the stone hits, instantly killing the rabbit. None of the other animals on the clearing reacts, so Briar targets another rabbit with a second stone.
Again a shimmering speeds through the glade and the rabbit is hit,but this time the remaining animals are spooked and run away. Briar slowly stands and goes to collect the two rabbit corpses.
That was almost too much - I''m down to 2/120 Kuor''Tel. Let''s hope that nothing happens in the next several hours until I''ve got some points regenerated.
Half an hour later he is back at their temporary camp. His sister Rose and Shandy have already prepared a fire for cooking their meal while Ev''lar and Runner were searching for edible plants and herbs. When he presents them with the two rabbit corpses, his sister speaks up:
"Two corpses? That must have depleted your energy - are you sure that you could risk that?"
"Shandy needs the meat - and I got lucky, I might have a job and a guarantee of food and shelter for all of us. I don''t know how much I can tell you at the moment - part of the system''s contract was a clause to keep the contract secret. But if everything works out, we''ll have a home now. We just have to meet someone near the blackshale swamp, that is one week travel in that direction according to the system."
Rose thinks a bit before answering "I admit that we need the food if we were to travel that far in a week, but can you afford to spend that much for hunting? Especially because Ev''lar told me that there will be two or three storms within the next week, we might need to preserve Kuor''Tel to survive those."
"Yes" Briar answers "Part of the contract was a rank-up for me that will make everything easier. It won''t be easy, we''ll still have to work to get there and hope that I can keep the job, but the contract is confirmed by the system."
At that moment an elven child and a very young human child approach the camp from the other side. The beastkin child, Shandy, points to them and says "The others are back, let''s eat - I''m hungry."
During their meal the five children discuss the offer despite the fact that Briar remains close-mouthed about the details, but no one can offer a better solution - they all have been travelling too long since they had to leave their homes, and all cities they passed had no interest in hiring some orphaned street kids. So they set out to meet that "Gunny", whoever that is with such a strange name.
2.3.1 Sanity is overrated, anyway (Sky Arrows PoV)
2.3.1 Sanity is overrated, anyway (Sky Arrows PoV)
While they slowly descend the stairs, Gladia checks her mapping and compares it with their current position. "After two water-themed floors below the two levels of Mapping Hell we now approach the sixth level. It seems to be a high level as these stairs go down farther than usual. I hope - hey, Tom, check this."
She points to a place on the wall where a number of black lines interrupt the masonry of the stairwall. The lines go around the entire stairwell and are between half of a millimeter and three millimeter thick. Looking at them seems to cause some form of vertigo in everyone.
Tom and D''vol check the lines as well "It almost looks like a wall where the environment was retracted from the dungeon - but that would never be so small and collapse the floor anyway. What could this be?"
"I don''t know but it can''t be good considering the rest of this dungeon. Everyone, be extra careful and let''s continue down to floor six."
The stairs go a lot deeper before they can finally step away and onto a stone masonry platform to a sight no one expected.
"What by the Seven Gods is this???"
The sky arrows stand on the edge of the platform where two walls meet, with one stair going up and another stair going down - nothing prevents them from skipping this floor and going to the seventh one. The room or platform itself is eight by eight meters, but where the other two walls should have been there is just a large chasm - a chasm bridged in three positions.
On the floor of the platform another two black lines divide it into four quarters, with each quarter having a different environment. Only the southwest corner where the stairs end is of regular masonry.
The northwest quarter floor is covered with a strange grey substance that is partially reflecting light. A number of metal poles crowned by metal balls hold five strange ropes going over the chasm to another platform filled with more of those metal poles and a number of tables that would fit into an alchemists laboratory.
The southeast quarter of the room looks as if it is flesh - including a slow vibration like breathing. A bone-arc holds a bridge that looks as if it is made from a rib cage and held together by muscles and tendons. It goes over the chasm to another flesh-room with a pulsating, tentacled thing in its center. two further corridors are visible there, but the doors that close them look as if they''re teeth, especially with them moving to open and close on their own.
The northeast quarter is a water pool. It looks as if a number of stairs go down under water, but in the very northeast corner the water boils up for about a meter before streaming over the chasm to connect to the wall there. From the point where it connects it flows up the wall. Up and up and up - and the sky arrows have to look away to prevent the vertigo of looking at something that seems to be a retracted environment on the entire ceiling.
After a minute of stunned silence the party falls back into a safety formation. D''vol and Corvin guard their quarter to the north, while Holgun and Cleev do the same to the east, allowing Tom and Gladia to check the system.
[Floor Details]
| Floor Details |
| Floor Number |
6 |
| Floor Name |
not set |
| Floor Environment |
<> |
| Environment Rank |
<>
[System Calculating]
[System Calculating] |
| Details |
[Mutated]
Floor has been mutated and no longer follows system rules
[Separated]
Floor is no longer fully part of the dungeon, the core has only limited control here
[Contained]
Mutation has been contained on this floor and cannot infect other floors anymore.
[Splintered]
Floor Environment has been splintered into four different environmental forms divided by zones without environment. |
| Floor Effect |
<>
[System Processing] |
| Effect Rank |
<>
[System Calculating]
[System Calculating] |
| Details |
- [Dampen Mutation]
Halves chance of explorer or spawn mutating per day on the floor
Halved Chance 5% for Spawn, 1% for explorers.
- [Random Effect]
Floor effect has a chance of 50% to mutate each day.
|
"What??" shouts Gladia "Even the System doesn''t know how to rank this floor??"
But Tom had focused on something else "That''s not the worst - this is a mutated floor, but it has been contained. How is that possible? I never heard of any containment on any mutated dungeon, they always have to be destroyed before the mutation spills out to the surface."
Hearing that D''Vol interjects while scanning his sector for any sudden dangers: "This is no mutated floor, mutated floors are random structures and puzzled-together chimera-spawns. This has too much structure to be mutated, even if it is an insane structure."
| Gunny watches the Sky Arrows discussing the floor. This is the first time he had the leisure to really check the floor in the illusion since the hours before the evaluation dives were filled with the need to kill several mutated foxes and crabs and running one task after another.
"General, how did we survive the mutation? I only remember everything going fuzzy and crazy."
After a pause the General answers "The short answer is that Booble created the next floor - I already mentioned that this is what saved us.
To be more precise, the node I was in at that time had already mutated and I was caught in a feedback loop with my nightmares fueling the mutation, unable to do anything and enhancing the mutation with every second.
Booble was protected from this a bit longer because it was not part of the node, and then it finally got enough Mana to create the floor it was authorized to do.
And the System Rules specify that the core always has to be in the node of the lowest floor, so it was the System that janked the contents of the core room out of the mutated floor and placed them on the new, lowest floor in the new core room that still had an intact node.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
So basically dumb luck combined with your advice to give Mana to booble for creating a floor, and with me gone from this floor the feedback loop on the mutated node was also broken, reducing it in power far enough that the system could contain the mutation there."
"Well, I often give good advice and the luck was probably that you followed it this time." |
The Sky Arrows also discussed the impossibilities they see and the surprising fact that the System could not calculate the rank as fast as usual, but then both the discussions on the mutated floor and in the core room were interrupted by a [Ding]
| System is unable to estimate or calculate the danger of the separated floor with the contained mutation.
Empirical Data Required
Creating System Quest
|
| System Quest: Evaluate the Mutated Node
|
| Details |
Adventurers of all ranks are called to participate in tries to find and evaluate the [mutated] node of the [separated] sixth floor of the dungeon "general" on the land "Logronal".
This floor is currently unranked and the successes and failures of all parties entering will provide empirical data to rank the floor for the future.
There can be up to three parties of each rank in the floor at any time, other parties of the same rank will have to wait until a party either leaves or is completely killed.
The quest will be considered completed after the node has been evaluated ten times AND after 100 parties of each rank lower than the lowest ranked party that succeeded in the evaluation have tried the floor.
|
| Requirements |
- A Party participating in this quest needs to enter the floor by special phase transport that is limited to this floor only, unable to enter any other floor.
- All members of the party need to be of the same rank.
- A Party participating has to be full (six members) and at full strength (full points, no negative status, no damaged or lower-ranked main equipment)
|
| Hints |
This is a high-risk, high-reward quest, especially for low-rank explorers.
Substantial bonus rewards given for Adventurers of less or equal to [Above Average] Rank. |
| Rewards |
On leaving, Titles, Abilities and Bonuses are bestowed based on how far the Explorers ventured into the floor, even if the node is not found.
Multiple tries may upgrade rewards to best results of all delves, but are not cumulative.
No rewards will be given if the party doesn''t drop to half HP or below at some point of the exploring. |
"A SYSTEM QUEST?!?!?!" All the Sky Arrows shout more or less simultaneously. It takes Tom several minutes to get his friends calmed down and the shouts structured into a discussion.
"OK everyone, one after another you can give your opinions. Holgun, you seem to be the one who has the least interest in this, why?"
"Just look to the east, Tom. That is no dungeon, those are the living intestines of a titan, you can even see two mouths with teeths. Going there is going into the stomach of a titan to be digested."
At that point Gladia interrupts "Don''t be a fool, Holgun. That is just a dungeon environment with a different look for corridors and doors. One I haven''t seen before I admit, but it should not be a problem - and think of the rewards of a system quest.."
"I will not go into the stomach of a titan on my own two feet!"
"But Holgun, nothing can give titles or abilities like a system quest, aren''t you excited about that?"
"I WILL NOT GO INTO THE STOMACH OF A TITAN ON MY OWN TWO FEET!!!"
"Calm down, you two." Cleev tries to stop the argument. "In case you didn''t read the requirements, we can''t even start it now as it requires to go through a phase shift before being transported directly here. And the transport platform on the first floor didn''t even have a phase crystal on it. So no one can even start this quest yet.
And Tom, since the system calls this floor seperated and has its own quest for it, we can probably say that the full eveluation of all floor doesn''t include this one - or what do you say?"
"I agree - and with the System Quest like that Orwen has to agree as well. And even if not it would be better to use that phase transfer to enter this floor through the quest instead of entering it normally. But we should include what we can watch from here in our report, that would help a lot with the quest itself. Holgun already gave a good description of the east part for the record, anyone wants to follow up with the northeast and north parts that we can see?"
D''vol Blackthorn is the one who speaks after that "OK, let me give the details on the northeast part.
It is the only part that is not connected by a regular bridge, but by a stream of water flowing from a small pool here on the platform to the other side, flowing horizontally without a bed over the chasm. Most likely that is a one-way transport, which means that whoever tries to go there has to find another way back and be at a disadvantage through that.
Upon hitting the wall going diagonally in the north-east, it flows up the wall instead of falling - and that wall goes much farther up than should be possible in the distances between floors. Where we stand the ceiling is ten meters high, which would conform with the distance we got down the stairs. But the chasm goes dozens of meters into the ceiling, and those wall structures go as far as we can see before the vertigo of the missing environment makes it impossible to follow.
Those wall structures look like a garden and places divided by walls and stairs, but somehow I can''t trace the paths even in those parts that are completely visible - I can''t decide what is wall or floor or whatever as soon as I try to follow it. I don''t know how to describe that despite it being simple-looking at a quick glance.
We''ll probably loose a lot of parties going there, especially until someone finds a way to retreat and tell us what we can''t see of it from here."
"OK, and let me give the last description" Cleev is the next to speak. "The platform on the other side of the chasm to the north looks a lot like an alchemist''s laboratory, but there are a lot of metal poles holding metal balls and plates that do not fit such a laboratory. There is a table at the center where some large humanoid lies, probably a spawn to defend that place.
The bridge over to that place - if you can call that thing a bridge at all - consists of eight strange ropes that are only rarely connected to each other. you''ll have to balance on one rope while holding another to get over the chasm, but that should be no problem for someone with minimum balance. It will limit the amount of loot people can bring back over it however, especially since they can''t overload the ropes.
The ropes themselves look as if they were made of metal - copper from the coloring of it, but are partially covered with a substance I don''t know. Colorfully covered as that substance is sometimes red, sometimes blue, sometimes yellow or green striped and more, but each cover only goes for one or two meters before the ropes are blank copper again."
After that all Sky Arrows continue to look over the chasm to remember as much details as possible and get picture-memories of it into their status-galleries. After a while Tom commands again "OK, that should be enough - let''s go down to the next floor."
Gladia asks "How long do you think it will take the dungeon to setup a phase selector for this System Quest, Tom?"
"Shouldn''t take too long, System Quests are not to be ignored - perhaps it''s even done before we finish the delve."
| "The System Quest I got for adding that option to the existing portal does have some nice rewards, so Tom is right. But I think I''ll try to hold out a while to give the impression that I can''t change anything on the safe floor until it is empty of surfacers. Hopefully some of them will have the idea to evacuate the floor in the next few days, but I can use those days for other tasks as well so they won''t be lost." |
2.3.2 Deeper into the Dungeon (Sky Arrows PoV)
2.3.2 Deeper into the Dungeon (Sky Arrows PoV)
A medium-sized room with three exits lies deep on the seventh dungeon floor. It looks like hundreds of other cellar or dungeon rooms, with only one exception: On one wall a large symbol glows red. The symbol is known as the Repulsor-Symbol and it forces any spawn to leave the room at once. This creates dangerous roaming spawns that can attack any adventurer party any time, even adding to the spawns fighting in other rooms - but it is compensated by the fact that a room with a repulsor is safe because no spawn can enter it.
That fact is why the Sky Arrows had setup camp here last evening. Currently only Tom Blueeye is awake, silently preparing rations for breakfast - the other five adventurers are still sleeping in their bedrolls, although one of them has begun to stir as well.
Gladia Evelarn sits up and streches herself a bit before going to help Tom with the rest of the preparations.
"So what do you think about this dungeon, Tom? Especially with this boooring default for a seventh floor after the very cunning first few floors?"
"It doesn''t fit at all, I agree - but that is what gave me an idea of what might have happened. The idea still has several holes where things don''t fit, but it might be a start to explain all this."
Tom muses a bit before he continues "The first floors were very cunning, especially the Mapping Hell where every part contributed to make those two floors a challenge to find your way through. And I think that originally the submerged fifth floor was only half submerged like the fourth floor - that would have made it much more difficult, especially for black-ranked adventurers with a low number of perception skills.
But remember that you discovered that the water was not part of the environment, but summoned from the nodes. I think that when that idiotic fight started, the core used the water nodes as an energy dump and that is what completely filled the fifth floor with water - there have to be some cracks between the floors where the water from the fourth floor also went down, especially since it was not restricted as part of the environment.
Then the energy build-up caused the mutations and insanity on the sixth floor, which has to have been the current floor at that moment. I have absolutely no idea how the core was able to contain that mutation and escape to a new floor, but however it was done it can''t have been easy or it would have happened to other dungeons as well. And I think it cost the core a lot - including losing most of his cunning, which is why this seventh floor is basically a boring textbook type dungeon.
What remains to be seen is if that reset to defaults is permanent or if the dungeon will recover from it. Personally I hope it will only partially recover - a bland dungeon is no challenge, but I could do with less surprises on future floors compared to the Mapping Hell and the fourth floor."
| ''Nope, you got several things wrong, Tom - but considering your limited knowledge that is actually quite close to what really happened. But don''t worry, I''ll have a lot of surprises planned for the second rank of floors after I can level up and get rid of this regeneration limiting status...''
|
"Sounds reasonable, be sure to write that possibility down in the report. Orwen will have to research that and other options."
With the rest of them awake, the Sky Arrows have a quick breakfast, collect their equipment into their inventories and then continue the delve deeper into the dungeon. After two more hours of dungeon cellars with an assortment of enemies from silver foxes to spear crabs they arrive at the final room of the floor. The titanic crab that is the floor boss is quickly dispatched, allowing them to study the node and the stairs down.
While Cleev Imral, their elementalist, goes to check out the node, D''vol Blackthorn checks the stairs. "From the look of the stairs, the next floor is cellars again. But there can''t be many more floors after this - the core has to have been on the floor 6 during the fight for it to have mutated, and after that there were only two mana waves strong enough to create a new floor."
Tom answers to that "I''m not as sure about that, D''vol - this floor might have been done in the confusion after the battle, although it is a bit big for that - and on the other hand I''m reasonably sure that the two tiny waves are not enough for the respawning on the Mapping Hell that we know happened. I think we''re still missing something. Cleev, what is that node?"
"It''s a small-weapon-node, capable of creating wooden or copper weapons with [Limited] enchantments. Pretty standard as well, like the rest of this floor."
"OK, then let''s head down - regular formation with Corvin and Holgun first."
Five minutes later Corvin quietly tells the others: "I can see the first room of the eighth floor - no spawns visible, but there are several stone blocks and walls of about one meter high scattered through the room. It might be a trap or puzzle room, although that would be strange on this low a floor."
"The Dungeon had a token barrier on floor 4, so I wouldn''t call a trap room on floor 8 an impossibility, be careful when advancing."
| Combat Initiated |
| Silver Foxes A, B, C, D, E and F
vs.
The Sky Arrows
The Sky Arrows are surprised |
"Watch out, foxes"
*Clank* "Damned stone wall, that was my sword"
"Two foxes behind the stone block south"
"Watch out for that hole in the stone barrier to the west"
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
Silver Fox Cadavers can now be taken as loot. |
"They seem to be regular silver foxes like the ones on Mapping Hell and the few scattered through that default floor above, but ordered to use ambush tactics. And the obstacles here - especially with those half-meter-holes near the ground - make this room perfect for ambush and retreat tactics from small spawns. I think that we have to consider this floor to be more difficult than regular again."
"Probably, depending on what follows - but it seems that the core is regaining some of its cunning rather quickly. I don''t think it''ll remain partially damaged like you hoped, Tom."
| "That raises an important question, General. We know that the seventh floor was created by Booble and there never was a reset, but it is possible that some damage from the mutation and temporary insanity remains?"
"I don''t think so, Gunny. But I can''t be absolutely sure. Most of the sixth floor is separated and I have neither access nor memory of it. That includes no access to the templates of the spawns I created there like the Frankenstein Zombie or the flesh golems.
I do have access to the templates I got from sending out the remaining scout sphere randomly while under the effect, and that should indicate that the system removed all mutation connections but nothing else."
"That at least indicates no new insanity was added to the one you already had - after all your command decisions in North Korea thirty years ago were also insane."
At that Orslesh, the Shaman interjects "You should not speak that disrepectfull of the core that gave you life!"
"No, Orslesh, the General is not my father - thank god. And before you judge you need to experience the same - seven different close calls with death within a single hour of a supposedly top secret black scouting mission."
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.When the Lizard Shaman opens his mouth again, the General stops him.
"Just accept that this is something from before Gunny and me came to the Sphere, and you won''t be able to change that. But to another point because the Sky Arrows are currently doing nothing of importance: Unfortunately Grsmg''wdf iuhulh managed to sneak past his guard and entered the mutated zones of floor six. I was a bit distracted by the ambush on the Sky Arrows and couldn''t intercept him in time."
"It''s probably better this way - I didn''t understand why you didn''t have him killed after his mutation anyway." is the only answer from Orslesh.
Everyones attention turns back to the Sky Arrows, who proceeded through two more rooms in that time. |
"Three ambush oriented rooms and now nothing but a long corridor going north? Gladia, any chance that we might have missed a secret door or something like that?" Holgun asks over his shoulder while cautiously proceeding.
"No, I doublechecked as well. Nothing but a long corridor that turns east a bit short of the dungeon floor limit. If this were a core floor, I would suspect it was started but is unfinished - but I don''t know of anything that could make a core abandon working on an incomplete floor to build a new floor below it. That would reduce its defenses after all."
The Sky Arrows follow the turning corridor until they finally come near to another room. Gladia warns "We are on the last part of the map on this floor - there is a good chance that this is a node room despite the node not visible from here. Unless of course the floor is not incomplete but has another trick to it."
Carefully the Sky Arrows enter the room, checking every corner and obstacle in it. But the only things they find is the floor node hidden behind one obstacle and the stairs leading down to another floor at the other end. There is no trap or spawn in this room at all, something they can''t really believe.
"Why is there no spawn here? This is the floor end room, why would the dungeon core cede this without a defense?"
Incredulous and suspicious faces are everywhere while the Sky Arrows take the time and double- and triple check the room again. "Tom, is it possible that the core has gone dormant and is on automatic despite the change of the title two days ago?"
"Perhaps it used up all the mana gained and couldn''t fill this room? No, that doesn''t make sense either - it would have gotten some mana for this from our own delve yesterday..."
| "Hey General, you were right - watching them carefully stalk around nothing is really funny..."
"Yes, Gunny - but it''s mostly to keep them guessing and off-guard. Besides nothing I could have placed there would have been a problem for them..." |
It took the Sky Arrows another hour of carefully searching an empty room before they go down to the ninth floor - just to be met with another surprise.
"What? A single room floor with the node and both stairs up and down in the same room, all without a defender? Has the dungeon core transported us into a different [Limited]-Ranked dungeon by one of its gates? What''s going on?"
While the rest of the adventurers look around in confusion, Tom stands to the side in deep thought. Finally he raises his voice to keep his friends calm.
"No, I think it''s beginning to make sense. The two tiny energy waves must have been from creating two tiny floors - this one and floor ten if I''m guessing right. That would mean that the massive final wave would have been the creation of floor number eleven - the very first [very low]-ranked floor.
The dungeon must have realised that it needs escapees from a [very low]-ranked floor to get past the system level limit of 20. And then it must have decided to abandon the already started floor 8 and create this floor and possibly the same next, in order to have most of its mana in a rather difficult floor 11 as a way to quickly get past that rank-limit.
If that is right, the next floor will also be tiny like this one and then there will be the core on floor 11. Let''s go on."
| "It shows that the Sky Arrows are experienced adventurers, others would probably have taken longer to understand that. But that idea about gates to another dungeon should be noted as well. Gunny, you''ll have to keep a lookout for other possible dungeons when I send you out the day after tomorrow."
"Huh? Another job for me? What have you planned now?"
"I set the system to search for a candidate for the rogue contract I had gained as a quest reward, and someone answered. You''ll have to travel to the meeting point to guide them to my entrance if you consider them usable. I''ll give you the details tomorrow, now let''s continue watching the Sky Arrows - they already passed the single-room on floor 10 as well and are approaching the core floor..."
|
"Looks like your guess was correct, Tom. I can see a large room at the bottom of the stairs. It''s still mostly dark because no one has entered it, but I can see some eyes and shadows of waiting spawns." Corvin whispers back to his companions. "I''ll get ready to storm them. Holgun, you take the right side."
The two fighters storm into the room - resulting in several crashing noises and curses, but no combat notifications. When Gladia and Tom follow them ten seconds later they see Holgun wrapped up in some form of fishing net that has a lot of fishing hooks sewn into it, while Corvin is cursing from between two stone slabs that dropped down from the ceiling. Tom goes to help Holgun while Gladia checks the rest of the room.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here...
A trapping room, my speciality - it is an early floor for such a room that allows for multiple and complex traps while all spawns are forbidden. Then again, just because spawns are forbidden doesn''t mean that pictures of spawns on the walls are also forbidden.
But I have to admit, the use of colored glass and mirrors make the eyes especially lifelike in bad light, that is new. Of course it only works against people without maps, but then again a bit of paint and glass doesn''t cost the dungeon much..."
"Hey Gladia, just because the stonefall trap is too weak to crush my mithril plate doesn''t mean I like being stuck here. Stop your admiration speech and do something about this damn trap!!!"
After fifteen minutes of working, the Sky Arrows had disabled the traps and gotten their comrades out again. Then Tom holds up a glowing crystal. "According to the crystal we got from Orwen this is the core floor - which would fit with our estimation on what the energy waves did as far as floor creation goes. Our contract says that we are not to advance into this floor - I admit that the contract was written before we knew whether the core survived or not, but a contract is still a contract. We''ll retreat from here, our job is done."
Everyone reorganises their backpacks and prepares for going back, but Gladia asks: "Will we stay here for a while to participate in the system quest or do you want to head for the Bremarin Dungeon directly? And what about the idea of a base here in Rivansea?"
"We''ll discuss both points with the others when we''re back in the inn - but the chance is high we''ll vote for yes to both questions."
Going up is a lot faster than going down because they no longer need to map the dungeon, but it still takes the Sky Arrows the rest of the day to fight their way up through the respawns that either happened while they were deeper in the dungeon or that were prepaid with the stoning traps.
When they arrive back at the first floor it is evening, but a waiting guard tells them to proceed to a mess tent set up outside and wait for mastermage Orwen who asked to be called no matter how late it would be when they returned. And half an hour later Orwen comes into the tent.
"Hi everyone, let''s make this quick. The System Quest Message was send to every guildmaster of every adventurer''s guild on Logronal and on the surrounding lands, and I expect to get a lot of visitors and messages due to that. So I need to get a simple overview on how difficult that quest will be and the basics of the rest of the dungeon so that I can set up an official message. The details can wait for when you turn in your report."
Tom looks up from the beer he''s enjoying. "In one word - bad. The mutation is like nothing I have ever seen, and I helped in destroying three regular mutated dungeons over the years. Usually a mutation results in a random placement of walls and corridors with spawns that were made of random parts from other spawns, but that floor is both more consistent and more crazy - despite the fact that those two attributes have nothing to do with each other.
It is divided into three parts with three bridges, one of them being a one-way bridge which means anyone going there has to find another way back - and the other two bridges are looking difficult as well. If the System Quest didn''t specifically call for adventurers of all ranks I would simply forbid anyone but silver-ranked adventurers to enter that floor.
The dungeon itself has eleven floors - it basically sacrificed any defenses on floor eight to ten to get the eleventh floor as fast as possible. That is what the tiny waves were - creations of two mini-floors nine and ten so that it can fulfill the rank-up requirement of [very low]-ranked escapees as soon as possible."
"Thanks, Tom - the last part is good news, although you won''t be handling that. I have to play politics here and that means an elven party will handle escorting the [very low]-ranked adventurers and helping them escape after triggering the halfway HP message on that floor. And then several of the necromancers from Kaarg are waiting to be the first into that mutated floor."
"They''re welcome to it - there are indications that one of the three parts would be to their liking as it consists mostly of flesh and bones. We''ll write the report and make copies of our maps tomorrow, they should be ready by sixteen o''clock or so. And while we have to discuss and vote about it, most likely we''ll ask for help purchasing a home in Rivansea as a reward."
"I expected as much as soon as the System Quest Notification came around. Luckily I already had some people purchase land for the guild before that message happened, you can bet that the prices will get up as soon as that info goes around..."
2.3.3 On the Surface (Gunny PoV) (INCOMPLETE)
2.3.3 On the Surface (Gunny PoV)
Gunny stands on a rock ledge at the opening of the small vale, looking over the marshy plain that begins here. Two silver foxes sit at his feet, while another lizardman and a few more foxes wait for them on the ground below. "That was the shortest and easiest part of the journey - just a couple of hours down to the bottom of the mountain ridge. Now comes the difficult part - crossing a third of that marshland, the Blackshale Swamp. I''m guessing we''ll need three days for that if we don''t have to backtrack, and we have five days until the agreed upon meeting time."
An answer to his comment seems to echo from everywhere: "So you want to use those two extra days to look for other dungeons in this swamp?"
"Yes, but without risking the deadline. We''ll travel as best as we can for the rest of today and tomorrow, only checking for other dungeons on our direct way. If we make good time at that then we''ll start a wider search pattern the day after tomorrow. If we need to backtrack and zigzag too much then we''ll delay the search pattern until we''re nearer to the meeting point.
Can you try to focus your projection more, Lia? The way it comes from everywhere would be perfect to scare or distract a party in the dungeon, but for working together and especially outside the dungeon it''s not the best effect."
"Nice to know - but I''ll need a lot more training and levels to get it better. I''ll use illusionary signs or letters if it gets too distracting - those are even easier for me. But illusionary audio is difficult, and don''t forget that I''ve only awakened a few days ago. I''ll scout ahead a bit."
At that the largest silver fox sprints toward the march.
Late afternoon on the third day of travel the still unnamed lizardman helper approaches Gunny as he stakes along the north border of the river that flows toward Rivansea. "Gunny, Lia sent me - she thinks her foxes might have scented other dungeon spawns while following a sidepath. She waits for you about two kilometer in this direction."
"Scented, heh? How does that even work without air? Let''s see what she truly meant and what the xenotic-translation messed up this time. That way you said?"
Half an hour later Gunny approaches a group of silver foxes watching a large tangle of wooden bushes, tendrils and small trees. "Can you now scent dungeons, Lia? Or are you telling me that the General might want to wash more often?"
"No, not the General - but some of his summons and contracts could use more water.
Joking aside - that is exactly what seems to have happened here. We have the trails of several animals that scent of the desert going in and out of that mess of bushes. We haven''t seen anything of the entrance itself, but the only way an animal can keep a desert-scent in this swamp is by having access to an area with a desert climate. And that most probably means a dungeon floor. Will we go in?"Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"While we are good in time - no, the General only wants probable locations and stressed how important that rogue contract is for a lot of help and local info.The meeting place is still about a day''s travel or less ahead, with the rest of today we might get there around noon tomorrow. And I rather use the additional day for checking the meeting place for traps and surprises than to risk anything in an unknown dungeon, even if that dungeon is low-ranked. And we don''t even know its rank yet.
But another question, what exactly can you scent? This has to be another case of assumed translation due to the Xenotic conversion the General and me got through, because scenting can''t work the same way we remember without air. Where we came from scenting could be used to identify individuals and track their movement as well as where they have been."
"Then your scenting is more powerful than any other scenting I ever learned of. My scenting can''t identify an individual - at least not directly. It can detect the environment where a person has been before, and that includes minor differences like between a protected burrow and a grassy forest in case of wild mice or squirrels, but this rarely leaves a track unless the difference is big like between swamp and desert. But it won''t detect differences between two people or animals from the same environment.
That is part of the reason why the elves were able to surprise us - their cities try to be as much as nature as possible, and their rangers were in camps designed to follow a forest''s flow, so the difference in scant between them and the serene forest of that dungeon exit was really low. It''s much easier to detect the difference between a human town scent and the lake scent of that exit for example."
"Good to know, and that is something we have to discuss with the General after our return. For now, just create memories of how that entrance looks and it''s position on the map in your status screens and let''s go on, we still have a few hours of light to travel."
Let''s go on."
Gunny watches children approaching and is a bit uncomfortable when realising that the contract went to a 13-year-old orphan with limited education.
comments like "I''m almost 14, I''ll be adult in two months" remind Gunny that even on earth medieval cultures had a much lower age setting for adulthood, and the children all behave rather more mature than Gunny expects them.
When discussing to move on, Briar advises to keep the night here and prepare for a storm they are expecting tonight.
There is a comment that the children consider Gunny''s behaviour of travelling without "Raingear" to be rather reckless. Gunny wonders internally what kind of weather they were talking about as there is no air or atmosphere inside the sphere.
The children chare their raingear with the two lizards, and it is revealed that the raingear is mostly ropes and fasteners - allowing everyone to bind themselves on the last trees before the swamp starts.
In the night there is indeed rain - black water - almost everywhere, and everyone is tossed around by some forces the Gunny can''t correctly identify. The ropes of the other lizardman tear and he vanishes upward, Lia can barely hold her fox-body below a bramble bush.
This helps Gunny''s decision to bring the children to the dungeon as they seem to know how to handle the situations.
While travelling back, Gunny tries to hunt to add some meat to the food as the children are a bit thin, but has a hard time hitting the animals. despite being a good hunter on earth he usually needs four or five tries to get something.
Briar watches this hunting with concern but doesn''t comment. The times he helps hunting, he gets the catch on first try, something that adds to Gunnies cursing.
2.3.4 The Real Entrance
2.3.4 The Real Entrance
The group stands on the grass in the small dale, about a hundred meters away from the stone wall of the mountain. A cave entrance is visible in that stone wall, but nothing else.
Gunny speaks up. "Briar, I would like to make a little test of your knowledge and skills. As long as I''m with you no dungeon creature will attack you or your friend, but I would like to see how you handle dungeons and traps even without a risky fight. Lia can go ahead and inform the core, and you can show me how you would approach a dungeon without any previous information about it."
"OK, I can do that" answers Briar "but that is just a cave entrance, not a dungeon. Is that part of your test?"
"Let''s just say that with the General, you always have to expect the unexpected. He made a [Very High] ranked evaluation team work for it on [Limited] levels. They weren''t in any danger of course, but they couldn''t just stroll through those floors either.
So yes, that cave entrance is where you start. But first give Lia an hour to get ahead and inform the core about this."
One hour later Lia is back and Gunny watches as Briar slowly approaches the cavern entrance. He looks through it for a few seconds before he starts to check the tunnel for traps or other hidden effects. The group slowly follows him as he checks the natural cavern as it continues into the mountain.
At one place where a much more regular tunnel branches off in a steep angle and Briar climbs it up, Gunny gestures the rest to wait. Half an hour later Briar is back. "This seems to be a lookout tunnel as it ends behind a bush about thirty meters higher on the mountain wall."
"That is correct, which is why I told your friends to wait here until you got back."
Gunny continues watching Briar as he continues looking for traps in the other corridors that follow.
Why is he working that hesitantly? I thought he wanted that contract? No, it''s not not hesitant - it''s as if he already knows he will find nothing and just goes through the motions to show that he knows how to search for something...
After going about two or three hundred meters deeper into the cave, the tunnel opens up to a small cavern. The ceiling is suddenly five or six meter high, supported by two stone column in the center and the left back of the fifty meter long and twenty meter wide cavern.
Briar watches the cavern for a while from the tunnel, before he starts rummaging into his backpack. With a rope and two short planks of wood he approaches the second column and starts to bind the wood on one part of the column.
Gunny tries not to show it, but he is impressed. How could he have seen from the entrance that the General gave orders to weaken that column? It''s similar to how he gave the impression of knowing that there are no traps elsewhere. If I didn''t know better I would assume that Briar had been in this cave before the General came here, but from all that I know that is impossible...
The group continues through the tunnel at the other end of the cavern, until they come to a crossing of five almost identical tunnel openings - the one they stand in and four others that come together at a tiny cave.
Briar speaks up "The tunnel to our left is the real entrance to the dungeon, it begins about three meters into that tunnel. The other three tunnels have nothing to do with the dungeon itself, should I explore them anyway?"
How did he know that? "No, that is not neccessary. One of the tunnels is another exit and the other two are a loop without any function, just to confuse people coming in here."
At that Briar thinks for a few seconds before asking "Gunny, can you guarantee us a week of rest and food even if the Core decides to cancel the contract?"
The General wouldn''t throw out children even if the contract fails, but "Why do you ask? What brought that up now?"
Briat explains "You have a big problem here with these tunnels, and you don''t even have a hint of understanding or you wouldn''t have build them. But I can''t explain it, I can only demonstrate it. But that demonstration would exhaust me.
I would need several days of rest before I would be able to leave after the demonstration, to the point that we would not be able to survive in the wilderness if I don''t get that rest before leaving."
"I can''t even think of what problem you could see that I don''t see, but if that is really the case then that will be no problem, you''ll get your week of rest at minimum after the demonstration." Gunny answers.
Briar reaches out and takes Gunnies claw into his hand before turning toward one of the other tunnels. He closes his eyes and looks as if he concentrates.
Suddenly there is a flicker in the air and two of the five tunnels are gone.
"What?" Gunny exclaims "What happened? Where are those two tunnels"
"What tunnels are you talking about, Gunny?" Lia asks. She looks confused on his behaviour.
"The looping tunnel to distract people that was here just a few seconds ago, those tunnels!" Gunny gestures toward the tunnel wall.
"Did something hit you on the head? I know that the core has plans to make such a tunnel, but he decided to do that later and focused the improved badgers to dig to the other side of the mountain first. That''s why those tunnels were only mentioned once a few weeks ago." Lia looks concerned about Gunny.
Briar interjects at that moment "Stop it! Gunny, that was Kuor''Tel.
Inside a dungeon Kuor''Tel cannot work, but anything outside can be kuored. Sir Marken told me that most dungeons at least know about Kuor''Tel even if it doesn''t work inside them, but when you didn''t kuor your hunt I became suspicious.
Neither you nor the core have any idea about Kuor''Tel, am I right? Because otherwise you wouldn''t have made plans for the outside like that..."
"You''re right, we don''t have any idea of what this Kuor''Tel is. Are you telling me that outside of a Dungeon anything can be changed by people as they wish?"
"No, ''change'' is too small a word to use for Kuor''Tel, and Kuor''Tel in itself can be opposed outside as well. I don''t know how to describe it with other words than saying I kuored - everyone always understood what that means."Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
"OK, then let''s stop this discussion for now - it''s the General who needs to hear this, and he can''t hear it while we are outside the dungeon. But you definetely earned some points with this demonstration.
Let''s continue into the dungeon to see how you handle that, and then we go to the core room to discuss this Kuor''Tel." Gunny answers. But unfortunately this sounds like another problem for translation, like we had problems explaining what air and breathing is to the creatures of this world. Only this time the General and I are on the wrong side of the translation barrier...
With a nod Briar continues down the tunnel of the dungeon, this time visibly much more carefull than before. After about a hundred meter it ends in a torch-lit cellar-like room. After he enters it and looks around a bit Briar begins to frown.
"This is more strangeness - usually the environment of the first floor pushes itself up to the surface, overriding the environment for the entrance. Here it is the other way around, with the outside environment determining the entrance until short of the first floor.
And it is extremely strange that the first floor is set to be the safe floor. Mythical cores have a rather large first floor that would take some time to build, and sacrificing all that area that could have defended the core early?
Well, Gunny, usually no adventurer would search for traps on a safe floor. But with this many unusual things I would even search for them if you hadn''t asked to see how I do this."
The room is six by six meters, with a single corridor leading north and the tunnel opening to the exit on the east wall where it takes a sharp turn south and up. Two torches flank the corridor opening and a third torch hangs in the middle of the south wall.
Briar begins to check floor and walls for anything unusual, and finally he stops at the west end of the south wall.
"Gunny, there is something here. It is well-hidden and I don''t see any trigger at all, but this wall is not like the others."
"You''re correct, it is a secret door. Because it is a dead end leading nowhere the rules allow it to be handled by a guard at the other side, that is why you don''t see a handle. But it is where we have to go for now." Gunny makes a gesture and after a few second the wall slowly recedes a bit before it swings open, revealing a two meter wide corridor going farther south.
A lone lizardman can be seen as he crouches timidly and withdraws back into the corridor. Gunny continues "and for those of your friends who know nothing about dungeons, that behaviour is the result of the [safe floor] effect, it makes dungeon spawn [timid] in the presence of non-dungeon beings. Let''s go in."
After ten meters the corridor turns east and continues far longer in that direction, past three doors on the north wall. Gunny however stops at the first door.
"This will be your room and the room of your friends for now. It is rather small and never was intended for guests, but for now we have no other choice. The next safe floor is not yet built as it will be Floor 20, then the core could include some guest chambers there. But he didn''t expect guests of the peaceful variant when he designed this first floor.
You four should stay here where you are safe. As you can see someone already placed some food and water there. However Briar and I will continue deeper to the core room for the discussion on how to continue."
After a short discussion the children agree - Briar knows that he is the only one directly protected by the contract, anyone else would be in danger if they left the safe floor.
Before leaving with Briar, Gunny says to the children "We will talk about a schedule when you can safely leave this room later, but for now please stay inside. There are a few spawns working in the other rooms here, and while they can''t hurt you you would disrupt their work when forcing the [timid] effect on them as soon as they see you. We should be back in two hours or so - if not Lia will come to tell you of any changes."
Gunny and Briar go back through the corridor and continue toward the other exit from the entrance room. Beyond a short corridor it opens up to a larger room of eight by ten meters. Only one other corridor leaves this room, a walkway going down in a curve at the north-west edge.
Gunny approvingly watches as Briar begins again to check everything without being prompted to do, and indeed he finds another secret door on the same wall as the way down. This time however Briar finds a way to open the secret door, revealing a rather small room filled with several barrels and a lizardwoman. With a "Hi" as a greeting he enters and checks the barrels. "Drinking water? Nine barrels with thousands of liters of distilled water? That''s a bit strange here. Care to explain, Gunny?"
"No, it isn''t for drinking. I''ll explain on the way down.
You see, this isn''t the only entrance into this dungeon. We had already a number of visitors through the other entrances, and it was really fun to watch them stumbling through the General''s surprises in the other part of the dungeon. We hope that the adventurer''s guild never even finds this exit as the General managed to keep the opening spike to the other exists.
This however allowed us to repurpose this exit to catching animals for our use. And ... Oh shit" Gunny looks down to his feet, where a bit of water is streaming along.
"I forgot to change Margraals'' last commands, and she didn''t realise that by finding her you would have disabled her. She activated the trap I was about to tell you. Let''s hurry down, things are about to become slippery."
The two speed up going, but the amount of water flowing down quickly covers every part of the floor, and the last two meters they barely manage to stay upright by gliding down the stones.
"What? How is that possible? You can''t install a trap on the way between floors, the System would never allow that!" Briar is really confused.
"It isn''t a real trap" Gunny answers. "Not as the System defines traps. It''s just someone watching the corridor through a peeking hole that can drain perfectly harmless water down to be disposed of.
But as you might have known, the distilled water here has the tendency to make almost every hard surface rather slippery, and it is perfect to keep animals captured for a short while after we baited them down here.
And it isn''t even against the rules, because there is another way out - you just have to go down to the core floor and then back up the other part of the dungeon."
The rest of the way down to the core room is very instructive for Briar, even if Gunny refuses to explain some parts. But he learns many ways how a dungeon can surprise someone who only experience rather simple core behavior in the past. And then he listens as Gunny describes their discussion and situation in detail up to the demonstration of Kuor''Tel just outside the Dungeon Entrance.
"And that is what I don''t understand, General. I remember you giving the command to dig that tunnel because it would be much quicker work before digging the long tunnel to the other side of the mountain. I also remember checking the tunnel out and how Briar asked about it. But the tunnel isn''t there, and everyone else tells me you never gave that command but send the badgers directly to dig the long tunnel..."
"I believe you, Gunny - and not only because you have no reason to lie.
I do remember giving the order to dig the tunnel directly - which is strange in hindsight because it would have been more logical to dig the other tunnel first. But what really tells me that you''re right is that I experienced something similar back at the beginning.
Before I entered the core, while I was still floating above, a label in some of the screens was changed for no reason I could determine. I remember reading ''Aura'' as the label, but just a minute later it was labelled ''Plague'' everywhere.
This must have been a similar change like what was done by Briar to the tunnels, although just changing a label instead of a lot of digging work."
In the silence that follows Briar speaks up "What do you mean, ''before you entered the core''? I realise that you are not a regular dungeon core - you sound like a person. But how can that be?"
"Briar, as you promised you provided valuable info and helped us. I originally hoped to get a more experienced person with the contract and your youth will cause some problems, but given how you helped and the penalties for cancelling a contract as well as trusting luck to search someone else - I''ll keep you on the contract.
So yes, I was a person before I died and Bareen snatched my soul to use it for this dungeon core. Short summary: the dungeons have a purpose and that they are often conquered is creating problems for the gods. So they decided to try soul-controlled cores to see if we are better at staying free than the regular cores with simple programming."
The discussion continues with many questions on both sides. Briar fails to explain what exactly Kuor''Tel is as it is almost instinctual to him - and the General suspects that is not only because of the translation barrier but also because that ability may prevent them from understanding.
When Gunny suggests to call it a variant of ''changing'' Briar can only answer "Change is too small a word, it is to Kuor''Tel like a pebble is to a mountain".
Frustrated the General decides to skip that explanation for now and focuses on what Briar needs to train in the next week before getting his first real assignment.
Interlude 2.3 A Meeting of the Adventurers Dungeon Council
Interlude 2.3 A Meeting of the Adventurer''s Dungeon Council
Mastermage Orwen hurries his steps as he sees that the Sky Arrows have just passed the customs desk from the Dverolion portal.
"Tom, Park, good that you are here early. I know that the planning meeting for the next evaluation run was to be in two days only, but I got a very disturbing news this morning and called for a special meeting of the dungeon council in about one hour. Would it be possible if you two give your packs to your friends and come to that meeting?"
The members of the Sky Arrows look at each other before Tom Blueeye answers "Yes, we can do that. What has happened?"
"Later, then I only have to explain once. Let''s just say that your evaluation run has become even more important than we thought." After that Orwen hastens to the Rivansea portal, leaving the Sky Arrows (and the General Core, who was listening in as soon as he got the notification about the Sky Arrows entering) to wonder what this was about.
Park shrugs "Nothing to do but to go to this meeting. Corvin, Gladia - can you take our packs while we go to the council chamber? And make sure to remind Siirn that we''ll need a good restock on potions and food after our runs on the Bremarin Dungeon, especially if they want the evaluation run to start earlier than intended." "OK, can do"
Leaving the dungeon, the group walks down the one hundred meter street to the harbor. The street is now paved, and almost half the buildings on both sides are finished, with the others in the later stages of construction. after a few dozen meters Tom and Park split away to enter the council building while the rest of the group continues to the tiny building near the pier that was their reward for the evaluation contracts.
One hour later they''re sitting in the council chamber listening to Orwen explaining.
"Greetings everyone. Please allow me to make a quick summary to bring everyone up to the current status before I come to the news from this morning that prompted me to call this special meeting. Luckily this has nothing to do with the insanity floor, so let''s skip that for today.
After the Elven team guided some [Very Low] ranked adventurers to the eleventh floor to trigger the escape conditions there, we could confirm that the dungeon core passed the level restrictions and the experience overcharge and continued to build. More specifically it continued to fill the eight floor that was basically abandoned in a push to create the ninth to eleventh floors as well as continued to build more floors. Curiously it did not change the tiny floors nine and ten.
However one month ago there was an overwhelming Lifeforce release. It was so much that we couldn''t really tell what was built, but several mages offered their suspicions that it would have been enough to build either multiple floors or a floor three or four times as big as the dungeon should be able to do. Considering the gate connections between the second and third floor most of them tend to the suspicion that this core has a special ability to build multiple floors at once.
This was what started the planning for the next evaluation run, especially since it was repeated with a second such wave one week ago. We just wondered how and where the dungeon could have gotten the energy for that as our calculations of the runs would not have produced that much energy for the core.
But this morning the ritual to identify the gate entrance rooms was finally completed with astonishing results. The rooms are called [Remote Entry Rooms] and their rank is [Heroic]."
"WHAT?!?" Everybody in the council chamber starts to talk at once, because no dungeon core could use any structure higher than its own rank, and that would mean that their dungeon is [Heroic] ranked and not [Very High] as they assumed until now. It takes a few minutes for Orwen to calm his collegues down, and then Tom Blueeye is the first to speak.
"That doesn''t make any sense - we thought the dungeon was [Master]-ranked because the five or six size meters it would get from that rank would have made no difference for the Mapping Hell. But two ranks? That would mean at least twelve or thirteen meters, enough to increase the grid on mapping hell. We could have been dealing with a Mapping Hell of 41 rooms instead of the 25 rooms it has, and that would have increased its defense value a lot. What could have made a dungeon sacrifice that protection?"Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
Orwen didn''t like to hear that the Sky Arrows had considered the Dungeon to be [Master]-rank at a time the council still believed it to be [Very High] ranked, but he stops before commenting on that when councillor Owlkan begins to speak.
"That is a question that we should answer in time, but I think we should first concentrate on the excellent news that this dungeon is even higher ranked than we originally thought.
It will no doubt take some time for the core to get to the really valuable deeper floors, although it is digging faster than we assumed when we thought it was only [Very High] ranked. On the other hand we know that there is no dungeon core of that rank on several other lands in every direction, and that is on top of the System Quest for the insanity floor.
We can basically charge almost anything for adventurers that want to access this "
"SHIT" comes from Park Lumberman
"I beg your pardon? Is my concern about money irritating you?"
"No, sorry, of course not, councillor Owlkan. My expletive had nothing to do with your speech. All this time I was thinking about why a low level dungeon would split off some of its space for things other than defending itself.
And unfortunately for all of us I just realised that there is a reason. We''re missing one specific room on the first floor, and that room is all the reason for splitting the dungeon space. All we have on the first floor are the magic gates to transfer us in, but where is the physical exit?
The dungeon has to be placed somewhere, and that means a physical exit and entry on the first floor - and that room and its connections has to be in the extra ten meters of space the dungeon has hidden so far on every floor."
Markus Ohannus looks poleaxed. "Are you telling us that we have a [Heroic] ranked dungeon with an unrestricted and open exit at an unknown location???"
Lady Nasii K''tara is the one who answers "The dungeon has to be in the Blackshale Swamp. That swamp is central and in range to all known Portals to the dungeon, and wild and unexplored enough to be a perfect place for a dungeon."
"It gets worse" Tom Blueeye adds. "The Adventurer''s Guild knows that there are four or five black-ranked dungeons in that swamp. They never bothered to contain them because a dungeon of the first three ranks isn''t strong or valuable enough to warrant the expense of pushing through the swamps. And now the mana released by those weak dungeons will make locating the last exit from this one much more difficult."
The councillors and their aides look at each other. Finally Councillor Owlkan speaks again. "We''ll have to report this to our government and they might decide to send scout teams into the swamp, but there is nothing we can do about that from here. So the important question for us is the evaluation run for whatever comes after the trap-floor. Can the Sky Arrows go in sooner than in one week? I know that this was the original plan, but I would really prefer if you can go in tomorrow and try to find out what else the dungeon core has been hiding."
Tom and Park exchange a look and Park shakes his head before Tom answers "No, not tomorrow - we will need one or two days to prepare and rest before we can go in. [Heroic] is the first gold rank, and no one around here has any reports on conquering a gold-ranked dungeon. That is difficult enough for the silver-ranked ones we had in the past, but we always succeeded in those cases.
The dungeon being [heroic] ranked does partially explain the many tricks it has thrown at us in the first floors, but that is another reason why I want extra preparation before going in deeper. The losses to other adventurers on the insanity floor are high enough, and I don''t want to underestimate that dungeon core again."
From that point on the discussion turns to the details and preparation of the next run to be done by the Sky Arrows.
On the next day, Mastermage Orwen visits the Sky Arrow''s new home alone.
"Hello everyone, I won''t distract you from your preparations for long.
As you probably have guessed, the reason why the other councillors didn''t discuss the physical exit further is that every one of them plans to find that exit for their own government. Rivansea is at a disadvantage there because we are not only much smaller but also the only of the four countries that didn''t have a border to the Blackshale Swamp - and for some mysterious reason the customs paperwork to get a permit to travel upriver from here suddenly requires much more extensive declarations to fill out.
Well - we are not going to try, not when such obvious obstacles are hindering us without costing the other governments anything. Instead we would like you to try to push through to the core. If the core is conquered before that fifth entry is found, then it will be worth much less.
In this bag I have a number of healing potions for you to assist in that task. I hope it will be enough to get to the core, especially as the system will force it to install another [safe] floor soon."
2.4.1 Doors in a Spiral (Sky Arrows PoV) (V1.1)
2.4.1 Doors in a Spiral (Sky Arrows PoV)
Corvin steps from the stairs onto the ground of a corridor. "And another painted wall - this one painted to look like a ten meter room despite this being only a two-meter wide corridor to the right. Park, have you ever heard of stairs to a new floor ending in a corridor instead of a room?"
"No, I never heard of such a case - but I don''t think there is a system rule about this either. It''s just that normal dungeons don''t do this."
"I think we have pretty sure determined that this is not a normal dungeon" Tom interjects. "But a regular party expecting a room would probably have stormed into that wall."
"Even a regular party that makes it to floor 12 will have learned to be cautious given the surprises on the floors until now" Gladia adds. "But on the other side some paint doesn''t cost the dungeon much, and there are always impulsive idiots."
"The dungeon wins in all cases - if the adventurers don''t storm the rooms, they won''t get a surprise attack on the spawns in cases when there is a normal room."
While this discussion was going on, Cleev had been checking her back- and torso-packs. "We used up about a qarter of the extra potions from Orwen to storm through the first ten floors. Do you want to continue at this speed, Tom?"
"No - we had maps until about half of floor eleven and could assume that the traps continue in the other half, but floor twelve is completely new. We have to be more careful now as no one knows what surprises the dungeon may have for us from now on."
| "Good decision, Tom"
The current core room is once again packed with spectators watching an illusion of what the Sky Arrows are currently doing. All the leaders of the Naga and the Lizardpeople are here with Gunny and the General, as well as Lia and Briar. For Lia and Briar this is a new experience as Lia was barely through the class core implantation when the Sky Arrows were last running the floors, and Briar joined only two weeks later.
"I know that I have nothing to stop a powerful group likes yours, but I think the next six floors will slow you down a lot." One of the Naga speaks what the core tells her to say. "Hopefully it will slow you enough for me to create the floors 22 to 24 in that time, because I feel a tiny little bit exposed here on the [Safe] floor 21."
Gunny looks around while taking some roasted nuts from a bucket. The hall they are currently in is an exact copy of the main public hall on the first floor.
"Well, General, you did take an awfull risk with the creation of the floors twelve to eighteen. If they had decided to make another evaluation run before those seven floors were finished, they would have had it easy to find you. And floor nineteen to this one are not exactly designed for protecting you either."
"No, Gunny, but I had to start both with the extra quests from Bareen and with giving the Adventurers a reason why they don''t want to dominate me even if they reach me. And I''m already at half the Mana needed for the next three floors, that should get me out of their reach if I can get enough mana to finish those floors before the Sky Arrows get here."
|
"The corridor looks as if it goes a few dozen meters straight to the right." Gladia reports "I don''t see any kind of trap or spawn in it, so I suggest we proceed. Even with all maps and storming through that trapped floor we needed more than half a day to get here, so we might also look for a safe room to stay in."
"The dungeon had only one safe room several floors back. We can''t expect it to have one repulsor formation on every floor like some other dungeons. That would mean no roaming spawn but also no safe room, only the System-mandated [safe] floors. And has anyone a guess when the core will create the next [safe] floor? It needs one per rank of ten floors after all."
"Doesn''t matter for now, let''s see what surprises this floor has for us." Tom cuts the discussion short "It looks like a regular cavern environment again, and the floor effect gives bonus health and damage to every living being. So we can expect a lot of fights."
The Sky Arrows line up to move along the corridor. A short time later and after a turn north they arrive at the first room of floor 12. It is quite bit larger than usual (sixteen by sixteen meters instead of the more common six by six) and there are a number of stone walls and partial columns scattered through it. There are no spawns directly visible, and the Sky Arrows carefully make their way around the obstacles.
| Combat Initiated |
| Silver Foxes A, B, C, D, E and F
vs.
Sky Arrows
The surprise attempt failed |
The Silver Foxes attack suddenly from several direction including holes in the obstacles, but the Sky Arrows were on guard and quickly countered them. Due to the higher levels of these foxes the fight takes a bit longer but none of the foxes can survive more than two or three hits from the high-leveled adventurers.
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
Silver Fox Cadavers can now be taken as loot.
|
"Those foxes got the [Stair Guard] +3 level bonus, and there is a token door to the east wall." Gladia mentions "Good to already know where the stairs down are, but most likely we have to go through the entire level to find that token to open the door."
"You''re probably right, and I can detect more stoned foxes hidden inside those obstacles." Park adds "By the time we find the token, those silver foxes will have destoned and be ready to fight us on our return."
"Well, that tactic has been proven to make the floors more difficult by allowing more spawns per run - the only reason why it didn''t create much uproar is that it also gave the people more loot to take out from the first two floors." Gladia answers. "Let''s go on."
The corridor behind the first room snakes and winds to the left and right for a short while, before the Sky Arrows arrive at the next room. Again it has a size of sixteen meters, but this time it is partially flooded with steps going down into the water and coming back up for the next corridor on the other side.
"Hey Corvin, wanna bet that there are spearcrabs and bladed obstacles below the water?" asks Holgun.
"No bets this obvious" comes the answer, and the Sky arrows proceed to wade through the room, detecting the spearcrabs with their advanced skills. Again there are a few stoned spearcrabs just out of reach so that they can''t prevent the respawn by destroying them. After that it goes through another snaking corridor until the third room shows something new: A lot of the floor is covered with moss and large mushrooms. On the other side of the room they can easily see a closed door, but the rest of the room is partially hidden through stalagmites and stalactites.
"Careful" warns Tom. "We don''t know if the different room means different spawns, neither the crabs nor the foxes would do well here. Perhaps there are Snow Owls again?"
| "No, but too bad that we didn''t think to place some old feathers there. That would really have them looking in the wrong direction..."
|
The six adventurers slowly move into the room and around the stalactites. They can now see that the door at the north wall is a token door again, and that the corridor continues on the west wall.
| Combat Initiated |
| Swamp Snakes A, B, C, D, E and F
vs.
The Sky Arrows
The Sky Arrows have been surprised |
With a hiss six snakes strike to bite them, but only in two cases they succeed. In most cases the armored boots are enough to prevent the bites from penetrating, but Gladia and Cleev both feel a burning where they were bitten.
With the surprise spent, the snakes are quickly cut down, although it takes a bit until the last one is finished.
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. |
"Ouch" comes from Cleev "there go two of our basic antidote potions. Park, Tom, anything special about those snakes? Should we use a stronger antidote?"
"Regular Swamp Snakes from the look of it." answers Tom "They''re common in the Blackshale Swamp, so we can probably take this as proof that the fifth exit is there. Dungeons have other ways of gaining new spawn templates, but that is the most likely explanation. But the snakes were a bit stronger than I would have expected, even with the bonus of the floor effect."
Park has a strange look on his face when he answers: "That is because they were stronger. All snakes have the stair guard bonus levels, although I have no idea how several rooms on a floor could get stairs down to trigger that bonus."
"Please don''t tell us that we got gated to another floor again, Park" Gladia groans "Mapping Hell was bad enough, and I haven''t seen any illusion or magic on this entire floor until now."
"No, we are still on floor twelve - which is why I don''t understand this. What do you have of the map yet, Gladia?"
"The three rooms are actually in a straight line south to north, and the distance is only 32 meters between each room. It just took a lot longer because the snaking right and left makes the corridors go about double that distance in length."
"The door has a different token symbol, a line instead of a circle. But there is nothing we can do about this, we''ll have to follow the corridor. The System hasn''t classified this dungeon as
yet, and in every other case until now we found out how the dungeon tricked us. This one will probably also have an explanation, I just hate the extra work this causes us."
"Park, at least that means that we got a job guarantee - Siirm told me of a rumor that the elven [Above Average] team that usually handles early dungeon evaluation is very glad for someone else taking unknown floors of this dungeon on." Gladia smirks at this.
The Sky Arrows continue onward after this. There are no branching corridors and they go through a regular cave room with a single big crab to the fifth room, which looks a lot like the first room again. Obstacles with holes and one-meter-high walls would give any foxes or similar creatures an advantage, but no Silver Fox can be seen at the moment. A third token door is visible on the west wall to their right.
Carefully and expecting an assault by Silver Foxes the Sky Arrows approach the door - which didn''t help them much with what really happens.
| Combat Initiated |
| Ratswarm 1 to 6
vs.
The Sky Arrows
The Sky Arrows have been surprised
|
Suddenly dozens or hundreds of Sewer Rats jump at them from all directions. The rats are weak and don''t do much damage, but a dozen tiny bites are a pain to deal with, especially if you have too many targets to know where to strike next.
As a result it takes the Sky Arrows quite a number of battleturns and a lot of cursing (and two flamewalls from elementalist Cleev) before they get rid of the last of the Sewer Rats.
| Victory Result |
| No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.
|
"What the hell?? Tom, the Dungeon has the Party System active, that should limit it to groups of six spawn per room. Hordes of hundreds of Spawns should not be possible here..." Holgun shouts red-faced.
"Park? Any idea what this could be? Because Holgun is right about this." Tom redirects the question to the [Dark Sage] who is already checking on the corpses of the Sewer Rats.
It takes a few minutes before Park is finished and answers "The Sewer Rats have a new modification, one that I haven''t seen before: . It basically removes the base level and causes them to be Level 1 on all floors, but makes them part of a swarm in compensation. We have been fighting six Ratswarms, and each level-fifteen ratswarm consisted of fifteen level-one rats. And yes, level fifteen because they have a stair bonus again, the third one on this floor."
"If we had known that, the rats would have been completely harmless to us." Corvin adds his part "It was the chaos and the surprise that caused most problems and a few friendly fire effects - a bit more warning before the firewalls would have been nice, Cleev. But this will cause problems for several of the parties that are ... more set in their ways to call it nicely?"
"I agree - this dungeon is not for those who can''t improvise or change their plans on the fly" Tom answers. "This door needs a token with a triangle symbol - obviously every token only fits one door and they can''t be mixed. Let''s continue and see where those tokens are."
The Sky Arrows continue the long and winding corridors through a room that just contained a group of Silver Foxes to fight, until Gladia calls out to Holgun who currently moves in front. "Holgun, the rooms and corridors seem to spiral on this floor, and that would mean that the next room is the center room of this floor."
"Yes, I think I see the node of this floor - half submerged because this is again a floor half under water with stairs going down, so expect some spearcrabs or other fishes to ambush us."
Holgun watches the black surface of the water in the room for a moment before he begins to go down the stairs.
SPLASH
| Combat Initiated |
| Spearcrab A, B and C
vs.
Holgun Hammerdorn
Holgun Hammerdorn has been surprised |
The three spearcrabs quickly released their pressure spears on the dwarf lying on the bottom of the floor before moving away again.
| Victory Result |
| The Spearcrabs successfully escape from combat
|
"AAARRGH" Holguns head comes above the water again. "There are no stairs here, it only looks that way with two steps above the water surface. As soon as it''s out of sight there is a drop of one meter to the bottom. And we''re lucky that I went first, one of you long beanpoles would probably have stumbled on the metal blade hidden in the water one meter away.
Now please excuse me, I have to make my displeasure about this known to the spearcrabs who ambushed me."
The Sky Arrows spread out to check the room and the node while Holgun wades through the water to hunt the spearcrabs. Gladia checks the door on the west side. "Tom, this token door is different from the first three - it needs six tokens, not one, and those tokens are marked with dots in different numbers - one token with one dot, one with two dots and so on. Looks like this floor requires a lot of tokens, but we haven''t found a single one yet."
"Nothing we can do but to move on, somewhere we''ll find the tokens because the System requires a path to the core."
Three hours later - after another six rooms with three closed doors - Gladia warns the rest of the party. "The rooms were symmetric so far in a double spiral, but now it is complete and we are on the opposite side from where we entered this grid of thirteen rooms. That corridor to the north leaves this section, and we don''t know what to expect."
"Thanks for the warning, but nothing to go but on. We have found seven doors that require a total of twelve different tokens, but haven''t seen a single token yet. I hope the change means that we''ll find the tokens now."
The corridor also stops winding, it only takes a turn to east before continuing for almost fifty meters, then another turn north and a final caveroom with a sanded floor. A single big crab patrols around a pedestal here, but it cannot stand against the high-ranked adventurers. And as expected on the podest lies a single token stone.
Gladia approaches it and groans "The circle token, the one for the very first door at the other end of the floor. We''ll have to go back through every room and every spawn again to get there."
"Not today - we camp here" Tom shakes his head. "This room has only one corridor and is easy to guard, and it has been almost thirteen hours since we entered Mapping Hell ten floors above. We rest now and go back through the floor tomorrow."
| "I think they''ll about to get very familiar with that floor considering how you distributed the tokens, General" smirks Gunny.
"Obviously, but for now the show is over. Briar, Gunny, Lia, please stay - the rest can return to your usual duties." the core commands the naga to say for it.
The Naga and Lizardpeople leave the core hall at that.
"OK, Briar, have you considered your chances of sneaking by the guards on floor one?"
"Yes, and I still don''t like the odds. But the bigger problem is the risk of getting caught - if I were already registered as an adventurer there I could talk my way out of such a situation, but as a complete unknown caught leaving the dungeon? That would rise a lot of questions."
"Unfortunately you''re right, and I can''t risk that. So you''ll have to travel to Rivansea over land and as fast as possible. If I give you enough rations for the travel and gold to purchase food and equipment at Rivansea, how fast could you get there?"
"It''s about sixty kilometers, half of that through the swamp. If I don''t have to hunt and get someone to help guarding, I might be able to get there in a week or eight days. But that would be pressing the speed. What is this about?"
"I managed to get a special favor from Rolandro, the God of the Gamblers. But he needs one of his priests here to grant that. I have a name from someone in Rivansea who has no problem going against the City Council''s wishes due to past conflicts. Ideally it would be possible to get him here after I build the next floors but before the Sky Arrows get through the floors. But if that is not possible, I can block the door to the future temple with a token door so that the Sky Arrows can''t enter."
"So travel to Rivansea, finding one of the dubious priests of Rolandro, registering as a new adventurer and getting into the dungeon through the Portal Platform that is guarded by the guild? Then it will be better not to risk the same guards going out, I doubt that I can talk my way past two times."
"Unfortunately I have to agree. I''ll have a number of Silver Foxes and Large Foxes under Lia''s command ready to go tomorrow morning, she''ll accompany you to Rivansea and will stay hidden for two or three days there. She can''t be allowed to be seen with you as I''m the only known source for Silver Foxes at the moment, but if things go wrong she can wait outside town."
|
2.4.2 Forests in the Deep (Sky Arrows)
2.4.2 Forests in the Deep (Sky Arrows)
The Sky Arrows stand before the open token door of the first room. It took them three hours to fight their way back to the beginning of the floor, and now they look not at a set of stairs down, but at a lot of tree branches to climb down.
"A forest floor? At [Very Low] rank? Usually the nature environment floors don''t start until [Below Average] rank, but that would be twenty or thirty floors deeper" Corvin shakes his head.
"That might even be to our advantage." answers Tom "A nature floor has no rooms, only large caverns. And the size limit of the early floors will limit those caverns. That means less spawns and less problems finding the way through them."
"Too-hoom, you sure you didn''t just jinx us?" Gladia pouts "The dungeon has tricked us often enough, and I''m not sure this is as easy as you think."
| "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Gladia." the General smirks.
|
"We will see. Let''s climb down." Tom commands the Sky Arrows to go on.
Instead of the usual ten meters between floors, the way down is thirty meters deep - but the Sky Arrows expected that as nature floors are much higher than regular floors, high enough to let the trees grow to twenty meters.
Once at the bottom of the climbway (no one could call that stairs anymore) the Sky Arrows watch through a large cavern filled with an old forest. Several fat stone columns support the ceiling. They and a lot of large trees make it impossible to see through the entire cavern. Like the climbway the walls themselves also look like a thick mess of wooden tree branches, making it even more difficult to judge where the cavern ends.
"Gladia, make sure to map this floor with all areas for the cavern." Park says "We should start by going along the walls to get the limits of the cavern. After that we try to find our what is in the inner areas. Let''s start toward north."
Two hours later the Sky Arrows are back at the climbway.
"''Just follow the walls'' he said. ''A smaller cavern means easier to find your way through'' he said. Have you ever told that to the brambles and hill-like halfwalls scattered through this ''smaller'' cavern?" Gladia whines.
"Hey, but at least that mess should have given you a good start at mapping the inner parts of the cavern whenever we were diverted there. Although I admit we were forced to do quite a lot more walking than a cavern of this size normally requires." Tom tries to calm her down. "How big is it anyway, and how much have you mapped now?"
"255 by 255 meters, average for the thirteenth floor of a [Heroic] dungeon. But we had to travel much more than one kilometer to map the walls. The map shows about half of the floor now, but we haven''t found either the node or the stairs down. The floor uses both Silver Foxes and Large Foxes as spawns so far. There are not enough Silver Foxes to make this cavern worth looting, but the nature effect has increased the growth of several mosses and herbs, that might be enough to compensate."
Park adds to the discussion "Open nature-based caverns always have fewer but stronger spawns than room-based floors and only two higher-level bosses at the node and the stairs down. The fact that this is an early and smaller nature floor would make it a good training ground for parties planning to go to larger nature-based dungeons - this floor hasn''t given us any extra problems so far, it only slowed down mapping it. Depending on what the node is this could still be a very good floor.
But we need to find the tokens, and I bet they are loot on the two floor bosses here. I think I saw the node through a very thick bramble bush in the northwest corner, opposite to the climbway up here. Let''s go there next."
"OK, but we should go more west than north first" Gladia comments. "That way we get one of the blank spaces left mapped on our way."Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Half an hour of walking and a boss fight against a large fox later, the Sky Arrows inspect the node and their loot.
"Hey everyone, the token dropped by the boss shows a pentagon - that door is almost at the other end of the spiral on the floor above." Gladia shouts.
"Did you expect anything else?" Park answers "But this node has a very interesting option. It is a regular plant node, which means that anyone can spend SP to create one of the herbs or plants known to the dungeon. But it has an option that you can bring a new plant in and add it to the list of possible creations."
"Which would of course give the core the ability to use that plant elsewhere." Tom answers "So basically you can gather plants for the core to use in exchange for that plant being available as loot. Most cores don''t bother with that option because it''s mostly used to modify the loot tables for improving the chances of the parties venturing inside. But I suspect a dungeon core as tricky as this one can probably use such herbs in other ways as well."
After some thinking Cleev answers "The Lizardpeople could probably use any herbs for themselves. And it is strange that we haven''t encountered one of them so far. We know from the report of the elven rangers that it had lizardpeople gathering things, and the fact that Blackmoss was retracted also points to someone with hands to remove the destroyed core node had gone there. But we haven''t found any sign of them, only animal spawns so far. And never forget that we still have no idea what else it gained from Blackmoss, the dwarves are not telling anything other than that Blackmoss was
."
"Yes, that is something to think about. But let''s look for the stairs down and the second floor boss."
Ninety minutes later Corvin calls out. "Gladia, wait. Are you sure nothing has manipulated your mapping? We killed the last regular spawn an hour ago and must have gone through the floor twice, but still haven''t found the second boss or the stairs down."
"No, the map is correct - there simply isn''t a stair down on this floor. I''m beginning to understand what is going on.
Everyone, see those seven columns? We originally thought they were only obstacles because no dungeon needs to support the ceiling, but they are wide enough to contain stairs. And I think they do, with their stairs going through this floor into deeper floors. That would explain the multiple stair bonus rooms on the floor above, and it means that the second boss in this cavern has become a roaming boss like if the deepest floor of a regular dungeon is a nature floor."
"You''re right" answers Tom, "That is the simplest explanation for everything we found so far. And since the second boss seems to be intelligent enough not to attack stronger opponents, we either need to bait or herd it to force a fight. And Claudia didn''t come with us for this dive, so I suggest we split and herd it into a corner. There can''t be many spawns left on this floor and everyone of us is strong enough to handle a level 20 spawn alone."
One hour later the Sky Arrows stand by the corpse of a rather big silver fox. Gladia checks the token they gained while Tom kneels down and begins to cut up the fox.
"The token has one dot, it is one of the six tokens for the center door above. Why are you gutting the fox, Tom?"
"If your assumptions on these floors are correct - and I think they are - then we''ll need a week to get through them. Going through every fight on floor twelve multiple times and hunting the roaming boss on seven open nature floors will take that time, especially if we want to play it safe. And that means we should bolster our rations with what food we can get in the dungeon itself. And luckily the bonus on the silver foxes means that their meat is edible and won''t dissolve like a regular spawn."
The Sky Arrows continue collecting what they think is usable and then head to the climbway back to floor twelve.
| "It looks as if they''re planning to camp the night again in the last room of floor twelve, General." Lia says "Do you plan to modify that room if that becomes standard practise?"
After a minute the core''s answer is relayed "Not at the moment, it wouldn''t matter with the Sky Arrows anyway. I might decide to change it later if even the regular parties do the same often enough, but it will depend on a lot of things as I don''t want to get labeled as too deadly either."
"What about the next floor they have the token for?" asks Orslesh "It will be that floor 17 that you labeled as ''Amazonas'', but I don''t know what an amazonas is."
"That name comes from a region on the world where we came from." answers Gunny "It is basically a water forest or wet forest, with many of the trees growing out of a river named ''Amazonas''. I think Holgun will really like the many spearcrabs that are hidden in the waters of that floor."
Everyone smirks at that comment.
"Unfortunately I don''t think the Amazonas will provide an obstacle to the Sky Arrows, they are just too good and high-leveled for that to do more than slow them down." The General comments and continues "But the third floor they will get a token for, the floor fifteen might be something else. I hope I got it right this time after the failure on floor five."
"Right, you tried another go at an underwater floor there..."
|
2.4.3 The Core plans for the next stage
2.4.3 The Core plans for the next stage (Core PoV)
"Hey General," Gunny smirks "Looks like the Sky Arrows finally found the node of floor fifteen. Took them long enough."
"Yes, this time my ideas for an underwater floor really paid off" I had the current duty-speaker answer for me.
Together we watch as the adventurers quickly finish the immobile boss, check the node and collect the token from the remaining mess of algae. Then they proceed for the way up to floor 12 again.
| "THREE DAYS!!! Three days underwater just because our so-called graverobber messed up her map in a three hundred meter open cavern!!!" Holgun whines.
"HEY! My map was always correct. It''s 315x315x20 meters by the way. And whoever heard of dungeons that plan up? Every other dungeon has always remained on the floor itself. Who would have thought that this one uses the fact that someone can swim up underwater to declare a node fifteen meters up the wall to be accessable and create a truely three-dimensional floor with coral growths as obstacles?" Gladia looks pissed-off as well.
"Calm down, both of you" Park interjects. "Everyone is tired after combing every millimeter of the floor six times in two days before we thought of going up. Let''s take this as another lesson of never assuming anything in this dungeon."
"Racist! I''m calling racist on this core! This floor was clearly made to prevent dwarves from going deeper!"
"You''re just pissed off that being water-challenged prevented you from participating in the battle against that algae-based boss-spawn." Gladia answers. "What did you get from it, Tom?"
"Nothing special, it was just like a regular plant-based spawn. I think the core used this instead of the piranha-boss we expected because the piranha would have given the position away due to it''s movement range from its spawn point."
After reaching the entry point and beginning to swim up Corvin speaks up "But I can see Holguns point as well, even if I''m not one who eats iron and has to climb instead of swimming. This dungeon is extremely tiring for the very few EXP we get only from bosses due to us being that high ranked. I don''t know if I would have agreed to be the exploration team if I had fully understood that before."
"You''ll sing another tone when it finally gets deeper." Park answers "We now know that it is [Heroic]-ranked, and previously we would never even have dreamed of getting up to those ranks with all other accessible dungeons around being only [Very High]-ranked.
And this contract even earns us priority access later..."
|
"I would really like to see their faces when they realise that you can go deeper than the 100-floor-limit of a [Heroic] dungeon core, General."
"Of course someone with your perverse sense of humor would like to see that." Lia answers before the speaker can relay an answer from the core. "But I would like to know why you expanded this section of the [safe] floor, Core? I thought you wanted to preserve all Mana until you can build the floors twenty-two to twenty-four..."
"Ah, but I almost have that Mana. I''m only waiting for Orwen to be inside to watch him while I place those floors as I can finish their contents later. And in the mean time I had another idea for a new type of treasure to be won on floor 19 above, one that would also allow me to better hide that planned temple if the Sky Arrows get here before Briar can bring in Rolandro''s Priest." the core answers that question.
"That new treasure will be unique key tokens to the side rooms here, and I made the hall longer and added more side rooms to have some more of those keys before running out of rooms. And since I still want the stairs down at the other end of this hall I had to add that before placing the next floor down.
It''s not yet finished - most of the doors just lead to a one meter dead end where I still have to excavate the room that should be there. I''ll do that slowly when I get more Mana. But there will be only one key to each room and some furniture like for shops inside. That should convince some merchants to purchase one of those keys and setup a shop there as they don''t have to carry their wares in and out then - or perhaps some adventurer parties might decide to use those rooms as store room for their equipment and similar options.
And if I''m careful they won''t even realise that as soon as they lock the room and leave the floor, the room content will count as "dungeon-owned" for the system, allowing me to absorb and recreate anything I don''t have yet.
And having my own dungeon economy with my own coins to distribute - like I already have done with some treasure chests and token riddles - will aid some long-term plans as well. So I hope that those merchants will adopt my coins as one possible way of payment. I''ll even aid that by placing token riddles as exchange stations in those rooms."
"I hope this works out, General" Gunny comments "But I agree that having our own coins and shops will probably be helpfull in the long term. What about mid and short terms? Anything planned to surprise the adventurers there?"Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"Well, short term the Sky Arrows will enter floors 16, 14 and 18 in that order - a swamp, a snow forest and a desert. Those will be the last of the nature floors and then the big surprise of floor 19 and the [safe] floor 20 above.
I hope that they''ll have to spent a lot of time in the swamp, because I tried something new there. Unfortunately the System forced me to place a small hint as the loot on the two bosses, but the tokens themselves aren''t loot. They simply lie somewhere around on the floor - somewhere on the bottom of the swamp..."
"So you hope that they spent extra time fishing through the swamp?" Gunny answers "That should add to the time they need. Most of the nature floors so far they took in a single day, only the underwater floor added two extra days to that. Briar estimated he needs eight days to get to Rivansea overland, and that means it will be a head-to-head race who gets to this floor first, the Sky Arrows through the floors or Briar with using the teleporter platform."
"Unfortunately he will need to find that Tricksters priest first" Aria, chief of the naga, objects. "So it is unlikely for Briar to get here first, unless the Core can really pull off another stunt to delay the Arrows."
"We''ll see that tomorrow" the Lizardman currently relaying the messages of the core for all to hear sounds a bit tired. "Luckily the Sky Arrows have not yet realised that another advantage of the dead-end-caverns is that they can''t feel the Lifeforce release of changes to other caverns - the wave only goes up, never down another stair after all. But I don''t want to invest too much Mana into changes there because it is more important to place the next three floors. While that floor effect was a nice surprice to gain, the requirement to place the three floors at once is a problem at the moment.
Let''s see how the Sky Arrows handle the swamp floor tomorrow."
"Ah, finally Orven makes an appearance. The Sky Arrows are already down in another dead-end floor, so any LifeForce wave from deeper will pass them undetected. Let''s make the next floors."
| Mastermage Orven Windriver wanders along the main hall of the first floor toward the office section at the other end, accompanied by Kerstin Lamera. The former receptionist of the Travellers Guild had been promoted to his secretary and assistent when the guild was changed into an adventurer''s guild and gained responsibility for handling the dungeon entrance.
"Kerstin, please schedule a meeting of the Dungeon Council on the rules for the System Quest on the Insanity Triplet Floor. Yesterday the System made the first modification to the Quest Rewards for that floor, giving a bonus for low level adventurers entering it.
So far we refused to let anyone below level 20 enter due to the fact that it would be basically suicide for them, but with the System giving bonus rewards for low levels now a lot more people will demand to be let into that floor and its quest."
"OK, Master Orven - I think we can fit in the meeting in three..."
Everyone on the entire floor stops what they were doing when a massive LifeForce wave passes them.
"What in the... That wave was stronger than anything I ever felt, even in much deeper and higher-leveled dungeons. It has to have been the creation of multiple floors at once, because I don''t want to consider what other things might require to spend that much energy."
"Master Orven, I think I can send messengers to schedule an emergency meeting tomorrow morning. Do you want me to include the discussion points for System Quest in the Insanity Triplet floor as well in that meeting?"
"Yes, Kerstin, please do so. We can always re-schedule that if we need more time than we have tomorrow. I only hope that Park was able to quantify that wave - it was too much for me to even guess how much energy it contained."
|
"Nope, Park is currently hunting snakes in a swamp and doesn''t even know there are new floors..."
| The Sky Arrows watch as Gladia turns and tries to match two wooden grids with holes and letters on them. "Why can''t this dungeon use regular hint tablets? You know, stone plates with half of a sentence on them? ... No, this combination also makes no sense - let''s try turning... Ah, finally! Eeew...
Guys, the hint sentence is:
The tokens lie hidden and unprotected at the bottom of the swamp.
We''ll have to search through this entire mud again, ew.."
"I don''t think so" Tom objects. "For the system to allow the statement ''unprotected'', the tokens have to be outside the movement range of the spawns from the spawn points, so get your map out and draw in those ranges, Gladia."
Holgun''s face lights up at this "And a core as tricky as this one will never risk the tokens to be accidentally found in the open, so it has to be a place that is a dead end and behind some of those spawn areas as well."
"And bottom means that it can''t be at the higher points of this floor either...."
|
"Shit, another point for the Sky Arrows. I really hoped that they would start searching the entire floor, but with that kind of filtering on the map they''ll find the tokens after a quick search." The core is anything but pleased.
"No plan survives meeting the enemy, General. And we know that the Sky Arrows are good. But they''re still too late, the new floors will stop them when they try to go beyond the next [safe] floors. Do you think they will be delayed by the other floors?"
"Not by the snow forest that comes next - that leaves that so-called desert floor as floor 19 was always a hit-or-miss type of blockade, and the Sky Arrows are too good to fail there."
"Agree - but how could that environment be called a desert? It is nothing like anything of a desert from earth..."
"Most likely another one of those xenotic translation messes. If we had any idea what the sphere is we might even be able to get how that was named..."
not abandoning - a different story first
Hello everyone
as some people may have heard from me, the last two years I had chronic health problems preventing me from almost any writing - and those health problems won''t go away either.
But I want to try to get back to writing - I just have to take it slowly.
And the "General Core" is at a very important part of the story, where the next chapter is too complex for me to write without damaging everything (I tried), so I need something else to write until I''m back to a level where I would be confident to continue this story.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
This "Something else" is a story I''m calling "The Experimental Dungeon".
I added the link in the post-chapter note, and just added chapter 2 to it.
I''m currently writing chapter six, and until I run out of backlog I will publish two chapters a week.
I would really like your comments on that story - five chapters are already finished, the sixth one is in the works.
And the dungeon is experimental on five different levels - one of them is the experiment to see if I can use it to get back into writing ;-)
I hope that everything works out and that I will be able to repair and continue the "General Core" in a few months, but I can''t promise anything - not with the way my health problems have already blocked several tries to write something in the last two years.