By the time we actually reached Epheria, the city on the border of the Forest of Illusion, even Bruzigan was looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed, and the rest of us were thoroughly sick of camping out. The city was smaller than a Landing City, with buildings and gate-and-wall defenses clearly made of less advanced materials, materials that were no doubt possible to fabricate from local resources rather than the space-age glasses and metals that made a Landing City gleam. Too, its gates were manned by well-equipped delvers rather than prison guards.
The place was safer than smaller towns, but both more dangerous and restrictive than Landing Cities were. Both such towns and cities like this were lorded over by strong delver teams, who were nominally responsible for the safety of those who paid them protection fees. In practice, they tended to care more about punishing those who broke rules that they imposed than keeping other delvers from fighting, exploiting, or killing each other. In the cities meant to be staging areas to take on the Trials, however, the ruling delvers were appointed by the organization which controlled the guards, and answerable to special inspectors, so they at least made the effort, though they weren’t usually as effective as Landing City Peacekeepers.
However, the situation was different for teams who were able to actually access the nearby Trial. If anyone in Epheria “interfered with another delver’s ability to attempt a Trial” it would be worse than prison guards that they’d answer to.
So, Bruzigan took the lead in entering the city, holding the Trial Tuner in as obvious a way as possible. The gate sentries inspected it, and became very respectful once they saw it wasn’t a forgery. True to expectations, no one acted the least bit hostile to us as we made our way to a place toward Epheria’s market center. However, we did end up attracting unwanted attention of a different sort.
“Will you be taking the Trial tomorrow? You’ll need lots of firepower!”
“You guys seem to have an excellent healer, I could be a good meatshield!”
“Nah, what you need is someone good with a bow like yours truly!”
Challenger teams were capped at six, but on the 8th Floor, up to 20 could enter Stronghold dungeons and above. Up to ten could enter lesser dungeons. At low difficulty levels, it was inadvisable to recruit Floor natives because you’d be taken advantage of or even betrayed at worst, and lose out on Mission Rating at best. If you successfully got a Trial Tuner, you got moochers like these fawning over your team, trying to associate with it to enhance their own status—so for the most part it was still inadvisable to recruit Floor natives. We had no need and even less desire to indulge any of them. This prestige was another reason we were reasonably not at risk here.
However, we did go to the Epheria market rather than stopping immediately to rest. The Trial Cities had a selection different from the Landing Cities, offering better, rarer, and higher quality equipment. Most of what we found that was worth considering would have amounted to rather minor upgrades, of which we ended up getting only one, a headgear/hat for Mewi that gave him a bonus to Regeneration and slightly powered up his Water spells, which were still what he used the most.
Anna scored a real prize: bracers that boosted her defensive buffs, her Resilience, and could cast Lesser Sacred Barrier on herself, which would completely negate up to two attacks against her for 30 seconds, once every half-hour. That spell was one she already knew, because it was an excellent one for healers since its drawback was the inability to use offensive spells or skills while active. It could be cast on any of us, but it usually was her go-to for protecting herself since offensive abilities were outside her main focus. Mewi had benefitted from it once or twice as well, though. Combined with the other bonuses, not having to spend her mana to cast that spell, even occasionally, would be pretty helpful.
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We set out to find the Trial entrance early the next morning. Other than the dungeon’s general theme, and the fact that all Trials had nine levels plus one for the boss, our information on what we’d find inside was limited. It was thought that the layout, enemy placements, and possible loot drops were randomized, so that was basically the most detailed information we could go on.
The actual process of using the Trial Tuner was pretty simple, though. It was another warmer/colder game, with the orb atop the fake rod flashing with light faster the closer we got. There were enemies around, of course, but if you were going to struggle with those, you had no business taking on a Trial. When we reached the right spot, the orb was lit steadily. Bruzigan placed it in the ground, and it vanished, a swirling vortex portal appearing where it had been.
Cautiously, we stepped through. Like the Palace before it, the Trial dungeon was easier than it could have been, though for a different reason this time: the Magical Maps we’d brought in. The already bizarre looking corridors of the Trial of Illusion dungeon constantly shifted before our eyes, real and fake paths appearing and vanishing. However, using a single Magical Map gave us an accurate layout of the level we used it on. In fact, this was the one dungeon that if a challenger team HAD to clear it for their mission, it was recommended to buy Magical Maps in the 8th Floor even if they couldn’t track down any in Area 1 beforehand. Those items were available here, though much more expensive compared to Area 1.
Our run went pretty much routine until we reached the 6th level. The single, long corridor was so plain and devoid of the dungeon’s usual illusory shifting effect that it was impossible not to be suspicious. However, Lee didn’t detect any alternate paths, and the Magical Map didn’t indicate that there was any branching off, and did indicate that the exit at the other end was real.
However, none of us could actually see the next exit portal at the other end—not even Lee. And though it was finite on the map, the corridor seemed to continue forever. From our movement on the map, it was obvious that the corridor was looping somehow, but it took quite some time before we figured out just how it was done.
The reason Lee could not detect any illusion, even when we were close enough to the exit on the map that we should have been able to see it, was that a portal which looped back to near the start of the corridor had been placed in such a way to impose a perfectly seamless and technically true image of more corridor over the hallway. Immediately, Anna got to work on an array to reveal anything magical in the corridor. If the array or enchantment or whatever it was was within the loop, we could disrupt it. If it was outside of it, that was still okay because if that was the case, it’d be impossible for the connected portals to remain stable indefinitely or for a truly long period—as Anna explained it, this fact was a logical extension of a general principle of magical crafting, which included her arrays as well as things like Ri’legh’s Energy Enchanting.
“It has to do with intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties,” she’d said, “only intrinsic enhancements or enchantments can be self-sustaining.”
Ri’legh nodded. “That is why the enchantments I make require the user’s energy, whether the Energy required for special techniques, or Stamina to activate. If I enchanted a piece of equipment or object made out of a material that lacks its own way of generating the energy needed to sustain it, all it would have is what I put into it during the enchanting. Then when it ran out, I would have to redo the entire enchantment. Rigging an enchantment to run off of the user’s energy, which is a renewable resource, and building in an idle state, is a workaround that makes energy enchantments effectively permanent.”
“The same principle even applies to ourselves,” said Bruzigan, “buffs granted by potions, your cooking, or spells are extrinsic and always temporary, while bonuses granted by traits, for example, or racial evolution are intrinsic and therefore permanent.”
“All right,” said Anna, looking up from where she was preparing the detection array, “it’s ready. Let’s see what we’ve got...”