Ava POV
As I stared into the eyes of the Maned Prowler I did one final party check before we decided to engage. “Mana Check” I say, there was no need for a health check since I did one before we even entered the clearing.
I get 100% 's from everyone except Lia who is silent with the vacant look in her eyes that comes from looking at a system screen. “Lia, what’s your mana percentage at” I ask her directly trying to gain her attention.
Lia holds up a single finger in a gesture that tells me to wait a moment. After several tense seconds she smiles and closes her system screen looking at me and saying “100%” while giving me a thumbs up. Cheeky girl, she was waiting for her mana to finish filling, she’s lucky the boss is just glaring at us for now.
“Fine, Hal in front, Lia offtank. Jay, prioritize crowd control over damage. Z, remove the extras before the boss.” With my orders delivered I recast Armor of Thorns on the party and then begin to cast my short term boosting spell.
As though my casting was a starting sign the boss roars loudly and a pale yellow aura surrounds both him and his 3 pride mates. All four of the prowlers jump down and begin to charge us.
Jay is ready for them; he uses his Greater skill Rapid Cast to fire off 2 Frost Grip spells, one on the main boss and another on one of his prowlers. The spell lands but I can already see the boss breaking free after only seconds of being rooted. Luckily for us the 2 unaffected prowlers continue their charge forwards.
One is intercepted by Hal and the other by Lia, both of them use the Counter skill with near perfect timing causing both prowlers to be knocked onto their sides. Z moves in right as I finish my spell “Unleashed Potential!” I shout out the name of my spell to let Z know that it’s activated. A green aura surrounds our party’s rouge as his speed seems to double. Z is a blur as he unleashes his skills to kill the lesser prowlers as quickly as possible.
Z’s duel wielding, both daggers wreathed in the shadowy aura of his Shadow Pierce, I trail of shadows also dances up his arms and turns his eyes pitch black. The tell tale signs of his Target Weakness ability, he can only use it twice per day but as an innate ability it doesn’t cost him mana and has a powerful effect that guarantees he hits vital areas while it's active.
Z’s daggers flash with movement as he lands a strike on the spine of both prowlers. Before he can even register if they’re dead or not I watch him disappear into the shadows of the grass using his Shadow Stalk skill. I only have a rough idea of where he is thanks to the fact that my Unleashed Potential is still active for the next few seconds.
Right as Z is gone the Maned Prowler is here. The boss is currently charging me but is forced to change course when Hal uses his Draw Attention taunt skill on it. The Boss slams into Hal and the screeching of metal warping fills the clearing as I watch in horror as Hal’s Steel Tower Shield (Lesser) has one of its sides bent inwards by the force of the boss’s swipe. Regardless of the damage to his shield Hal holds his ground releasing nothing more than a grunt from the exertion of effort.
As the boss is occupied I quickly use one of my only 2 offensive spells. I cast Thorn Grasp as a tangle of thorny vines shoot out from the ground and begin to coil around the boss. The Boss is not pleased and begins to claw his way out of my vines until he’s stopped by Jay.
“Mirror Cast” Jay calls out the name of his spell letting us know that it's now on cooldown for 10 minutes. An icy replica of my own spell shoots out from the ground and wraps around the boss, restricting the limbs he was using to cut his way out of my own spell.
With the boss immobilized Lia moves in swinging for its neck and using her Combo Strike to combine her two strongest skills, Slash of Light and Smite. With the thunderous roar of lightning and a flash of bright light the combined skill Smiting Light severs the boss's head from its body, killing it.
I look over to Z to see that he already used his stealth and what was left of Unleashed Potential to finish off the last prowler while we dealt with the boss. He’s currently sprawled out on the grass panting heavily as the exhaustion debuff from my spell ending affects him.
“Looks like we beat the boss” I say moving forwards to check everyone and tend to any injuries. As I begin to move forwards the boss's body begins to glow. The whole party quickly reforms into formation, moving between the boss’s corpse and the disabled Z. A green light shoots out of the boss's body and sinks into each of our dungeon tokens. I then hear the ping of a system message.
First Floor Boss: Maned Prowler Pride Defeated!
You have gained the First Floor Token
You have (3) additional rewards that cannot be viewed until entering a safezone
I dismiss the system alert and turn to look at my party. I see that they are also finishing reading the alert. I also see that Jay and Hal look more excited than the others. “Alright what did everyone get?” I ask, might as well let them get it out of their systems now.
“I DID IT!” Jay exclaims in a scream “I maxed out my Ice Affinity, when we get back I can use the catalyst to upgrade to the Blizzard Affinity and finally start my rank up!” After some extra questioning I managed to confirm with Jay that he got the same notifications I did from the system. I then turn to Hal who is smiling so hard I’m worried it’ll get stuck like that.
“I got level 19 and both my Counter Skill and my Stalwart Passive leveled up” He says in an excited voice from the look of his eyes he hasn’t even closed his status yet likely still looking through his system to see if it's a trick.
“That’s fantastic Hal, two skill ups and a level is a lot of progress for a dungeon we’re overleveled for.” I tell him with a smile. He beams back at me before going back to looking at his system menu.
“Anyone else get a level or a skill up?” I ask before moving on. After both Z and Lia give me a negative I continue speaking. “Ok, this was a good run. We had a bit of trouble with the first group of prowlers, but it's likely that we just happened to slip by the single ones and entered straight into the paired zone. With that all said, let's check the cave and then head back to the plaza to see what these other rewards are.”
Everyone agrees with my assessment so after doing a quick check of the cave while Z rests off his exhaustion and finding nothing, we move back onto the path we took to get here and walk back to the safezone plaza. As soon as we enter the plaza I notice that there's something new, I can now see the faint outline of a door on the trunk of Wyla. I also get several system notifications as soon as I enter the safezone.
Safezone Registered. Processing Rewards.
Your Party has slain 26 Lesser Prowlers
Your Party has slain the Maned Prowler Pride
Your Party is the first to enter the Eternal Dungeon in over 1000 years
Your Party is the first to complete the first floor of the Eternal Dungeon in over 1000 years
Wow that’s a lot. Interesting that is specified the time, that gives a lot of credence to the Legacy Dungeon theory. If this was once an active dungeon over 1000 years ago then there could be all sorts of treasures inside. I’ll have to include this in my report to make sure the importance of this dungeon isn’t understated.
Rewards Processed
You have received 78 Eternal Coins
You have received 50 Eternal Coins and 1 lesser item
You have received 100 Eternal Coins
You have received 1 hidden reward
Your Progression has been updated!
Please enter the World Tree Wyla to receive your rewards!
Ok, the dungeon tokens did have an ability called Eternal Coin Purse and Progression Tracker. I guess those are the rewards it gives. Maybe Eternal Coins are some kind of 1000+ year old currency. If that’s the case it's unlikely to be useful, although the lesser item could be good.
“Did everyone get their reward notification?” I make sure to ask my party and check to see if anyone got something different. From their responses I learn that we all got the same notifications. “Alright, I guess lets go claim our rewards” I say to the rest of my party as I begin to move towards the glowing outline on Wyla.
As we reach the tree nothing happens. After 5 minutes of everyone just waiting I decide to just go for it and try to walk into the glowing door, nothing stops me and I simply walk into the tree. I make sure to call out to my party to tell the rest of them to come in. The inside of Wyla has a large open central space with a large spiral staircase that leads downwards. There are several empty alcoves and spaces carved into the walls that look like they might’ve once held something. There are several signs hung over these spaces that simply read `Under Maintenance`,`In Progress` and `Coming soon!`. It seems like this area isn’t quite finished yet. Only the smallest alcove has anything inside it which looks like a . . . squirrel who is wearing a bowtie. What?
Z looks at us, looks at the squirrel and then grins as he confidently walks towards it. “Hey there buddy, mind telling me your name” he says in the most confident tone possible while the rest of the party suppresses their laughter at our rogue's antics.
“My name's Chip and I’m the only shopkeeper available right now” The squirrel says in the most adorable voice ever, very befitting a squirrel. The rest of the party, myself included, have completely dumbfounded looks while Z gives us the most cocky smile I’ve ever seen him do.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Well then Shopkeeper Chip, what wares do you deal in?” Z asks, turning his attention back to the squirrel.
“Well I sell system integration features that make it easier to use all the features of the dungeon. I’m also in charge of the coin exchange” Chip says in an animated voice. I didn’t even know squirrels could smile like that. “If you want I can give you the basic integration starter package for only 100 Eternal Coins” The Squirrel finishes.
“Sure sounds good, how do I pay you?” Z Says while also fishing for information on how the coins work with the tokens.
“Simple, just accept my offer, after you get the first integration you’ll gain the ability to take coins out of your pouch as well as make trades with other token holders.” Chip says before holding a paw up at Z and I watch as he gets the far off look of reading his system. I see Z smile before his eyes return to normal
“Pleasure doing business with you, you can access my shop anytime from a safezone using the basic integration feature. Make sure to familiarize yourself with your new tabs related to the Eternal Dungeon and have a Chiptastic Day!” Chip finishes as Z walks back towards us, his grin having never left his face.
“My old job used to use sentient animals as messengers, eventually you learn to tell the difference” Z says to us before any of us can even ask. “Also all of you should go buy the basic system integration. It's really useful and gives you access to a whole bunch of stuff.” He informs us before we can ask about it.
It doesn’t take much convincing for all of us to buy the basic integration from Chip. Honestly I just love interacting with him, he’s so adorable.
Basic System Integration Gained for Eternal Dungeon.
You may now access the Progression Tracker from your system at any time
You may now access the Coin Exchange from your system while in a safezone
You may now access the Eternal Rewards from your system while in a safezone
You may now access the Shop: The Chiptastic System Helper from your system while in a safezone
As I looked through all the new things I could see what Z meant. The Progression tracker kept track of what monsters we’ve killed, what floors we’ve completed, and what bosses we’ve defeated. I also displayed both the first time rewards and the repeat rewards, however it looked like we had to at least do things the first time to then unlock its section of the progression tracker. The Progression tracker helpfully informed me that slaying the boss had given us the floor key and it also let me know that there were still hidden things we hadn’t done yet. I would look into that when we next returned.
After looking at the coin exchange my eyes nearly bulged out of my head. You could exchange 1 eternal coin for 10 silver! It looked like the dungeon didn’t understand the value of money quite yet. Based on the fact that it was called a coin exchange I expected the exchange rate to adjust as the dungeon figured out how much its currency was worth, hopefully it would do that before causing rampant inflation in the kingdom.
Next I checked the Eternal Rewards, which just seemed to be a system tab that let us claim the lesser item we were supposed to get from the boss. It looked like I could pick any item that was available, I quickly noticed that the only thing in here were all exact copies of the gear we carried in with us, the only exceptions being some items made from Ancient Oak and Prowler parts. I selected an Ancient Oak stave just so I could have something new, maybe I would have an artificer take a look at it and either sell it or turn it into a proper focusing staff or wand.
Finally I decided to look through Chip’s shop. The prices were all insane. Some of the lowest things he was offering were in the hundreds of coins, however what he was offering was equally insane. Chip’s shop was promising the ability to modify your own system interface, something that I didn’t even know was possible. All the stories about the people of the past being stronger than us suddenly made a lot more sense to me. I mean strictly speaking modifying your interface didn’t actually make you stronger, but the amount of time you could save and the number of features that were in this shop that I didn’t even know about was insane. One in particular stood out to me.
Party Interface Integration: 1200 Eternal Coins
Allows the user to access the party system which allows grouped party members to better cooperate with one another. Includes features such as: Party health and mana displays, short and long ranged chat functions, and Eternal Loot Distribution.
Being able to constantly see her party’s health and mana read outs straight from the system would be a godsend. It would increase her effectiveness as both a healer and a leader. The real question would be whether or not the system upgrades worked outside of this dungeon.
“Well after seeing what’s in here, I’m saving my coins” I tell the rest of my party.
“Sounds good, we should all do the same” Lia says while glaring at Z.
“Fine, fine, I won’t turn my 128 coins into pure silver” Z says unconvincingly. I let Lia berate and yell at him about fiscal responsibility while I check in on Hal and Jay.
Hal seems happy to have used his lesser item to get a replacement shield that is an exact replica of his previous one. He smiles at me when he sees me looking at him and says “It feels just like my previous one” I roll my eyes at him and turn to Jay.
“I took the Ancient Oak Stave, I’m going to see if it’ll be any good turned into a focus” I inform Jay hoping to help with the look of indecision on his face.
“Hmm, OH, that’s a good idea. It's just that I really want to compare the mana structure of our existing items against the copied ones. I think I’ll take another set of my own robes, I can always use spares” Jay says, coming to a decision now that I’ve pulled him out of his own head.
“Sounds good. Alright everyone let's just look at the next floor just in case. Regardless of if it's the core room or another floor we head back got it?” I say before everyone can get too distracted. Once I receive affirmatives we get into formation and move down the large staircase in the center of the room.
As we reach the bottom I can see a shining green gemstone floating in the center of a 25 foot radius dome shaped room. Standing between us and the core is a massive green prowler twice the size of the lesser ones, it's even bigger than the boss.
Vinepaw (Greater) Level 10
Is what its tag reads as. I can see it eyeing our party, its rear legs already tensed into a pouncing position. I hold my hand up and as a single unit we slowly back out of the core room and move back up the stairs.
“Ok Let’s Leave” Z Says, no one disagrees.
Eternal Dungeon POV
That went better than I thought it would. I was cutting it really close with all the changes I added at the end, but I really wanted to make sure that I rewarded them for completing the dungeon first. I added in the 1000 year things since after hearing them talking, I’m going to try and pretend that I’m a legacy dungeon. Hopefully that’ll mask most of my strangeness. My only worry is that if I’m identified as a True Core people will hoard my dungeon and restrict who enters. Which I definitely don’t want. I want to make a dungeon that everyone is able to enjoy.
It's especially important since if I want to have a steady leveling speed I’ll need to have a constant supply of at-level adventurers. I mean that group that came through barely got any experience and yet I still gained about 6% progress towards level 2 just from them leveling 3 skills while inside the dungeon.
I was really cutting it close with Chip there at the end. I had been really abusing the system knowledge and assistance to try and get the loot set up but making a sentient creature was a bit too hard, in the end I just had to hop into the body and role play as the shopkeeper myself. It worked out ok and I’m happy with the personality I gave him, now I just have to figure out how to actually bring Chip to life so I don’t have to do it myself.
I would need a whole lot of system help to do this. What I had to do was use my soul to generate a soul construct which would function as the core for the sentient dungeon creature. The advantages of this method are that since the creature's existence is reliant on my own, it won’t ever act against me because my survival is directly tied to its own. Now that I think about that’s basically how all dungeon creatures work. No wonder they have absolute loyalty, my death would equal their death, and on the inverse me being immortal means that so long as I let them live they are also immortal.
With this new knowledge in mind I think I’ll avoid messing with my own soul since that sounds super risky and dangerous, especially so when the system warns me that it can’t protect me from self-inflicted soul damage. So the method I will actually be using is to call on an elemental or spirit to inhabit a body I make for them. Since Chip is a beast I want a spirit and since I already set his personality up I need a nascent spirit that I can influence with my orders.
Activate unique skill! System help! Seriously, I've been in this world for like 2 days at most. I’m still a beginner when it comes to mana. The most I’ve done on my own is manage to copy mana structures that I perceive with my aura and make a really cool tree. Every other time I’ve needed the system to hold my hand and show me how to do it. On the bright side I’m actually learning! After the system showed me how to set up the loot I did most of it on my own, I’m personally enjoying picking up all these new mana skills.
Now then the system begins to train me in the surprisingly simple art of calling magic. Locals call it summoning magic, but as the system points out it is a lot more like putting out a job ad and hoping the right people sign up. First I cycle my mana through my core in a sort of pentagram-ish pattern? It's hard to say since I’m drawing a 3 dimensional object across both the physical and mana planes, which then also makes it kind of a 4d drawing.
Anyways with my magical sigil drawn next I need to slowly pump mana into the core of the sigil until I reach the desired level, however much mana I put in will determine what kind of creatures get enticed by my summoning. I make sure to use Wyld mana in hopes of attracting a young nature spirit of some kind. System informs me to only place a little bit of mana in if I want a young spirit so I only put a couple points in.
After about 3 minutes a small green ball of mana appeared in front of my core. I could feel its perception on me despite it not having any discernible face or eyes. Then again I also had no face or eyes.
“Food?” The small ball of wyld mana spoke using pure intent instead of words, it sounded hopeful and expectant.
“If you agree to a contract with me I will give you unlimited food” I inform them, doing my best to convey the terms of the contract I worked out. The downlow is: Spirit inhabits and animates a body, it fulfills whatever role I need it to take, and it can never work against me now or in the future under penalty of death. I didn’t want a death penalty, but the system informed me that without a definitive penalty such as enslavement or death I wouldn’t be taken seriously. I refused the enslavement option, I’d rather just kill someone honestly.
In exchange for its service the spirit will get a steady income of mana from me as well as unlimited free revives so that it doesn’t ever have to worry about death. Effectively I’m offering immortality and free exp (because apparently Spirits and Elementals eat mana to level). Sure the spirit has to then serve me for eternity, but I did leave clauses similar to my own, where they can leave so long as they have a willing and trained replacement. The other condition of course is if I fire them, but that option is a lot less peaceful and a lot more violent since that clause would cause all the mana they received from me to be revoked.
For being the equivalent of a baby spirit, this little wyld sprite I summoned takes a long time considering the contract. After around 40 minutes of contemplation the sprite agrees to the contract. I give him a system assisted memory download so that he can play Chip and also add a reward system for him so that the more Eternal Coins he convinces them to spend, the more mana he gets.
With that complete I decide to hold off on more sentient dungeon monsters for now. I want to slowly add more until my floors are big enough to contain entire cities. The best way for me to get more space in my floors is to grab the Aether Affinity as my level 2 bonus so that I can spatially expand the space. That would also let me add an inventory function to the dungeon tokens, because small conveniences help people focus on the adventure rather than worry about nitty gritty things like carrying capacity.
Well, not much I can do about it now, the only way for me to level is by siphoning off the experience of non-dungeon entities. I already asked the system if I could just let people pay experience for things, but got a negative. Something to do with how experience interacts with the soul stops people from losing experience except by death. The elementals/spirits are an exception because for them mana and experience are roughly the same thing. I get experience from people leveling their classes, skills, and abilities because as the facilitator of the development I get a special reward from the system. Something the system won’t tell is where all the experience it gives out comes from, my guess is it has something to do with that Elysium place that Administrator Vaxstrom mentioned.
Anyways, nothing to do now but work on my second floor. I can’t populate it until I have level 20 monsters, but I can still work on the layout and finer details. Back to hand crafting some adventure! (well mana crafting, same thing)
??? POV
Several miles north of the new dungeon a group of hired bandits finally manage to reach the other side of the Farza Mountains.
“Finally, we’re through!”
“I thought those tunnels would go on forever!”
“At least we can get looting now!”
A chorus of cheers goes up at the last comment.
“Alright boys and girls, you know the drill! We gotta job to do! Raid and pillage as much of the eastern lands as possible. Destroy everything we can’t take!” The Leader shouted out, raising her battleax to the sky. Her troops all join her, shouting out jubilation at the thought of getting paid twice for one job. It was an easy job, after all the eastern lands of the Vicrost Kingdom hadn’t seen war since the country's founding, protected by the so-called “impassable wall”.
The hired raiding party begin to travel south towards their first target. Brahmstone.