Chapter 6 - Scouting Party_Arnar the Dungeon

It took five days to complete my entrance area and it was mostly due to my stubbornness. I decided to stick to one floor for now but wanted to add a few more rooms, which proved hard. With each one completed the resistance increased and the last one of the seven took me 2 days alone. Making another although theoretically possible would probably take a whole week and all my mana. Additionally now maintaining the dungeon takes three times as much mana. The unexpected gain of this experiment was realising that information provided by status windows weren’t to be treated as absolute, but were a pretty good indication. Expanding by 10% increased mana expenditure by 200% so 70 room limit was mostly true.

All that was left was to decide how much rooms should adventurers be able to access and the boss for the area. The very idea was quite a baffling one but apparently, it was common practice to make the last hurdle especially challenging and in turn increase the rewards given. I checked my newly created dungeon map and settled on 5 main rooms with 3 dead ends for 9 rooms total. I blocked further access with a stone slab enchanted with an indestructability rune, which sounded impressive but in reality was less so. The door would be protected only as long as the rune didn’t run out of mana but connecting it to my mana pool made sure no random intruder would be getting through. If they tried to go through the wall they were in for a nasty surprise, the void obsidian gave headaches even to my silver grootslang burrowers.

As for the mobs, which was quite a curious name for common dungeon monsters, I settled for two basic types of mushrooms; howlers and spore mushrooms. Howler family had purple caps and white stalks. The only difference from the Grey Swamp Marasmius that were coincidentally placed right next to them were yellow gills (Marasmius had white pores) and slightly bigger cap. Of course, there was another significant difference Marasmius had strong healing properties when prepared correctly. Howlers attacked anyone who approached closer than 5 meters with quite a strong sonic howl, effective up to 20 meters. It continued for 5 minutes after the offending object left it detection range. In the first rooms they were always solitary or surrounded by benign mushrooms but later they were either grouped together or accompanied by other varieties.

One such variety was a slimmer screamer that emitted concentrated sound wave in a 30° cone. It had shorter detection of only 3 meters but its range was 30 meters and due to concentration it inflicted triple damage. For some variety the red-capped alarm mushroom was placed in few selected spots, it could only sense things in 2 meter radius but if disturbed it set off all mushrooms in the room, as a compensation I gave it few rare alchemic properties like increasing potency of potions and granting night vision if proper concocting procedure was followed. The catch was that you had to remove it mostly intact or it became useless. The last howler present only in the side room with the treasure chest was called conductor. It was shorter with brighter cup and could enhance all nearby mushrooms’ attacks by synchronising their frequency.

For the spore mushrooms, I followed a simple pattern all were short with wide stems and resembled Stonewall Phelodon, which could cure poison with the exemption of bright dots. Those were colour coded spores; red caused itching; black caused 10-second blindness and yellow caused dizziness. They were placed in quite visible places so as long sufficient attention was paid they could be avoided easily. They released spores if they sensed any intruder in 1-meter radius and some lacked spores on one side indicating they were safe to approach from that side. The only real danger was if you stepped on one as it then released all its spores at once. In one of the dead ends, I placed a dense garden of valuable Triple Shields which were an ingredient for potion significantly increasing mana regeneration and it had no hostile mushrooms besides strongest colony of spore mushrooms placed on the ceiling. That should teach them how important constant vigilance is.

As for rewards the ingredients were sufficient prize for general rooms and to promote exploring I hid some quality weapons among bigger mushrooms’ colonies. There were two exceptions to that as chest guarded by conductor shroom had random alchemy recipe for mushrooms available on this level and few silvers, surprisingly it was just silvered copper with silver being less than 5%. The second chest contained already prepared potions with higher than normal potency and a masterwork weapon, not enchanted as it would be too much but still better than your average E rank adventurer could afford. It was of course placed in the boss room.

To encourage guilds to treat me with importance I placed a silver chest next to the stone slab blocking access to the rest of dungeons. It was made unmovable which was bound to disappoint few intruders but the contents should more than make up for it. I placed there 10 silvers, one enchanted dagger and 2 sets of skill crystals, of course, it wouldn’t be refilled after every boss fight but randomly when I felt like it, it was openable only after beating the boss so no one would know if it contained anything or not.

Final room had only hostile mushrooms with the exception of Yellow Chalice Lichen, which was D-rank reagent, placed in the middle of each colony requiring the adventurers to be careful in combat in order to not destroy it accidentally. Although a mushroom boss seemed fitting I didn’t want an immobile boss that could be easily taken out from afar. With my options being pitifully small I decided to adapt centipedes my healers used to get mild anaesthetic. I created 10 of them in an empty room and poured mana in, stopping when they reached 2 meters. Shortly after creation, they started fighting among themselves and after few hours only one was left.

I focused on it and willed it to die, which with such a simple organism wasn’t hard, giving me a simple schematic of the new mob. It was usable after few modifications as I reduced its venom potency, strengthened the carapace and allowed it to rapidly recover health by consuming Yellow Chalice Lichen. If the adventurers were taking their time killing it then it would run to one of the colonies, eat the Lichen and get back to fight at full strength. It needed to be killed quickly or the mushrooms had to be destroyed reducing potential gain and presenting a nice issue for adventurers. It didn’t deserve the name but it was a new species so I decided to collectively name them gardening centipedes. I also created two variants, one with blue carapace being more nimble, with increased health and boasting a stronger more valuable venom. The second was red had much stronger natural armour and instead of running to heal itself it would attack with increased vigour. Apprising yielded three satisfactory results.

Race

Gardening Centipede

Subspecies

Class

Subclass

Rank

Level

1/100

1000/1000

Mana

50/50

Titles

Skills

Weak Paralysing Venom [E] lvl 1/10

(Racial)

Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.

Engorge [F] 1/5

Eating vast quantity of chosen food (Yellow chalice lichen) will restore health and mana to maximum levels. After each use skill will be unavailable for 3 minutes. Cannot be used more than 5 times per hour.

Race

Gardening Centipede

Subspecies

Blue Gardening Centipede

Class

Subclass

Rank

E+

Level

1/100

1500/1500

Mana

250/250

Titles

Skills

Paralysing Venom [D] lvl 1/15

(Racial)

Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.

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Engorge [F] 1/5

Agile focus [D] 1/15

For 30 seconds damage you inflict is reduced by 20% but your speed and reflex is doubled.

Race

Gardening Centipede

Subspecies

Red Gardening Centipede

Class

Subclass

Rank

E++

Level

1/100

1250/1250

Mana

175/175

Titles

Skills

Weak Paralysing Venom [E] lvl 1/10

(Racial)

Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.

Berserk [F] 1/5

All your attributes are increased with HP loss, up to 150% at 10% HP

Barbed Carapace [D] 1/15

All ranged attacks have 75% chance of being deflected inflicting only 10% of their damage. Melee attacks deal 20% less damage.

Considering their low-quality race they shouldn’t be life-threatening to a well-prepared party of D-rank adventurers with red centipede being a sound trial. To make things easier, centipedes were not allowed to chase adventurers if they escaped the room.

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Next morning pair of adventurers showed up at the entrance. The man was wearing a green hooded cape, studded leather armour and worn but high-quality boots, while the woman was clothed in a brown unadorned robe and similar cape secured with an ornamental buckle bearing adventurers’ guild mark. For weapons, the man had a long practical sword and a short bow that looked to be customised to work well in a dungeon, his partner had a staff she used more as a walking aid than a weapon.

The adventurers’ guild seemed to be one of the best guilds for me with the crafters’ guild being the optimal candidate. A close second would be the mages’ guild due to my affinities. The church seemed to overreact and destroy cores just to be safe unless dungeon had a high divine affinity of right alignment. If your divine attribute was infernal or chaotic you were out of luck. The imperial guard was a unified force and dealt with thousands of dungeons across the Empire so another one wasn’t as valued. The best treatment received dungeons affiliated with local nobles but you always could get incompetent family, not to mention if nobles entered conflict with the imperial family or imperial officials the fate of their dungeons became precarious. That said even them would be better than some small minor faction or warriors’ guild stumbling by blind luck upon the dungeon as they lacked the resources and knowledge to properly raise and protect a dungeon. Small grootslang strike team waited prepared to take care of any intruder with undesired affiliation so I sent them a stand down order and called Areth to my room where I would share the whole event telepathically.

Unfortunately, my basic grasp on the imperial language allowed me to get only a vague sense of their conversation. It appeared that they were here to scout the whole dungeon, get samples of resources available and if possible make a detailed map. Beating the dungeon seemed to be a secondary goal, in case of unforeseen danger they were to retreat and report the situation to higher ups.

Having finished their preparation they started carefully advancing inside. The woman, most likely a healer, stayed few meters behind the man and prepared to assist him. The man with his sword drawn arrived and stopped at the end of the tunnel leading to the first room. He quickly scanned the place and carefully collected one of the mushrooms placing it in the bag. The woman pointed towards my howler saying something quickly getting a nod from the man in return. He picked the stone and thrown it at the suspicious mushroom. Apparently, they were thinking rather lowly of my intelligence if they expected that to work.

– "Arnar wasn’t that one of your mobs? Why has nothing happened?" – Areth asked

– "You see that was inorganic matter, and I designed them to respond only to organic targets." – I confirmed proudly – "It would be too easy to find proper path in later rooms."

– "So if he had thrown that mushroom he picked up earlier he would have got a reaction?"

– "Hm, you are right, I will need to change that later to living organic matter. Good catch."

In the meantime, the ranger approaching the howler crossed 5-meter boundary and jumped back surprised. Sadly surprise was all he got as my F-rank mob couldn’t do anything more to a C-rank target. After confirming the mushroom had no other means of attack they returned to the opening of the room and waited five minutes for it to quiet down. Seconds later poor fellow’s life ended, skewered by ranger’s arrow. I noticed that I got slightly more mana back than creating him required, must have been due to his growth. I also confirmed that killing humans wasn’t necessary for me to grow as those two C-ranks gave me enough mana to respawn the boss and his whole room three times just by being in my dungeon. When I had a chance I wanted to find average time spent in the dungeon for an adventurer to give equal mana to killing him.

By the time I finished my musings they entered the fourth room and discovered spore shroom. The man got hit in the face by itching spores and his companion cast some kind of cleansing spell on him. While being the less effective or threatening, that variation was most unpleasant which probably prompted healer to act.

Once again they took a singular sample of everything new and went into a side corridor, where they spend 15 minutes testing different combinations of shrooms present. Alarm shroom actually forced them to retreat as a whole room of mushrooms suddenly producing a cacophony of sounds were too much even for them.

– "I am impressed Arnar. This combination is much more effective than anticipated."

– "Thanks, I wonder how much damage it actually dealt and if I added more mushrooms would it cause them true difficulty."

– "Most likely it wouldn’t work." – Areth answered after quick consideration – "Notice how they are trying to minimalize any damage they deal to your dungeon. If they were truly in danger they would use some area of effect skill and all your mushrooms would get obliterated in seconds."

– "So you think they are limiting their skills on purpose? I guessed as much myself but I am unsure why."

– "Arnar, if you were a new dungeon that never had any intruders the shock of losing all mobs could potentially kill you. Even if you survived they don’t know how long it would take you to repair all the damage. Weak dungeons would probably need months for what you did in days."

Areth was probably right once more, after all, who could guess that I had an army of grootslangs who generated enough mana just being inside to allow me to recreate that section from scratch every 5 seconds and still have the energy to spare. As to prove her point the man in a flash of movement reached the poor alarm shroom and scooped it up and retreated back. By doing this he exposed another flaw in my design, the remaining mushrooms were blissfully unaware. On second thought that probably was for the best as this was supposed to be an easy area. Future explorers would have a choice of carefully avoiding it or destroying it first, decreasing their gains as it was easily worth double of everything else in the room.

The final side room on this side proved quite challenging to the pair as they seemed really determined to bring back a sample of every unique monster back with them. They immediately noticed increased attack of shrooms in the room and after killing one of them they compared it to previously collected one.I was unclear how they arrived at the conclusion but they determined there was something else in the room responsible for the change. Making conductor shroom smaller and hiding it among its common brethren was certainly a good choice.

Watching them trying to find a culprit was entertaining until the woman grew tired of fruitless exercise and yelled a sharp word that clearly was in a different language. To my surprise, the conductor shroom got illuminated and somehow incapacitated as it stopped coordinating other mushrooms. Shortly after they collected new mushroom and went on to the last unvisited side room.

I was unsure how they determined the way but they always picked dead ends first, which if they were to scout the place seemed most efficient. I actually caught myself cheering them on as seeing them pick just the right path to avoid all hostile mushrooms, which I made quite complicated with few sections that forced you to move away from the room’s exit, was much more entertaining and rewarding than killing those weak intruders earlier. That must have been my powerful mind trait at work and I was fine with that as less death meant more adventurers.

Just as they were exiting the little maze room the woman accidentally stepped on a hidden spore shroom and the spore cloud that exploded was truly magnificent, it even had enough force behind it to also set other nearby spore shrooms off, all of them being itching spores. It actually took the woman two tries to successfully cast the cleansing spell and judging by the intensity of their voices they didn’t appreciate the effect being proportional to a number of spores released. She forcefully scribed something in her notebook, I was sure it was a warning not to step on the damned shrooms.

Curious about their reaction I quickly changed all spores in next room to the itching variety. It didn’t actually require much effort on my part as spore shrooms could produce all varieties of spores just not at the same time. Sadly only the man had fallen into my trap this time and following quick cleanse spell was back to action. They proceeded more carefully now and avoided all other colonies, they only fell for the last one as they didn’t expect mushrooms being placed on the ceiling in such a low-level dungeon. Their mood seemed to improve after they found Triple Shields and they moved towards the boss room briskly.

I considered greeting them with variant centipede but decided against it, I wanted to have some surprises left for other adventurers. They must have sensed something wrong with the room as they paused at the entrance. Seeing nothing special the man entered the room leaving the woman behind. My boss didn’t take the bait as I made sure he would only attack when the whole party entered or if attacked which wasn’t an easy feat as it was hiding among mushroom colony.

The moment the healer entered the room events happened in a flash. The boss attacked her from behind, startled she swung her staff and landed a solid hit on boss’s head and it died. Well, at least I now knew she could use it for more than just a walking aid. The man was clearly displeased and I got an impression they had to check the boss' properties to adequately evaluate a dungeon so they had to stay here until I respawned it.

I think they decided to wait for two days outside before trying once again and began leaving without even checking two chests that were their rewards. I certainly was not going to wait for two days just because they fucked up, so I concentrated on the boss concept I had stored in my core and willed it to spawn in the boss room. I was actually unable to spawn it closer than 2 meters from them and even picking the most distant corner it took fifteen times the mana normally required. So that was why dungeons didn’t just drop monsters on intruders, they couldn’t.

The bright light coming from the corner drawn their attention, the mana overflow needed to overcome their auras interference was making quite a spectacle. After 30 seconds or so, which was six times longer than usually, a new perfectly healthy centipede plopped onto the floor. Surprised, the man drew his sword and went to meet the new enemy.

This time the fight took 20 minutes, not because he was weaker than she but he took utmost care not to kill it too quickly. The venom didn’t seem to affect him at all, bites were parried and he easily avoided tail sweeps by taking a step back. They allowed the boss to use engorge five times and when they were sure it couldn’t do that anymore and had no additional abilities he killed it with one strike cutting its head off.

They collected its body and the remaining Yellow Chalice Lichen as I made sure the boss would leave at least 10% of each group, so all adventurers knew what they lost not killing the boss quicker. They calmly continued collecting all the loot discussing the fight and concluded the boss would be a good training exercise for D ranks as it had behaviour patterns seen only in much more dangerous monsters at lower dungeon floors. Having newbies getting used to that with low-threat enemy seemed an attractive idea to the pair. They didn’t put much thought to the boss appearing in such a dramatic fashion, the earlier surprise seemed to stem from me being able to do it and not from the act itself. Only seeing the skill crystals broke their composure and provoked a heated discussion.

Once again cursing my inability to understand their conversation I focused trying to catch anything that could shed some light on the argument. Apparently, they never saw such crystals before and were unsure what to do with them. The woman’s intuition must have been really good as she was the one who found out how to use them. Focusing on them mentally they were able to get a basic understanding of the skill and a choice if they wanted to learn it.

The man decided to take the risk and use one of them, what exactly the risk was remained unclear. For a second his eyes became unfocused and then he immediately activated the second crystal which shocked the healer. The skills may have been low rank but despite that, they were extremely useful, after all, I have designed them for my grootslangs, especially for scouts.

The man grew more excited as he tried the farsight out. I made sure the rooms beyond the stone slab were protected from divination by grootslangs so he couldn’t get anything from that direction but checking the previous room must have satisfied him, the advantage of seeing potential ambushes in a dungeon couldn’t be overestimated.

They decided to rush back to their headquarters to deliver the news and remaining two crystals, just before leaving my dungeon the man stopped and placed a few potions, one of his arrows and some strange alloy on the floor, then hesitating he reached into his pocket and added a strange token before leaving for good.

Chapter 6 - Scouting Party

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