Before I can figure out more lofty things like the fabric of space, let me at the very least get a grasp of how this portal moves people about.
With a smooth motion, I do the IBA procedure, precisely tapping the surface of my binder, until, with a sudden flick, I grab a previously nonexistent nail. With the same motion, I shoot it towards the door.
In the blink of an eye, the nail disappears, shwooped into the portal.
Quickly, I use a touch of Freedom to float into the portal. A shuddering click overwhelms me, and I find myself in the same room as before.
Looking around, I search the floor for my nail, but curiously enough, it’s nowhere to be seen. I casually shrug before I turn around and walk back out of the dungeon.
Floating a bit away from the door, I create another nail by successfully tricking myself into expecting another one, and flick it into the open door. Walking back in, I am mildly irritated to find that my newly created nail is missing again.
For the third time, I create the nail, only for it to be gone by the time I get back in. I walk back out in a huff and pull out my infinite journal.
I quickly scribble the annoying and inconclusive results into my journal. As I do so, I wonder what could even possibly be happening, is the dungeon eating my stuff. I screw my face together in confusion as I look at the dungeon, great devourer of nails.
I don’t hold onto this thought for long, but considering that I can’t think of anything that might explain why or how my nails keep disappearing, Given the lack of data, I turn to another experiment.
Examining the open door, I can see no hint of the dungeon beyond; instead, I only see the seemingly empty door frame.
Considering the situation, I am currently unsure how this door functions, since walking through it causes a strange shuttering sensation and tossing things in only takes the blink of an eye. It might be just a nail, but there should be some observable shift as it moves through the portal. Ugh, I wish my skin had finished settling in by the time I left. My observations would be greatly improved with an enhancement to my brain.
Regardless, my current hypothesis is that the portal, isn’t actually a portal but rather a trigger for some form of teleportation. Since the shuttering effect makes it feel like an instant appearance rather than the step-by-step movement of standard astral airport portals.
In those you walk into the Astral Plane for a fraction of a second, then you walk back out in the same motion to your destination. It's one fluid motion, while, the door feels more like suddenly appearing in the dungeon.
The wormhole theory, still unsubstantiated in our day, theorizes that you might be able to move across vast distances quickly by bending two pieces of space together. If that were the case for this portal, then moving through it should be one continuous motion.
However, I doubt that it is one continuous motion, and it would frankly be quite easy to see whether or not this is the case.
With a smooth well practiced motion I move through the IBA protocol and create a nail, then grabbing that nail I place it inside the door frame.
When I do so the nail quickly shutters out of existence in the blink of an eye, wondering if the same thing happened to the nail I step into the portal after it.
Looking at the stone floor, I again see no nail, and my minor bit of annoyance begins to burn inside me, as a flood of escalating thoughts storm into my brain.
Each thought leading to another more furious and irrational thought, as the dungeon around me starts to roil with heat, the little piddly sign at the front bursting into flames, as my own runaway anger burns the world around me.
Even as I think these thoughts, I'm also panicking about my own anger, as if my consciousness were trapped behind my own brain. Able to watch and panic, but unable to affect anything at all as the thoughts run towards more and more ridiculous conclusions.
Eventually, the anger fades out, and I take a deep breath. I gently remind myself, that I have a literally infinite supply of nails, and that my anger is unfounded, built more off of a brain prone to escalation than a rational understanding of anything worth anger.
Yet despite all my own self reassurances, and therapist-taught techniques, a low simmer of anger still goes strong in my stomach. Unwilling to return to my experiments while still burning with anger, I stomp toward the next room for the first time.
Soon enough I pass through a bare stone tunnel and find myself in a small meadow surrounded by stone, filled with strangely familiar soft grass, and alien flowers I don't recognize.
I look around not seeing much of anything, but as I turn towards the next door I hear a rustle in the grass and look over to it's direction.
In that direction, I see the cutest little bunny rabbit, with an adorable dappled coat, a quivering nose, and strangely enough a little horn on its head.
I approach it, with my hand out, hoping to touch its soft fur, but as I reach out the rabbit snarls, its eyes suddenly shining a bright red, it hurls itself toward my outstretched hand, its tiny horn shining with a strange light.
Panicking I switch on the heat beam installed in my gauntlet, and almost instantly flash fry it alive, its body falls, and it makes a final shriek of pain before my still functional gauntlets reduce its body to a dirty pile of melted fat and cinders.
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A ball of something rises in my throat as I choke in my helmet from a mix of disgust, and horror as I stare at the ruined remains of the adorable rabbit.
However, as I start frantically trying to wipe my eyes while still stuck in my helmet, I hear something in the ceiling begin to turn, and a deluge of coins dink off my helmet.
I stare up at the ceiling as the hole that let down the coins begins to close up, my disgust and horror melting away into a mix of anger and exasperation.
Choking back a scream at this ridiculous thing called a dungeon I scoop up the gold coins from the floor, and stomp out of this miserable place.
After a tiny walk back through the slightly burned entranceway I find myself back in the astral still holding those miserable little coins.
Gritting my teeth, I shove the coins into the bag, and looking back at the annoying, and vaguely horrific experience, I conclude that most likely it isn't one continuous motion. But I need more evidence to say that, so let's get something a bit larger so that it will be easier to see the difference.
Grabbing a handful of iron dust, I first plan to make a rough oval, considering my lack of tools, but an idea springs to mind. Then giggling all the way I make a roughly 11ft pole. Feeling a bit better from the thoroughly irritating experience I humm a familiar melody as I lift the pole into the air. Then, with great care, I slowly push the adventurer's best friend, an 11ft pole, towards the portal.
Moving to the side as it slowly floats through the astral, I carefully observe it as the standard-issue trap detector an 11ft pole touches the edge of the empty doorframe and disappears in the blink of an eye with little fanfare.
A small smile spreads on my face, as my hypothesis is vindicated. I repeat the experiment, getting the same result every time and put down the results. But as I finish my table and begin to write what errors there were in my experiment, I realize that this is nothing to smile about because if it’s not a wormhole or a portal like an Astral Airport Portal. Then how the fuck does it work?
Maybe it moves things really fast? No, if that were the case, I would have broken all my bones upon reaching the dungeon unless it had a similar protection clause to my stasis rune. Wait, maybe that’s what the stuttering feeling is; it feels somewhat similar to the stasis rune I use to protect myself. If that’s the case, it would be perfectly reasonable for it to be just like the Home rune. Fuck, now I need to check if this is the case just to be sure, but how?
Well, if it's a physical movement like the Home rune there should be some travel time, even if it's quite small. Latching onto my first idea, I try to think of some way to properly note down the time. But I keep running into dead ends since I didn't exactly bring an atomic clock with me to the astral. But as I start to mourn a promising way to understand how this portal works, I remember my first Home rune experiments and how most ended in disaster with the object crashing through whatever lay in its path. It would be easier to check if it moves me by setting up obstacles to smash through, rather than trying to cobble together a makeshift and most likely innacurate clock.
Ugh, I’m going to raze this little dungeon to the ground if its teleportation turns out to just be complicated movement, like the Home rune.
Exasperated by the lacking results and the nagging suspicion that this dungeon is a scam, I sigh and begin building a large series of barriers around the door.
—
A new adventurer has come in WONDERFUL! I just finished processing the last one, and a brave new soul aims to traverse my depths. I can hardly stand still with excitement, although standing still isn’t much of a choice since the human inside blocks most movement I can make.
Hmm, although I'm not sure if I should be excited. This adventurer is quite queer; they are utterly alone in my depths. Don’t they know that loneliness is a dangerous thing in a dungeon?
Oh well, what will be, will be, anyone who walks into my depths alone is either a fool who will quickly die or someone strong enough to be worth processing.
Quickly I set up the sign to the appropriate language while it is still in the corner of the adventurer's eye.
Soon enough they turn to the sign, but strangely enough, they look nonplussed. Slightly worried that they might be the real deal, and that I’d have to deal with a dungeonbreaker. I use [Identify] on them.
Name:----
Power
Title: She Who Breaks Chains
Class: False Spirit
Physique(?)
Soul(6)
Equipment(5)
Total Power
47
8999
12
36
327
9421
Oh no, their power level, IT'S OVER 9000; there's no way that can be right, right? But no matter what I change or how I look at them, their rating stays the same. I keep frantically looking for any excuse or disguise but I find nothing and something shatters inside me.
Fuck FUCK FUCK! Almighty below, I would nash my teeth if I had any at hand. A sheer panic fills my brain as I see this monster nonchalantly sit in my waiting room, the one place I can’t hurt them at all.
Yet as I internally scream, they just walk out?
What, was she too scared to continue? That doesn’t make any sense, even her equipment would allow her to steamroll through the entirety of my first floor.
Oh no, is the wench going to bring back some compatriots? I can survive one person with over 9000 power, but I’m fairly certain I’ll perish if a full party of them storms in and tries to grab the real prize.
FUCK, I HAVE TO CLOSE THE DOORS OFF, and suddenly, as I think this, I hear a tink and a nail falls onto the floor, huh?
Instinctively, upon seeing an unattended item, I absorb it. Just as I finish this, the monster bursts back in and looks at the floor, as if they expected their nail to be there.
I watch bamboozled as the monster repeats this two more times. What could possibly be the purpose of this? Why aren’t they just strolling to my core for a nice snack? Why must they torture me in such a way?
Can’t they just get it over with and blast through half the walls and dig through my guts? At the very least, if they leave the accursed waiting room, I’ll be able to do something.
You know what? Next time if I survive this, I’m removing this waiting room. I don’t care if I’ll be called a deviant dungeon; I’ll just teleport away from the nearest inspector.
Anything in order to not be hounded by this patient monster. If they’re going to leave, why can’t they stay gone? why must they-Almight damn it, they came in again. The monster bursts in, staring intensely at the floor, yet this time they begin to roil with an immense heat, warping my sign and singing my immaculate door. Before the air around them slowly cools down to normal temperatures.
Then, with that, they huff and walk forward further into my depths. Previously, this would have terrified me. But instead a thought spins to life in the back of my mind. That heat could have been generated by any two-bit mage, who would need to valiantly retreat if they fell into my depths alone.
Do I have any need to fear this knave at all?
As this thought starts to grow in the back of my head, I see the monster casually walk into my first room. Finally, with this, I can begin to fight back against the knave. I might not be able to manipulate much with them inside, but with a simple split of the mind, I siphon away all the mana from my various floors, robbing them of both loot and any ability to regenerate any mana. All the while I set up a spatial spell of grand power to valiantly retreat against this superior foe. Who cares if they maybe aren’t the strongest? I can’t afford to risk it: most adventurers would cut off their arms for a dungeon core.
But as I do this and monsters droop throughout my dungeon, a fraction of my mind observes them apart from the vast majority of my brain putting together the escape spell.
As that small fraction observes them, it sees the little knave use a spell befitting some bizarre mix of a noble failson with far too much power in their hands and a novice mage who has never heard of a spell before. Truly horrendous efficiency, and yet they don’t emit a wiff of mana.
Baffled, my metaphorical jaw on the floor of my own body, I watch as they retrieve some gold that fell from the emergency adventurer reward system I installed in the ceiling.
Curses I forgot I installed that when some idiot mage sucked out all the mana, and the adventurers stormed down my halls, looking for revenge for their lost loot.
Agh, finally they’re gone again. Now I can escape, but do I need to?
It seems to be more and more obvious that what that monster has is false strength. It seems fitting enough; they are a False Spirit after all.
From the looks of it, they seem to have large stores of some bizarre power but no legacy or education on how to use it.
Their equipment alone is quite powerful, enough to contend with some of my strongest monsters. However, their novice spellwork shows that they aren't exactly the most competent; additionally, if they fall here, I would soar past several stages of strength if I consumed them. I would also get their undeniably legendary equipment. Ooooh, I want it; I need it; I'll get it.
Perhaps the best move would not be fleeing or throwing them some bones so they won’t kill me, but instead striking at this powerful person while they still don’t know how to use their power properly.
YES! They will terrify me no longer. I’ll wait until the little knave takes a bit too much time on the outside, and I’ll show them why adventurers fear a deviant dungeon. Let’s remove the frying pan and dump them into the fire.