November 2, 2022
Day 13
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“We need to take care of the cavern business before we talk about anything else. The rest of our discussion will depend on whether the dungeon spawns or not. "
Martin focused his attention on Daniel as he continued speaking.
"Daniel, expand the cavern until the dungeon spawns, or you run out of SPs. ”
Daniel nodded and did as told.
Being a member of the Laysan council allowed Rahul to open the settlement details screen and see the SPs decrease in realtime. After spending 1000 SPs to summon Martin, they had 26,150 left. Rahul hoped it'd be enough.
26,150
25,150
24,150 ..
He also noticed that the terraforming projects section had been updated and had a new entry - Unnamed cavern expansion.
Settlement Details
Settlement Name
Laysan
Settlement population
8/1000
Bastion
Laysan Bastion
Unique bastion bonus
Allows any humans within the domain of the colocated settlement to drink salt water without any adverse effects
Settlement bonuses
Expanded settlement domain III, Dungeon Spawn II, Amphibious IV
Settlement domain highlights
Unnamed inland hypersaline lake, unnamed cavern, unnamed coral reef formation
Other bastions within settlement domain
1 avian bastion, 1 shallow water bastions, 23 deep sea bastions
Leadership Bonus
N/A
Council Bonuses
N/A
Settlement points
24,150
Buildings
Castle (Lvl 1), Dock (Lvl 1)
Terraforming projects
Unnamed cavern expansion (ongoing)
Active Settlement Quests
Consolidate Your Domain (1/26)
Everyone watched nervously as the the settlement points kept falling 1000 at a time. But as Rahul saw the settlement details screen fluidly update in realtime, his mind wandered.
Rahul had always been inquisitive. When he watched an online sport livestream for the first time and noticed the number of concurrent viewers, he immediately wondered how the streaming company had designed their systems to handle such heavy loads seamlessly. Most people didn't care, but as soon as the game had ended, Rahul went and read the tech blogs of the streaming company and understood the complicated interplay between the streaming servers, the CDNs and the ISPs that made live-streaming at such large scales possible.
When the large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT went viral, he looked up various conference papers and presentations on LLMs and tried to understand, at least at a high level, how they worked. While his friends were busy marvelling at the insane art generated by AI models like DALL-E, he read about GPT-3 and even perused the source code of similar projects which were open source. He didn't always understand it all. But he always tried.
So as Rahul saw the settlement details in front of him update in realtime, he wandered exactly what mechanism powered it. And just what would be it's limitations.
What if Rahul were sitting a million light years away, in a different galaxy. Would the information travel faster than light, and the update still be instant?
Would the updates be still snappy if a million, a billion, or a trillion beings were watching the same settlement screen at once?
Rahul wondered what infrastructure, no, what phenomenon was enabling such transfer of information?
How was the information being fed directly to his mind?
Rahul had taken a course on Human-Computer Interaction in college, and he knew about neuralink, but nothing came close to what the system was doing. No concept, no technology, no process or phenomenon that Rahul knew about from pre-integration earth could explain what was happening, and just as he was about to chalk it all up to magic, Rahul was broken out of his reverie.
"It's done!" Daniel exclaimed loudly.
Rahul looked at the settlement details again. The information had been updated, as expected.
Settlement Details
Settlement Name
Laysan
Settlement population
8/1000
Bastion
Laysan Bastion
Unique bastion bonus
Allows any humans within the domain of the colocated settlement to drink salt water without any adverse effects
Settlement bonuses
Expanded settlement domain III, Amphibious IV
Settlement domain highlights
Unnamed dungeon, unnamed inland hypersaline lake, unnamed cavern, unnamed coral reef formation
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Other bastions within settlement domain
1 avian bastion, 1 shallow water bastions, 23 deep sea bastions
Leadership Bonus
N/A
Council Bonuses
N/A
Settlement points
8,150
Buildings
Castle (Lvl 1), Dock (Lvl 1)
Terraforming projects
Unnamed cavern expansion (completed)
Active Settlement Quests
Consolidate Your Domain (1/26)
The Dungeon Spawn II bonus had been removed, and a new entry had been added to the settlement domain highlights - unnamed dungeon. The terraforming project had been marked completed too. No terraforming the dungeon, Rahul guessed. Finally, he looked at the remaining SPs.
8150
For some reason, Rahul had expected the dungeon to spawn only at the last possible moment, as the SPs went from 1500 to 500. Instead, the dungeon had spawned with 8150 points to spare. But Rahul wasn't happy.
This was worse.
It meant that spawning the dungeon had taken only 19,000 SPs.
Mark had 23,000 SPs saved up when he had died.
If Mark had actually invested the points he had saved up into expanding the cavern, they would have spawned the dungeon before they ever attacked the Avian Bastion. At the very least, they could have explored the dungeon, levelled up, and then attacked the avians.
But as these intrusive thoughts forced their into Rahul's mind, the what ifs and should haves, he deliberately cleared his head. He would not to go down that rabbit hole. The dungeon had spawned and they had SPs to spare. This was good news, and he joined the others as they congratulated each other.
But time was at a premium, and soon Martin interrupted the merrymaking.
"Daniel, you must have got a prompt to decide the location of the dungeon entrance. The dungeon isn't truly spawned until it's entrance is created. From the events earlier today, I think it'll only be apt to place that entrance in the castle cellar. It's a nice defensible place and more importantly "
It looked like Daniel was about to protest, and Martin raised his hands and continued to speak.
"Let me finish. More importantly, it's a place where you all painfully broke each other's bones so you could wake up, fight back, and escape almost certain death. Such events weave powerful strings of fate and turn a place from mundane to significant. That significance might lead to nothing, but it also might be the difference between a normal dungeon and a special dungeon. If we're very very lucky, we might be blessed with a tiered dungeon. I don't have time to explain, just trust me on this. "
Noticing the incomprehension of everyone's faces, Martin added one last line.
"You'll see soon enough. Please do the honors Daniel. "
Daniel reluctantly did as he was told, and they were all greeted with a minor earthquake, and two notifications. One a standard dull notification that they had expected, and the other a very long system notification that spoke directly into their ears. A notification no one had expected at all.
None save Martin, who had a disturbing manic grin plastered across his face.
Congratulations. A tiered dungeon has spawned in your settlement.
This first notification was a brief and innocuous one. The second one, in contrast, was the definition of grandiose.
System Message
Rejoice denizens of the earth.
The threads of fate have woven themselves tightly around your planet, opening many perilous new paths and closing the simplest one - the path of safety through obscurity and mediocrity. Only time will tell what implications that will carry, and whether your planet will excel or perish.
A tiered dungeon has spawned on your planet.
Such a dungeon is among the most valuable resource in the multiverse, and can offer great rewards to any that are strong enough to best it. By their very nature, tiered dungeons are a gift that keeps on giving. But by it's mere presence, the dungeon has painted a target on your planet. Forces of the multiverse will be watching you.
Given this momentous event, it's imperative that the integration process of this planet be augmented.
To that end, three trials will be held. An immediate trial to ascertain the control of the dungeon, a second trial in a year's time for control over the planet, and a final trial in ten years for control over the newly integrated galaxy.
The first trial will start in 24 hours and will last 10 days. To enable this trial, the tutorial is being expedited and will end in 24 hours. All the remaining tutorial events will be accommodated within the remaining time.
You will also notice that your settlement store has a new purchase option, World Congress Token, priced at a million settlement points. All those who have purchased the token(s) before the tutorial ends will be able to send one delegate per token to the first world congress. More information related to the event will be provided there.
Tutorial ending in 23:59:59
The moment the system announcement ended, Martin interrupted them all.
"Walk with me to the cellar. Ignore the event, you won't be allowed to attend anyways and preparing for it is my responsibility. Right now you have something more urgent. "
As he said that, Martin projected the dungeon overview screen.
Dungeon Overview
Dungeon Name
Dungeon Category
Tiered Dungeon
Bastion
Laysan Bastion
Dungeon bonuses
Premiere Dungeon I, Premier Special Dungeon III
There was a lot to unpack here, but Rahul didn't get a chance to unpack anything as Martin continued speaking without pause.
"You can go over the exact bonus details later. What you should know is that while normal resources are finite, dungeon resources are infinite and have a separate instance for everyone who enters them. But they can only be entered once per person. Tiered dungeons go one step ahead as they have a separate instance per person per grade, so you can explore the dungeon six times, all the way till A grade. With Premier Special Dungeon III, the dungeon will now have three instances per level "
Martin noticed a mix of certain confusion and reluctant elation on everyone's faces, and realised he had failed to drive the point home.
"You have no idea how valuable this dungeon is. A normal dungeon has beasts and rewards of a certain level of and is only suitable for warriors of particular level. If a dungeon has Mid-E grade monsters, it can only be explored at that strength. If you're weaker than mid-E grade, you will die. If you're D grade, you gain negligible experience and E grade rewards that are useless to you. "
"But a tiered dungeon can be used once at every grade, generally close to the peak of each grade. A tiered dungeon with 3 sub tiers can be used three times at every grade. At F grade, it can be used once before you unlock your classes at level 10, once before you unlock your specialisation at level 25, and once more before you reach E-grade at level 100. "
Martin saw the elation on everyone's faces become more pronounced, but he still wasn't satisfied. They had no frame of reference to understand just how remarkable this was, so he dumbed it down for them.
"With this dungeon and some grinding on the outside, you should be able to reach almost level 30 within a few days. Long before the first real implications of the system event start to affect you. "
That evoked just the reaction he was looking for, as they all stared at him with their jaws dropped.
But they were out of time, and Martin couldn't afford to act haughty. So, as they reached the cellar, he got to the final points.
"The original class choices I had suggested for all eight of you are still the most appropriate, but if you discover anything that makes you want to choose otherwise, go ahead. Your path is your own to walk and your instincts should be your best guide. By the time we meet tomorrow, you'd all have made your class choices. Before you enter the dungeon, allocate all your unused points by prioritising a few focus areas and balancing all the other stats so they are all at least 20."
Rahul had something to ask, but sensing the tone of Martin's voice, he knew that there would be no more conversation. Just like the last time, Martin was in his information dumping mode.
"Rahul and Matt - Melee : Rogue - Focus on strength and dexterity"
"Ivan - Melee : Tank - Focus on strength and vitality"
"Alex - Range : Siege : Focus on intelligence and vitality. Try to combine magic, intent and arrows to make exploding arrows"
"Charlie and Helena - Ranged : Archery : Focus on endurance and dexterity"
"Daniel - Mage : Enhancements and Maya - Mage : Elemental - Focus on intelligence. "
"I am only giving you general pointers about most relevant attributes for your classes. These will not earn you better class choices or titles or anything else like that. All class choices will be available to everyone and there are no hidden or superior classes, so don't obsess over that. The dungeon will be very dangerous and you need to be at your best, so focus on that. Don't hoard stat points. Allocate them the moment you get them. Any imbalance you end up with will be easy to sort out later, but only if you're alive to do it. Don't do anything foolish and don't die. "
"Also, the maximum party size is 5, and since there are 8 of you, it'd be best to enter the dungeon in two groups of four each. Don't worry about the world congress, this dungeon gives me a lot of leverage, and I'll trade some favors and squeeze out information on what happened in the event. You'll not be permitted to attend anyways. Don't worry about defending the castle for the tutorial event either, order the sentinels to take care of that. Hire the siege sentinels as well if you're worried, you have the SPs to spare. "
Then, in a single breath, Martin babbled his last few instructions.
"Summon me tomorrow three hours after the congress event ends, or if you fail to find the end time, summon me 8 hours after it has started. I'd have discovered everything there is to know about it by then. Before that, clear the first sub-tier of the dungeon. Make sure to get the maximum score possible. If you have time after you're back, attack some nearby bastions and grind to get as close as you can to level 24, but no further. Once you've conferred with me, you will attack the dungeon again tomorrow. The second subtier. Don't forget you can only enter the dungeon only once per subtier."
Then, just as Martin's body started to fade away, he realized he himself had forgotten something important.
He had forgotten to teach them the inspect skill. As he disappeared, he could only utter three words, and hoped they would be able to make them count.
"For inspect focus"