++ The Dungeon Boss ++
After a brief exchange with the two survivors, they exit the boss arena. After being sure they are out of sight and earshot, I rest my sword against the wall of my arena and take a seat. After a brief moment of silence I turn my attention to the dungeon’s core with a question in mind. “What do you think the odds are that those two make it past the attackers leader?”
“They seem capable enough to survive, I even expect they will be capable of capturing the remaining bandit alive. Why do you ask? Worried we’ll lose our contract?”. I pulled down the hood on my armor so I could relax, thinking to myself about the situation. “Honestly I'm just worried about them getting out of here okay, I used to be human before you pulled me into this job, if you remember.” After the dungeon fails to respond, I take the time to relax. About half an hour later the dungeon snaps me out of my pseudo-nap with a short announcement. “The humans have escaped the dungeon. I wasn’t watching closely but I believe they were interrogating the bandit.”
“Did they get him to say anything that can help us? Also, what happens now that no one is left alive in the dungeon?” I stand up from my spot and walk over to the boss door in order to peer outside. The room immediately outside the boss arena looks strangely blurry for a few seconds before the room is seemingly reset. The only difference between this version of the room and the original is the inclusion of a couple of low grade equipment pieces placed in inconspicuous spots around the room. It's only after I turn away from the entrance to head back to where I set my blade down that I notice my arena is clean again, no bloodstain or bodies from the bandits, although there is one new addition that makes it different from the other room.
There is now a chest in my arena. I start walking over to the closed chest in curiosity before the dungeon responds to my questions. “The bandit did state that the dungeon was being targeted to become a bandit den. And supposedly that this particular bandit group was a weak one, sent only because they knew my dungeon was newly created. As for your second question, you saw a little bit of it. The dungeon's rooms reset in order to prevent rot or blood from building up, the one exception is inorganic objects and things that are considered magical in origin or function. Items or objects that fall under the right categories will be absorbed into the dungeons functions and treated as obtained loot. The chest in your arena holds the 5 highest value items we acquired so far.” I hum in response to that and begin to think to myself while I walk over and crouch down in front of the new chest.
When I open it, I notice a couple of weapons, a chestplate and a shield inside the chest, but what catches my eye is a very high quality looking jewel. I pick it up and inspect it, noticing its cut with some very fine shapes. It almost looks like a sculptor took to gem cutting and tried to make something that looks like a figurine out of a jewel. It's shaped almost exactly like a feather, if a bit stubby and all one solid jewel. “Wow this thing is crazy… Do we have any way of figuring out if this thing is real? Because if this thing is a real gem, I can’t imagine what it costs.” As I look it over, I can’t tell if it's a real gemstone or something made of magic. I put it back into the chest and waited for an answer.
“Hmm… My functions say it's genuine, while I can certainly tell you the cost, it wouldn’t be in any human currency as my evaluations are entirely based on Narath and the items’ true value associated with it.” I just shrug to myself and close the chest. ‘It doesn’t matter too much then, I still wonder who was carrying that thing. I half expect it was one of the fallen adventurers since the bandits don't strike me as people that know where to get stuff like that.” After I finish with the chest I walk back over to my sword and sit back down. ‘How much Narath did we manage to get from that whole fiasco?”
"We collected about four-thousand. To be more precise we gained exactly 4,081 Narath from those that died. Most of our profit came from the adventurers that perished.” I tried to imagine how much that is but all that accomplishes is wasting my time, considering the fact that I have no baseline for what Narath is worth. “How much were those rats worth, when you bought them I mean.”
“A single rat with no modifiers is only about five Narath to purchase.”
“We earned almost a thousand rats back from one dungeon attempt? That's crazy!” I know how fantasy media implies these things grow fast early on but this feels like a stretch even under that explanation.
“While it may seem so, the rats are actually one of the worst possible purchases with Narath, they are the cheapest creature available, and practically don't pay for themselves until they become obsolete. When they die they only generate one Narath for the dungeon, so paying for as many as I have, I would have to have been cleared five times to pay for them. You should also consider what happened to give us that much profit. Humans are worth an amount of Narath appropriate for their overall level, so even just one human dying in the dungeon is a large boost early on.”
“I see… Well, we have some available to spend now. The question is what we should do with it.” I start thinking of the possibilities, although I can’t imagine we have too much we can do it still helps to plan things out. My first thought was to replace the rats, but I dismissed that idea immediately. If someone comes in prepared for any other new dungeon, the rats can put them at ease. If they get arrogant and deny our contract and end up dying then we could get a lot more Narath. But then there's an issue, I’m not sure how I feel about killing regular adventurers… bandits are one thing, but normal people are a whole different problem.
All things considered I’m not distraught at the thought of doing what’s basically the same thing as working for a really big company back in my world. If it’s my job to kill people who try to clear the dungeon then it’s up to me to differentiate between greed driven fools and expeditionists just doing a job like earlier. I am meant to be a guardian for the core right? I can give people insurance for if they lose but that requires them to have a sense of danger and self preservation that takes higher priority than their greed or confidence. While caught up thinking about this, the dungeon begins to speak to me, derailing the thought.
“I planned to replace the rats in the other rooms since the only reason I purchased them at all was to be able to afford you. However you brought up furnishing when you first saw the dungeon layout. With one of the benefits of a sentient floor boss being a second opinion, and one usually more capable of seeing improvements that intelligent cores can produce. You should have a say in what we ultimately do.”
I almost respond dismissively before something the dungeon says catches my attention. “While I personally appreciate that statement. I can't help but wonder if all dungeons think like that.”
“Some do, since our existence is entirely location based, it's hard to get a full image of what our dungeon requires to survive. The smarter ones rope in outside help by using a telepathic creature later on in progression. The really smart ones get a sentient boss like yourself, and the smartest ones get human souls to be that sentient boss. All dungeons are born with a certain amount of information available to them. For instance the common practices of dungeons are displayed front and center when they are first manifested.”
“Which would mean dungeons are born with complete ego’s that lead them to make decisions… and if some dungeons value the sentient boss they rope into things, that would imply that some do not…”
“Sadly that is the case, though I have no sentimental attachment to you, there is immense gain in letting you have some authority, for example, if a different dungeon had the same dilemma, a large pool of Narath immediately following a failed run and a third party dying to the runners… A dungeon that gives no authority to their sentient boss would likely instantly spend a majority of the profit to upgrade the rats without stopping to find a better idea.”
I pause briefly in thought. The rats are weak but like the dungeon says I don’t agree that it's the smartest option. Ideally the rooms need to be improved, not the enemies. The rooms need demarcation, the only unique rooms we have are; a room with a barrel in it and the entrance. “Give me a few minutes, I'm going to assess our layout and then I’ll be able to give you an answer on what I think we need to do.” After informing the dungeon, I take a seat and possess the rat in the room just outside once more.
After a few moments I take a few steps to remind myself how to move as a rat. Once I'm ready I start moving around the room immediately outside the boss arena. Some of the most important details are the location of the doors in and out of the room, the amount of creatures in the room, and any important items. The door leading towards the entrance is on the left of the arena door, there are 3 rats including myself in this room and as far as i can tell there is a hand-axe and some leather boots as loot. This room is also the only one with literally any furnishings, being a barrel.
The second room from the arena has another left turning door, this one only has two rats in it normally, and has no items for loot in it. It does however have a trap at the start of the hall. To speed things up I only keep track of the amount of rats, items, and traps I spot considering it's all likely to change anyway.
Room 3 has one rat inside, a door straight ahead, and one item. Room 4 has one rat, a door on the right, and no items. The hallway between room 4 and 5 has a tripwire trap. And finally, room 5 has 2 rats and one item. Room 6 is the dungeon entrance and is still empty. With all the information I can remember on hand I remove myself from the rat’s perspective and let it return to its room on its own.
After regaining control of my body, I hear the dungeon welcome me back. “Before you say anything about what changes you think we should make I would like to make a suggestion…” I pause briefly in slight confusion and readjust myself a little to be leaning on my weapons guard. “Alright, let's hear it.”
“I understand you intend to keep innocents out of harm's way inside our halls but we need the defensibility. I suggest we focus on lethality since we may only end up with two floors.” The dungeon finishes its statement and my only response is to just lean on my sword even more and stay silent for a moment. After it’s clear that the dungeon doesn’t intend to push any further on the idea, I begin to think back to the thoughts I was having before scouting out the rooms...
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I really don’t want to make this place end up killing anyone that doesn’t deserve it but I know why they are suggesting this, if the core dies, I die with it, which means I should be focusing on our survival over random people’s… I’m not convinced I can stomach that… I can’t help but think back on the multiple adventurers that died inside the other rooms. They weren’t villains, maybe one of them was a coward or malicious but they were still less malicious than the bandits that came in. I didn’t know them, but I still feel bad about their deaths, even if it wasn’t our doing explicitly.
I remain silent for a long time as I mull things over. ‘Killing the bandits felt incredibly easy to me… it was like I was a child playing pretend, sword fighting with their friends in the afternoon after they were already itching for something to do beforehand. My body moved so naturally as if the muscles were pre-programmed to kill and it hadn’t occurred to me at first that it shouldn’t have been. But what would happen if I had fought the survey team. We would have gotten more Narath for certain, and plenty of items to scatter into our rooms but…’ I shake off the thoughts and hesitation in an effort to try to refocus. Logically speaking the contract works great for us in the long term but in the short term we have the threat of more bandits than just a small team. The dungeon is right in what it's suggesting, we need to be more lethal out the gate if we want to make sure the bandits won't erase the both of us.
I stand up and take my sword into my hands, looking at the blade and its reflection and remembering that this is a body I didn't have before. I can’t just let the in-built muscle memory take over when I'm fighting people. And I need to prepare myself to fight in any of the bodies I might possess, standing upright or otherwise against anyone who enters the dungeon. With everything that I will likely be faced with, making this place and myself deadly enough to get rid of a bandit problem doesn’t seem all that bad. “I’ve taken your suggestion into thought and I agree. We need to be able to survive the bandits before we assume we can make this place more hospitable for anyone friendly towards us.”
“I’m glad we have come to the same conclusion. I have no investment in the lives of anyone that enters the dungeon or otherwise, but I know that practicality wasn’t the only reason you introduced the contract idea. To that end, my only goal is to survive and grow, as is every dungeon's purpose.” The core speaks of its point of view in such a blunt and decisive manner that it’s very difficult to push back against, and noting my silence, it continues on. “And you must remember the agreement we came to, I am to survive at any cost we must pay. You are my advisor in this matter, making the smartest choices to keep the both of us alive. First we make sure we survive… Afterwards we can work on not hurting anyone else.” I remain silent for a moment after it makes its point, then nod. “To that end, I believe I have a plan…”
Four hours go by, informed by the core having some sort of innate sense of time to draw from, and we begin to enact a plan for making the dungeon hyper dangerous temporarily. We discussed the importance of not making it this deadly permanently as early as we are as it will stunt our growth, but we need to be certain that no matter what, the bandits will not get to the core. And with my plan, we do just that.
First the dungeon Moves all of our rats from the scattered room into the final room in the dungeon as well as moving all the loot from the dungeon into my boss chest. Then begins to purchase things on their end.
The entrance remains empty as for some reason the entrances to all floors must be a safe room, the reason as to why I’m not sure. The dungeon just says it must be that way. It’s fine though, as long as we carefully calculate what boons we give to people in any situation, since we will eventually need to add things like healing fountains or loot rooms just to be able to make more Narath anyways.
At the moment we don’t have to make the entrance anything more than a safe room so people don't get jumped instantly upon entering, even if that particular method is cheap it would still be helpful as early as we are. The room immediately after however, is where we decide to place our first major threat: I fondly call it the “Rat Tsunami” room. Once a party enters this room, they will notice a mostly smooth room in the shape of a rectangle. The floor in this room is mostly lower than where the door is, however there are a few platforms inside that are at the original floor level; these platforms will shatter if more than one person is on them at a time, and subsequently drop them into the lower area. If any creature ends up at the bottom of the short drop, the room will activate its main trap, that being several holes in the bottom area’s walls where a literal flood of “Tiny rats” will erupt from; these rats are the size of household rats, meaning they aren't a threat at all to people alone, but handily come in packs of ten for the same price of a regular rat. The rats we had before renovation go on-top of the platforms in this room. We don’t quite have enough platforms for every rat to take one each so we keep two of the rats aside for a later room I have in mind.
The second room we renovate is made into a smaller circular room with a set of 6 pillars in the center and a plaque posted in the middle of the pillars. This is the greed or selfishness test, designed explicitly to catch out people like the bandits. The main mechanism being the pillars in the center, there are fake copies of that beautiful gem we looted on each one for now. Each one is just a small rock that we cut in the same shape and created an illusion around. None of these gems are real but serve to create the trap, however if someone does take one of these rocks, they will be marked with a status effect that will weaken them and poison them once they leave the room. This status is avoidable through poison resistance but the kicker is that it stacks the more fake gems you have on you. If someone picks up all 6 fake gems in this room, it is very likely to kill them over the course of the next room. My favorite part is the impulsiveness trap, it will mark you with a different status effect if you pick up the crystal but then put it back, meaning; if someone touches these stones at all, they will be hit with a status akin to blindness promptly blurring the fools vision for the rest of the dungeon. The plaque in the center of the room is our way of making things kinder later on. Right now it simply says: “These priceless crystal feathers glow in some places, if you wish to use them for light, please return them after use and you will be rewarded.”
Our third room is a bit diabolical regarding the previous one, Its design being a fairly large square room with slanted disconnected walls within its interior space that lead you to fake doors that lead to pitfall traps. The traps within this room aren’t particularly deadly, but they will still twist an arm or sprain a leg if you aren’t prepared for them and some of the pitfalls have fake floors that only trigger after more than 2 people step onto them. There is one more major issue that will ruin most parties' chances at clearing this room however; there is a permanent darkness effect within the room that makes torches and other mundane ways of producing light effectively pointless as that light will at best make your knees visible if held directly to your nose. The gems from the room before it are given a glowing effect that actively ignores this danger. There is one creature we purchased in here that makes this room much more dangerous than just a pitfall maze, Blood wolves; the three wolves we placed in here cost a high amount of Narath but make this room more than worth it, they have perfect sight in the dark and hold no weakness to blindness, Are very agile and fast on their feet so they can’t fall into any traps, and are very good at isolating people. Sadly these wolves are not the best at fighting groups and are very weak physically speaking, as such, they will die in only a few swipes from even a newbie, assuming that newbie could keep up with their movements or get very lucky. I’ve given those purchases every advantage we could afford without abandoning the other rooms though so here’s hoping they do well enough…
Speeding up a little we also have a room with a straight up chasm in its center with a wooden bridge guarded by two armored skeletons and on the other end, two bow wielding skeletons. Hidden inside this room are our other two rats hiding close to the entrance but blocked off from seeing, or being seen by, the enemies that enter the room. Then after that there's a dedicated combat room with no tricks or anything too sneaky. Mostly filled with cheap-shot style enemies like rats rock throwing gremlins in order to deal damage across the board but unlikely to get any kills. The final room coming up to my arena is a room filled to the brim with doors. Only one of the doors goes to my arena but all of them are made to look as if they are the real entrance to my arena thanks to a trick illusion placed on each door. The worst part about this trap room is that the spaces behind each fake door lead to a small space that prevents the person that stepped inside from being heard or seen, and will create a thin stone barrier so as to not let them leave the trap space. People can be rescued from the door by someone half entering the door and leaving room for their ally to leave, but if the room is closed for more than five seconds, water will quickly begin flooding in from a crack at the top of the tiny closet sized room. This will certainly drown them if they do not get rescued.
It takes a while for everything to be set up as the dungeon doesn't have many shortcuts to making these rooms how I imagined them. I would have pushed for some more aesthetic design but we had to go simple for most of this to be affordable, we put about twenty normal sized rats into that last combat room along with their much more dangerous but much more expensive cousins, at least in this world, Helltrines; 3 headed rats with a coat that emits heat so unpleasant that wood catches fire when they touch it, these rats are about the size of a fully grown dwarf and twice as thick furred as a common dire-wolf. These things were a hefty price at 900 Narath a piece… I feel a little sorry for anyone that has to face that right now.
As the dungeon completes its sweep of the place, making sure everything is in place and ready to go, they bring up a question. “We have a small amount of Narath left, Are you sure those rats we purchased are worth the poor-efficiency?” I finally get to sit back against the wall of my boring arena as I answer. “Yeah, they suck quite a bit for actual efficiency, but we frankly aren't developed enough to reliably fight higher threat invaders with just some stronger guys, we need to be tricky, use our resources in ways that people diving into them won’t expect. Those rats in our combat area and the first room are traps of the mind, someone will enter and at first think, ‘oh some rats, might as well get rid of them before we pass through the room right?’ But anyone who falls into those thoughts will easily activate the trap. We don’t want to try and rely on just one room to kill all invaders, we need to slowly whittle the number of any groups down as much as we can.” The dungeon quickly responds to my logic fairly positively. “Then by that measure you don’t expect any of our rooms to be the final blow, you want to make it so that as few people come to fight you as possible yes?”
“Exactly! If you were fighting them head on then sure, the rats are worthless in almost every way. But if you throw the people they will be going against off in some way, or throw a much bigger single threat in as fodder, then you can get them kills they never would have been capable of.” Admittedly designing things like this, even if by proxy, is getting me kind of excited. I can’t wait to hit them with the worst trap I set up for the chasm room… While I'm caught up in my thoughts, the dungeon decides to go quiet and after a moment I feel very different. Confused, I immediately questioned the feeling and silence. “Wait, what did you do? I feel different somehow… Kind of itchy actually, what was that?” As a way to feel less weird I roll my arms a bit and wait for an explanation.
“I've increased your stats, primarily your agility and power, but I also bought an expensive passive skill for you. It’s a simple one but it should still be of use. Now it should be much harder to read your actions.” I look at my hands and wave them in front of me a bit but I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. “You won’t be able to notice it since it's a dynamic change to how people see your movements, that's likely why you feel, as you put it, ‘itchy’. You are moving differently and slightly more unpredictably, even in the tiny motions you make.” I’m not sure how I feel about this, I can be made to move differently without even realizing it? Although I suppose that makes sense… My body already has an autopilot seemingly built in, as unnerving as that can be, it was a big help during the bandit fight earlier, and I imagine this change will be helpful too but… “Ah well, even if I’m not sure what changed I am sure that I can feel it out with time. So… Now that our first floor is set up and I’ve been made stronger, What do we do now?” I start to swing my great-sword around idly and get a response that I suspected was coming. “We wait for the bandits to show their faces. Or anyone else foolish enough to raid us that is.”