Chapter 54

The dungeon that Tom established was fifteen floors deep. On the first floor, he spawned a handful of burrowers. The second and third floors he left blank before spawning zombies on the fourth. He was relieved that the burrowers and the zombies were of relatively low level, which implied that the local garrison should be able to handle them.

He planned to spawn zombies all the way down to floor fifteen, but noticed that their levels increased with each floor. By the bottom floor, they were level forty, which meant that a full clear of the dungeon would require an very powerful party.

Emil was instrumental in the shaping of the dungeon itself. While structural support wasn’t terribly important in the dungeons which Tom had been creating so far, the Caseville dungeon was built underneath a city. A floor collapse in the dungeon could have disastrous consequences for those living above. As such, Emil advised Tom on how to create a number of different types of supports on each floor in order to prevent such a disaster from occuring.

The result was a dungeon filled with pillars and archways, and lit by the dungeon stones which Tom had first seen in the dungeon north of Tilluth village. The dungeon wasn’t brightly lit by any means, but the party could walk through it without torches to light their path.

Antonie suggested spawning a minotaur on the bottom floor to be the final boss of the dungeon. Tom had his reservations about summoning an intelligent monster only to have it be slain by the adventurers who would, presumably, be delving this dungeon in the future.

“The more powerful the summoned monster is, the more of whatever resource it takes for dungeons to summon monsters is consumed,” Antoine argued. “While we might be able to get by with the locals simply farming the top few levels for zombies and rats, the fact remains that if the core can spawn powerful monsters, it probably will. It’s better to try to teach it to put them in a controlled place than it is to allow them to simply spawn wherever.”

“Besides,” Sevin pointed out, “It will only be the first minotaur that you spawn that will be loyal to you. You can mark it like you did the others, and tell it not to attack people unless they attack it. Then if someone does attack it, you won’t be responsible for the outcome.”

Tom frowned, because being responsible for the fates of the adventurers challenging his dungeon, while a concern, was not exactly why he was reluctant to spawn a new minotaur. He liked Brutus. He didn’t think that the minotaur champion deserved to be killed simply because it had been spawned by a Core. He was having trouble articulating exactly what his reservation was, but in the end Antoine and the rest of the party convinced him.

He spawned a minotaur, and he coated the walls with luminescent moss both to allow the monster to see its new home, and to feed the herbivore. He quickly marked the monster front and back with his crest, so that everyone could see that it was his minotaur.

“Your name is Cassius,” Tom informed the creature after taking suggestions from the party. This entire floor is yours. If you want to head up higher in the dungeons to kill zombies, that’s fine, but don’t kill any humans unless they attack you first. We’re going to tell them that you’re down here, so hopefully there’s not any confusion.”

The beast looked at him for a moment, then nodded its head.

“Also, if any other minotaur are spawned down here, the same rules apply to them,” Tom explained. “I don’t know if you can talk to them and tell them not to attack humans though. If you can, I’d appreciate it. But if they do attack humans, then they might be hunted because of it. I’m going to make sure that everyone knows that you’re marked by my crest, so hopefully they’ll be able to tell the difference between you and anyone else that spawns.”

The minotaur shrugged.

Cassius, for his part, wasn’t particularly concerned with the possibility of fighting humans. If anything, he was rather looking forward to the possibility of stretching his muscles. While he had no temptation to fight his master, it was only the presence of his master which prevented the beast-man from attacking the others in the party.

He also felt no particular desire to follow them once they decided it was time to leave the dungeon. He had everything he needed in the bottom floor; plenty of the luminescent moss to eat, a secure location to guard, and zombies on the upper floors to fight when he was feeling bored. It was, as far as Cassius was concerned, an excellent place to have been Spawned.

“What should I set this dungeon to Seed?” Tom asked as they were ascending back to the entrance.

“Nothing,” Emil said immediately. “We do not want the people delving this dungeon digging into the walls or the supports that we built. Not with thousands of people living on the surface above. Even a small cave in could cause disastrous results to the structures on the surface and cost lives.”

“It seems like a waste, though,” Tom said. “I mean, I don’t know, it seems like I should be able to reward the people who delve this dungeon with more than just experience.”

“In the stories in our world about worlds that have dungeons in them,” Jessica explained, “The dungeons always spawned some sort of loot to reward adventurers for their successes. Maybe you’ll get something like that in the future?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Tom admitted. “But right now it’s not like I can just conjure up magical swords and put them in treasure chests.”

“If the experience gained from slaying the zombies you’ve spawned isn’t enough to motivate the local adventurers to delve this dungeon, then nothing will,” Antoine predicted. “The truth is that you’ve made a very effective dungeon for powerleveling, Tom. The upper levels are lower leveled monsters which even a level one person with a combat class should be able to defeat, and then it gets progressively harder the deeper one goes. And therefor more rewarding in experience. It’s a good thing that you have zombies in your repertoire now, as they’re particularly rich in experience.”

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It had been Antoine’s suggestion to seed most of the floors with zombies to begin with.

“It’s a good thing that they’re magic zombies and not ‘if they bite you, you’re infected’ zombies,” Jessica clarified. “For that matter, it’s a good thing that they’re not actual dead people. Just monsters, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. The dead don’t rise from the grave naturally this far away from the blight,” Silva agreed.

“Wait, what?” Jessica asked.

“Are you certain that nobody will be at too much of a risk delving this dungeon?” Tom asked.

“Delving a dungeon is inherently a risky activity, Tom,” Antoine reminded him. “But you haven’t created an especially dangerous dungeon, if that’s what has you worried. There’s nothing venomous or poisonous, which is actually how most adventurers die. You didn’t put any mimics in either, which would have added a layer of difficulty. As long as the party enters the dungeon expecting to face zombies for most of it, they’re probably safe.”

“If it begins spawning minotaur in the lower levels, that will add some to the difficulty,” Silva added, “But any adventurer party that can deal with a swarm of level forty zombies should be able to deal with a level forty minotaur or two.”

“Ultimately I don’t think there’s anything else to do except wait to see how the Core responds to the dungeon you’ve created for it,” Antoine said. “We should start sending in delvers to kill the zombies you’ve spawned in the next few days. As long as everything respawns in the locations you’ve designated for them, it should be fine.”

The party made smalltalk on the way out of the dungeon. As they were leaving, either Tom or Emil saw a few things which required small tweaks, but for the most part the construction was finished. The resulting dungeon was extremely straightforward, linear, and progressively more difficult the further one went. It was, hopefully, a dungeon which many adventurers could use to safely level while at the same time keeping the city safe from random monsters spawning in their midst.

They were greeted at the entrance by the city council. The council was, however, less than enthused at the presence of a dungeon entrance in the immediate vicinity of their Core.

Fortunately for Tom, being that he was a fourteen year old boy and not someone who looked to hold any great power or authority, the yelling was mostly directed at Silva, Antoine, and the other Knight, Rebekah. And Grant, for some reason. The cooler heads of the party attempted to explain the necessity of the dungeon, but in the end Jessica resolved the situation with clever use of her Sonic Sovereignty Skill.

She simply increased the pitch of the councilpersons’ voices until they were all squeaking like rodents. The frustrated council members ceased arguing when they realized that they had an audience that was witnessing them in this undignified situation. The politicians, realizing that they were looking like fools – and worse, they were publicly looking like fools – eventually dispersed.

Grant, for some reason, simply could not stop laughing as they were finally left alone.

“So what do we do now?” Tom asked.

“We should go to the nearby villages, the ones which you accidentally linked when you linked Caseville,” Silva said immediately. “You should set up dungeon beneath each of them.”

“No,” Antoine said.

“What? Why not?” she demanded.

“Two reasons. First, we need to rest,” Antoine pointed out.

“People are in danger, we can rest when--”

“Second, we need to experiment. We might have, in fact, solved the issue entirely by giving Caseville a dungeon and there’s no need to intervene in the villages. We could be putting those villagers in more danger by building a dungeon beneath them than we are by waiting to see if they develop a monster problem as things stand,” Antoine argued.

Silva opened her mouth to counter, but stopped herself. She considered for several moments before announcing “I am going to contact the king and request instructions from him. I suppose that, in the mean time, there is no reason not to stop at a tavern and have a meal.”

Which is what they did. Silva requested a private room for her communication with the king. When she returned, she had a grim look on her face.

“King Fenard reports that the Caseville command crystal is no longer flashing. He believes that this means that all of the subsidiary cores have stabilized and that the villages are no longer in danger. He has located the villages in question from the records and ordered me to send Nolan to one of the villages and Rebekah to the other to confirm that they are stable, or to deal with and report any monsters that do spawn,” she reported.

“So where does that leave us?” Tom asked.

“That depends on whether you believe you can make progress on your quest as things stand,” Silva answered. “I believe you mentioned that Alpha Core is badly damaged. Would it perhaps be best to wait until it has healed some before proceeding?”

Tom considered the question carefully. “My gut is telling me to slow down, honestly,” Tom admitted. “I think that I should gain some levels, and that so should everyone else, before we proceed any further. As for Alpha Core, I think I’ll return to Weaver Estate and build another training dungeon. But I think I should stay in Caseville for a while to make certain that it really is stable and that the locals can handle the dungeon that I built. If it’s too much for them, I might have to change things.”

~~~~~~

Caseville hummed happily.

The controller who had built its dungeon had done a fabulous job.

With the amount of miasma siphoned off into the monsters that had spawned, it was no longer in any danger of losing health. In fact, it had been forced to draw in miasma from its subcores in order to supply the necessary evil intent to satisfy the Controllers demands. If the Controller had continued to spawn monsters at the rate that he had, then the Caseville Core would not have been able to oblige.

Some time would pass until Miasma reached dangerous levels again, but Caseville wasn’t worried about that. It didn’t think that far in the future. And now that it had a dungeon to populate, it was more or less happy. The error that had been caused in its programming by the destruction of the Zombie dungeon was completely forgotten.

It memorized the dungeon as it was now, and resolved to keep it that way for as long as possible. If miasma levels got critical, perhaps then it would increase the monster populations within, or raise the levels of the monsters it spawned.

But for now, Caseville was content.