** ** ** Dungeon Core ** ** **

The largest change in the Dungeon had been the appearance of Adventurers within the last week. They had started off with just one team, but built up to five teams that would come into the dungeon every morning. He expected this to be a huge change but not much really happened besides an increase death rate and less fighting between dungeon creatures.

He wasn’t really interested in the adventurers, despite his own human back ground he didn’t find much appeal in watching over them unless he was checking in on how his own dungeon was faring against them. Known of the adventurers had died. Only his own creatures had perished, which ended up extending his apathy towards them.

He still tried to keep his them from dying, never assisting them, but never overwhelming them. He didn’t hate them, but with each death they dealt he wasn’t so sure he would really feel bad if they died themselves. After all who said that his creatures were any less important in the plan of the Goddess’s? What made the humans so much better? He was glad that his favorite creatures were able to revive.

He paused on the fourth floor, which had turned into a workshop of ideas for him currently. He hadn’t done anything to the floor accept text ideas for his dungeon. He hoped nothing could get down to this floor yet. If they could it just went to show how much more he needed to know. While he tested and trained the adventures, they likewise taught him more about what he needed to improve and what worked.

Bastill looked over the results of his past two weeks of work. The time had flown by. He had decided that he should a have a more deliberate room set up in his caves. It had been too linear for his liking beforehand. With a plan in mind he went about the grueling construction to create his ideal layout.

From his prior excavating experiences, he had come up with a much more efficient way to make the floor designs he wanted. Instead of spending time creating each room, he would create one large room and then fill it back up with walls to create rooms on the floor. This let his floor designs become more fluid and creative. It also leads to a great first floor design.

During his discussions with Gaius, the King, had mentioned several famous dungeons that had been massive labyrinths. These were crafty dungeons that relied less on strength and more on their ability to wear down their opponents. This seemed to be a great strategy for him. It was best to use everything he could. He didn’t plan to slack off on monster creation, but if he could fight back smarter and harder, then it would be more efficient. He wouldn’t purposely overwhelm all adventures, only those seeking his down fall.

His first floor was a configuration of one hundred rooms that connected together to make a maze. There was Two paths that lead through to the second floor, but there were four different dead end’s that lead to a treasure room with one of the four Racoonoids that he had assigned to Elite Status. The Treasure chests could only be plundered every twenty-four hours, which would allow the Elite’s to resurrect.

The floor was also populated with Water Skater’s, Stone-Hedge Hogs, Troll Squirrel, Serrated-Billed Platypi, and Elder Berry Leaf Imitator’s. The Mini Goats were all hidden away in the two clans with non-roaming the floor. You could find these creatures on every floor. They were the easiest to overcome and Bastill decided to let them roam between floors. He had several ponds and streams dotted around the maze.

He had decided to use the racoonoids after they had officially developed their own house within the Ecosystem Menu, House of the Mask. He had turned the two leaders of the opposing Racconoid clans into bosses with one guarding each entrance to the stairs leading to the second floor. For each clan he also assigned two racoonoids at the elite status. They were called champions of their respective clans. The clans were named after their leaders. He glanced at their ecosystem information.

Ecosystem Menu

House of the Mask Alliances: N/A, Mood: 5/10

Racoonoids- Average Level:14 Birth Rate: 500/week Death rate: 450/week Food: Mandrake Roots, Elder Berry

Habits: Human Emulation Population:500 Loyalty- N/A Bosses- Niccolo, Chicane Elites- 4 Clans- 2

He had increased the potency of the Caring Mother of Fertility Statues after the first adventures began to show up. When they began to show up, his creatures cut down on their amount of time dedicated to hunting prey. With the new beings in the cave their number were decimated a lot quicker.

Not all of the racconoids would openly fight. Some were given permeant jobs to tend and were irreplaceable. Bastill didn’t force them to fight. The Niccolo Clan forced everyone except those that were rebirthing their population and on that taught the youth how to fight, while the Chicane Clan had several Sculptors and Scientists and Shadows that they kept away from the adventures.

Remembering his earlier project with the Chicance Clan he focused his attention around the maze to spot their different artwork. Each exit two a room had two statues on either side of it. There were granite sculpted Dracula Hare’s, Blood Foxes, Racoonoids, and other denizens of the Dungeon. The more talented sculptors would create a stone scene of fights between the two. Each Statue was slightly different and there were plenty of errors in them, but they would work aesthetically for now.

The racoonoid sculptors would create these with shadows at different entrances as lookouts and armed guards protecting them. They would dash into a burrow anytime they were threatened. They were quite adroit at their surivival, which led to their skills growing stronger and stronger.

He began to notice a creative side of them as well. Portions of some walls would have stories sculpted into them. He hadn’t given them these blue prints, which showed they were beginning to design their own ideas. He noticed a new statue as well. It was in one of the dead-end rooms. He noticed a lot of the Troll Squirrels were focused in this room as well. Their focus was on the statue. Focusing in on the statue Bastill mentally closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Why… Why would they sculpt this…

In the center of the Troll Squirrels was a giant granite statue of an acorn. A freaking acorn! They had basically rewarded the Troll Squirrels for living. He didn’t know when they had created it and it was definitely not in any of the designs he had given them. He couldn’t punish them, but he was not happy with it at all. He didn’t think the troll squirrels deserved such an honor.

He focused in on the Chicane Clan’s town that was hidden away. Whenever they created new things he would give them sculpted items. Most professional sculptors would be incapable of sculpting items themselves that would hold up to use, which made his items precious. Knowing this limitation, he created t a blacksmith forge for them to utilize as well. They were just starting to figure out how it worked. His items were still immensely valuable since they often came with bonuses.

His reward system relied on a chest in their town that they would fill up with the design they created and the location it was in. He would then mark it uniquely before placing it in a different chest with the reward inside or instructions on how to use a reward like the forge or simply clever ways to do new things. He engraved such instructions using pictures, so they’d understand it.

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His last few gifts had been the forge and battle tactics that he had heard from Gaius. He had called it a Phalanx, and it was a formation of troops. The first adventures that had seen the square of nine racoonoids with the first row of spears pointing at them had nearly shitted their pants. The Chicane Clan had a slightly higher living rate compared to the other clan after using the new battle formation.

He pondered over what his new reward would be. It shouldn’t be too generous given what they had made, a large acorn statue. He wouldn’t punish them after all they did what he had asked of them. He couldn’t be mad due to not explaining his own dislike for the Troll Squirrels and their dumb faces and loyalties.

He ended up giving them a new device that had been recently been brought to his city while he lived. It was called a Parasol ad was used by women in higher status. Its sole purpose was to keep rain off of their heads. How could such a thing be useful at all? Did people think cloaks were going out of style? It did however have a creative design that had a collapsible canvas that would fold down to decrease its side.

The dumb contraption ended up taking more work to make then he thought it would. Since stone doesn’t move very fluidly he had to make dozens of hinges in order to make it collapsible the damn thing. When he finished he placed it in the chest and went back to looking over the dungeon.

The adventures were all over the first floor. They were always in teams of five for some reason. He couldn’t argue with their logic since they were quite effective. Currently there were four teams on the first floor. That had just finished mapping out the floor out yesterday, which let them get to the second floor.

This annoyed Bastill. He had spent a lot of time creating a beautiful maze to confuse the adventures and reduce their flow into the lower parts of the dungeon, but they had just mapped out his layout and handed it out to the teams that had been exploring for the last week. His lower floors were still rather unfinished, and he didn’t appreciate their cleverness. He had one team that had advanced to the second floor and the three other teams were currently leaving the dead ends after collecting their loot.

They were now heading towards the entrances to the second floor. He would need to fix this problem, but first he wanted to see how the team on the second floor was doing. The second floor set up was different. On the very first floor it had four different paths leading into the dungeon each with a different compass coordinate on it. Each one would lead to a different elite with their path’s mirroring their temperaments and affinities. There were one hundred rooms in total.

He had managed two level up to level fifteen while he had been working which had given him a new ability at level fifteen called Atmosphere Mana Control. He was also very close to the next level. He was expecting to level up by the end of the day, he just needed to fill up his mana capacity. Atmosphere Mana Control allowed him to control the environment to a large degree. He had used this to make the forge for the Racoonoids constantly heated.

Boreas, The Northern Wind, pathway was very cold. Bastill had used Atmosphere Mana Control to make it grow cold within its environment. It was also connected with the southern wind through a passageway half way through it. Notus, The Southern Wind, had his pathway perpetually hot. Bastill had managed to manipulate the environment by using his ability and raising the temperature with it.

People could choose halfway weather or not they wanted to continue in the hot passage or the cold passage. There was no other cross over. At the location of the crossover he had manipulated the air current to become stronger and cross between each other. This created this section of the path’s two become very stormy.

The group was currently in the Southern Wind’s pathway nearing the halfway point. He could tell that the team was regretting their decision. They were heavily sweating and seemed to be considering turning back. They had someone mapping their route as they went through. They would occasionally stop to fight the Dracula Hare’s that ran rampant on this level. This floor’s rooms were littered with plants with a focus on the large red mushrooms that allowed the Dracula hares on this floor to ambush adventures better. There was also a thorough network of hidden passageways for the Dracula Hare’s and common prey to get around.

He watched them as they approached the intersection. The winds spiraled around harshly and the map that was being created was swept away. The team looked in despair as they watched the map fly away. The room was had dark clouds that were high in the air, when lighting erupted from one of them behind the team, they began to sprint ahead.

Ha, serves them right for trying to map down here. Could strong winds be the answer to the mapping problem?

When they approached the two paths’ intersection they apparently noticed the other path appeared to be cooler. He imagined they wouldn’t make it to the end before turning around. All that sweat would begin to freeze and put them in danger of hyperthermia. He lost interest in the group and turned his attention to the last two paths of the winds.

Zephyr, The Western Wind, had very green rooms. He had customized the atmosphere to be the perfect environment to grow vegetation. All the plants he had in this room had grown stronger and more numerous than anywhere else in his dungeon. It was so densely populated that ambushes were impossible to avoid.

His path was starkly contrasted with Eurus’s, The Eastern Wind whose room was sparse except for sand. There was no life here that could be seen on the surface. While Zephyr’s room was bursting with life in every square inch, Erurus’s lived beneath the surface. It had taken a couple days for a good plan to settle in his mind, but he was proud of his idea.

There were various sinking traps that would lead one to a burrow filled with Dracula Hares. This would be very effective at splitting team members apart. The quicksand was incredibly fast acting and looked identical to the rest of the ground. There was of course a way back up. That exit was blocked off by the Dracula Hares however. The two paths were also connected at the center which created a section of jungle environment with sinking traps and harshly vegetated trails to follow.

The basic idea of the second floor was to let the adventures choose between sweltering heat, freezing cold, quicksand dessert or a vegetation based ambush environments. While there was areas two switch between the hot and cold paths when the reached the stormy intersection and a area to switch between the dessert traps and Vegetated ambushes with at an intersection of a quicksand jungle environment. He considered allowing each room to connect to each other later on, but he wanted to plan out the environments they would create first.

At the end of each path was the respective elite and past that was the final boss of the floor, Wenet. She spent her spare time laying new eggs in a secret room off to the side. Adventurers could get to it, but he had hidden it fairly well. If any adventurers were coming her elites would let her know and she would leave her secret room and prepare herself.

The third floor was not set up yet. He had the basic idea down and had only set up the rooms. There was first a divider of three rooms dedicated to the common blood foxes to dwell in. At the end of those three rooms they would be presented with three options. The adventures would be presented three different doors leading to different trials based off the sin they were approaching and choose which trial they wanted to complete. After they completed it there would be a divider of six rooms for common blood foxes to ambush the adventures in before the elite room where the Sin would be in. In all each elite got four rooms, three for the trial and one for them to live and battle in. If a group defeated one of the elites, the other elites would let them by without fighting, they would still have to complete their trials. This was to make sure one group didn’t have to face all the Elites in the end. Unless those adventurers planned on harming Bastill. Then they wouldn’t receive a break.

In all there was sixty-three rooms with common blood foxes, because there was another eight before the final boss of the floor, Kitsune. The kits totaled twenty-eight rooms, with the addition of the final boss’s room that gave the floor a round total of one-hundred floors. He was quite proud that he had managed to keep each floor at one-hundred rooms. That of course wasn’t counting the secret rooms that housed the Caring Mother of Fertility Statues throughout the dungeon.

The last floor was just one large open room. This giant room was his core room. It was incomplete at the moment, but he planned on making new creatures to fill it up in the future. Then he would add walls to it. He was currently working in the space though. The large room was filled with walls that didn’t reach the ceiling. He was also working on different pit fall traps, some that weren’t too lethal, while others that were deadly. He was trying to decide on the designs for the Kit’s trials rooms, but traps fitting their titles weren’t easy to create. His current project involved plants.

He was cross breeding the Toad Stools, Moon Shades, and Mandrake in order to design air born toxins that effect the mind. He had several different strains made. Some were inert, but he had one successful one which caused drowsiness which he thought would be perfect for the title of Hebetude. He wanted the trials to reflect the titles accurately, but it was difficult to make these plants function correctly. He had hardly no experience with plants and creating the plant that released the drowsy gas was actually just a failed attempt to make a plant that would incite violence.

I need to think smarter, but still hit harder. My forte doesn’t lie in plants. The solutions to these trials will rely in sculpting. I’ve never custom made the effects the statues have, but maybe if I focus my intentions it is possible. I will beat my enemies by being smarter than them not stronger. Brute force doesn’t solve all the solutions. You don’t push the mountain out of your way, you move around it. Hmmm… but what if I could push the mountain around…. That’s it! I have a solution to those damned maps!