> A small almost invisible gnome stood on the shoulders of a bronze golem. The creation below him was wrought with literally thousands of black scribbles – a book’s worth of words written by tiny hands and painted onto metal.
>
> “Nice entrance. Good presentation. Clean air. M. Move forward.”
>
> The golem appeared to blur slightly – as if instead of running they were walking normally and then sped up.
>
> “Oh! I really like the soft glow those panels appear to give off. Need to remember that. M. Continue at low speed.”
>
> The golem slowed slightly, descending down into the dungeon and passing a giant rat holding a bulbous gun-like weapon complete with tubes of RGB glowing liquid. The rat raised its plasma gun and shot. Out flew a blob of caustic mana that fizzled out as soon as it got close to the enchanted golem.
>
> “M. Stop, Print med-low variant A.” The gnome muttered then teleported off his perch. He scribbled a quick two-sentence script onto the mini stone golem that had appeared in front of him and then, in the same sliver of time, he jumped back to his position on the bronze shoulder observing the weak golem rush forward conjured blade at the ready.
>
> A sideways dodge missed both shots from the dungeon monster however the rat reacted in time to prevent itself from being bisected, gun shifting down to block the blade.
>
> An overhead smash knocked the rat's weapon out of it's hand and caused the dungeon monster to perish, a scribing noise accompanying the process as what appeared to be an ink pen wrote on a floating clipboard.
>
> “Probably should have used a team of low variants but I’m kind of rushed for time. I hear the more interesting stuff is further down. M. Continue. Ignore standard protocol: no stops.” The gnome muttered once more. Reaching out with a crystal-tipped pen he drew out a cursive X in the air. The movement caused a light afterimage that hung in the air and caused his construct to dissolve into a small pile of sand.
>
> Bounding down the hall the golem passed by or barreled through any rats they found before coming to a series of testing halls.
>
> “Oh! Haven’t seen one of these in a while – I want to try one! M. Complete leftmost corridor following: best-guess-process.” Hopping down from the golem, the gnome strode confidently into a testing chamber – pen held like a sword, a massive cheery grin on his face.
>
> Blazing through several of the easy tests with single word solutions the gnome slowed down after reaching a room with a giant pool of inky purple darkness attached to the ceiling letting blocks drop endlessly through it.
>
> “So these are the claimed stable portals! Hah! The last time I went through a dungeon with portals it was the ancient dungeon on the shattered continent. Issue #12 I think it was. That takes me back.” Smiling the gnome wandered around the gate before heading deeper.
>
> “I should really do my job here while its fresh in my mind…but I have to see this transcontinental gate first. I really have to.” Waiting for a moment beside the archway the gnome tapped his foot impatiently – glancing repeatedly at the archway and then the testing chambers behind him.
>
> “Jim’s been trying to do this for ages, he’ll probably freak when he finds out.” The gnome mentioned his eyes tracing the gates contour.
>
> “I’m looking forward to seeing his reaction and that of his cute little club… Should probably make sure he doesn’t ruin this for the rest of us huh?” As he observed the gate, spiraled tattoos around the transient gnome’s eyes briefly flashed into brilliant, piercing existence. For a single moment his eyes appeared to sear into the surrounding world before his inscriptions faded once more – his eyes no longer glimpsing into the inner workings. Stepping forward – almost nonchalantly making a change to the gate – the gnome wrote a looping sentence about the whole structure before stepping back once more as if nothing had changed.
>
> Turning and looking around innocently the gnome stood with his back turned to his meddling, even as it disappeared from all but the most involved mana enhanced views. After less than 5 minutes of exaggerated innocence he started to get impatient once more.
>
> “Come on. Did you get stuck? I don’t want to come fish you out…” he muttered – moments before the bronze golem appeared running down the hall towards him. The golem galloped on all fours while being chased by some screaming mess of…what looked like spider webs filled with womanly fingers that also dripped yellow blood.
>
> Crouching down nonchalantly yet again, the gnome wrote a paragraph worth of text into a tile below him not bothering to deal with whatever strange invisible scripts he had been using before. Words appeared – the ink splattering slightly with how fast they were applied – before his spell locked into place. As it was activated the tile floated up out of the floor and appeared to bend into a perfect sphere without moving – space moving in weird ways about the material's surface, the air looking like a ripple in a lake. Rushing forward without any hesitation the sphere impacted the demon with a strange sort of twisting crunch – a brief flash of blacklight covering both the creature and device before they were both gone.
>
> “Nice! Took you a while M. – Standard again. I really want to get going!” Hopping up onto his perch once more, the gnome entered the gate with the excitement of a schoolboy – excited despite not needing the device to cross continents.
>
> …
>
> “This is surprisingly well put together, It’s a form that squeezes every ounce of strength it can into its goal. Doesn’t feel very dungeon like – they usually go for brute force and massive amounts of mana…but then again I heard this core’s pretty young. This array is much stronger than I’d have though…Oh! ritual magic! That makes sense. OH! The gate was ritual magic too, how didn’t I see that! I mean, I haven’t seen that in a core yet – that’s definitely new. I might have to have a chat with this one. Definitely need a repeat visit in a decade or two when they’ve had more chance to grow.”
>
> “Carry on, let’s see what other unique things this dungeon has. Up or down… M. decision 50/50?” As the gnome spoke to his mount, mana flowed slightly down into the arm being held like a question. A pause was felt before the golem raised a single thumb pointing upwards.
>
> “Up it is! Oh, I see quite a few skips available. Should note that down…those are always appreciated. Feels weird to get them in the reverse direction when I haven’t gone through this yet you know? …But it makes sense if the gateway was set up afterwards.” The gnome spoke constantly to himself – excitement causing his words to speed up and begin rambling. He stood perfectly at ease on the golem even as it loped upwards in a jolting movement – standing perfectly at ease as if glued to the golem's shoulder. Crashing through a spider den, the golem dodged webs of fire and blobs of molten mana – its passenger an observer to the capabilities of the dungeon.
>
> Around and around the pair traveled – skipping the shortcuts to take a more scenic route before appearing before a series of doors.
>
> “I hadn’t heard about this yet?” The gnome muttered while staring at an invisible system message explaining the trials.
>
> “Should be fun! Wonder what sort of trial it’s going to give me… M. take the one on the left I’ll take the right. Regroup at the end – this should be fun!” After a beat with no movement the gnome spoke again. “Sorry that wasn’t formatted correctly, I’m getting excited. M. Complete leftmost passage following: best-guess-process.” The gnome clarified even as he hopped off the artificial life.
>
> Moving towards his chosen entrance, the gnome pittered across the floor and into the passage alone – entering a mirror-like hallway of crystal.
>
> A crystal gnome stood across from him carrying an identical but monochrome version of his own pen and standing in a similar “ready” pose.
>
> Quickly dropping and writing a series of combat enchantments into the floor, the gnome looked up frowning a second later to see the room around him shattered – the crystal version of himself melted and twisted into a blob before his spells had even launched the spell itself spluttering out without a target.
>
> “Aww, I really did want to see what it would be like to fight myself. Looks like I broke it before the spells even hit that’s…kind of disappointing. Definitely want to come back in a decade or two.” The gnome said while standing up and marching out of his hallway.
>
> “Stupid dungeon has no right getting my hopes up like that…I was really looking forward to that! I can’t be too mad – core’s younger than should be possible to make something like this and I really should be praising what it theoretically could have done…but I’m still sad.”
>
> Turning to wait once more for his ride, the gnome stared curiously about the mazelike hallway in front of him.
>
> “Ah, you’re done! I’ll review your combat logs later as I didn’t get a chance to have fun. M. standard once more.” Up they traveled – the gnome’s innate sense of location letting him spot the subtle and not so subtle tricks of the maze – each one only seeming to delight him.
>
> Upon reaching the silver mines the gnome once more made a set of temporary constructs that followed along behind them. Instead of crushing everything with overwhelming power the gnome sent weak groups that struggled to take down monsters and commented continuously on how they did.
>
> A similar meander was done and then the gnome stood at the entrance to The Crossroad Link from Murek – turning to face the scribbling notepad that had followed him, recording his whole adventure as if in an interview.
>
> Clearing his throat, the gnome began to speak.
>
> “Hey! Tom here back with a very special treat! Did you know a group of dungeons has been connected through literal portals across the world! You heard that right! Stable Gate’s the holy grail of transportation! I’m here to start a very special issue of ‘Tom’s reviews’ centered around this unique phenomena and the actual dungeons that have facilitated this network. We’ll start this journey with the delightfully clinical testing chambers of the central continent…”
Excerpt obtained from the daily life of Tom.
Innearth found the transitionary floors were a fun way to force himself to try new things. Just as using his affinities as a dungeon let him make his strongest monsters…forcing himself to use elements he wasn’t used to was a good way of pushing himself and continuing the feeling of innovation. The practice with other elements also translated to a small measurable increase in his skill with his primary choices as long as he actually learned something from it.
On that note his next floor was a simple one but one that used elements he didn’t use a lot.
After the nightmare mines came a sand dune floor using piles upon piles of Sand mana. Water and Earth mana combined with all the relevant combinations Innearth knew, made dozens of different sand materials. Crystal and Water made one or two variations as well and Innearth commissioned a giant hourglass from FED to place in the center to complete the aesthetic. All the individual sand materials were similar – but when combined offered a nuance to the floor as they blended together into a single sandy whole. Essentially they bled into each other and the surroundings more when combined – making the environmental mana in the room push towards a more effective sandy environment faster than it would otherwise.
This hourglass had the fun – pointless but aesthetic increasing – effect of slowing down sand that fell through it. Tieing the decorations into an actual event Innearth set up a sort of time limit for the floor – when entered the hourglass would flip and when the sand reached the bottom an “Event” would happen. For now, that event was simply to spawn several more monsters all at once. A monster wave of a time limit increasing difficulty.
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The monsters for the floor involved several trios of a dust mana devil and their two handlers. The old experiment finally had a floor to belong to and despite their danger being a sort of hit or miss they made up a good part of the defence. The desiccating effect cut through most armour and stats alike and made monsters that could damage high-levelled adventurers to an insane degree…over a period of time being the big caveat. This “period of time” brought these monsters from being a solid adventurer killer down to “an obstacle”.
Any adventurer that made it this far would be able to dodge the dry clouds of dust mana easily enough – and those that got caught or fell into them would be able to jump out and escape.
Additionally, a water or fire mage could pretty easily highjack the cloud's control systems –trivializing them as an enemy.
The dust devils weren’t the only monster Innearth used to populate this floor however.
To start he explored several sand monsters once more – from making dozens of blobs that were essentially copy pastes of the beginner floor boss – to more solid constructs that contained sand-like limbs and solid containers – essentially blobs with differently shaped armour.
Innearth also made a few crystal snakes styled to look closer to the illusion wurm. He packed them with sand cores then set them loose swimming about the floor’s dunes – acting as sneak attacks from below to increase the difficulty. Crystal “cacti” were made as traps – void spikes to damage anyone knocked into them and Innearth planted several treasure chests buried about the field.
Honestly, all the effects Innearth added combined were still less dangerous than in the previous zone, so he tried to make the room hotter and push into the “desert” theme harder.
Similar to how the ice caves had “the cold” being one of the major challenges Innearth made beds of fire mana rods beneath the sand and then had the bright idea of making a “sun” in the corner of the room. Light mana wasn’t bright enough so Innearth began making a spotlight of laser mana that moved about the floor. The wide beam would begin melting the sand if left in a single spot too long and so he made it a plantlike trap that would aim at adventurers it spotted.
I was going to move on to the harder version of the magma floors but…when actually trying to damage something laser mana is a bit stronger than I would have thought.
Like the sun was meant to blind adventurers but it ended up able to melt sand into glass-like puddles!
…I want to focus on this more. Right now… it only does that when left for a bit. If I try and up the damage, I’m sure I can make something more interesting for the next zone – especially as I already kind of used increasing the heat to make the desert harder. If I jump the magma floor hotter right after It might start to feel repetitive. I’m not the best at magma mana anyways – all the hotter materials cool quickly, and the stable ones are less dangerous.
Let’s see.
Innearth began playing with laser mana. There were plenty of different materials he could make but he focused on the ones that dealt more damage.
A laser mana device was best made by attempting to divert all of the “beam” released in one direction. Damage was increased both by having more mana in the device – or making a larger one – and by focusing said beam to a thin point.
Innearth made several hallways with room-sized laser blocks that could melt through any material he produced. Even asking his dwarfs to make a shield with runework made something that could be cut through – albeit slowly until the runes failed.
More and more the lasers shifted in Innearth’s mind from a passing curiosity to something that should be held with respect. When Innearth put in the effort and mana…they were strong.
In fact, there were only two effective defences against the high-powered lasers that Innearth made – mirror-like defences that specifically bent light. And nullstone but even that failed when left to smoulder in a beam's path for several minutes. In fact, Innearth needed some of his strongest nullstone to have any chance of blocking the massive beams and that was being used on more important experiments like his mana oven or blast doors.
The mirrors would fail after a while as well and it wasn’t until Innearth figured out how to combine the two that he was able to make an effective defence.
A solid plate of null stone was collected and polished and then coated in an incredibly thin layer of silver. That base was then covered in an even layer of his clearest crystal material and left to sit for a while in an oven that Innearth cleaned of contaminants and then filled with pure mana that could easily shift to other types.
This whole setup “set” the process – tinging his creation with a sort of mirror mana.
Innearth found his oven step worked better than trying to use illusion mana or similar manually and was quite happy with the results that were finally able to handle his laser beams permanently.
… He had spent over a month working on just this one setup, time did fly when you have a goal.
Innearth then realized having lasers that bounced around seemed like a better prospect for the “hardmode crystal zone” so he cut his initial bouncing plans for the magma halls. Instead, he started from scratch – making lenses for the room-sized laser mana blocks.
Liquid crystal was put into rune-covered rings and mixed with various dusts and liquids to make it clearer and more malleable to the rune’s mechanisms. Essentially with a lot of trial and error, Innearth and Steve were able to make a lens that flipped between concave and convex shapes with the activation of a trigger rune.
This allowed him to make beams of cutting light that could be “disabled” by spreading them apart into a less dangerous shape – and then covering them with a nice cap. For that darkness mana was enough to disable the spread bream and protect the cap from damage.
This whole setup let Innearth make long hallways with dangerous beams that shot down them periodically. He would have made them a randomized trap but at this stage was more interested in nerfing the damage he had made than actually hitting adventurers.
The typical “firing” of one of these laser beams was started off with a small red pre-laser that appeared for a single second – warning adventurers the beam was about to fire.
It would then switch to the more dangerous “burn everything in its path” variant for several seconds before being turned off once more and accompanied by a burst of steam making it seem like the device had overheated or spent its energy. The device could actually be shot endlessly but Innearth preferred this setup and he put various cubbyholes that adventurers could hide in throughout the magma hall.
Magma spiders were made as well, but he found himself trying to incorporate laser mana into them after realizing he was more interested in it as a mana type than maintaining the magma theme.
Huge laser blocks could be shrunk down to more mobile forms – much less damaging but stronger than could be made from scratch at the same size.
They were then placed around the “body” of magma spiders.
Innearth refined this design. Multiple-eyed spiders that could shoot dozens of cutting lines at anything they looked at and blinked beams on and off at will. Making “focusing lenses” as “eyelids” let the monsters turn the lasers off when unneeded and protected the eyes from being damaged.
Honestly placing the laser mana inside of a monster was almost easier than his previous mechanical experiments. The “airbrushing” effect of solidifying a monster made it so the eyelids blocked the light without being damaged and without requiring a complicated setup.
They could be moved in incredibly precise manners and the monster had an instinctive way of aiming that meant they could burn even fast-moving projectiles out of the air if they focused.
The really exciting change was when Innearth started to give the spiders skills.
Not really caring about following his newest funk of using larger cores Innearth began giving his laser spiders unique circuits.
…that’s what changed quite a bit. Quite a few of the circuits didn’t seem to do much – gave them a ranged shot or movement skill that was weaker than their beams. But one or two and then more and more as Innearth explored synergized with the beams.
Instead of pure light, heat and destruction being shot, circuits were found that let spiders send altered beams of different effects.
Darklight beams that seemed to splash shadows as they moved and ate into stuff like a cool acid – instead of a hot scalpel – were cool.
Beams of frost that freeze what they hit are even “cooler”. Heh.
There were vine beams that grew plants where they hit and burning beams that spread lingering fire – or exploded when they hit. Sticky beams and beams that bounced were some of the stranger creations because none of the cores used in their circuits gave any indication that would happen.
Most of the time it was only one or two of the spider’s beams that were affected by a circuit… and of those types, there was usually a trade-off where the beam could no longer be used normally. Instead of an endless beam it was a spell that needed time for the spider to recharge its mana…but considering how much work Innearth had put into making sure the beams weren’t endless that was almost a bonus.
Basically, all these beam flavours make the spiders either stronger or more interesting. This seems like something I can stick with for ages without getting bored! Always a plus!
Innearth marked spider schematics he liked with small details – giving the eyes that shot interesting beams colourful rings to indicate they were “different”.
Of course some of those changes altered the circuits effect… but Innearth was starting to intuitively understand a lot of those changes in a way he couldn’t quite explain – essentially letting him offset a lot of the changes he made with small counter tweaks. He still couldn’t switch a circuit that made one skill between different types of monsters, but he could at least prevent it from changing by minor cosmetic changes.
The boss of this floor was once again a group of the strongest circuited spiders. Instead of three with several bats, there were five – with a combined 12 different beam types among them. This group was set up in a huge arena that let them use their long-ranged beams to their fullest potential.
For the transitionary floor, Innearth worked on focusing on using nothing but his void element. The floor was short and consisted of a series of floating platforms and “bridges” to cross a void acid pit and surrounded by void spiked walls. Innearth planted several of his void roses from the mysterious island event, happy to have a place to put them and put a gate near the bottom of the room with a series of difficult-looking platforms to reach.
Void flies filled the room for the aesthetic and the gravity was increased once again – it would be very hard to fly across the room or bypass most of the defences…but Innearth was starting to get close to his limit of gravity manipulating effects.
And then next came the nightmare crystal floors.
Gravity became crushing and the surroundings were seeded – not with regular crystal mana but growing patches of different kinds of the “third-generation corrupted crystals”.
Innearth could make regular crystal mana shapes and then infect them with his corrupted crystals – purposefully giving them all different affinities but letting him shape them into more interesting shapes.
Instead of walls of purple crystal, there were walls of corrupted fire crystal. Instead of spike-shooting plants there were lightning – or void-crystal shooting – plants.
Innearth then used second-generation crystals embedded in the same group of monsters that were in the original floor. Each crystal helped boost their strength by a massive amount and if they broke, the surrounding 3rd generation crystals insulated the place from danger – once corrupted by one variant of the crystals they wouldn't be corrupted further.
Then came the put off mirror work with lasers. Innearth hadn’t designed a puzzle in a while and he suddenly had a huge itch to do so. It felt like there was too large of a stretch of his dungeon without a proper puzzle and he already had an idea of what he wanted it to be.
A “Source” of a laser was made on each of the three floors and then lines of moveable and spinnable mirrors were linked all the way to a “Sink” near the end.
Hitting that Sink gave a group "randomized masterwork items" while “resetting” the floor by shifting all the mirror locations.
It was partway through this design that Innearth found himself levelling once again anticlimactically into tier 7. It was a milestone – but he didn’t care for any of the minor system bonuses it gave him.
There was the ability to make new groups! …But he already had a group with his friends.
There was the ability to trade recorded videos! …but Innearth wasn’t a streamer and didn’t care about rewatching streams. He could already record and playback streams to show his friends… and he’d much prefer showing them off "live" and forcing them to react to it, than sending something to them and telling them to watch it in their own time.
At least his first check of the bonus slipped his mind but after thinking about it a bit more deeply Innearth began to change his mind.
The reason this was exciting was because he suddenly found out Bob Ross had a whole collection of his most popular streams saved. Home videos that Innearth could have bought a while ago!
In comparison to his current mana regeneration, they were incredibly cheap and so he ended up buying weeks worth of content to watch.
That was some solid soothing entertainment on demand that didn’t require Innearth to join public streams...at this point he was probably close in level and skill to the older Core, but he remained a fan.
The last point of interest in his new tier was a new goal to work towards.
⚝Click Here to show current status⚝
Innearth (Dungeon Designation: Crossroad Link from Murek) Level 82 1/7636 exp to next level. System Access Level 7 0/4 requirements met to advance. -Mana regeneration at 200 Personal Units/Min. -50+ floors -0/100 different "Types" of adventurers hosted and catalogued. -Level 101+ Stats Mana Regeneration 192.00 personal unit/min Mana concentration 3.09 AMU / personal unit Mana Storage 18976.21/23600.07 AMU Regeneration over time 9.890022761 AMU/s Time to Full Mana 7.8 Min Physical Storage 12% Capacity Age 5 years Current Year 2002 AS Distance underground 399 meters Number of floors 27 floors Titles. Earth Mana Specialization, Crystal Mana Specialization, Void Mana Specialization, Customization.
I need to start cataloging adventurers I guess? Oh I see the system actually gave me a panel for it already. I'll do that right after I use my newest decent.