«Well, good news,» Prime said with some exasperation. «the encounter rooms along that path are at least open, if not fully prepared.»
«We don’t have a Boss Room, though,» Aide “helpfully” pointed out, a touch of gallows humor leaking through their bond.
Saccharine sweet, Prime responded, «We don’t have a boss, either, and my skills won’t let me change things while people are on the floor.»
They shared a moment of silent maldebitum, then Prime asked, «Should we fake being turned into a composite soul or just latch on to the joy of the dungeon core life?»
«Well, we have enough proto-soul personalities clogging up the works still,» Aide said.
Prime paused. «We do?»
«Yeah. Dungeon cores are one of the major clog points for that. That’s why the Reincarnation Cycle our Storyteller is helping the originator get working had anything at all to do with the Branching Event.»
Thoughts circling, Prime asked, «If we push those personality parts into our spawns, will we lose control of them? Are the personalities strong enough that they’re going to turn into proto-souls on us?»
Aide let confusion slow their words. «You don’t like slavery?»
That made Prime draw up, her thoughts stalling on her. Disappointment colored her tone. «So it will make proto-souls that are forced to obey us?»
«Well, not directly. Tell me what you’re thinking,» Aide requested, his confusion set aside for curiosity.
«I asked to assess repercussions,» Prime said. «Check my understanding, please. Personality, that’s like the first baby steps toward independent action, and it takes something a bit extra to make the leap to a proto-soul. Proto-souls are just much further along with their development toward immortality, and not all bodies can support a proto-soul.
«Like trees in this world. Trees have personalities, but they cannot support an independent proto-soul. A locus proto-soul can use the for anchor points, and that’s kind of what a dungeon core is. It’s a housing for a location’s soul to form up.
«Now, unless I have drastically misunderstood the Construct skill, it’s spinning up sigils, some attached — as in a part of — our core body through meta-mana inspired meta-physics. Some of those sigils are more like how we poop. I mean, the resources we can make are shiny poo, I guess, but they’re still essentially the waste products from a dungeon core’s digestion-like way of processing mana, right?
«Personality miasmas leak, and I don’t want to get stuck trying to reconcile all sorts of foreign personalities inside our soul space, so if we can shove that off to the defender constructs without risking creating parasitic or enslaved proto-souls, that should make things better all around, yeah?»
Aide took that in for a moment, then probed, «You’re assuming the personality miasma will affect us, you and me, not just the world elements we’re hooked into, directly?»
«I don’t want to take that chance. Isn’t it better to bind that stuff to physical bodies, or at least use a physical medium as a filtration system? Plus, there’s no faking going on if we are in charge of a composite entity, like being the queen of a beehive or an ant colony.»
«Oh!» Aide’s voice brightened. «Oh, that could work! Well, maybe. Do you want to use a Bullet Time charge for me to make sure that’s viable?»
That would require cultivating to recharge their personal, banked mana, which Prime was less than keen to do. Still, this core body felt much more congenial to cultivate in. Impulsively, she agreed. «Go for it.»
She felt the depletion of their personal mana like her soul shrank in volume. Mana messed with physical dimensions, so it wasn’t quite that, but the analogy was close enough. The loss was hardly major, but the fact she felt it at all was a testament to the abruptness of the change.
While the sensation was still itching her senses, Aide reported, «I got the Storytellers to share in our Bullet Time, and they both liked your idea for getting started clearing up the personality gunking. They’re making sure that any core-spawned creature that reasonably could end up with a proto-soul will be marked with an appropriate Halo under the PLOT, and they’re examining the dungeon core Narratives to see what elements of monster re-spawning they want to add to the Reincarnation Cycle.
«And I figured if we’re burning the mana anyway, I might as well get as far as I can with our patterns. I’ll be registering them to the System now, but we have both ratlings and lesser nagas, as well as mock dragon fish. The naga are better in water, but they can be reasonably effective on land. The mock dragon fish, not so much.»
Which could be all to the good — as soon as Prime could spawn more defenders.
Even while the agents talked, they watched Muscle-Head’s group advancing.
Kinser used a skill that expended mana into the surroundings, much like the way bats shrieked at ultrasonic frequencies to listen for the echoes. The mana did not return to him, and after a moment he lifted the key from its hook. He approached the door blocking the hallway. More mana rippled out from him, only this time a fraction returned, bouncing off the lock. However his skill interpreted that, Kinser’s shoulder’s loosened, and he fitted the key into the lock.
Both the key and the lock on the door dissipated into a dusting of shimmering lights. The door swung open, away from Kinser, revealing the rat swarm in the passageway before them. As soon as they had line of sight, the spike rats launched a volley of pinky-finger sized stone darts at Kinser’s center mass.
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A’Ferun’s boundsman scout got his arms up to protect his face even as he flattened himself against the wall. A’Ferun leapt forward, his thick bladed rapier already out and stabbing into the mass of rats at the leading edge of the swarm.
Jump rats blitzed passed the two front liners, bouncing and scrambling at the matu in his tight fitting yellow shirt and tan pants. The healer had an understandable reaction, slapping to get the rats off himself and his gear.
The elf behind the healer used finger seals to cast a spell targeted at the rats that slowed them all, and the two mages behind the elf whipped out batons with which they proceeded to beat the rats that reached them.
The sailors at the back were never engaged in this fight because the rat king controlling the sward recognized the rats were out matched, and called for a retreat.
A’Ferun had to be off his game because he chased the swarm and triggered the pit trap at the bend of the hallway. Quick reflexes and the fact the trap wasn’t that wide saw him landing on the other side. The trap at least recalled A’Ferun to his senses, and he stopped, sword out and dripping rat blood, his back to one of the walls.
Kinser hurried over. “Lord?” he called.
“Well. Any harms suffered?” A’Ferun called back.
His party sounded back their “all’s well”.
Kinser studied the pit trap for a brief moment before he hopped over it to stand with his lord. “Lord, I think this is a dungeon. I don’t know how, but that looks exactly like the pit traps we’ve encountered in dungeons before. We need to be more careful.”
“Fascinating!” the elven mage opined, kneeling to stare into the pit.
“Ep’hram,” A’Ferun growled.
“Yes, yes. I’m coming.” The elf rose and dusted off the knees of his leggings before he stepped across the trap.
«Note to self,» Prime muttered. «See if I can make those traps wider, or odd shapes.»
«Yes, someone might crack their skull on the lip falling down them,» Aide snarked.
Kinser resumed the lead, his mana pulsing out of him in a regular beat as he checked for traps and watched for any places the rats might ambush them from. They rounded two corners, the last opening into the first encounter room.
Prime had not managed to decorate the rooms yet, nor had she put in any passages for her defenders. That left one of her rat king swarms guarding a path A’Ferun’s party hadn’t taken and with no way to call them over for more defense.
The lack of decorations in the room meant the rat king facing A’Ferun’s party had to marshal his forces in a bare room, and he made the most of it within a rat king’s ability. The swarm of wharf, spike, and jump rats was somewhat tactically deployed, with the spike rats at the back, flinging their stone spikes before joining the rush to mob the invaders.
Kinser’s opening blow was tossing one of his many daggers at the rat king. He struck the rat king’s body without killing the rat king outright, but that was enough that when he rushed forward, agilely cutting through the swarm, the rat king wasn’t able to dodge Kinser’s second strike. That one cracked through the crest covering the rat king’s neck, killing him and crippling his control of the swarm. As the rat king died, so too did any sense of cohesion die among the swarm.
«Hey, we’re level two now!» Aide shared, then quickly corrected themselves. «Er, we can advance to our second level when our floor is cleared.»
«What?! No fair, Class System! Sapients and monsters level during combat all the time!» Prime protested.
Aide said, «But they don’t advance then, do they? That takes a bit of time. It looks like the dungeon cores have to advance very level up.»
That cheered Prime up, even as she morosely watched her first encounter destroyed by Muscle-Head and his boundsman, with a small bit of aid from the mages. «It’s the crystal body, isn’t it?» she guessed while A’Ferun’s party poked around the encounter room.
«Probably?» Aide tentatively agreed. «We’ll see when we level up, right?»
One of the sailors in the back of A’Ferun’s group “eep”ed and smashed the last rat in the room, triggering the encounter room’s treasure chest to auto-spawn. Kinser checked it for traps, opened it, and, at A’Ferun’s impatient nod, passed the two reels of quartz thread the chest had contained to the elf mage Ep’hram.
A’Ferun’s impatience meant that they didn’t bother searching for any secrets in the room and just took the obvious path. The key that had been in the chest with the two reels of quartz thread again dissolved along with the lock.
At some point, the woman mage had cast a light cantrip, and her mage light took the form of golden leaves lofting just above the human’s head height. That put it near eye level for the elf. It also cast some soft shadows that the krait waiting right next to the pit trap used to hide itself and the trap from Kinser’s detection skill.
The snake lunged for Kinser’s heel. A’Ferun reacted almost instantly, chopping off the snake’s head. His movement, however, knocked Kinser into a forward stumble. Scouts were strongest on Perception and Reaction, and Kinser was an experienced scout. He tucked and rolled as he lost his balance, landing enough on the other side of the pit trap to avoid falling in it.
The party paused to make sure there were no more surprises. After ascertaining they were in relative safety for the moment, Kinser said, “We really need to stop finding those things with our feet.”
“Did the snake bite you?” A’Ferun asked.
“I don’t think so,” Kinser answered, but like the professional he was, he checked. “Scorch it! Yeah, I’ve been nicked. What kind of snake is it?”
The matu healer toed the body. “There’s magic in its bones, so I’m not sure, but it looks like a krait. Hold still and I’ll get you an Anti-Venom and a Healer’s Watch.”
There wasn’t much room to maneuver because the door to the next encounter room blocked off the passageway about an arm’s length from the pit trap’s edge. This puzzle door was of the slide-the-pieces variety, a four square by four square picture with a slide-out cubby so the pieces could be moved within the picture frame on the door.
Once the healer did his thing, the both of them returned to the side of the pit trap with more room. The male human mage moved up to the door and worked out the puzzle. When the last piece slid into the correct spot, the image shimmered and transformed. it had been engraved onto wooden tile, a carved relief. When the shimmer settled down, a full color hologram had replaced the door.
The image Prime had imbued into the puzzle door was an artsy rendering of N’kieran, blade held to her throat by the pirate captain, with the chained core in the background. As a nod to the Halos of the Roles, N’kieran was depicted with regal courage radiating from her her expression, and the pirate with cruel contempt oozing from his stance and sneer. Inserting a touch of fiction to the event, the pictured N’kieran’s hand was stealthily moving toward the chained core.
The blue robed mage put his back to the hallway wall to give Kinser and A’Ferun room to pass him by, but A’Ferun just stared at the image for creeping minutes.
“What …?” the mage asked, trailing off at Kinser’s head shake.
“That is Lady desh Idahl,” Kinser quietly said.
----------------------------------------
«Prime, why?» Aide asked, conveying a focus on the puzzle door’s image.
«You said one of the big things about dungeon core Narratives is that we can’t talk to people, not easily. We agreed that it was likely much safer for the Male Lead Halo to recognize that we’re now the dungeon core. I’m planting the seeds of that.»