Zack left the others to attend to the business while he retreated back to his core room to decompress. He needed a project, something he could work on to help get him into a healthier frame of mind. If he sat and dwelled on the fate of his fellow cores, he knew he'd end up going mad sooner or later. Archie bombarded him with questions, demanding to know if he was okay. Upon revealing what Zack had learned, the rabbit's horror matched his own.
And yet there was nothing to be done about it for now. Zack couldn't avenge his slain peers because he didn't know the full extent of their loss.
"It's best not to dwell on it for now," Zack said, though even he could tell the lie was half-hearted. He knew he wouldn't be able to ignore it. "A distraction is the best thing for me, at least for now."
"Understandable, Zack," Archie said, nodding his agreement. "In that case, shall I return to my burrow and resume construction?"
"No!" The sudden word was enough to make the rabbit's ears twitch. "No, I want you to stay with me and help me with the manor," Zack said quickly, attempting to cover up his haste in reason. "It's a bigger room than the others, so any help would be appreciated."
Archie's nose twitched, but he nodded all the same. He tightened the collar of his shirt and dusted some dirt off his sleeves, then headed out of Zack's core room and stepped into the first true room of the manor.
This section of Zack's dungeon differed from his previous attempts in a few distinct ways. Firstly, Zack had designed it by combining multiple units in the previously abandoned mall to create a larger space. The goal was to give the feeling of exploring an old abandoned house, the kind populated by ghosts and monsters. As such, the floors were decorated with thick rugs to muffle footsteps, the walls covered in old peeling paper to sell their age.
Instead of light fixtures in the ceiling, iron candlesticks jutted from the walls, a flickering magical fire burning where candles otherwise would. This had the added effect of twisting and elongating shadows, creating a starburst of blackness whenever someone passed between the right number of light fixtures.
Zack was particularly proud of the work he put into the manor. It was a winding maze of chambers and corridors, with locked doors leading to smaller rooms off the beaten path. He fell back on his years learning art design and graphics in college, giving the decrepit rooms a colour palette of rich reds, rotten blacks, and old browns. The effect was such that even the smaller rooms had dark corners in which creatures could hide.
"It seems to me as though you have already finished this level," Archie noted, scratching his chin curiously as he stepped into the sitting room. It was one of the chambers not far off from the manor entrance. There were a pair of arm chairs, as well as rack covered in old glass bottles. Curiously, Archie stepped up to the rack and uncorked a bottle with the tip of his dagger. "How on earth did you get wine?" He demanded, sniffing its contents curiously.
"Oh, I didn't. One of the shops in my influence was an old grocery store, and there were bottles of juice left untouched. It was all gross and fermented, but when I absorbed them I got the recipe for their base form. All I had to do was add the alchoholic modifier and bam, alcoholic grape juice," Zack explained. "To the uninitiated, it won't be any different from wine. I'm sure some somelier will find the comparison offensive, though."
Archie snorted a laugh, then pressed the bottle to his lips curiously. He immediately spat out its contents, almost the second the dark liquid touched his tongue. "They would be right to. That was downright foul."
"Yeah, I think the alcoholic modifier needs some more experimentation, unfortunately," Zack chuckled. "This isn't the first time it's made something gross."
Archie sneered and recorked the bottle, setting it back on the shelf in disdain. "You should ask Greg to bring you a proper bottle of wine. It wouldn't take much for you to create a proper vintage."
"And yet, I don't think local wineries would appreciate me stepping on their toes."
"No. I suspect they wouldn't. Now, I don't believe for a second you brought me here to sample your," Archie paused as he considered a better word to call the beverage he just rejected. "Your poison."
"No. I just… I don't want to be alone right now?"
"I'm sure the others would be glad of your company, Zack."
"They don't really understand what I do here. You don't need to understand. You're, well, part of me. You're like the imaginary friend I had as a kid. You just automatically understand everything I need you to."
Archie raised an eyebrow but didn't argue the fact. After a second, he gestured with a flourish for Zack to begin his work.
With an inward grin, Zack started conjuring a new pattern. It was something he desperately wanted for this room, but regretfully never acquired the proper pattern. Still, it wasn't like what he was designing was hard. Like everything he created from scratch, he started with a grey, featureless cube. With expert precision, he set to work carving and extruding faces, until his cube started to take on the telltale shape of a human skull. He gave it teeth and hollow eyes, followed by a long vertebrae attached to the base.
"Fascinating," Archie said, pacing around the room as Zack worked.
"I wasn't aware you could see these projections," Zack noted. "I always assumed that when I worked on patterns like this, they were just… In my head."
"As you pointed out yet forget so quickly, I am also in your head," Archie pointed out, smirking. "There is nothing physical for me to see, but I can see the mana as you work it. I cannot make out concrete details, but I grasp the general shape you are working toward. Might I offer a suggestion?"
"Please."
"Right now the mass is solid, but this is not how bone actually behaves. Bones are technically hollow and filled with marrow. If you are going for something believable, you should work toward that."
Zack considered the suggestion, spinning the skull and spine as he thought. "I'm not sure that's really what I'm going for. We're not going for reality, we're going for expectation. There's a certain level of realness that people will expect when they run my dungeon, but they also understand that this isn't a true combat scenario. It's a learning environment."
"Is that a reason to deny realism when it would otherwise be possible?"
"No… But that sounds like work, and I'm lazy," Zack chuckled. "Okay, compromise. Hollow skull."
With a quick mental twitch, Zack hollowed out the inside of the skull and left behind a shriveled chunk of meat that would imply the existence of a brain. Archie nodded in approval and returned to his passive observation. It was another hour before Zack was ready to speak with him again, and in that time he'd meticulously modeled the skeleton's entire rib cage, as well as the shoulders.
"You are putting a lot of work into this," Archie pointed out.
"Why do you sound surprised?"
"By your own admission, you are lazy."
"Wow, rude, twisting my words against me."
Archie looked at Zack's disembodied awareness from under raised eyebrows.
"Fine, you caught me. I like making models, okay? Back before becoming a dungeon, I studied computer graphics in college. It was something I was really good at and always assumed I would turn into a career. I can't say this is what I had in mind, but I'm making the most of it."
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"But why put this level of work into it? Surely you can simply conjure the shapes outright, no?" Archie pointed out. "Why waste the time modeling every inch of the structure?"
Zack quietly considered the question for a long moment, as he created another square and began the process of extruding and reshaping it into a bone. He knew that Archie was right, and realistically there was no reason for him to waste time modeling out his shapes. At the same time, though, there was no reason for him not to do it either.
"I'm not in a rush," Zack finally said, attaching the newly formed forearm to his previously made upper limb. "I like working this way. It feels nice, comfortable even. Sure, I can just pop things into existence." In demonstration, Zack made a skull appear in the air above Archie's head. The hare effortlessly dodged the falling bone, which shattered like ceramic when it hit the ground. "There's no fun in that for me, though. I enjoy the act of creation almost more than the final creation itself."
Archie knelt down and picked up the broken top half of the skull, holding it up to eye level as though he were to recite Shakespeare. Instead, he nodded his approval, and tossed the skull over his shoulder again.
It was another two hours before Zack was finally satisfied with his skeleton. Most bones in the human body weren't too complex, but the hands and feet proved to be a nightmare to work with. He had to reference people he knew several times, and was grateful that his ability to access the Akashic System helped fill in gaps in his knowledge. The system refused to bequeath him the actual pattern necessary for his vision, but that was semantic to his actual goal.
Once the arms and legs were finally complete, it was a simple matter to clone and flip them, then attach them to the main body.
"And voila, a skeleton," Zack chimed happily. He saved the pattern to his internal list, and spawned the model into space. It dropped stiffly into place, where it stood frozen in the middle of the room.
"I think you might have forgotten a step," Archie chuckled, as the T-posing skeleton manifested before him.
"No! It's just asserting dominance," Zack insisted. When Archie cocked an eyebrow at him. "Fiiiiiine. You're no fun."
"You did not bring me here for fun," Archie reminded him.
"You are right about missing steps, though. Right now this structure is just an object model. I haven't made it a monster yet. But there is a good reason for that, I promise. I want to make sure it meets all the qualifications for the theme of this room, so I need to give it special spells and modifiers."
Zack spawned three monsters in the room beside the skeleton. One had the appearance of a teddy bear with long boney claws jutting from its hands. Another was a half-rotten plush dragon. The final was a large stuffed tyrannosaurus rex with glowing yellow eyes.
"Ah, I think I understand your intentions," Archie noted. "Haunted manors require spirits of the dead, do they not? And what better way to acquire those spirits than with undead monsters."
"Yeah, exactly. I can't really go around killing people and trapping their souls for all eternity, so my next best option is to figure out how these three monsters got their undead tag and work from there," Zack explained. He mentally brought up the status of the first monster.
[Deady Bear]
[Level 7 Construct, Undead]
[A stuffed animal brought to life through necromancy. It will obey the whims of its necromancer or its commanding undead.]
[Weaknesses: Slashing, Light, Fire]
[Known Spells]
[Curse of Undeath]
[Passive, Curse, Affliction]
[This creature is undead. Spells that would heal it will damage it instead. Purging the curse of undeath will kill it.]
[Dread Howl: Level 3]
[Spell, Affliction]
[Enemy creatures within hearing range may become afflicted with a fear debuff. The higher the target's Wisdom attribute, the more likely they are to resist this effect.]
[Back to Life: Level 1]
[Passive, Trigger, Ressurection]
[Upon dying, this creature will begin the process of ressurecting itself. If left alone long enough, it will reform and return to full health. This effect can be interrupted by attacking the user again.]
[Cooldown: 1 hour]
[Wicked Strike: Level 2]
[Spell]
[The caster lunges toward a target, striking with weapons or claws. The power of this spell scales with the weapon's]
[Cannot be cast if the target is within five meters of the caster.]
Zack whistled as he deconstructed the deady bear and acquired the four spell nodes from it. Already he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to put those powers to use, but he still had two more monsters to check. Unsurprisingly, both the Tyrannosaurus Hex and the Dead Aevis had most of the same abilities. Instead of Wicked Strike, the dragon had a fire conjuration ability that Zack was sure he could put to good use. The dinosaur, on the other hand, had a much more impressive power in the form of Command Undead.
Unlike the other passive abilities, it changed the monster's relationship with its peers. It was almost like upgrading it to a boss monster, which would enable it to command the monsters ranked lower than it within the dungeon. If the dinosaur wasn't so out of place in the manor, Zack would be all too happy to add it. Right now, though, an army of stuffed animals didn't quite meet Zack's expectations.
He still had plans for the stuffies, though. They would have to wait til later.
With the spell nodes added to his arsenal, Zack was about to resume working when he received a new message from the system.
[Level up!]
[You are now level 13.]
Zack blinked curiously at the message before dismissing it. He didn't even want to look at his stats, knowing how low his integrity had fallen. Still, he was grateful for the boost in mana the level gave him, as he set about weaving unlife into his newest creation.
A few quick spell nodes gave the skeleton some levels, and materials gave the bones some realistic texture. Obviously the undeath status was paramount, since that was Zack's whole intention behind this area. He also applied the Wicked Strike power, just to give them some additional abilities. Clothing the monster proved even easier than creating it the first time, especially since he had the patterns from Archie's wardrobe. A few rotten details here and there, and a sabre strapped to the skeleton's hip, and it was finally finished.
"Say hello to my new monster, the Rotten Soldier!" Zack declared happily. He dismissed the stiff model, labeled it as a monster, and spawned it once more in the middle of the room.
The skeleton staggered in place as it was spawned, and started looking around curiously. There was an eerie orange glow in its eye sockets—wisps that Zack assigned in place of its eyes. When its gaze fell on Archie, it reached for its weapon, preparing to do battle.
"Don't attack Archie," Zack ordered it, and the skeleton immediately relaxed.
The rotten soldier paused, then rose back to full height. It looked around the room again, before settling into one of the arm chairs. Zack spawned a second in the room, which happily joined the first. The table between them was already prepared with a spawner that would conjure rotten biscuits, and a tray appeared on the table ready to be filled.
"You two can go ahead and sample the wine whenever you like," Zack explained to them. "Oh, also, you need to guard this key."
At the mention of a key, Zack spawned a yellow object and dropped it onto the table between them. It was a rusty old key, keeping on theme with the manor, but it was painted a bright yellow in colour.
"Is there a reason for that?" Archie asked, as one of the skeletons rose to select a wine.
Zack didn't immediately answer him as he worked to set up the room's spawner. For safety, he hid it in a light fixture hanging from the ceiling. Hopefully no adventurers would be willing to disable their only light source. "Well, most of my rooms so far have been straight forward combat scenarios. You walk in, you wade through armies of monsters, and then you reach a boss."
"I'm familiar with the structure, I am one such boss monster after all."
"Right. Well, the thing is, combat isn't the only way to forge a deeper connection with the Akashic System. I had the idea a while back when I saw a man with several passive abilities related to learning and applying skills. I wanted to create a scenario that would help inspire that sort of connection."
Archie scratched his chin in thought as the two skeletons started pouring glasses of wine. When they drank the foul fluid, it stained their clothing but otherwise didn't make a mess. "So this level of the dungeon will have puzzles?"
"Sort of. It's not so much a puzzle as it is rewarding exploration," Zack explained. He ushered Archie out of the sitting room and back into the corridor, spawning a few slimes as he went. These slime variants were black as pitch, and left a foul smelling residue behind on the carpet. "If people want to fight monsters until they reach a boss, they'll have that option. In fact, I even have a boss in mind for them to fight. But it isn't the only way to progress through the manor."
Archie lingered as Zack quickly erected new spawners to take care of the putrid, rotten-egg stinking monsters, pinching his nose in disgust. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing."
"To encourage them to come back, of course!" Zack explained in delight. "Look, fighting the same monsters over and over again, that can get boring. But a dungeon room with non-linear progression, where that one hour time limit really matters? That is going to get people coming back for more."
Archie blinked in thought as they stopped outside another room. Like the sitting room, it was small and simple. A bear skin rug was draped across the floor, with stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall. A single skeleton sat in an arm chair, though it was naked and didn't have a sword.
"This room is interesting," Archie shuddered, as he caught the eye of a familiar, blue-furred horned rabbit hanging above the fireplace.
"Do you like it? This is for the first boss."
"First?"
"Yup," Zack mentally grinned, as he dropped a red key onto the table beside the skeleton's chair. "I don't have enough spare flags to actually assign it a flag, but that doesn't mean I can't make it more interesting."
Archie gave Zack a sceptical look, but shrugged in acceptance. "I'm sure it will be quite magical."
"Oh, you have no idea."