When Vee opened the door to his office, he expected to see Alforde playing with the miniature version of Crestheart the way he usually did during their planning sessions. Vee’s [Right Hand Man] was a huge fan of directing the tiny ectoplasmic figurine to the champion’s arena and then playing out a battle scene with the model representing himself that would put any of the fights in the [Martial Arts Landscaping Master] novels to shame. Truth be told, Vee was getting a little tired of having to rebuild the arena model so often after Alforde destroyed it with “a hammer blow unlike anything ever seen before!”
However, instead of shattering walls and turning the floor into ectoplasm-gravel, the armorsoul was instead crouching in the corner of the room with his gauntlets in front of his helmet and a look of intense focus.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Alforde muttered as his cape of snow and ice whipped back and forth behind him. “[Chilling Tempest]! [Chilling TEMPEST]! [Chill-ing Temp-est]!”
The [Ghost Maestro] watched as a tiny flurry appeared above his friend’s fingers for a split second before vanishing into nothing. Alforde growled and squeezed his gauntlets into fists before trying again. This time, the flurry was joined by a small rotating snowflake and lasted a bit longer, but didn’t stick around either.
“What are you doing?” Vee asked, and Alforde’s helmet spun almost entirely around. He must have been so focused that he hadn’t heard Vee come into the room or sensed them through their bond.
“I’m trying to summon a smaller version of my Domain,” Alforde said. “Holly suggested it as a way for me to improve my control and be able to use the skill more consistently.”
Vee raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Holly?”
Alforde got up and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I asked her to help me level up some before the circuit starts. Since she knows a lot about snow and ice and stuff, I figured she’d be the best person to help me improve my skills.”
“I see. And how’s that going?”
“It’s great!” Alforde beamed. “She can do all kinds of amazing things with her magic, and after our fights today I leveled up in [Hammer Afficionado], [Dungeon Champion], and [Glaciernaut]! Isn’t that great?”
Reginald let out a low whistle. “That’s pretty impressive.”
“I know, right? Now, I don’t think I’ll keep leveling up that quick as we train more, since I’ll get used to her tricks as we go on, but I’m hoping to get a few more levels. I doubt I’ll be able to reach level 30 in [Hammer Afficionado] and turn it into [Hammer Specialist] before things kick off, but I’m going to do my best!”
Vee smiled at his friend’s enthusiasm, and was also secretly relieved at the fact that Alforde’s goals weren’t tinged with that hint of manic desperation that he’d had before. It seemed that the armorsoul had found a healthier way to stay focused while training.
He’d keep an eye on his friend though, to make sure he wasn’t slipping back into bad habits.
“Well, if you want to keep practicing your Domain, that’s fine with me,” Vee said. “But Reginald and I are going to keep working on the new dungeon design. We’d love to have your help!”
Alforde pondered his corner for a moment, then shrugged his pauldrons. “I’ve probably done enough practice for today. Holly said that trying to strain beyond my limits could damage my wells.”
“But you’re not a [Witch],” Reginald said. “You don’t have wells to damage… or limits to strain against.”
Alforde shrugged again. “It’s the underlying idea that counts, I think. There’s a time and a place to stop for the day, you know? Anyways, if you’re going to test your [Dungeon Layouts], Vee, can I play the adventurers?”
Vee shut his eyes and smiled.
“Sure, bud. Just try not to destroy the arena again, okay? I don’t feel like remaking it right now.”
----------------------------------------
Though Vee hadn’t wanted to remodel the entire dungeon again for the circuit, his discussions with Reginald and Alforde had convinced him it was necessary. The current version of Crestheart was fine for their normal clientele, but they needed to go big for this circuit. They’d have way more eyes on them than they were used to, and making a good impression was going to be key for attracting new challengers long term.
With that said, he was starting to wonder if redesigning Crestheart from top-to-bottom every few months was going to become the third certainty in his life.
Hopefully not.
He wished he had more floors to work with, as some of his most interesting ideas required five or six to properly execute, but alas, they were nowhere close to having enough shards of chaos to expand the dungeon further. As such, they had to come up with creative ways to use their space, which was where [Dungeon Loadouts] came into play.
The skill felt like a stronger version of [Walking Walls], as it allowed him to reshape the dungeon rapidly by storing different versions of room layouts that could be swapped with ease. The changes could be significant too, including even trap placements and minion allocations, and they could be used more than once in a single run. Unfortunately, they couldn’t “reset” progress to create the illusion of a longer dungeon than actually existed and he could only store three different layouts, but Vee was confident they’d be enough to give him a decent chance of victory on every run.
Well, most runs anyways.
Alforde picked up the tiny ectoplasmic figurine that represented an adventurer – which was really just a cube and sphere of ectoplasm smashed together – and slammed it into the first room.
“Let’s say that I’m a….[Sacred Brawler],” Alforde declared. “I fight with {Gloves}…no, wait, I fight with {Black Fire Disruption Gloves}, and I’m level 26. Apologies, but my Burning Spirit and Pure Heart won’t be conquered by this dungeon! Hi-yah!”
Reginald sighed as Alforde slammed his figure into a pyramid that represented a pack of three skeleton knights and a handful of ghosts, sending the latter piece of ectoplasm flying. “You really don’t need to make up a character each time, you know. We can simulate in the abstract too.”
“But it’s more fun that way! And it helps Vee think about the types of things he’ll need to adjust for different kinds of adventurers!”
That was true. While Vee was getting much better at seeing what motivated various adventurers and figuring out what type of people they were, he still had a long way to go when it came to tailoring the experience to counter them properly. He suspected that inability would only be worse with adventurers he’d never seen before, especially if they were higher levels than he was used to dealing with. Having some semblance of a gameplan for different types would probably help quite a bit. He decided to play along.
“You’ll have a tougher time reaching the ancient treasure in the depths of this abandoned laboratory than that, adventurer!”
Alforde chuckled as he moved his character into the second room, where he was forced to contend with a bevy of floor and ceiling traps.
Following Reginald’s advice, Vee had decided to use the first half of the first floor to really dial in the dungeon’s hazards, testing adventures with as many different threats as they could muster so that they could change the later floors to exploit any weaknesses they found.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Following that first trap room was a long hallway filled with fake doors and every aura Vee could cram into it. Of course, Alforde insisted that his adventurer couldn’t be held back or affected by “such paltry distractions” and tapped his piece into the first floor arena, where a stack of ectoplasm spheres representing Mister Chills was waiting.
Part of Vee felt bad for having the big ghost revealed and battled so early in this iteration of the dungeon, but it was part of the new story and he had bigger things planned for the lower floors anyways. In addition to his new location, Mister Chills was going to be getting a slight makeover too so that he looked more like a [Mad Alchemist]’s half-finished guardian construct instead of a big snowman. He just had to finish making the thickened plates of ectoplasm that would protect the ghost from more attacks.
The arena was getting an upgrade too, with the teleporters being added so that Vee could send in additional minions – probably the skeleton lancers, though he hadn’t yet ruled out ordering some statue sentries – if the challenger seemed to be having too easy of a time against the miniboss alone. Beyond that, Vee was adding some permanent pillars that could be moved to shrink or expand the combat area and more tracks so that Mister Chills didn’t have such predictable movement patterns. He could have asked Rortenferry about improving the ghost’s legs so that it didn’t need the tracks at all, but his old [Professor] was busy with his experiments and other things that would benefit Vee, so the [Dungeon Master] hadn’t pushed the issue.
Alforde let his adventurer fall to Mister Chills, which was a reasonable outcome given that most of the challengers who reached the ghost in the current iteration of Crestheart failed to defeat him. However, the armorsoul was undeterred by his first attempt’s failure; he took his figure back to the entrance – probably to go off and have a convenient and suspiciously effective training montage – and announced that he was now a [Combat Archaeologist].
This time, instead of smashing his way through the first couple rooms, Alforde claimed his adventurer created a series of implausible counter-traps with his whip and made it down to the second floor without issues.
“Which loadout are you going to use?” Reginald asked.
Vee rubbed his chin as he thought. He’d been planning to use what he called the “Gauntlet” mode for Alforde’s first character, which would have just peppered the [Sacred Brawler] with monsters until he ran him out of stamina. However, the [Combat Archaeologist] was a craftier foe. For adventurers like this, Vee felt that his best course of action was to use the “Maze” layout.
This was a long, labyrinthian arrangement of small rooms with tight walls that would allow his elementals and ghosts hands to harry an adventurer’s every step. He didn’t have space for big packs of monsters, but that was fine. He didn’t need them here. After all, this was where he was planning to use Nock, if the weaponsoul agreed to his terms and started helping out. The bow would summon his avatar and “hunt” the adventurer through this version of the floor, attacking from the shadows at every turn. Based on the fact that he’d managed to go toe to toe with Luna for a while, the weaponsoul was probably more than capable of handling a good number of the adventurers who challenged Crestheart.
Vee just had to figure out the bindings and contracts that would prevent Nock from rampaging or going rogue.
Thankfully that was one of the things Rortenferry was working on.
“I turn around as your miniboss appears—” Alforde seemed to spit the word, his voice dripping with derision, “and activate [Discover Bones] to summon a construct that protects me from his attack. Then while its distracted, I flee down to the third floor and laugh at your puny attempts to stop me.”
Vee scowled at having his threat basically ignored, but he couldn’t deny that was how runs went from time to time. There were some adventurers who chose to go around nearly every obstacle they faced instead of through them, and he had to have plans for them too.
The third floor was still a work in progress though, so Vee turned to Reginald and said, “What do you think? In a case like this one, should we start them with the moving platforms room?”
His [Majordomo]’s felty mouth curled into a tight frown as Reginald considered the options. “Maybe. I’m not sure that’s the best starting room though.”
While the moving platforms room – which contained a deep pit filled with ice slimes and all sorts of nasty ice traps like [Icicle Spear] and [Frost Saw] – was good, there were other rooms they could start with too. According to the new story of Crestheart, the third floor was a lab of sorts, filled with half-finished experiments that had been broken or damaged by the unceasing march of time. Beyond that, there were going to be lots of small bonus rooms that would – hopefully – be filled with treasures ripe for the taking. Naturally, such a bounty wouldn’t be free. Vee’d ordered a pack of bone hounds from the union to fill the treasure rooms, and he trusted that their size and strength as tier three minions would be sufficient to protect these extra goodies.
Especially once he augmented them with some of his ghost slimes and skeleton mages.
However, shipping from the union was apparently still something of a crapshoot, so Vee wasn’t certain they’d arrive in time for the circuit’s start.
Reginald perked up.
“If they come through the Maze, I think we should start them in the lake on this floor, boss. Then have the wheel right afterwards like we discussed the other day.”
The Lake was a big, round room, filled with water chilled by ice traps and floating chunks of ectoplasm that served as platforms and followed the currents. He’d cover them with slimes and elementals of course, but the lake wasn’t really designed to end runs on its own. Instead, the intent was to splash adventurers and get them soaked so that they’d be cold and sluggish when they made it to the big spinning wheel in the next room. Of course, Vee still needed to tweak that hazard too. It was a problem for another time.
Alforde’s figure leapt from platform to platform, only falling into the water once. Vee made a mental note to explore the possibility of making like, ghost fish or something to attack those unlucky enough to lose their balance too.
It was fine if the lake got a bit more dangerous.
His mind racing and filled with possibilities, Vee played along with his friend until “the adventurer” reached the champion’s arena, and then Alforde looked up expectantly and held out his gauntlet.
“I will, of course, require my own figure.”
Rolling his eyes, Vee picked up the small prototype Alforde he’d gotten from Brice and handed it over. Alforde immediately went to work.
“You have done well to discover my master’s secret sanctum, adventurer,” he said in an exaggeratedly deep voice as he waggled his figure around. “But you shall not obtain his final treasure!”
His voice changed, becoming nasally and high-pitched. “Of course I will, fool!”
“I will not allow it! Prepare yourself!”
From experience, Vee knew that the ensuing “battle” would take at least five minutes as “Alforde” and the “Adventurer” both revealed new skills and escalating secret techniques in their attempt to defeat one another, so he activated [Excellent Spreadsheet] and started crunching numbers.
He flipped through Cecil’s sheets, frowning at the estimated costs per run that he’d modeled and accounted for. This version of Crestheart was using a lot more minions than previous iterations, and included some seriously expensive options like the bone hounds – ten gold fleurs per pack – and the possible statue sentries. There were plenty of little bonus treasures planned too, which ranged from ten to thirty silvers apiece, according to Vee’s [Budgeting]-enhanced instincts.
As such, Vee was worried that runs would alternate between being mildly profitable and huge losses, depending on the type of adventurers and how successful they were. He didn’t like operating on such a razor’s edge, but still felt like this was the right thing to do.
Looking out the window, Vee saw Do bow once again to Thien and head toward the tower. They must have finished their planning.
Vee closed his eyes and silently prayed. I hope I’m not biting off more than I can chew.
Main Character Sheets:
Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 29
Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 21
Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5
Might: 13
Wit: 33
Faith: 21
Adventurousness: 7
Ambition: 14
Plotting: 20
Charisma: 15
Devious Mind: 23
Leadership: 17
Guts: 14
Intimidating Presence: 10
Citizenship: 20
Public Relations: 7
Determination: 2
Persuasiveness: 3
<3***Infatuation***<3
Alforde Armorsoul:
Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 25 (+1)
Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 14
Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 15 (+1)
Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 6 (+1)
Might: 43 (+2)
Wit: 13 (+1)
Faith: 28
Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9
Endurance: 21
Intimidating Presence: 12
Heart of a Champion: 9
Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8
Vigilance: 6
Vanity: 1
Reginald :
Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???
--~%@(%$@ &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#$@!)~--, #$v@& ????
Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 39
Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 16
Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 8
Might: 1
Wit: 33
Faith: 14
Ambition: 27
Greed: 22
Deceptiveness: 27
Manipulativeness: 37
$#&*!@!!: !!!
Loyalty: 47
Patience: 9
[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]
Hop@#!! @#$@!@#
@#$@%%^
#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#
Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7