The world was a weird place. It had always been odd, with unexplained phenomena up to wazoo, but with most of those, people with the necessary knowledge just hadn’t bothered to investigate. There was an explanation, it just hadn’t been found. Unexplained, not unexplainable.
Unfortunately, Thomas was pretty sure he’d figured out what was wrong with him, though.
It was a beautiful theory, one that squared with everything he’d learned from Elias and what he’d overheard from everyone else.
He just didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
His transformation had cost him more than just his ability to walk around on two legs. Obviously, this be helpful to funtion as a Dungeon that fed on the deaths of humans, which was a good thing if viewed from an entirely neutral, rational, and objective viewpoint, but since when was a human, any human, anywhere close to that?
No, he didn’t like this at all, and that was the understatement of the century. At this point, he felt like he was crawling out of his now-metaphorical skin, after all, he didn’t have skin anymore. The loss of his body he’d at least begun to compensate for by creating interesting creatures to inhabit, and amazing Avatars to play around with. Jan had freaking superpowers, for fuck’s sake!
And eventually, he’d be able to create a human avatar. In theory. In practice, Thomas was planning on creating something well beyond that, a form whose Rank matched that of his car, holding several complementary powers that would allow it to match even the likes of the Inspector, should she reach that Rank as well.
But his mind … that was something he could not abide being messed with, something he could neither fix nor compensate for. And how would he know if he’d found the full extent of the changes?
If things had been changed while also warping the framework of his mind to the point where the changes had been normalized? If his memories had been changed?
Imagine, say, a ruler were shrunken. Not by enough to outright see the change with the change with the naked eye, but still to the point where any measurement made with it would no longer be correct. And you did not have another ruler, yardstick, or other tool for measuring around, nor anything whose size you knew off the top of your head to compare the ruler to. How would you be able to tell that the ruler was the wrong size?
And that was exactly the issue he had now. Any conclusions he reached based on information that was suspect was therefore also suspect. Only that tiny part of his being related to empathy for people he didn’t really have a relation to was obviously affected, yet a particularly paranoid part of his mind insisted that everything about him could have been changed.
All around him, the Dungeon became more and more chaotic as though the various creatures within could sense his irritation. Then again, animals could supposedly predict natural disasters, and what was a pissed-off Dugeon but a natural disaster of epic proportions?
… this was the dozenth time he’d gone through this chain of ideas, every single time winding up in the exact same place.
Part of my mind was changed.
Everything else might have been changed.
And I hate everything about that.
On to trying to decipher the truth for the thirteenth time …
“What’s wrong?” Elias finally took notice. It had both taken him a long time and no time at all to realize that there was an issue. He’d slept like a log through much of Thomas’ turmoil, but once he’d woken up, he’d picked up on the fact that there was a problem in moments.
Thomas told him everything in a flood of conversation that he sincerely hoped Elias would still be able to understand.
“And?” Elias asked, sounding puzzled.
“AND!” Thomas snapped back, not quite understanding how dense the fairy was being.
“And what do you expect me to do about it?” Elias said. “Your body was transformed, and your mind was affected too. Just a little. Did you really care about people you didn’t know all that much before? Or are you trying to tell me that you cared about every single person you ever even laid eyes on?”
Elias’ “pillow” threw him off in an instant as Thomas made his displeasure at the statement known.
“Look, I’m serious. How much really changed for you? You used to care about strangers in the abstract, and now you don’t care at all.”
Thomas didn’t respond verbally, and just mentally communicated the feeling of “intensely furious glare” towards the fairy.
“Ah,” Elias sighed. “I see.”
“Oh, do you now?” Thomas scoffed.
“You’re angry at the intrusion,” Elias sighed. “You don’t feel secure in your own mind anymore.”
Thomas just stayed silent.
“You know, you’re a Dungeon. You’re so different than any other being out there that controlling you is going to be literally impossible. That’ll never happen again.”
Thomas believed that Elias believed he was telling the truth. And yet …
“You’re telling me that if the universe decides to break again, that I’ll be safe?” Thomas asked sarcastically, unsure whether or not he managed to convey every ounce of disdain and disbelief he felt.
Elias sighed and finally took to the air properly until he was hovering right in front of Thomas’ crystal, the closest thing to a face-to-face conversation he could achieve.
“That was a once in the history of existence catastrophe. Something happened. Something bad. But if it ever reoccurs, it’ll be in literally billions of years. This is the result of things happening beyond what even S-Rankers can influence. You might as well worry about if Dretolara will fall at some point and if the Creatures of the Void could even get here from that breach. The only thing that can change you is something you can’t possibly affect, so why would you worry?”
“Creatures of the Void?” Thomas asked, choosing to focus on that over Elias’ dismissive attitude.
“Weird monster things that we fought back home. Dangerous, but good for advancement. They can’t really get far from where they enter reality, so we’ll never see him here,” the fairy scratched his chin. “What are some of the things you used to know were apocalyptically dangerous, but didn’t worry about because you couldn’t change it?”
“Nuclear armageddon caused by a computer glitch, ancient viruses from permafrost, pulsars, true vacuum, underground supervolcanoes, AI takeover … and I think half of those are just theories,” Thomas rattled off, before he caught himself and sent another “glare” at the fairy.
“Are you seriously telling me I should just stop worrying?”
“I’d have put it differently, but yeah,” the fairy shrugged.
“And how, pray tell, would you have put it?” Thomas asked in a dangerously low voice.
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“Do something else, anything else, stop spinning out and distract yourself. It won’t make the problem go away, but you really can’t do anything to change the stuff you’re worrying about. Take your mind off things, come to grips with the things that refuse to be forgotten, and then shove them to the back of your core.”
Another “glare”.
“You literally can’t do anything except drive yourself crazy,” Elias reminded him.
Ah yes, absolute rationality. Won-der-ful.
Elias was right, but quite frankly, supremely unhelpful.
Thomas might have decided against using the skunk he’d found in the archives out of general human decency, but right now, he felt like simply telling Elias to get out and leave him alone for a while was too mild a method …
***
Thomas was still in a foul mood several hours later, but decided to try and follow Elias’ advice. In theory, it might not be the best idea to build a Dungeon while feeling murderous, at least not for the delvers, but in practice, he did need to take his mind off things.
Up first was, of course, the issue of his unranked critters. He needed to bring them up to F-Rank at the very least but he’d utterly annihilated the local beast populations to create Jan. And using delvers would result in at least two or even three more “easy” wins for them, as leveling creatures just by having them fight humans without managing to kill any wasn’t particularly profitable.
And asking people to power them up but not go after the vial of supremely valuable potion just felt … unworkable. Utterly unworkable. He’d have to force them, somehow. In a way that did not involve kidnapping, or anything else that would bring down the wrath of the government and humanity in general on his head.
Thomas took control of a nearby spider monkey just so he could have a physical body to facepalm with.
Decision made, he began to reshuffle the entire Dungeon concept, starting with the entrance hall. The floor sunk down and water began to flood the room, only leaving a narrow winding path for the delvers to take.
This would be his Evolution Chamber. An easy room that people would have to fight through, no matter what, one he could fill with whatever the hell he wanted, or rather, the specific critters he needed to get to a usable rank.
Right now, that meant it was filled with dwarf crocodiles, pajama catsharks, and velociraptors. The last creature type wasn’t necessary, strictly speaking, but he wanted to upgrade them.
He already had two upgraded versions, the draconic F-Rank version and one that was E-Rank but entirely useless for combat since its two powers were Dungeon Avatar and Inoffensive Existence, the latter of which made them look cute and fluffy while also weakening their offensive potential.
The “fluffy raptors” were there because he thought they were cute and because they were going to be used as in-Dungeon avatars when Jan was out.
And the Dragon-raptors were just plain awesome.
But Thomas wanted some raptors that actually looked like raptors, so he’d create yet another version of that pattern.
So, that was the entrance hall done.
On a whim, he also decided to alter the room to the right of the entrance, which currently still held the museum’s biggest store. He removed all the knick-knacks, added some soil and grass, and filled it with simple, basic, unranked critters for people to cut their teeth on. A few wolverines, some Oryx antelopes, and a regular hippo as a mini-boss.
Slap on a sign above the door that read “THE CRADLE (no loot, just XP)”.
Five minutes of work created a slapdash mess, but it was only for the noobiest of noobs. Something to attract people just starting out, ensuring that most of the supernaturals in England would become familiar with his Dungeon if they had any kind of combat Class.
The rest of the “main” Dungeon got quite a bit more care. In fact, it was completely restructured.
First, the entirety of the dinosaur section and the Mammal Gallery were merged into a new massive room, with several pillars placed inside to limit the range of both gun-users and the two camarasauruses he had in there. He also added two of the draconic rexes, with one big dino in each corner of the room, from where they’d emerge if people got too close.
Then, Thomas filled out the rest of the remade dino section with scolosauruses and dragon raptors. His small dinosaurs, in other words, with him preparing to add more as he got them.
Decorating the room was really fun. Giant ferns, towering horsetails, crystal clear ponds, oh, it was something straight out of Walking with Dinosaurs.
And to add the finishing touches, he decorated the short corridor that led from the entrance hall to the dinosaur room with pre-dinosaur fossils and a few informative plaques about the Earth’s early history.
Secondly, Thomas remodeled Mammal Hall into Cheshire’s boss room. It was much of the same, with perfectly smooth floors and sacks of sand that would only be provided to those who weren’t a threat to him.
He did make one big change. Covering smooth marble with water made it slippery as fuck hell, sure, but what would make it even slicker, didn’t evaporate nearly as quickly, and could be found in the kitchen’s deep fryer?
Admittedly, that particular batch of frying oil did smell a little like old french fries, so he used one of the unopened bottles from the storage room, but all in all … Thomas laughed an evil laugh as he imagined the face of the first person who tried to keep their balance on that shit.
And, of course, he added another set of information plaques and interesting pictures in the connecting corridor.
From there, Thomas turned the first underground room into a chamber of prehistoric mammals, namely, giant sloths and sabertooth tigers, with the staircase holding even more information.
The next chamber held his modern critters, starting out mountainous with wolverines and small hyraxes around every corner. Then, it transformed into a jungle with tigers on the ground and jaguars in the canopy, until it eventually transitioned into a swampy area that held hippos. He’d eventually probably add crocodiles too.
And then, finally, he added Dexter’s boss room, giving the giant sloth all the space he could possibly need. Though his current plan was to, ever so often, swap him and Cheshire so that both could grow.
At the next staircase after that, he put a “do not enter” sign, as that was where his personal area began, anyone who tried would be confronted by a “private, no mercy beyond this point” sign, and if they ignored that as well, the gloves would absolutely come off.
Not only was there a connection to the water in the panacea section that he could open at will, unleashing a crushing force of water whenever he needed to, but he also had a bunch more progressively nastier tricks. False ceilings full of snakes that he could dump on an unsuspecting enemy, quicksand, actual tatzelwyrms in a room full of sharp edges, and a ton of his strongest creatures.
He was still limited by his rules as a Dungeon, namely, not being able to create “absolute” barriers, but everything else was fair game, until he was satisfied.
That then left his final area, his problem child. The “Panacea Run”.
The snake area was fine, and the ocean was going to soon gain appropriately-ranked critters.
As for the boss room, the Inspector clearing it with a single attack had stung, but honestly, Thomas was willing to let her have that. If someone got that far without “wasting” their ultimate attack, he’d let them use it.
But that left the swamp section. He still kinda liked the concept, but the execution … whoof. Not good.
First, he made connections between every pool. Aboveground connections that would not allow water to be exchanged, but let crocodiles travel to reinforce the other pools.
And then he added more hippos, along with deciding to develop yet another crocodile variant which also held the tatzelwyrm’s legacy, though he’d make sure that it was clearly identifiable for the delvers.
That particular area wouldn’t be too tough for a while yet, but it would be improving.
Besides, he’d pained a sign above the entrance to the Panacea Run that read “Currently unavailable, loot generation in process”. That should buy him enough time to upgrade his creatures.
Then there was the rope that had negated his nastiest preparation, the one-way drop. The counter to it was obvious. All he had to do was create a few “blades” against the floor people would jump off of. Any rope that would be used to pull someone up would rest against that rock, and be pressed against the blade once someone’s weight rested on it. Simple.
And yet, the more he thought about it, the less mad he was about what had happened, and would likely continue to happen.
Yes, they’d beaten him, but they’d done so fair and square. He’d been so enamored with the tricky design that he’d forgotten about the eternal joke about how a rope was the most important piece of gear one could ever bring onto an adventure.
Not to mention that the rope wasn’t so much a hard counter as it was a bargain. Entirely by accident, he’d set things up so that there was nowhere up there to anchor a rope to. The only way to tie it up required someone to stay up there and anchor the rope with their body weight and maybe by digging their heels in within the dirt in the jungle section.
One person, no matter how strong, would never be enough. They’d simply be too light to pull someone up. The dirt wasn’t particularly tough and therefore wouldn’t hold up particularly well, and as for the bare stone section, it wasn’t as bad as Cheshire’s boss room, but it was still smooth marble. Not much traction to be had unless you were a gecko or something.
And if there was someone with a gecko power, they would be able to walk up the wall anyway. At that point, Thomas would be willing to chalk it up to bad luck on his part and let it go unless it was abused.
Ultimately, if there was a group willing to split up to make sure that they didn’t have to make it to the end to be able to escape, that was their choice to make, their chance to take.
So he left things as it was, trusting that his soon-to-be-upgraded creatures would be enough. And now that he’d done that, he finally felt ready to send out Jan to search for a good spot to put his first sub-core.