Violet Danderpuff, the dungeon fairy, was enjoying his vacation, for the most part. The dungeon core enjoyed his flute music and didn’t put any demands on his time, so he had spent weeks de-stressing in every way he could. He mostly played the flute, but he also caught up on all the book club books he had missed since graduation. Music, good books, and a little drinking. A perfect fairy vacation. Violet was getting bored.
He closed his latest book and set it on a little side table he had conjured. He rose from the reclined lawn chair and gave a big stretch. He adjusted his clothes, hair, and wings, then moved to stand politely in front of the dungeon core. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Good morning, Terse Elements.” Words like ‘morning’ and ‘night’ were entirely arbitrary inside a dungeon, but Violet felt like he was having a morning. “I’ve been thinking, recently, that I might be of more benefit to you if I set up a visual scanner so I could look around and see what’s going on out on your floors.” Violet gestured to the green walls of vines that surrounded the dungeon core. “I’m sure you’ve got things under control, you are rather advanced for age, after all, but there are a number of tricks and tools that many dungeons never find one their own. This is the main reason we dungeon fairies exist, by the way, to make sure dungeon cores can make the most of every opportunity.”
The fairy paused and watched the dungeon core. It seemed to flicker only a small amount. Perhaps it is hesitant? Violet struggled to extrapolate the dungeon’s mood from the flickering glow. “D-Don’t worry!” He said, nervously. “I won’t let the visual scanner distract me from playing the flute, I know how much you enjoy my music. It’s just something I could use every so often just to do a small checkup, you know?” Violet wasn’t sure if the flickering was a positive or negative response. He clenched his fists behind his back for a few seconds, unsure what to do. The fairy berated himself as he had a realization. It probably doesn’t know what a ‘visual scanner’ is, ya damn fairy. Just make one and show it off.
“Here, I’ll just whip one up really quick so you can have a better idea what I’m talking about.” Violet half turned from the core and worked his mana for a few seconds. The mana twisted around itself before sliding apart into a smooth rectangle. An image of the main worldlet appeared in the air. Violet presented the image to the dungeon core. “This is a visual scanner. It allows me to see out into your floors without anyone out there being able to detect it. See, I can move the vantage point around…” The fairy flexed his will and caused the image to pan around the main worldlet. Then he had it float over above the exit and widened the viewing angle so he could get a good view of the whole thing. “And I can adjust various things like the viewing angle, the side of the image, the spectrum being captured, and so on. What do you think?” He turned and smiled at the dungeon core, hoping for a positive response after the demonstration.
Although Violet said the visual scanner could not be detected, one entity in the dungeon operated on different rules. The void bubble had fought to escape the dungeon vine’s grip but had gradually shrunk to the size of a grain of sand. It’s power was nearly spent but it saw a potential escape route through the magic of the visual scanner. It struck out and tried to seize it’s freedom. Behind the dungeon fairy, the visual scanner fuzzed and switched to a scene of impossible iridescence and sharp, dangerous looking shapes.
The dungeon instincts in the dungeon core mind detected the attempt by the void bubble to infect an existing spell, and the mushroom network delivered some of the details to the plant instincts. The mana in the gall around the void bubble tightened, nearly crushing the bubble out of existence. The void bubble’s connection to the visual scanner broke, and it shrank to the size of a speck of dust.
In front of the dungeon fairy, the dungeon core flashed brightly. Violet took that as an enthusiastic positive response, similar to when it had agreed to hear flute music. The fairy clapped his hands. “Excellent! I’m excited to take a tour of the dungeon and see what you’ve built.” He summoned his lawn chair directly to him and sat to view the scanner in comfort.
Violet surveyed the creatures in the main worldlet. He had a wonderful time watching vine fruit spawn creatures and watching those creatures compete for resources. On a whim, he followed an earth aligned beetle for half an hour until it was eaten by an acid aligned snake.
“A very interesting little ecosystem you’ve built here.” He told the dungeon core. “I love how natural you’ve made everything.”
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Violet was surprised by the presence of natural ravens inside the dungeon. Allowing natural creatures to live in a dungeon was often quite dangerous—they would slowly become as strong as dungeon-spawned creatures but would not be subject to dungeon core commands. Violet decided to keep silent on the matter for now and just focus on the positives. He moved his scanner into the sauna worldlet to continue his tour. He found the void artifact immediately.
“Ah, oops.” He grimaced. “A void artifact. I apologize again, I should have been awake and able to assist you with this. It looks like you have handled it just fine, though.” He cleared his throat and tried to smile. “It’s funny, I had thought that I smelled some void influence somewhere around here. This artifact must have an unusual amount of void residue.”
In the underwater worldlet, Violet expressed ample admiration for the unique environment and the ‘Boss’ bat with the glowing white eyes. “Unusual to have a boss this early! I think adventurers will have quite some difficulty with an underwater fight against an agile swimmer. Very tricky!” Violet chuckled as he imagined how such a fight might go.
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The dungeon fairy toured the other worldlets but failed to notice the underworld worldlet, since it’s entrance was underground and the tunnel to it had collapsed. He played his flute a bit as he enjoyed the interesting sights for a few hours. When he was done watching the scanner, he turned back to the dungeon core.
“That was excellent. Thank you so much for allowing be to view it more directly. It’s a truly impressive set of worldlets you’ve built.” Violet nodded politely in respect to the dungeon core. “I noted a couple of things that I think we should discuss.” He summoned a notepad and pen to jot down some notes. “The first item is one of dungeon safety. There are some natural creatures present in the dungeon. The ravens probably don’t pose any threat right now, but over time, they will absorb ambient mana and grow stronger. They might undergo a mutation or develop spells that could turn them into serious threats. You need to have a plan for dealing with the natural creatures—claim them or kill them are the most reliable choices.” The fairy paused for a second to see if the dungeon core would respond. It glowed in a calm, undisturbed manner. Violet put his concerns on the back burner and moved to the next item.
“The second item is about adventurer satisfaction. That might sound odd, since we don’t work for the adventurers, but adventurers are going to be your most effective source of experience and levels.” Violet took a sip of a fruity drink. “The thing we are missing in your current set up is treasure. Adventurers love treasure. If there is treasure in a dungeon, adventurers will seek it out and take larger risks. There was a lecture about this that I really enjoyed in fairy school.” Violet proceeded to recite most of a lecture about risk and reward, luck and consequences. He described mechanisms of balance and strategies for handling groups of adventurers. The dungeon core glowed steadily throughout the lecture.
“Now, that was a bit more dungeon theory than I meant to go over, sorry.” Violet rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “But I can offer a specific application right now. I noticed that your fruit often spawn into samples of materials you have unlocked—flint, stone, ice, and so on. This is an intriguing approach and I’m sure people appreciate it, but it’s not the same as real treasure. You do, however, have an unlocked treasure that would be perfect to mix in with these samples—the amber piece. Here’s how we can add it…” The dungeon fairy used an obscure mechanism to share his view of dungeon System controls with the dungeon core. He navigated to the spawn controls and the treasure controls and showed the core how to connect the amber treasure to the group of spawnable things. “And that does it. Now people will get a taste of the treasure in the material samples on the ground. What do you think?” Violet looked expectantly at the dungeon core.
Across the dungeon, a wave of fruit fell to the floor and opened to reveal rich honey, colored nuggets. The dungeon core glowed brightly to supply the mana to spawn so much treasure at once. After the initial wave, amber began to spawn in equal ratio with everything else. The dungeon core settled back to glowing steadily, slightly brighter than before.
Violet beamed. “I’m so glad you like the result. Now, I have just two other locations that I think need proper treasure right away.” The fairy continued to talk and demonstrate how the dungeon System treasure controls worked. He placed a pile of amber at the bottom of the oasis pond and placed the chest of gold at the far end of the underwater worldlet. The boss bat swam over and perched on the chest of gold. It squeaked in challenge to any who dared try and steal from it. The other bats circled excitedly and let off jets of water in all directions.
Feeling very satisfied, Violet pulled out his flute and played it while watching the visual scanner. He watched as a group of harvesters entered the main worldlet and began capturing creatures. He didn’t mind that the people were taking millipedes and beetles, but he felt rather uncomfortable when the people started catching the butterflies. The fairy twitched his own, very similar wings in sympathy.