On the Manifestation

Manifestation day. On the twentieth of February the first manifestations occured. In the course of an hour from 2:37 GMT a large number of people, places and animals manifested. After this period manifestations dropped to what is now considered to be the "base" rate of manifesting. The increased rate for the first sixty three minutes is widely considered to be from manifestations that should have happened "catching up" which may provide some clue as to what caused Manifestation Day, what causes manifestations and indeed what manifestations are.

Alarm, Morning. Rolled out of bed gently, to not wake the bed headed one. Checked the whiteboard with her roster on it. Elanore had a midday start so Mickey let her sleep while he got dressed and headed to work moving boxes around. After finishing and getting home, he broke out the crayons and paper to draw out the plans he had been thinking about all day.

The second floor.

Just sketches for now since he wanted a few different versions to consider before actually building it.

The first design had both the combat and obstacle room end in a set of stairs leading to the safe entrance room of the second floor. This would allow delvers to swap between room types without backtracking.

Another option was to have the challengers commit to a course. Effectively making two parallel dungeons. One a combat dungeon and another an obstacle/puzzle room dungeon for non-combat skills.

The third option was to have a random dungeon, with rooms changing lo`or open. Shortly Elanore swept into the room and looked at him with a little sigh.

"Playing with crayons at your age?" she snarked.

"You're never too old for fun Honey. Also I had some left over from a thing. How was your day?"

Elanore threw her business jacket onto an unoccupied chair by the dinner table where Mickey was drawing. Moving to sit in his lap she put an arm around his neck.

"Three P's. Patrol, Paperwork and patience. What are you drawing?"

"This is the prospective second level of my glorious dungeon. Or it will be if I can figure out a way to randomise the rooms automatically."

"Just do it manually."

"That works with only one group but when there's a bunch it'll be exhausting to rearrange paths between each run."

Elly shook her head.

"Just do it once or twice a day. Sure some people will tell others about it, but there's no point to making maps or anything precise if it's got a day-long use-by date. Also if you change the layout around noon, people will try to run it twice in one day. "

"That's genius. I'll do that."

Mickey made a note on the map.

"Has anybody finished the first level yet?" Asked Elanore.

"Uhuh those teens I mentioned did. The only group to go in so far. I expected more people to give in to curiosity but apparently they dn' t like the idea of entering a lightless danger hole under an overpass. Go figure." Mickey shrugged. It wasn't entirely unexpected.

" On the plus side tose tees are probably telling all their school friends about the metaregion which hands out magic powers and loot like a video game, so I can expect an uptick fairly soon. It's only a matter of time before the dungeon gets a sufficient level of attention. That's when things will get tricky. "

Elly nodded before hopping up off his lap.

" Well that's nice and all but I'm for a shower. "

Mickey did some quick social calculations and then jumped to his feet, following her towards the bathroom.

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" Hey need some- Ah want me to wash your back? "

—---------------------------

Alarm early morning. Checked the roster. Elly had an early start but Mickey could sleep in for a bit. Since Mickey knew his girlfriend was a heavy sleeper he started nudging and elbowing her out of bed.

" Wake up Hun, you have work. Wake wakey eggs and bakey."

"MMm Bacon?"

"No. Make your own. I'm tired." Mickey rolled over content in the knowledge that his extra couple of hours of slumber would be costly. But that was for future Mickey to worry about.

After another tedious day moving boxes around with only a couple people poking their heads into the dungeon briefly before leaving, Mickey finally got to work shaping the second level. Since the layout would change he only really needed to decide on the room types and layouts.

Mickey settled on four rooms. Two obstacle rooms and two combat rooms, one of which would be empty as a placeholder.

The other would have the first of his "constructed" enemies. Originally he intended to have clay or wooden golems, but it turns out, walking, punching and even standing upright is incredibly hard to manage with his limited skill. Mickey could harness stored kinetic energy to make the "golems" puppet move but using psi energy he could only tether simple limited commands to objects.

So he could imprint a command for a rock to draw energy and move in a single direction in response to a specific stimulus, but in order to get a combat puppet moving automatically? He would need thousands if not millions of commands and he simply didn't have the time for it.

Instead he made the most effective enemy he could. It was… well it was a ball. A fragile honeycombed sphere made of sandstone, surrounded by a mildly toxic liquid, contained in a tough flexible plastic-like layer.

The slime ball had 4 major commands, each composed of a number of simple subcommands. The first and most important was the "sense" command which took advantage of the flat empty chamber and glowing walls to locate targets by their shadows. In testing this was fooled by stalagmites and piles of rocks. If it cast a shadow it was a target.

The second was a basic "Roll" command. This would cause the construct to roll towards a target until it rammed into it or lost track of it.

The last two commands would only run if it was too close to ram the target.

First one command would cause it to compress the inner toxic liquid and then second would open a small hole towards the target spraying a toxin that would cause itchy, burning skin and temporary blindness if it got in eyes.

Overall the general squishiness of the knee tall slimeball would limit it's threat but with two of them in the chamber Mickey hoped they would present an effective challenge.

The two obstacle rooms were much easier to do. Mickey decided that this level would be dedicated to speed and endurance. So one of the rooms was separated by a deep pool of water flowing towards the entrance. To get to the reward pillar one would have to swim against the current. This was made more difficult since the river was somewhat cone shaped, meaning that the current got stronger the closer you got to the end.

The river vanished through a grate on the entrance side to flow through a short tunnel of twisted space back to the reward side, giving a constantly recycled flow.

The second obstacle was a soft soil downwards slope. Once the delvers had all entered a large cylinder would drop behind them and start rolling downhill. If the delvers didn't run fast enough to the finish line, they would be rolled over. The ground soil was specifically chosen to be soft enough that people would be crushed into it rather than squashed completely. However even if it didn't kill them it would be quite uncomfortable and carry a strong risk of broken bones and other injuries. Worse still the cylinder would block off the reward pillar and the exit forcing a slow delver to backtrack and take another path.

Each of these new rooms was connected to the second floor entrance room and the second floor exit room. Unlike the first floors' rough caves the doorways here were squared off and had actual doors in them.

Plain pine with a block of wood for a handle, they were rough to say the least. Mickey adjusted gravity ever so slightly so they would fall lose of their own accord.

For the second floor foyeur mickey made an empty room with two square pine doors. With an effort he bent the space so that each of the doors met up with the entry of the slimeball room and the river room.

Lastly, Mickey made a circular stairwell behind the reward pillar of the first floor room which led down to the second floor foyeur.

"There. Done." Said Mickey with satisfaction as he stood up from the couch and stretched.

"You finished your second floor?" Elanore asked, pausing the TV show she was watching.

"When will it be ready for me and other supes to try?"

Mickey hesitated.

"Probably not for a while. Remember it's mostly to power up norms. I think it would need to be at least level fifteen to twenty to really challenge someone like you."

"Pfft not all meta's are as strong as me. When will it be a challenge to non-combatant meta's like you?"

"Well it's basically a fitness camp right now so as long as they're not a physical type any meta who could use a workout could benefit."

Elly squinted at him and then shrugged before turning back to her show.

"Well lemme know when it gets interesting okay?"

"Will do."