Riddle Door. Place. Affix.

Going forward, Rori intends to place the Riddle Door first, as far from his core as he could without allowing for cheese. This would force delvers to proceed one-by-one, and unlike the shroom boss, it wasn't down for the count if someone beat it. This is why he was grateful for the 'choke points', the narrow parts of the 'Path to the Core' that all Delvers must pass in order to proceed.

His first dungeon's entrance foyer had served as its only natural choke point. His second dungeon had been a wide open space – the opposite of a choke point, at least when you take flight and climbing gear into account. But labyrinths like these can be littered with choke points.

Turning his attention back to his intruders, he gave a mental sigh. More than one of them were headed straight for his core. They made every correct choice at every intersection, ignoring the dead-end passages. This might have had something to do with the indicators pointing the way. Indicators that were in the shape of, you guessed it, giant-

Pricks, Rori said, pretending to be annoyed at whoever had painted those. At least they're not working together.

On the contrary, the delvers seemed to be competing. The one in the lead – a boy in his late teens – was speaking in the same language as the bone man. As he ran, the ground behind him was covered in large patches of ice. The two behind him – a girl in her early teens and what may have been her mother – were helping each other cross the icy terrain. The two behind them – an older man and what might have been his grandson – were nowhere near the leaders, getting lost in a side passage. All of them were level 9, and they each had a 'delver count' of 2 instead of 1.

Rori decided to put a trap right in front of the frontrunner to see how he handled it. The temporary version of the trap did not carve out any amount of stone beneath it. Instead it seemed to contain a small pocket dimension / expanded space just beneath the false floor of glowing glass- which Rori decided to call 'magi-glass' henceforth. It was a ubiquitous material in temporary templates, and he wanted a better name for it.

The trap also cost much more to maintain than it had in the underground lake, which had not spawned a pocket dimension. That version of the very same pit trap had occupied real space beneath the floating bridge.

Despite the obvious change from solid stone floor to bright glowing magi-glass, the boy was running too fast to react in time. He tried to leap at the last moment, but his foot found no purchase as the magi-glass split open. He fell straight into the harmless crystal pit with a wordless shout of alarm. He then stood straight up with a string of colorful curses – the linguistic kind, not the magical, and not in the bone-man's language. He was speaking Eseldra, of all things. Rori observed the lad a while longer, then moved on when he was fairly certain the boy wouldn't be getting out on his own.

The older man and the younger boy were still lost, and the mother-daughter pair were still waddling across icy corridors.

With all five delvers bolstering his adjusted I/M to well over 500%, Rori accumulated 100 mana before the mother-daughter pair reached the trapped teenager. Despite the fact that it would mean admitting more delvers, he didn't hesitate to Level Up and Confirm, nor did he hesitate to Affix another boss room after the first one. He did NOT Place it first, curious to see what would happen if he tried to jump straight to the 'build' stage.

The Crystal Cube boss room slowly began to take shape from the ground-up, but there were no temporary templates to fill in the gaps. It was mostly just empty space at this point.

So I don't have to spend anything to maintain it, but it won't defend me until it's built.

Rori tried overlapping a temporary version of the same boss room, but the space flashed red even before he tried to Place it.

Action not allowed! Templates cannot be modified while building.

Well, that's a bust. Note to self: don't do that again.

"Hey Mom! Can you help me out?! This thing is draining my mana!"

The voice of the teenager drew Rori's attention back to his delvers. The mother-daughter pair had caught up to the leader and were peering down at him.

"Oh, I don't know," said Floditha Faquarl in an airy tone. She turned to the young girl standing next to her. "What do you think, Ali? Should we help your poor, innocent brother out?"

Alitha Faquarl looked over the ledge and stuck her tongue out at Trathicus Faquarl.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Well, that answers that," said the woman. "Harmless or not, dungeons can be tricky. Maybe you should have remembered that before icing the floors."

"No, that was the dungeon, not me!" the teen lied through his teeth, as easily as if he were discussing the weather.

"Oh really?" asked his mother. "I've never heard of a dungeon doing that before. And I know quite a lot of things that dungeons can do."

"It must be a harmless thing!" the boy argued back. "This is one of those new special dungeons. Who knows WHAT it can do?"

Hmm… CAN I ice the floors?

His mother looked down at her son skeptically. "How convenient that it would choose exactly the same defense as your favorite prank spell."

"It's tricky, like you said! It's trying to make us doubt each other."

Oh, I'll do something much worse than THAT! Rori thought after finding what he was looking for. Let's see here… Set, and… Set!

Two outlines appeared on the other side of the trap, the side not yet occupied by delvers. Neither the mother nor the daughter seemed to notice, they only stared skeptically down at their trapped son/sibling.

"It even made this trap right in front of me! Whoever heard of a dungeon doing that?"

His mother made a hmming sound. "I was wondering how you fell into something so obvious. Well. What do you think, Ali?" she addressed the younger sister again. "Do you believe your brother?"

"Hmm…" hummed the girl theatrically, seeming to think about it. "Nope!"

She backed up a few feet, then leapt over the gap of the trap-

Place!

-only to land on a patch of ice leading to yet another crystal pit, which she slipped and slid straight into.

Heh, heh, heh.

A filtered search through the Structure, Surface section had revealed that Rori could, in fact, ice the floors. He had already wanted to place a trap right after the first one, but the flashing red highlight and the memory of his brief time on the mountaintop had reminded him that he couldn't put traps right next to each other. He could, however, place a temporary floor surface in between two traps, and that floor surface could be ice.

Once he'd figured that out, all he had to do was Set the two tiles and wait for the perfect moment.

Thank you, folks, for the great idea!

"Alitha!" came the mother's worried voice.

"I'm okay!" the girl shouted back.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! Just… trapped. Trath wasn't lying this time!"

"What happened?" asked the boy from his own pit.

"Your sister slipped on ice and fell into a trap. Which weren't there before she jumped."

"See?" the boy said, taking it in stride with arms and grin wide. "Never should've doubted me!"

My master plan is working! Forget making them doubt each other, I'll make them TRUST each other! Muahahahaha!

"And why, pray tell, does this ice look vastly different from your ice?"

"The dungeon's ice!" the boy said with an exaggerated eye roll. To his discredit, the boy could lie with the best of them. "The ice behind us was already there! It was fixed! I bet the ice up there looks temporary. Right?" He wasn't even wrong.

Come on, you can do it! TRUST that untrustworthy son of yours!

The mother was frowning down at her son. "If I let you up, you must swear to me that you will not run off again. You will help us all reach the core. We will all touch it together. We shall share the rewards. Or so help me, I will never let you have another scrap of food that I make. Am I perfectly clear?"

"Crystal," said the boy. He tapped on the wall of the pit. "Get it?"

The mother simply crossed her arms and stared at him severely.

"Fine, fine, we'll do it your way. Now help me before I run out of mana! I wasn't kidding, I'm getting drained!"

"Awww, does the wittle baby want uppy?" the mother cooed as she unslung what Rori had thought was a belt from her waist.

"Mooom!" the boy groaned.

"Don't worry, baby, mommy's here to make it ALL better." She chanted in the bone-man's language and the belt- no, the vine slowly grew. She then began to wield it in a manner very similar to the fishling elder.

Phooey. Foiled again. Who needs trust when you have threats?

As soon as the boy was out of the crystal pit, he used a spell to de-ice the temporary floor tile in front of him (rendering it 'destroyed' according to its Description). Then he and his mother crossed both pits, retrieved the girl, and continued on to the Riddle room.

It became 'Occupied' when they entered, but the affixation process did not stop. The glowing magi-glass portions of the room were still slowly transitioning to more mundane-looking materials. Primarily stone.

"Hello and welcome, humankind,

To a room that tests your mind!

Answer well and you will find,

That this blockade shall unwind!"

The son looked at his mother. "Did you bring our cheat book?"

Cheat book?! Rori thought indignantly.

"I have it memorized," the girl bragged.

"Then come along," said her mother. "I believe we must stand on the disk."

"Can't we go one at a time?" Alitha pleaded.

"We will succeed or fail as one. Nobody speak unless they are certain they know the answer."

HEY RIDDLE DOOR!! Rori thought with all his mental might. CAN I SAY THE RIDDLE? Maybe riddles from his world wouldn't be known. This was assuming he could even talk to his own mobs, which didn't seem to be the case.

A rounded barrier surrounded all three delvers and the Riddle Door spoke as if it had not heard him.

"Ancient tablets I have upstaged.

My invention was all the rage,

From lowly clerk to mighty mage,

And to avid bibliophage.

Countless concepts have I caged,

words and pictures, I do wage.

Essential to modern age,

Bane of morons, I'm a…"

__________________________________

Chapter Fin.

A/N: Same as last time. To the victor shall go the spoils.

Oh, and I should mention that the answer must be exactly correct. If someone had tried to answer 'flame' to this story's second riddle instead of 'fire', or 'big dumb hot ball in the sky' to the third riddle instead of 'sun', the riddle door's rhyming response would have been something along the lines of "Well yes, but actually no."

Update: Solved.