The dungeon was empty again, and Archimedes’ mood was mixed. Seeing the kids race each other in the library was fun, but of course it also served to reintensify his desire to participate. That said, he had been making great strides in his research lately, so hope outweighed his despair.
Since the previous night, he had successfully created two small containers, one made of Etherium and the other of Mananite. By now, he had been able to fill each with a small amount of the opposite energy in liquid form—enough to experiment with creating small lifeforms inside of the stuff.
Archimedes wasted no time and created an ordinary beetle inside the pool of liquid mana. He did the same inside the pool of liquid ether. Both times, a perfectly normal beetle was created. He created a chunk of platinum in each of the containers as well, leaving both the insect and the mineral inside to test long-term exposure.
I’ll check in on them later and see if any of my hypotheses prove true.
He moved on to the next item on his mental checklist. The idea had already occurred to him that advanced technologies were hiding in each of the starting boons a dungeon could obtain after birth, but the only one he had caught on to so far related to creature cores.
I want to know three things: how can I change mana and ether to a solid state, how does such a thing change their properties, and how do the functions of a creature core and a mind stone differ?
He had an inkling that the secrets of solid mana and ether would be easier to understand once he had a better grasp on their liquid and gaseous states. So he turned his attention there first.
In nature, mana and ether seemed to always be found in a sparse and scattered state, akin to a gas. Physical substances changed states easily when the surrounding temperature or pressure changed, but mana and ether did not. In the first place, mana and ether were forms of energy, not physical substances. Gravity, pressure, and temperature were all concepts they were inherently independent from.
Before learning about liquid mana, Archimedes had always thought of the sparse, particle-like, gas-like state of mana and ether as the only state they could exhibit. He knew now that that wasn’t true.
So what phenomenon caused mana and ether to change to a liquid form when within Etherium and Mananite containers? By observing the process on a microscopic scale over the course of several hours, Archimedes finally noticed the interaction that seemed to be the cause.
When mana particles bump into the energy field surrounding Etherium, they slow.
The obvious next question would be why that happened.
It would likely take outsiders countless centuries of study and innovation to gather enough information on the process to come to any conclusions. They would need to invent methods and machines to supplement their senses before proper observation could even be done. But Archimedes possessed the keen senses of a dungeon, so it was easy once he knew what to look for.
They spin in opposite directions, I see.
Archimedes came to understand that mana and ether particles had a spin to them, and that those spins were opposite to each other. Reversing that spin, he realized, was how it was possible to turn one into the other. He had been working with the concept instinctively until now.
Anyway, when whole particles of mana collided with an ether energy field, the more violent ether energy, partially released from its particles, overwhelmed the mana and slowed its spin.
Free mana making contact with the outside of the container met the same fate, but he noticed that the spin returned to normal over time. Liquid mana removed from its container would likewise gradually evaporate back into the air. This ”spin-up” process was what prevented the mana from reversing spins completely, turning into ether within the container and then inevitably escaping it. The amount of leaking energy wasn’t enough to fully reverse the spin of colliding particles after just a typical number of collisions per second.
That said, if he overstuffed a container, would the particles forced up against the energy field attain enough collisions to transform? Perhaps each container then had a natural capacity which couldn’t be exceeded. An experiment for later.
Moving on to studying solid-state energy, Archimedes hummed and examined a random creature core in the dungeon.
The particles are spinning at a snail’s pace, he observed. Why don’t they speed up again? The particles aren’t stretched or interwoven. Then there can’t be an energy field, can there? What’s interfering with my perception in that case?
One thing he noted was that there was an equal amount of mana and ether comprising each creature core, which he assumed was important somehow.
They’re all purple, he observed casually.
The liquid mana he’d gathered was blue and the liquid ether was red, so a solid substance made of equal parts mana and ether being purple seemed understandable enough.
But it’s also possible that they just match the color of the dungeon core that created them, since I happen to be purple too.
Archimedes was struck by a vertigo-like sensation as his recent pursuits caused a sudden question to occur to him for the first time:
What is a dungeon core made of?
Archimedes observed his own core, as he had tried to do in the distant past with no success. This time, his new techniques finally unveiled part of the mystery to him. The smooth crystalline shell around his outermost layer was made of alternating “solid” particles of mana and ether. Beneath that was a transparent fog he couldn’t understand no matter how he probed it, followed by the next crystalline shell, and so on.
The world was still full of so many things to learn after all this time.
***
“The ceiling here is lower,” Anther mused.
He was back exploring the maze, just like yesterday, only now he was searching for a way to open the black gated door in the center of the maze.
Seeing a drastically lower ceiling certainly made it feel like he was on the right track. If the roof was thirty feet high throughout most of the maze, here it was only half as tall. And at the point where the roof lowered, there wasn’t a stretch of bare wall, but the carved wooden back of a bookshelf.
“There’s got to be a way up there.”
Helios’s giggling voice came through Anther’s earpiece. He and Thesia were accompanying him, since there wasn’t much else for them to do, but they were being very careful not to give away any hints.
Anther wandered around in the section of the maze that presumably had a second floor, turning around anytime he was about to leave it. He kept his eye open for anything else unusual, and especially for any of those three symbols he’d seen framing the gated door.
Eventually, he discovered a clearing in the maze. These areas usually seemed to serve as little reading nooks, decorated comfortably with cushioned arm chairs, rugs, and small tables.
This one had a large fireplace crackling with a cozy orange flame.
The other reading nooks he’s seen didn’t have a fireplace, so he was naturally drawn to this one.
“Found you!” Anther cheered. Carved into the mantle was an abstract pattern, resembling long, swirling vines framing an abstract foot.
Well, in this context it sort of looked like a flower instead, but Anther still saw it as a foot.
Without any better ideas on how to proceed, Anther reached up to touch the carving. Instantly, the reading nook became darker and cooler as the fire below extinguished. Behind it, an illusionary wall vanished to reveal an opening to a narrow and ominous wooden staircase.
Anther’s ears perked up and he grinned to himself as a sense of adventure bubbled inside of him. Ducking his head just slightly, he walked over the cold logs and started up the steep staircase.
He noticed the spider and slime weren’t following him and hesitated. “You guys aren’t coming?”
“We don’t want to give anything away on accident,” Thesia wobbled.
“Good luck! See you soon!” Helios waved enthusiastically.
Anther smiled and continued up the steps, and he heard the fire roar back to life far below him.
When he exited the stairway, there was a second level to the library, just like he’d expected. But this area wasn’t a maze. Rows of bookshelves formed orderly lines, and each was carved with the same pattern as the mantle above the fireplace. They didn’t stretch all the way to the ceiling, and only a handful of free-rolling golden step ladders could be seen scattered about.
The strange part was that the bookshelves here were all empty except for a few lonely slots. These contained simply bound manuscripts, one of which Anther picked up to browse out of curiosity.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It had a dry title: The Basics of Dungeon Core Translocation. The elf boy’s eyes glossed right over it but stopped at the name of the author.
“You wrote this?”
Archimedes’ voice answered through the earpiece, “All the texts here currently are based on research I’ve done.”
“… It looks like you’re expecting to write a lot more,” the boy mused, gazing out at the rows of mostly empty shelves.
He flipped to the first proper page of the manuscript to see a very boring-looking summary. The second page and on were crowded with mathematical formulas and diagrams that made the child’s eyes spin. He quickly shut the volume and put it back on the shelf.
He glanced at a few other titles, all of which sounded just as intimidating as the first one:
The Role of Creature Cores in Life Support; Kinesiology of Bipedal Lifeforms; Kinesiology of Quadrupedal Lifeforms; Kinesiology of Exotic Lifeforms, Volumes 1, 2, and 3; Airborne Locomotion; Nautical Locomotion; Terrestrial Locomotion; Structural Commonalities of Inorganic Lifeforms; A Glance at Anomalous Dungeon Construction; etcetera.
Aside from the fact that they all seemed to have to do with bodies, their main commonality was how little Anther wanted to read any of them. He quickly went looking for other clues to the puzzle, praying that it had nothing to do with the frightening manuscripts.
As he proceeded down the aisles toward the back of the space, he noticed a chest sitting alone and went to open it. It was locked tight even though it didn’t appear to have a keyhole. There was a flat round divot on the face of the chest, however, carved with an abstract image of a foot.
“I guess I need to find something to put in this slot,” the boy mused.
He searched for about thirty minutes before finally climbing one of the step ladders to get on top of the bookshelves. There he found it, on top of the shelf nearest to the chest itself: a palm-sized black token with a foot symbol carved into it. Anther took the token to the chest and tapped it to the indentation. The carving on the chest glowed and there was a click as the lid popped open.
“Aha! I need to do the same thing at the gate!” Anther grinned, pocketing the token.
Inside of the chest was a bundle of spider silk, which he took as his prize for solving one of the floor’s puzzles.
“Hey, Helios, I found some silk. Did you make it?”
“I did!” the Trick Spider said cheerfully, his voice coming over the earpiece remotely.
Archimedes elaborated, “Helios made the original bundle of silk, and my treasure system is set up to automatically produce copies of it whenever we run out. That said, you’re the first person to open that chest, so that’s the original.”
Anther’s ears wiggled and he held the smooth white silk close to his chest. “I like it. I’ll ask my aunt Januiil to make something for me with it.”
He put the silk away carefully in his bag and hurried off to explore the maze again. When he returned to the top of the stairwell, he noticed a carving above it that he hadn’t seen on his way in. It was a triangle of three symbols: an eye, a hand, and a foot.
Anther held up the token and glanced at it curiously. “Maybe…”
He tapped it to the symbol, which glowed brightly, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the clearing where the adamantine door was. Thesia and Helios were already there waiting for him.
“Tada!” The Trick Spider jumped happily in place. “Did you like my enchantments?”
Anther blinked as he reoriented himself, then recalled all the mystical things he’d seen and nodded eagerly. “It was so cool! The fireplace, the chest, and even teleportation!”
“Ehehe~” Helios laughed happily and did a little dance on the floor, hiding his face shyly with his front two legs.
Thesia added, “You can touch that token to the front desk if you want to go back to that hidden area.”
“Oh,” he mused. “Yeah, it would stay secret longer that way. The fireplace entrance is really cool but also really showy. I don’t think I’ll need to go back there, but I’ll definitely keep the token.”
Anther glanced down at his token and saw that the backside was carved with his name. He smiled, put it back in his bag, and cheered, “Let’s go find the other two tokens!”
“Yeah!” Thesia and Helios cheered with him, even though they wouldn’t actually be helping at all.
From then on, the hardest part was navigating to the sections of the maze with lowered ceilings and finding the clearings within. Once he did that much, the next two puzzles proceeded pretty much the same as the first one. The token would be hidden in a different spot each time, and the decorations changed to match whatever symbol would be on the token, but that was about all that was different from Anther’s perspective.
Of course, the other two hidden lofts contained manuscripts of different subject matters, but Anther didn’t pause to browse the titles again.
Incidentally the loft hiding the hand token contained studies relating to physical senses and control of bodily processes; and the loft hiding the eye token contained studies relating to consciousness and experience, as well as studies on mana, ether, and the soul.
From the former, he got a five ounce bottle of ink as his prize, and from the latter, he received a stack of one hundred sheets of paper. He planned to hand both of them over to the guild when he returned, since they didn’t interest him.
What was far more important to him was that he now had all the tokens he needed to unlock the gate.
***
Having managed to brute force through the rest of the labyrinth’s puzzles in one afternoon, Anther was tired but invigorated when he finally teleported back to the adamantine door. He tapped each token to its corresponding symbol and they glowed with enchanted light. As soon as all three symbols were lit, he heard mechanisms rumbling inside the walls, and the twisting metal gate folded open. The door behind it swung wide on its own.
His feet didn’t move, but his heart beat excitedly in his chest. All this time, he had been exploring the dungeon with the goal of clearing it, and now he was on the verge of doing so.
“Why the hesitation?”
Anther flinched at the dungeon’s sudden voice in his ear.
“Just taking in the moment, I guess.”
Finally, Anther entered the last room in the dungeon: the room where the core resided. It was small, plain, and mostly undecorated. Aside from a bat monster hanging from one corner of the ceiling, the only thing inside was the dungeon core itself. But that alone was mesmerizing.
The core was spherical and inherently crystalline in structure, shimmering in a dozen shades of purple. Some light reflected off the outermost layer, while some penetrated deeper, refracting inside the structure and reflecting off one of the two crystal spheres layered deeper inside.
Basically, it looked like a beautiful magical gemstone about the right size for Anther to cradle in his arms.
The core hovered above a cylindrical stone pillar rising up from the floor, and a thin, glass-like bubble guarded it against outside influence. Anther instinctively extended a hand and rested it against the barrier.
“I made it,” he said with a silly smile.
“You did,” the dungeon’s voice came through the elf’s earpiece as usual. “Congratulations on clearing my dungeon. It’s too bad you weren’t the first.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really bad at riddles,” the boy apologized.
He may have been the first person to clear the first and third floors, but some people had managed to clear the second floor before him. Some of those people had the good timing to reach the third floor before it had any puzzles, meeting the core easily and thus clearing the dungeon.
“Still! I’m glad I finally made it.”
The elf boy reached into his bag and started pulling out small objects. Archimedes examined them briefly. They were inert and nonmagical. One was flat, square, and painted with repeating square patterns. The others were small and carved to vaguely resemble creatures. Some looked like elves, others resembled demons or beast people. There was a dragon and several more creatures he didn’t recognize.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a game!” Anther said brightly. “I’m going to challenge you now, since I solved all of your puzzles.”
“Oh?” The amusement in the dungeon’s voice was clearly audible. “Very well. How does it work?”
“It’s called Dragon Rush,” he explained, while setting up the pieces atop the board on the alternating colored squares. The dragon piece began in the center of the board. The elves, demons, and beastfolk were on one side, while three types of unknown creatures were on the other side. Anther called them harpies, dwarves, and trolls, and they moved the same as their friendly counterparts.
Archimedes noted the few characteristics preserved of these creatures in their simplified carvings, in case he ever met any of them. The harpies had wings on their backs; the dwarves were stout and bearded; and the trolls had four arms. That was all he could make out.
“One player plays as the friends, and the other plays as the enemies. You can move two of your pieces on your turn, or you can move the dragon.”
The explanation took some time. Each of the different pieces moved in different ways, but landing on another piece’s space universally destroyed it. The dragon was the one indestructible exception that couldn’t kill or be killed. The goal was to either wipe out the opponent’s pieces or to escort the dragon to the opponent’s side of the board.
“Do you get it?” Anther asked. “Do you need me to explain the pieces again?”
“No, I’m fine. We can begin.”
Anther seemed content to sit on the floor, but Archimedes summoned a cushion for him at least. The elf boy was playing as the friends, so the first move was his. He moved two of his beastfolk pieces forward. Archimedes calculated the board state and countered by moving a harpy and a dwarf.
Of course, he “moved” his pieces by deconstructing them and making new copies in the desired spot. They appeared to be teleporting.
Anther moved a demon and an elf, and Archimedes continued to move his dwarf toward the opposite side before cleanly taking the boy’s demon with his harpy.
“Oh. Oops,” the boy winced.
Archimedes chuckled and continued to reassess the board state. It’s a little too easy, he thought somewhat apologetically.
“Rush in four turns,” he declared.
“No way!”
Anther frantically tried to defend his pieces, but it was no use. The dungeon core had practically calculated a solution for the game already, since there wasn’t a hint of randomness to it.
“Rush,” Archimedes declared, as he placed the dragon piece at Anther’s decimated backline.
“I lost. I should have practiced more before coming here,” Anther sighed, packing up the pieces. “I’ll bring more games tomorrow, okay?”
“Please do.” Archimedes readily agreed. “And don’t worry about bringing this one again. I’ll keep a copy here.”
“Okay. My dad has a lot of games, you know. There’s a couple I don’t like as much, but I'll bring them anyway. See you tomorrow!”
Anther waved on his way out, and all the monsters in the dungeon gave him heartfelt farewells as always. The dungeon, however, felt his prior irritation resurfacing.
At this point, it wasn’t just Anther’s treatment that was being held up by bureaucracy—it was also the construction of his fourth floor. That endeavor, after all, would interfere with his ability to provide immediate treatment and to monitor the boy’s condition; creating a new floor truly required all of his focus.
What is taking them so long to come to a decision? he grumbled. And he deposited a letter on the gate guard’s lap requesting Dungeon Researcher Ulbert to visit him at his earliest convenience.