For days, Kohl's dungeon drifted across the void of the omniverse, waiting till his dungeon would touch or 'make contact' with a Dimension, in this time, he's slowed down his speed and has been using half of his mana experimenting.
For example, after death, the monsters of his dungeon would leave behind a corpse and they have the option of dropping loot.
This loot could be anything, but Kohl would have to be the one to make it and set how often these items in the loot table drop.
For example, the wild chickens of the Jungle biome could 'drop' whatever items he assigned to their loot table, and these items could really be anything, though he wanted to keep the loot to the theme.
The loot table of the Wild Chickens was the following: Feathers x1-5 (35%), Raw Chicken Meat x1-3 (30%), Chicken Egg x1-3 (30%), Fertile Chicken Egg 1x (5%), and Chicken Staff x1 (0.01%)
There was always a guarantee that one item from the loot table would drop, and there was always a chance of up to three drops at a time, such as the Feathers, Raw Meat, and Chicken Meat all in a single drop.
The chances for multiple drops were the following: One Drop(50%), Two Drops (40%), Three Drops (10%).
Quite simple, if you asked Kohl.
As for the Chicken Staff? It was an item he managed to create based on what he knew about the Conjuring Staffs of the Elder Scrolls universe.
The Staff was fueled by mana and would need to be recharged after a certain amount of usage, and if used, would summon a 'Furious Wild Chicken' that ranged from Level 1 to 25 depending on the level of the wielder.
That's right, with a bit of experimentation, Kohl did manage to discover how to create Tamrielic Enchantments and Magic with the help of what he knew and letting his instincts guide the way.
However, unfortunately, the Tamrielic Enchantments were not as flexible as Kohl hoped, meaning they were not suitable for the V.E.C., a Void Energy Converter, but, that doesn't mean they were useless, it was yet another way to enhance items to make them more valuable to the dungeon divers, it was also an enchantment system that allowed for much simpler enchantments.
For example, the Runic Enchantments Kohl discovered required a lot of attention to detail, energy, and time to make, while the Tamrielic Enchantments were quite simple and fast to make, at the cost of being a lot simpler in function, such as causing a flame to enwrap the blade of a sword and burn their targets, or an enchantment in which it soul traps the victim in a nearby soul gem or even an enchantment set to absorb the health of the targets.
So, if Kohl wanted to continue with the V.E.C. idea, he would need to find a much more flexible enchantment system or create a machine capable of doing the task.
And then he had an idea, what if he could make an enchantment system that was based on human programming?
Such an enchantment system should be able to be as flexible as he needed and gave him some ideas for a few other things, such as more types of entities he could add to his monster list, such as Golems, Automatons, Robots, and things of similar 'Man-Made' nature which would be great for the story he was making.
...
More days passed as Kohl worked to create the loot tables for the dungeon entities and to repopulate the entities whenever a low-level entity died.
As of this time, the current highest-leveled dungeon entity was surprisingly a new type of elemental, a Fire Elemental, one of two, with both being located in the Sand Biome.
Surprisingly, the Fire Elementals were quite aggressive, hunting down any entities they noticed.
The more aggressive Fire Elemental has reached level 24 due to its excessive fighting with the entity that came in second place not even hitting the 20s yet.
Speaking of which, as an entity rose in level, the speed of its growth became entirely dependent on how much energy its opponent or its surroundings has, meaning, due to the Fire Elemental killing everything around it, including the higher leveled monsters, the average level of the monsters in the biome dropped, it became such a problem that Kohl had to calm the Elementals down a bit, to keep them from rampaging across the biome.
Now, most of the Elementals remained in select locations, typically caves, and that's where they would remain, seeing as Kohl didn't want them to continue slaughtering everything.
Luckily, the Elementals would continue passively growing from the ambient mana and other energies inside his Dungeon, though their growth would certainly be slower, even if some Monsters threw themselves at the Elementals in an attempt to claim their caves for themselves.
Humming to himself, Kohl suddenly froze as he felt his Dimension come to a stop as it finally came into contact with another.
Looking through his Dimension's wall, of course, revealed nothing to see besides darkness, so, he sent out a tendril of mana to see inside this Dimension his Dimension was in contact with.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Once he felt the tendril peirce into the dimension, he followed the tendril and looked inside...and 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘻𝘦.
He recognized the place he was seeing.
From a story that held countless stories.
A seemingly infinite building filled with furniture, strange humanoid monsters wearing uniforms, and people fighting to survive...
SCP-3008, otherwise known as the Infinite IKEA.
Does that mean the worlds in the stories existed?
Kohl felt excited, so excited, that he immediately began forming a tunnel of mana between his dimension and the infinite IKEA's, the sign that he was breaching the Dimension and setting up a portal entrance.
Kohl's monsters and creatures could feel his excitement through their link, and for a brief time, stopped fighting completely, instead staring up to the sky, watching the incredibly small but bright orb floating in the sky.
And just underneath the obelisk at the center of his dungeon, directly beneath his core, a crack in space began to form.
And not too long after, the entrance into his dungeon was fully formed, and a golden crack floated in the air both underneath the obelisk, and underneath a sign that read, 'Exchange and Returns' in the infinite IKEA.
[A/N: Not the town from the SCP, it's an infinite IKEA, there are bound to be countless towns and cities with the same names if they all establish them under signs]
And now that he was attached to a dimension, Kohl wanted to run a few tests.
Such as if his monsters could cross to the other side, and explore the infinite IKEA.
[A/N: I will be using the terms Monster and Entities interchangeably if you haven't noticed already, they both mean basically the same thing in this context]
So, he got to work, having a small hummingbird fly to the entrance and peck at it with its beak.
[Warning! Any Dungeon Entities that leave the Dungeon, lose the benefits of being in the dungeon, and can no longer be revived no salvaged!]
But, Kohl still had the bird proceed, and with its connection with the bird, could look through its eyes, as the bird found itself on the floor of a seemingly never-ending IKEA that it could see for miles on end.
Just above the entrance, was a large sign that read "Exchange and Returns" and in the surrounding area, Kohl could see various showcase rooms showing different kinds of furniture and decorations, as well as a food bar not far with IKEA meatballs and various bags filled with chips various other things and fluids for consumption.
The portal was right next to a counter and empty room which Kohl assumes would have been the exchange and return counter and storeroom.
Wanting to test something, he had the bird begin ripping apart some of the nearby furniture and bring chunks of the materials and consumer goods back into his dungeon for analysis.
Examining the materials closer, revealed them all to be seemingly normal materials, fabric, wood, glass, etc, it all seemed normal, which confused Kohl to a great degree, as he expected at least 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 signs that showed the materials to be unnatural.
Changing focus, he had a few more birds go through the portal, and begin searching the surrounding area for settlements.
---
[??? POV Change]
Four years, four 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 years he has been in this place, in this hell. When he first appeared here, he wandered for what felt like hours without seeing another person, and he was lucky he found anyone at all before lights out, otherwise, he would have died on the very first night he arrived here, in this hellish IKEA.
Turns out, a great many people die before a week even passes in the store, and it's not due to dehydration or starvation, it's due to the Staff.
If you asked him when he first got here, he would have thought it was some joke, but no. The Staff are humanoid monsters that wear the uniforms of IKEA employees.
The difference? They have no facial features as if their faces were blank canvases. Their bodies were worse, with long or short mishappen limbs and body parts, surprising strength, and tenacity.
They were docile in the day...but at night? When the lights turned off?
They would become aggressive, hunting down any survivor in this shithole, and typically, rip them apart if they managed to get their hands on anyone. Luckily for me, I was at least somewhat fit, so I could fight and run if...no, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 needed.
Luckily, those who found themselves trapped here, have built settlements over who knows how many years.
Walls of stacked furniture, gates of scrap wood and metal, and even weapons fashioned from lawn mower blades, scrap metal, and whatever else they could get their hands on.
But, even then, these settlements can be sieged, and in the four years I have been here, I, unfortunately, have been a part of and seen, three settlements fall, and many who I would call friends, die to the Staff or their wounds.
Now? I lived in a settlement by the name of 'Living Room' due to it being built in a Living Room area of the store, but also due to the large blue sign that hung overhead the settlement.
Just like the last two settlements, I took up guard duty and scavenge duty, preferring to keep myself fit and battle ready.
Plus, it allowed me to kill the Staff every night when they attacked the walls and gate trying to force us to 'Leave the store' because 'The store is closing.'
There were just over ninety people in this town, and it was the smallest settlement I had joined so far, but something I've noticed over these years, was that everyone was surprisingly friendly, though we have heard rumors of some war and tribe-like settlements out there.
My point is, everyone is trying to survive, and if you are alone, you are certain to die, so, everyone works together, and everyone pulls their weight, if we didn't meant we were much more likely to die and this settlement would be yet another to fall.
Suddenly the nailed-together wooden fence acting as a net for a door was pushed aside as a woman rushed in, making me pause from sharpening the lawn mower blade in hand.
"Jay!"
"Why are you yelling? I'm right in front of you," I replied, somewhat annoyed by just how positive this woman could be, even after being here for a decade.
I arrived in the store when I was 23, and now I'm 27, Cindy on the other hand, got trapped here in the store when she was 16 and now she is just a year younger than me, how she managed to stay so positive after all these years, I have no idea, but she was the main reason the morale of the town was doing so good.
Cindy was both the town's counselor and mayor, she ran this town, and also helped everyone with any problems they had, in fact, I am sure she has managed to set up a couple of people here up together, and those people have actually had kids, one family had even been here since the founding of the settlement, with their eldest kid hitting eleven not too long ago.
"Well, don't go silent on me, what is it?" I asked, wondering what she wanted to tell me.
"Come look!" She shouted, as she grabbed my arm and yanked me out of my shack made of loosely put-together furniture.
Once outside she pointed to the sky and upon looking I grew confused.
Were those...birds?