2.3.4 The Real Entrance
The group stands on the grass in the small dale, about a hundred meters away from the stone wall of the mountain. A cave entrance is visible in that stone wall, but nothing else.
Gunny speaks up. "Briar, I would like to make a little test of your knowledge and skills. As long as I'm with you no dungeon creature will attack you or your friend, but I would like to see how you handle dungeons and traps even without a risky fight. Lia can go ahead and inform the core, and you can show me how you would approach a dungeon without any previous information about it."
"OK, I can do that" answers Briar "but that is just a cave entrance, not a dungeon. Is that part of your test?"
"Let's just say that with the General, you always have to expect the unexpected. He made a [Very High] ranked evaluation team work for it on [Limited] levels. They weren't in any danger of course, but they couldn't just stroll through those floors either.
So yes, that cave entrance is where you start. But first give Lia an hour to get ahead and inform the core about this."
One hour later Lia is back and Gunny watches as Briar slowly approaches the cavern entrance. He looks through it for a few seconds before he starts to check the tunnel for traps or other hidden effects. The group slowly follows him as he checks the natural cavern as it continues into the mountain.
At one place where a much more regular tunnel branches off in a steep angle and Briar climbs it up, Gunny gestures the rest to wait. Half an hour later Briar is back. "This seems to be a lookout tunnel as it ends behind a bush about thirty meters higher on the mountain wall."
"That is correct, which is why I told your friends to wait here until you got back."
Gunny continues watching Briar as he continues looking for traps in the other corridors that follow.
Why is he working that hesitantly? I thought he wanted that contract? No, it's not not hesitant - it's as if he already knows he will find nothing and just goes through the motions to show that he knows how to search for something...
After going about two or three hundred meters deeper into the cave, the tunnel opens up to a small cavern. The ceiling is suddenly five or six meter high, supported by two stone column in the center and the left back of the fifty meter long and twenty meter wide cavern.
Briar watches the cavern for a while from the tunnel, before he starts rummaging into his backpack. With a rope and two short planks of wood he approaches the second column and starts to bind the wood on one part of the column.
Gunny tries not to show it, but he is impressed. How could he have seen from the entrance that the General gave orders to weaken that column? It's similar to how he gave the impression of knowing that there are no traps elsewhere. If I didn't know better I would assume that Briar had been in this cave before the General came here, but from all that I know that is impossible...
The group continues through the tunnel at the other end of the cavern, until they come to a crossing of five almost identical tunnel openings - the one they stand in and four others that come together at a tiny cave.
Briar speaks up "The tunnel to our left is the real entrance to the dungeon, it begins about three meters into that tunnel. The other three tunnels have nothing to do with the dungeon itself, should I explore them anyway?"
How did he know that? "No, that is not neccessary. One of the tunnels is another exit and the other two are a loop without any function, just to confuse people coming in here."
At that Briar thinks for a few seconds before asking "Gunny, can you guarantee us a week of rest and food even if the Core decides to cancel the contract?"
The General wouldn't throw out children even if the contract fails, but "Why do you ask? What brought that up now?"
Briat explains "You have a big problem here with these tunnels, and you don't even have a hint of understanding or you wouldn't have build them. But I can't explain it, I can only demonstrate it. But that demonstration would exhaust me.
I would need several days of rest before I would be able to leave after the demonstration, to the point that we would not be able to survive in the wilderness if I don't get that rest before leaving."
"I can't even think of what problem you could see that I don't see, but if that is really the case then that will be no problem, you'll get your week of rest at minimum after the demonstration." Gunny answers.
Briar reaches out and takes Gunnies claw into his hand before turning toward one of the other tunnels. He closes his eyes and looks as if he concentrates.
Suddenly there is a flicker in the air and two of the five tunnels are gone.
"What?" Gunny exclaims "What happened? Where are those two tunnels"
"What tunnels are you talking about, Gunny?" Lia asks. She looks confused on his behaviour.
"The looping tunnel to distract people that was here just a few seconds ago, those tunnels!" Gunny gestures toward the tunnel wall.
"Did something hit you on the head? I know that the core has plans to make such a tunnel, but he decided to do that later and focused the improved badgers to dig to the other side of the mountain first. That's why those tunnels were only mentioned once a few weeks ago." Lia looks concerned about Gunny.
Briar interjects at that moment "Stop it! Gunny, that was Kuor'Tel.
Inside a dungeon Kuor'Tel cannot work, but anything outside can be kuored. Sir Marken told me that most dungeons at least know about Kuor'Tel even if it doesn't work inside them, but when you didn't kuor your hunt I became suspicious.
Neither you nor the core have any idea about Kuor'Tel, am I right? Because otherwise you wouldn't have made plans for the outside like that..."
"You're right, we don't have any idea of what this Kuor'Tel is. Are you telling me that outside of a Dungeon anything can be changed by people as they wish?"
"No, 'change' is too small a word to use for Kuor'Tel, and Kuor'Tel in itself can be opposed outside as well. I don't know how to describe it with other words than saying I kuored - everyone always understood what that means."
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"OK, then let's stop this discussion for now - it's the General who needs to hear this, and he can't hear it while we are outside the dungeon. But you definetely earned some points with this demonstration.
Let's continue into the dungeon to see how you handle that, and then we go to the core room to discuss this Kuor'Tel." Gunny answers. But unfortunately this sounds like another problem for translation, like we had problems explaining what air and breathing is to the creatures of this world. Only this time the General and I are on the wrong side of the translation barrier...
With a nod Briar continues down the tunnel of the dungeon, this time visibly much more carefull than before. After about a hundred meter it ends in a torch-lit cellar-like room. After he enters it and looks around a bit Briar begins to frown.
"This is more strangeness - usually the environment of the first floor pushes itself up to the surface, overriding the environment for the entrance. Here it is the other way around, with the outside environment determining the entrance until short of the first floor.
And it is extremely strange that the first floor is set to be the safe floor. Mythical cores have a rather large first floor that would take some time to build, and sacrificing all that area that could have defended the core early?
Well, Gunny, usually no adventurer would search for traps on a safe floor. But with this many unusual things I would even search for them if you hadn't asked to see how I do this."
The room is six by six meters, with a single corridor leading north and the tunnel opening to the exit on the east wall where it takes a sharp turn south and up. Two torches flank the corridor opening and a third torch hangs in the middle of the south wall.
Briar begins to check floor and walls for anything unusual, and finally he stops at the west end of the south wall.
"Gunny, there is something here. It is well-hidden and I don't see any trigger at all, but this wall is not like the others."
"You're correct, it is a secret door. Because it is a dead end leading nowhere the rules allow it to be handled by a guard at the other side, that is why you don't see a handle. But it is where we have to go for now." Gunny makes a gesture and after a few second the wall slowly recedes a bit before it swings open, revealing a two meter wide corridor going farther south.
A lone lizardman can be seen as he crouches timidly and withdraws back into the corridor. Gunny continues "and for those of your friends who know nothing about dungeons, that behaviour is the result of the [safe floor] effect, it makes dungeon spawn [timid] in the presence of non-dungeon beings. Let's go in."
After ten meters the corridor turns east and continues far longer in that direction, past three doors on the north wall. Gunny however stops at the first door.
"This will be your room and the room of your friends for now. It is rather small and never was intended for guests, but for now we have no other choice. The next safe floor is not yet built as it will be Floor 20, then the core could include some guest chambers there. But he didn't expect guests of the peaceful variant when he designed this first floor.
You four should stay here where you are safe. As you can see someone already placed some food and water there. However Briar and I will continue deeper to the core room for the discussion on how to continue."
After a short discussion the children agree - Briar knows that he is the only one directly protected by the contract, anyone else would be in danger if they left the safe floor.
Before leaving with Briar, Gunny says to the children "We will talk about a schedule when you can safely leave this room later, but for now please stay inside. There are a few spawns working in the other rooms here, and while they can't hurt you you would disrupt their work when forcing the [timid] effect on them as soon as they see you. We should be back in two hours or so - if not Lia will come to tell you of any changes."
Gunny and Briar go back through the corridor and continue toward the other exit from the entrance room. Beyond a short corridor it opens up to a larger room of eight by ten meters. Only one other corridor leaves this room, a walkway going down in a curve at the north-west edge.
Gunny approvingly watches as Briar begins again to check everything without being prompted to do, and indeed he finds another secret door on the same wall as the way down. This time however Briar finds a way to open the secret door, revealing a rather small room filled with several barrels and a lizardwoman. With a "Hi" as a greeting he enters and checks the barrels. "Drinking water? Nine barrels with thousands of liters of distilled water? That's a bit strange here. Care to explain, Gunny?"
"No, it isn't for drinking. I'll explain on the way down.
You see, this isn't the only entrance into this dungeon. We had already a number of visitors through the other entrances, and it was really fun to watch them stumbling through the General's surprises in the other part of the dungeon. We hope that the adventurer's guild never even finds this exit as the General managed to keep the opening spike to the other exists.
This however allowed us to repurpose this exit to catching animals for our use. And ... Oh shit" Gunny looks down to his feet, where a bit of water is streaming along.
"I forgot to change Margraals' last commands, and she didn't realise that by finding her you would have disabled her. She activated the trap I was about to tell you. Let's hurry down, things are about to become slippery."
The two speed up going, but the amount of water flowing down quickly covers every part of the floor, and the last two meters they barely manage to stay upright by gliding down the stones.
"What? How is that possible? You can't install a trap on the way between floors, the System would never allow that!" Briar is really confused.
"It isn't a real trap" Gunny answers. "Not as the System defines traps. It's just someone watching the corridor through a peeking hole that can drain perfectly harmless water down to be disposed of.
But as you might have known, the distilled water here has the tendency to make almost every hard surface rather slippery, and it is perfect to keep animals captured for a short while after we baited them down here.
And it isn't even against the rules, because there is another way out - you just have to go down to the core floor and then back up the other part of the dungeon."
The rest of the way down to the core room is very instructive for Briar, even if Gunny refuses to explain some parts. But he learns many ways how a dungeon can surprise someone who only experience rather simple core behavior in the past. And then he listens as Gunny describes their discussion and situation in detail up to the demonstration of Kuor'Tel just outside the Dungeon Entrance.
"And that is what I don't understand, General. I remember you giving the command to dig that tunnel because it would be much quicker work before digging the long tunnel to the other side of the mountain. I also remember checking the tunnel out and how Briar asked about it. But the tunnel isn't there, and everyone else tells me you never gave that command but send the badgers directly to dig the long tunnel..."
"I believe you, Gunny - and not only because you have no reason to lie.
I do remember giving the order to dig the tunnel directly - which is strange in hindsight because it would have been more logical to dig the other tunnel first. But what really tells me that you're right is that I experienced something similar back at the beginning.
Before I entered the core, while I was still floating above, a label in some of the screens was changed for no reason I could determine. I remember reading 'Aura' as the label, but just a minute later it was labelled 'Plague' everywhere.
This must have been a similar change like what was done by Briar to the tunnels, although just changing a label instead of a lot of digging work."
In the silence that follows Briar speaks up "What do you mean, 'before you entered the core'? I realise that you are not a regular dungeon core - you sound like a person. But how can that be?"
"Briar, as you promised you provided valuable info and helped us. I originally hoped to get a more experienced person with the contract and your youth will cause some problems, but given how you helped and the penalties for cancelling a contract as well as trusting luck to search someone else - I'll keep you on the contract.
So yes, I was a person before I died and Bareen snatched my soul to use it for this dungeon core. Short summary: the dungeons have a purpose and that they are often conquered is creating problems for the gods. So they decided to try soul-controlled cores to see if we are better at staying free than the regular cores with simple programming."
The discussion continues with many questions on both sides. Briar fails to explain what exactly Kuor'Tel is as it is almost instinctual to him - and the General suspects that is not only because of the translation barrier but also because that
When Gunny suggests to call it a variant of 'changing' Briar can only answer "Change is too small a word, it is to Kuor'Tel like a pebble is to a mountain".
Frustrated the General decides to skip that explanation for now and focuses on what Briar needs to train in the next week before getting his first real assignment.