2.4.2 Forests in the Deep (Sky Arrows)

The Sky Arrows stand before the open token door of the first room. It took them three hours to fight their way back to the beginning of the floor, and now they look not at a set of stairs down, but at a lot of tree branches to climb down.

"A forest floor? At [Very Low] rank? Usually the nature environment floors don't start until [Below Average] rank, but that would be twenty or thirty floors deeper" Corvin shakes his head.

"That might even be to our advantage." answers Tom "A nature floor has no rooms, only large caverns. And the size limit of the early floors will limit those caverns. That means less spawns and less problems finding the way through them."

"Too-hoom, you sure you didn't just jinx us?" Gladia pouts "The dungeon has tricked us often enough, and I'm not sure this is as easy as you think."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Gladia." the General smirks.

"We will see. Let's climb down." Tom commands the Sky Arrows to go on.

Instead of the usual ten meters between floors, the way down is thirty meters deep - but the Sky Arrows expected that as nature floors are much higher than regular floors, high enough to let the trees grow to twenty meters.

Once at the bottom of the climbway (no one could call that stairs anymore) the Sky Arrows watch through a large cavern filled with an old forest. Several fat stone columns support the ceiling. They and a lot of large trees make it impossible to see through the entire cavern. Like the climbway the walls themselves also look like a thick mess of wooden tree branches, making it even more difficult to judge where the cavern ends.

"Gladia, make sure to map this floor with all areas for the cavern." Park says "We should start by going along the walls to get the limits of the cavern. After that we try to find our what is in the inner areas. Let's start toward north."

Two hours later the Sky Arrows are back at the climbway.

"'Just follow the walls' he said. 'A smaller cavern means easier to find your way through' he said. Have you ever told that to the brambles and hill-like halfwalls scattered through this 'smaller' cavern?" Gladia whines.

"Hey, but at least that mess should have given you a good start at mapping the inner parts of the cavern whenever we were diverted there. Although I admit we were forced to do quite a lot more walking than a cavern of this size normally requires." Tom tries to calm her down. "How big is it anyway, and how much have you mapped now?"

"255 by 255 meters, average for the thirteenth floor of a [Heroic] dungeon. But we had to travel much more than one kilometer to map the walls. The map shows about half of the floor now, but we haven't found either the node or the stairs down. The floor uses both Silver Foxes and Large Foxes as spawns so far. There are not enough Silver Foxes to make this cavern worth looting, but the nature effect has increased the growth of several mosses and herbs, that might be enough to compensate."

Park adds to the discussion "Open nature-based caverns always have fewer but stronger spawns than room-based floors and only two higher-level bosses at the node and the stairs down. The fact that this is an early and smaller nature floor would make it a good training ground for parties planning to go to larger nature-based dungeons - this floor hasn't given us any extra problems so far, it only slowed down mapping it. Depending on what the node is this could still be a very good floor.

But we need to find the tokens, and I bet they are loot on the two floor bosses here. I think I saw the node through a very thick bramble bush in the northwest corner, opposite to the climbway up here. Let's go there next."

"OK, but we should go more west than north first" Gladia comments. "That way we get one of the blank spaces left mapped on our way."

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Half an hour of walking and a boss fight against a large fox later, the Sky Arrows inspect the node and their loot.

"Hey everyone, the token dropped by the boss shows a pentagon - that door is almost at the other end of the spiral on the floor above." Gladia shouts.

"Did you expect anything else?" Park answers "But this node has a very interesting option. It is a regular plant node, which means that anyone can spend SP to create one of the herbs or plants known to the dungeon. But it has an option that you can bring a new plant in and add it to the list of possible creations."

"Which would of course give the core the ability to use that plant elsewhere." Tom answers "So basically you can gather plants for the core to use in exchange for that plant being available as loot. Most cores don't bother with that option because it's mostly used to modify the loot tables for improving the chances of the parties venturing inside. But I suspect a dungeon core as tricky as this one can probably use such herbs in other ways as well."

After some thinking Cleev answers "The Lizardpeople could probably use any herbs for themselves. And it is strange that we haven't encountered one of them so far. We know from the report of the elven rangers that it had lizardpeople gathering things, and the fact that Blackmoss was retracted also points to someone with hands to remove the destroyed core node had gone there. But we haven't found any sign of them, only animal spawns so far. And never forget that we still have no idea what else it gained from Blackmoss, the dwarves are not telling anything other than that Blackmoss was ."

"Yes, that is something to think about. But let's look for the stairs down and the second floor boss."

Ninety minutes later Corvin calls out. "Gladia, wait. Are you sure nothing has manipulated your mapping? We killed the last regular spawn an hour ago and must have gone through the floor twice, but still haven't found the second boss or the stairs down."

"No, the map is correct - there simply isn't a stair down on this floor. I'm beginning to understand what is going on.

Everyone, see those seven columns? We originally thought they were only obstacles because no dungeon needs to support the ceiling, but they are wide enough to contain stairs. And I think they do, with their stairs going through this floor into deeper floors. That would explain the multiple stair bonus rooms on the floor above, and it means that the second boss in this cavern has become a roaming boss like if the deepest floor of a regular dungeon is a nature floor."

"You're right" answers Tom, "That is the simplest explanation for everything we found so far. And since the second boss seems to be intelligent enough not to attack stronger opponents, we either need to bait or herd it to force a fight. And Claudia didn't come with us for this dive, so I suggest we split and herd it into a corner. There can't be many spawns left on this floor and everyone of us is strong enough to handle a level 20 spawn alone."

One hour later the Sky Arrows stand by the corpse of a rather big silver fox. Gladia checks the token they gained while Tom kneels down and begins to cut up the fox.

"The token has one dot, it is one of the six tokens for the center door above. Why are you gutting the fox, Tom?"

"If your assumptions on these floors are correct - and I think they are - then we'll need a week to get through them. Going through every fight on floor twelve multiple times and hunting the roaming boss on seven open nature floors will take that time, especially if we want to play it safe. And that means we should bolster our rations with what food we can get in the dungeon itself. And luckily the bonus on the silver foxes means that their meat is edible and won't dissolve like a regular spawn."

The Sky Arrows continue collecting what they think is usable and then head to the climbway back to floor twelve.

"It looks as if they're planning to camp the night again in the last room of floor twelve, General." Lia says "Do you plan to modify that room if that becomes standard practise?"

After a minute the core's answer is relayed "Not at the moment, it wouldn't matter with the Sky Arrows anyway. I might decide to change it later if even the regular parties do the same often enough, but it will depend on a lot of things as I don't want to get labeled as too deadly either."

"What about the next floor they have the token for?" asks Orslesh "It will be that floor 17 that you labeled as 'Amazonas', but I don't know what an amazonas is."

"That name comes from a region on the world where we came from." answers Gunny "It is basically a water forest or wet forest, with many of the trees growing out of a river named 'Amazonas'. I think Holgun will really like the many spearcrabs that are hidden in the waters of that floor."

Everyone smirks at that comment.

"Unfortunately I don't think the Amazonas will provide an obstacle to the Sky Arrows, they are just too good and high-leveled for that to do more than slow them down." The General comments and continues "But the third floor they will get a token for, the floor fifteen might be something else. I hope I got it right this time after the failure on floor five."

"Right, you tried another go at an underwater floor there..."