Jungle Rocks Dungeon, foot of Mount Gursway, 15th day of Sol, 1661
Sometime later, Fancy popped back into Jessica’s room.
*Hey, Fancy. How did it go?*
With a sigh, fancy said, “I don’t think Monty’s partnered with the right Assistant.”
*Monty is probably the best of all three of us in resource management and strategic planning, but I think he’d need someone with a firm sense of self. It probably wouldn’t hurt for them to be a bit blood thirsty to complement his personality. If they’re a bit of a – are you familiar with the term ‘jock’?*
“Yes.”
*Let’s just say, he’s a real boy. The skill he is most proud of is being able to write his name in snow with pee.*
Fancy laughed, well, it was more of a giggle.
*The problem is that he’s going to be insufferable now, because that’s how we spoiled the evil plot and erased the glyphs to save our minds.*
By this stage Fancy was rolling around on the ground again, laughing herself silly.
*What about Sara?*
Looking up from the ground, Fancy said, “She’s fine and it looks like her match is a good one. What’s she good at?”
*Sara’s the best of us at magic, both the practice of and the theory of, and is by far the most stubborn, determined, wilful, however you want to describe it. Once she is set on a path, it is really hard for her to change or be changed.*
Fancy nodded, then got herself off the ground and continued, “Yourself?”
*I’m the leader and the best tactical planner.*
Fancy nodded, then said, “Then Mercy, the Pixie, will be a good match for Sara and I’ll talk to my Mentor after we’ve talked a bit more. I have a suggestion on who might be a match for Monty. When you said ‘he’s a real boy’, you meant?”
*Likes mud, insects, sweat, fart and pee jokes and is almost as competitive as I am, though don’t tell him that.*
“What, don’t tell him that you’re more competitive than him?”
*No, don’t tell him I am competitive at all, ever. Don’t even hint at it.*
“Um, why?”
Jessica sighed. *He thinks he’s the most competitive and actually thinks he usually ‘beats me’. The truth is, I simply manipulate the rules, so he thinks he wins. I change the rules so that my goal is to hide from him that I win. Therefore, he thinks he’s won, but I mess with him. Every. Single. Time.*
With actual stars in her eyes, Fancy said, “That’s brilliant. You’re my hero.”
Jessica snorted and shared some stories and had Fancy rolling around the floor of her Core Room again, laughing, again.
It took a couple of hours for Jessica to finish telling Fancy the whole story and filling her in on her education.
“Right, now, did you get anywhere on the claiming side.”
*Up to 2.3 kilometres and still growing. I’ve set it up so it’s expanding at the same rate as I’m generating mana, so my mana is staying constant at 80 mana. It just runs as a background task, so I don’t even have to work at it. I’m impressed with the multi-tasking skills I’ve got now. Why can’t I seem to get any DPs?*
“…”
Jessica sighed, “She’s broke again.”
“I am not! Just a little bit surprised.”
Jessica added another tick to the secret tally she was keeping of how many times she’d ‘broken’ Fancy.
“I sent an urgent request for my Mentor to attend when I went to deliver the messages. He’ll be the one to approve you getting a message to your family. As to the DPs? That’s because you are still a level 0 dungeon. Your abilities will be unlocked as we progress. Once we finish the first dungeon level, you’ll get access to all of your starting abilities. Also, any points that you may have collected up to that point will then be allocated.
“Now, on to the next step to get your Dungeon up and running. The system puts some restrictions on what will work, so you need to tick some boxes. This only applies to this initial level. You have a lot more freedom after this. So, the rules are, to have between 4 and 20 rooms, at least four traps and four monsters, but every room has to have something in it. This something can also be treasure or a puzzle. You can have another room set up to pretend to be your core room, complete with fake core, and this will take a slot, allowing you to not take one with your real one. You also need to have an entrance, attaching your Dungeon to the outside world, and every one of your rooms must have a path to the entrance, traversable by an average sized Delver. Your Core Room has to have a permanent path to the outside, but that can be, for example, a giant rat hole – so about a half metre diameter. You can create optional ‘experimental’ rooms to play with stuff and these cannot be connected to your other rooms and don’t form part of your room count. You get to have one every five levels.
“We’ll go through how you get monster, puzzle and trap plans in a minute. First, we need to kick the process off. Do you have any preferences for your layout?”
Jessica took a moment to process all this information.
“I quite like this limestone cave vibe. I was hoping for a straight shot for the first 4 rooms, then a fake Core Room. Could I have a trap that basically collapses the whole room if someone tries to get at my fake core? Run another set of four rooms off this fake one, with another set of four off the second last one? Put a trapped exit on the eighth room? Something like this.”
Jessica had been playing with her abilities and had figured out how to manifest things. She created a basic table with a rough relief map of the first draft of her Dungeon.
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“We can work with this. So, you’re using a gradual fall in elevation across the rooms, with Room 1 the highest and Room 12 the lowest?”
“Yep.”
“Scale?”
“Don’t know. How tall are you? That will allow me to figure out how big I need to make things. Also, what’s an average sized delver?”
“Mumble…mumble…mumble.”
“Cool, so you’re three mumbles tall. What’s that convert to in metres?”
Fancy starting blushing and Jessica sighed.
Using her ‘fake councillor voice’, Jessica continued, “Look, you are what you are, don’t let others define you based on what they consider important. As a ridiculously competitive Dungeon Core, I know about these things.”
Fancy nodded and gave Jesica a wintery smile. “A hundred millimetres. A ‘standard’ delver will be between a half metre and three metres.”
“So that makes me about 30 millimetres tall at the moment. Will I grow? Will you?”
“Yes. As you level up, we’ll both grow.”
“Cool. Next?”
“Do you want to go for short-term advantage or long-term?”
“Long-term.”
“Right. As you would have noticed, your area of influence has a lot of empty air above it. The area is a sphere, centred on your location. It’s worthwhile – when you build your Dungeon – to shift your core down as you go. You ‘loose’ that top area of influence, but you’ll be able to re-grow it down.”
“OK.”
“Wait! You need to hear the rest of this before starting. You should be able to see all living things within your domain, and they should be green. Can you see any that are red or grey?”
“There’s a group of five red things crossing my area on the surface.”
“Are they heading towards you?”
“No.”
“Good. Red things are sentient, grey are undead. You can absorb all green stuff and that will do three things. Firstly, it will give you mana, to allow you to do things and secondly, it will give you the blueprint for that stuff – allowing you to spawn it in your Dungeon, and lastly, as you absorb it, it dies, giving you some Dungeon Experience, which goes towards your next level.
“Clearing the stuff off the surface will give you a lot of mana, but it will also create a perfect circle of bare ground that will be a bit of a giveaway that you are here – well before you’re ready.”
“Likelihood of there being anyone in the area looking to claim a Dungeon Core?”
Fancy sighed. “Should be low.”
“I think it’s worth the risk, what do you think?”
“If there are Dungeon Hunters in the area, then we won’t be safe until we get to about level 10, so it seems a good risk to help us get a boost.”
“So how do I get down to my new Core Room, once I construct it?”
“Once you declare it as your new Core Room, and it is connected to the exit, you will be able to teleport yourself to it.”
“So, I create my new first floor, make my new Core Room a kilometre or so below, absorb all the green stuff and then move myself down.”
“Yes. I would make a layer of dungeon stone above and below your first level – about 20 metres thick. Don’t forget to deal with the water, otherwise the Core Room is going to get really damp. Also, keep your mana at fifty or above. Actually, do that layer between each level of your dungeon as well.”
Jessica laughed, “OK. By the way, what are blue things?”
Fancy got excited at this. “Blue are resources. You want to absorb all of those you can.”
“What happens if my mana goes over my maximum?”
“You won’t generate any new mana until its back beneath your maximum.”
“Cool.”
There was a ‘pop’, and a new creature appeared. Significantly larger that Fancy, and looked more…insect like? The difference was how angular the features were. Ah, a sprite.
“Fancy, I hope the emergency call was required?”
“Master! Thank you for attending. The situation here is a lot more complex than I’d expected and I needed to inform you of what has happened and to provide a suggestion for one of the other two dungeons in the area.”
The sprite didn’t say anything, just raised one eyebrow. Jessica grinned internally, recognising that look from her Dad. Someone was in trouble. In her mind she included the sing-song tune to go with that. As entertaining as it would be to let this play out, she didn’t feel that would be best for her, Jessica. She needed Fancy to be as confident as possible, to support her as she built her Dungeon Empire. Time for her to step up.
*Excuse, me? Who do I have the honour of hosting in my Core Room?*
Looking surprised, the sprite turned to Jessica’s crystal and said, “Master Dungeon Assistant Brian. And who are you, young core?”
*I am Jessica Fortier. Myself and my fellow triplets, Monty and Sara, were kidnapped and magically transformed into Dungeon Cores. While Fancy has been incredibly helpful so far, and I think we’ve made amazing progress, we come across a couple of things that she indicated had to be passed ‘up the line’. So, at my request, she’s contacted you.*
His eyes widened at the mention of her name. “So, your parents are?”
“His Royal Majesty, King Duniel Fortier III and Her Royal Majesty, Queen Camilla Fortier.”
“…”
Tick! Jessica did another mental fist pump and put another tick against the tally. She also started one for Brian.
This was fun!
Jessica continued, *I’m sure that they are quite concerned about the three of us and are probably expending a lot of resources trying to figure out what has happened. So, I would like to get a message to them. We know that magical changes such as these cannot be reversed, and honestly, I find this opportunity exciting. The idea of being able to pull practical jokes on my siblings basically forever, has a certain charm. The three of us will have no problems being located near each other. How long do you think it would be before we make contact?*
“You’re about fifteen kilometres from each other, so it should be within a year, based on the current growth rates?”
“Fancy, it should be a lot longer than that.”
“Master, it’s day 2 and Jessica’s already got her area of influence out to 2.5 kilometres.”
“…”
Tick!
“Alright, we’ll deal with the rest later. I’ll authorise the communication. Can you handle that, Fancy?”
“Sure.”
“That is it?”
“One other thing, Master. I skipped across to the other two dungeons to let them all know the situation and, while Sara’s Assistant, Mercy, seems to be working out well, I felt a lot of friction between Monty and his assistant. Bartholomew. From talking to Jessica, Monty is the best of the three of them at Strategic Planning and Resource Management but has a very strong personality. I remember Bartholomew from the Academy and he isn’t all that…flexible, and well, had already started to withdraw and sulk. I think that would be a very contentious relationship. I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I think that Jeremy the Sprite would be a better match, as I think he is yet to be allocated a dungeon, he should be available. His mixture of attention to detail and, frankly, course humour, would be a better match, from what Jessica’s told me. I was talking to Jeremy recently and was surprised he was still unallocated, considering his results.”
“You agree, Jessica?”
*Well, I don’t know this Jeremy, but I can say that someone with attention to detail would be a benefit for Monty. He has a strong personality, so a weak one would quickly get buried, and it would probably go better if they both laughed at the same things. I can imagine him doing something like having his monsters fart every time they got hit, just for the giggles. Remember that the three of us have just turned 13 today.*
“…”
Tick!
“Alright. I’ll go and drop in on Bartholomew and see what’s happening there.”
Pop.
Fancy breathed the tension out and said to Jessica, “Thank you.”
Jessica laughed, *My welcome, and honestly, it was good to get him on the back foot. Having someone have to agree with you by making a perfectly reasonable request makes it harder for them to say no next time.*
Fancy gave Jessica a strange look. “Then why did you start by telling me ‘no’?”
*Oh, that? That’s simple. It’s setting the tone for future discussions, that you won’t assume I’ll say yes, enforcing the idea that you cannot speak for me, and lastly, reinforcing that I am in control.*
Understanding lit Fancy’s eyes. “You’re keeping score, aren’t you? Every time you get one over me, you’re keeping score!”
*Would I, a pure, innocent twelve-year-old do that? Wait, no I’m thirteen now! Happy Birthday to me!*
Fancy knew what Jessica was doing but decided to play her own game and let her win this one. At least she tried to convince herself that was what was happening.
*Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday, dear me….*