Leaving that dangerous topic for another time, we continued to make our way through the [Dungeon], which didn’t appear to have any branches, puzzle rooms, or traps, but one slaughter fest of haunted items after another. I queried Sheeno on why there was so little diversity or challenge, and she responded by saying that this [Dungeon] must have been the equivalent of a baby, and we had caught it while it was still in the middle of growing its body.
Basically, we found a [Dungeon] while it had its magical pants down, and now we were having a disappointingly easy time in it.
The hardest thing we fought was a bunch of toiletries, and only because we didn’t want them anywhere near us, with them being able to spit green ectoplasmic goo; on that note, I was avoiding them because it looked gross, but Sheeno instead was doing so because she knew that goo was a sign of a [Splatter-Geist], another variant of the base type which generates a corrosive residue that is capable of quickly incapacitating most victim with its stickiness, and the ability to feed on the victim to grow and strengthen itself with what was absorbed.
All in all, the delve was surprisingly uneventful.
“Oh, c’mon, don’t be so glum about it, this is just the first we found on our first day! We’ll definitely find much better in near future”, Sheeno tried to comfort me.
“I’m not sad about the abysmal quality of the dungeon, just disappointed. Also, if some of the theories that [Dungeons] can think for themselves are true, then just how mindless this place has been makes the lack of challenge all the weirder. Which in turn makes me wary that the other shoe just has yet to drop”, I answered back.
“You’re thinking about this too much; let’s just complete the floor and then go back”, she said, waving one hand in the air as if to make the discussion fly away.
We kept moving forward, methodically clearing one room after another, with Sheeno as a vanguard and me as a backline; most challenges we met head-on, relying on my [Barriers] to protect us from any attack, while cleaving our way through the plentiful enemies, and as the beautiful giantess had said, they were now becoming so numerous that there no longer were any pieces of furniture that weren’t haunted, and the [Pouter-Geists] even ended up gaining the [Swarm behavior].
After the first few rooms, I fell into the repetitive motion of using [Unavoidable Detection] on the entire next room as soon as we got to the door, then [Identify] once we entered, and then creating a bunch of [totems], [turrets], and [trappers] to assist us; also, while Sheeno charged in, seemingly in a reckless fashion, but actually highly precise in its execution, I would provide additional support by shooting [Life Bolts] to anything in sight, while leaving a bunch of [Life Orbs] floating at my back, ready to strike at any moment, to cover any possible blind spot that we might have.
And so, maybe two hours in, we found ourselves in front of two familiar, black double doors.
“Wait, did we somehow get turned around?” Asked a confused Sheeno.
“No, no. I was keeping track, and while we might have looped around, we definitely didn’t get turned around: No ‘Harry Potter’s magic staircases’ akin bullshit here, thankfully” I reaffirmed.
“Who’s Henry Pother?” Asked back an even more confused four-armed- yeah, no. I need to stop it.
“A kid from a fantasy book with absurd plot armor written by a bad person”, I replied dismissively.
“And why did you bring something like that up, right now?” She asked, now irritated.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I just say stuff without thinking about it, especially when stressed”, I quickly responded, while making a point of indicating a familiar half moon shape on the wall next to the door.
She dropped the discussion to examine what was probably another hidden switch, placing two hands on her hips, scratching her chin with another, and lightly brushing along the edges of the button with her last hand. In the meanwhile, I tried to understand why I couldn’t push through the doors with my senses to get a feel of what was on the other side.
“I only had this happen to me once before, and it was with Eddd, a master of the elements who could seamlessly cloak himself in shadows. But even if these doors worked with the same principle, the addition of my [Adaptability] to the [Matrix] of [Unavoidable Detection] should be able to circumvent any attempt to evade its effects. And yet here I am, trying to [Scry] into a room that, for all intents and purposes, appears empty, even though it should house the ‘challenge’ of this floor… you know, with it being the last room before we loop back and all.”
[Buddy] didn’t respond to me for a couple of seconds, but when it did, its thoughts were further reason to worry, to say the least.
Now, this is only a conjecture on my part, although I have enough circumstantial evidence to be reasonably sure that it’s at least close to the truth:
As Sheeno has stated, the [Dungeon] is still building itself, and as you said, it could be somewhat sentient; now, if we were to consider both statements as true, what if the [Dungeon] has been learning how to counteract both of your styles, trying various things between rooms, and implementing what it found that worked in the room where you intended to go through anyway, the one that [Dungeons] usually make purposely harder?
“That is… entirely plausible, and makes this entire delve all the more dangerous.
But what are you trying to get at?”
What I’m trying to say is that you should loosen up on the patterns you’ve been using during this delve, and fall back on the more broad approach your kit allows.
The idea had its merits, and, since I probably wouldn’t have anything better to do while Sheeno inspected the doors, I systematically started removing the search parameters on my [detection Skill], while pushing my [Precognitive Aura] to try and tell me what would happen in the near future.
It didn’t really work: I mean, there was nothing moving, nor with any [Mana], in the adjacent room; neither furniture nor traps were preset, and all I could tell was there was a nondescript lump of metal in the middle of the space.
Even my [Aura] wasn’t helpful, telling me only that I would soon be disappointed.
“You sent a couple of pulses that even I could feel, without really trying to: You got anything for us?” Sheeno suddenly asked.
I looked her right in the eyes for a second or two, before my brain finally restart on gear “not much, just the room should be completely bare, that there’s a chunk of metal in the middle of it, and nothing else, unfortunately”.
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“The metal is definitely suspicious, and it could indicate the presence of traps, but that would be weird since we didn’t encounter any so far… So, what do you wanna do?” She offered in the end.
I brought my hand to my temples, massaging them, in an effort to help me think: “We could technically go back, and end the delve here since we collected enough information on the [Dungeon] to start the process of its categorization. On the other hand, going through the door will be faster than backtracking, and once we face the threat that awaits us we’ll make it safer for the next batch of [Adenturers] to do so since they’ll know what to expect…”.
Even though I offered my reasoning I knew that I had yet to say what I wanted to do, so with a sigh I continued “and that second point makes it clear that we should attempt it, just to not make the burden and risk fall on someone else”.
Sheeno nodded with a satisfied smile and, after replying that she was of the same opinion, squared her shoulders and made it almost look like she wanted to tackle the doors. Fortunately, that was only an inane thought on my part, and she just pressed the half-crescent button.
Instead of the creaky sound of ancient doors, that would have fitted in with the décor, the doors slid silently sideways into the walls; and instead of a look at the impending doom that awaited us in the room, we were greeted with a grey fog wall.
My [Aura] was right, I was disappointed, and apparently, I wasn’t alone.
“Well, now that’s what I would call ‘anti-climatic’… I guess I’ll still go in first and you’ll follow soon after”, I could only nod at her plan, and Sheeno was soon walking through the fog.
Before even a second had passed I passively scried that the inanimated lump of metal had become a moving [Monster], so I jumped through the fog faster than I would normally have, stumbling once on the other side, in order to warn Sheeno.
But what I saw made it clear that I didn’t need to.
Floating pieces of opaque, reddish metal were melting off the lump in the middle of the room, flying to seemingly random places and twisting into more firm shapes. I wasted no time in starting my summonings, but I went for a more defensive approach since I didn’t know what to expect.
4 [totems], 2 [turrets] and 4 [trappers] appeared around us, one after the other.
Sheeno tried to fire an [Ice Spear] into the mess of floating bits of metal, but one of the bigger pieces flew on its own to intercept the attack, barely denting after the sonorous impact, where the spear explode into tiny shards of ice, and while the bigger piece was flying back into place it was already repairing itself from the incurred damage.
Before we could mount a bigger coordinated attack, the lump in the middle was finished being used up, and the various floating bits snapped into places at the center from where they were hovering.
In less than a second were looking at a fully formed suit of armor, taller even than Sheeno, barely able to fit upright in the room; which then exploded green greenish fire from every hole and juncture it had.
“Fuck”, Sheeno helpfully supplied.
I decided to [Inspect] our newly formed foe
Name:
Unliving suit of Magmatic-Armor
Affinity:
Death; Earth (Aberrant: Metal); Fire
Threat:
High
Behaviour:
Aggressive
“Fuck”, I finally also exclaimed, metally noting that not only we shouldn't be facing a [Mini-Boss] so soon into the [Dungeon], but that the big fucker was also [Aberrant].
Even though the situation looked bad we started acting to the best of our abilities, but it soon became clear that [Buddy]’s warning was much more serious than I thought.
The disks from my [turrets] simply enter the armor and became part of it, making it only more dangerous to get close to, at least until the projectiles weren’t dismissed, while my [trappers] were being foiled since the enemy made it so that every net they launched met with a part of its body that resisted the various effects (like [Life] nets being met only by the metal, and more material types being destroyed by the [Ghost fire]).
Meanwhile, Sheeno was attempting to get closer, while launching her ranged attacks at it, but in reward for her efforts, all she got was only more fire being spat at her from the face-holes of the helmet, capable of melting all her attacks and forcing her to retreat.
We weren’t even that far from it, 10 meters or so, but it utilized the space to get in a ready stance position anyway, like it was wielding a sword with both hands, and before I could comment on it molten slag erupted from its hands, coalescing in the rough shape of a two-handed sword with a green and black glow.
I didn't even want to think about how black could glow, it wasn’t important right now; what was important was that the [Monster] at least seemed to be slow-moving.
“Gloves are off! Give it ALL you’ve got!” Shouted Sheeno, who followed suit and equipped herself with her ‘ultimate move’.
I decided to decrease both [turrets] and [trappers], since neither was working and went to do what I had in mind for a while: [Spell-weaving] mid-fight.
Was it a good idea? Not necessarily. Could it give us an edge? Since the [Dungeon] wouldn’t have had time to prepare for it, definitely!
So I got to it, while mindlessly launching barrages of [Bolts] and [Orbs] of random types, but still avoiding [Death], [Fire], and [Metal], and making sure that it wasn’t getting in Sheeno’s way, who was finally within reach of the metal giant, and was bobbing and weaving within its attacks while delivering her own.
“Ok, focus. What did I want this time?”
I already knew what I needed: I needed to be stronger.
It might seem unhelpful, but that would be at the center of the [Matrix], and I willed it so, and reality responded with a ring.
Then, I wanted it to be able to target and affect anything I could either touch or see, and that I recognized as either an ally, or that it was related to one; so, something that could affect people, familiars, and equipment.
A big ring appeared around the previous one, with four tiny ones interlocked with it… and it started collapsing.
“Motherfucker! Then I’ll throw an [Adaptability] at you too, how about that!?”
Surprisingly, the [Matrix] stabilized on its own when the new element was introduced.
“Would you look at that?”
I was honestly surprised: I never heard of a [Matrix] getting ‘fixed’ once it had started collapsing, but I guess I already was the cause for the first time of many things in the [Nexus], so this was within the strange norm that seemed to apply to me.
With one last push, I willed the [Spell] (because only a [Spell] could truly work like the ‘oh shit’-button I envisioned) to make anything affected better at doing what it did… and better at being what it was, because why not?
The surrounding space sort of ‘snapped’ and I was assaulted by a wave of vertigo, but the [Spell-Weaving] was complete.
You have successfully created a [Spell]: [Boost]
You have successfully [Evolved] the created [Spell] into [Betterment]
Betterment:
Spell; targeted
Will targeted ally, or affiliated target, to be better, in the manner most useful for the situation.
Initial Mana spent determines strength and type of base improvements, while the one subsequently provided increases magnitude.
Extreme enhancements may leave the target fatigued and spent, once effects have run their course.
Grinning at the [Evolution], which has been a long time since one had last happened, I summoned back both [turrets] and [trappers], with a ratio of 2 to 1.
“Sheeno! Get ready for a [Boost]!!!” I screamed to get my companion’s attention, to which I got a “ready when you are” from her in return.
It was time to table the turns.