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[Sigurd]
The journey to the capital was a long one, and Sigurd was not exactly keen to get started on it. It would be boring, painful, expensive, and painful. Did he mention painful? Especially so with his battered body.
Still, like normal, he woke early, just as the sun was kissing the horizon, as a mother to her child stepping into the wide world, a fitting image for him to start his own journey.
A quick breakfast, with a cup of Aeldra was enough to perk him up, “up and at them” as his mother used to say. Sigurd didn’t remember much about his mother, but he did remember that. He smiled at the fond memory, busying himself with preparations.
He had packed a bag of food, a sleeping mat and a couple of water pouches as well as a small tent, the night before and they completely filled up the saddlebags on Dexter, his horse.
His armour had dried over the last two days, and he had fixed it up enough, once dry, that it fit him correctly again. Sewing up the slashes with wax thread had taken time, but it was worth it.
After a quick run around the house to check he hadn’t forgotten anything, Sigurd stepped across the threshold and into the morning air.
He emerged into the fresh air and, breathing in a cold lungful, he smiled. There was nothing quite like the eerie quiet of the early morning, the peace and serenity lingering as the world began to wake. A private moment while everything was still and calm.
He loved it.
Sigurd’s cheery outlook and smile soon faded at the pain of riding his horse, shortening his breath and making him gasp with each jolting step as it trotted along, excited to leave the stable for once.
Fucking horse! What was it doing, dancing a fucking jig? He thought, bitterly.
“What do you want? I give you a nice stable and food!”
Predictably it didn’t respond. Fucking horse!
As he travelled, he said farewell to the few people up at such an hour, farmers and the like, and though he tried to keep the swearing to a minimum, it crept out a little.
Wincing with each prancing step Dexter took, he headed down the road at a trot, bracing every time the horse shifted or jolted around on the uneven path.
As time went by, the sun started to crawl slowly across the sky, rising properly as the land came to life. The early birdsong faded away, and the wind picked up from the dead calm to a cooling gentle breeze that pressed him forwards, giving a nice shove as if to say “get on your way.”
The leaves rustled, disturbed by said breeze, a breeze which carried the smells of the country across Sigurd’s nose, from the woody earthy smells of the woods to the smell of freshly cut grass and hay, he took it all in.
Off to his right, a small brook babbled and bobbled along, cutting through the terrain on its way to the sea. It took a few meandering turns, passing under bridges and across fields and copses. Sigurd watched it as he travelled, the constant glass-like flowing ridges in the water and the wavering, flickering reflections pleasant to look at. He watched odd bits of debris float along, at times seeming to dance around as the water currents pulled it this way and that. Speeding up and slowing down, pausing for breaks amongst the rocks that jutted out of the water like mountains as it raced downstream.
For a time, he watched the same small stick, before the twisting trail edged too far from the water and he lost it. He felt a momentary pang of disappointment that his companion had vanished.
It couldn’t be helped though, he would have to cross the brook several times before reaching Oar’s Rest, and his trail led round fields and thickets of trees on a much longer journey than that which the water took.
The sky was a nice, rich, blue, with nary a cloud in sight: just a few wispy vapours that marbled the blue canvas. Sigurd sighed, relaxing, it was beautiful.
He felt at peace. As one with nature. And he whistled merrily as his joyous mood returned, the pain banished in the depth of such a serene scene.
As he travelled, Sigurd found himself thinking back to his recent delve. Not on the failures and mistakes that he had made, and there had been plenty. No, he had already had ample time to think of those, but rather of the dungeon itself.
Whatever the truth of dungeons, it was clear to Sigurd that there had to be some sort of intelligence behind them. Whether there was any conscious thought or just intelligent reactions he didn’t know, but what he was sure of was that whatever was controlling this dungeon was far more unusual than any he had sought before. Perhaps unique among dungeons.
He supposed it was possible that the caverns had existed there before, as part of some old mages’ grand experiment or of some old order of peoples. A purpose he couldn’t imagine for such a work, but it was worth considering. At this point, it was all worth considering. In such a circumstance, perhaps the dungeon’s guiding intelligence had stumbled across it and had decided to use it, after all taking the time to remove that much stone had to have been time consuming. In fact, he wondered truly how old this dungeon was.
He had heard of some of the deeper dungeons having far larger twisting paths and rooms that perhaps rivalled the first floor on this one, but that was on floor 100 of some of them, like The Great Tomb and Parivalio.
Dungeons like them had been around for around at least a hundred years, with thousands of people putting in thousands of hours before they managed to get down low enough to see these floors.
Even now, The Great Tomb was only 132 floors deep, adding a new floor every two to three years, whilst Parivalio was unknown. It was much trickier and had got away from the guild at floor 115 when they had failed to reach the end of the last floor.
The guild had managed to keep up with the dungeon for decades, but it was a very risky dungeon to delve due to the incredibly deadly traps and monsters that ambushed adventurers seemingly at random. That and the wandering boss, the Parivalio Reaver, that had wiped several high-level teams, meant it wasn’t delved as much as needed to keep up with its growth. It was still delved and last he had heard it had been delved down to floor 137.
Still they predicted that it was 146 to 152 floors deep from its rate of growth before losing track. One of the deepest dungeons known, and Sigurd had heard reported that floor 109 was a few huge rooms. He had never seen those rooms though. The Great Tomb had stopped him at floor 58 and Parivalio at floor 32, so a long way off.
Sigurd smiled as he remembered the good times he had had with his team in those dungeons, with everything new they discovered. It was so good, but soon they had got as far as they would get in those, as their progress stalled out. Then they moved on, to the next one and the next.
As he reminisced, he felt tired and so slumped down in his saddle, letting his torso rest on the saddle bags. He liked this position, slumped over as he was, he could look behind them and watch the last remnants of the little wispy clouds of dust that were kicked up by Dexter’s hooves settle back down on the loose gravel of the trail. It settled down quickly after, leaving little evidence they had passed through, but the swirls were a good idle distraction and watching it helped to pass the time as the leagues went under foot. Being half-dwarf allowed Sigurd this position without falling off or burdening Dexter overly, which was a major benefit as far as he was concerned.
The sun rose higher in the sky as the hours blended together, and Dexter marched on under the heat of day, a tireless soldier carrying his friend to safety.
Soon it was time for lunch and a rest, Dexter had done well and despite dancing a painful jig at the start, he had carried him safely all day.
Sigurd pulled up in the shade of a tree, near the bank of the stream. Picketing the horse so that he could graze on the lush grasses that fed off the stream and take a nice refreshing drink at leisure. Sigurd washed his hands and face in the cold water, feeling refreshed as the heat of the day was banished and the droplets of cold water dripped from his hair. Slicking it back, he went rooting through the pack for food.
A deer stew was easy to heat up using a mage fire powder and it was delicious. Meanwhile, Dexter got several handfuls of oats, a carrot and an apple as well as a brush down. After eating Sigurd pulled his straw hat over his eyes and drifted off to sleep for a quick nap in the shade of the tree, the breeze caressing his face.
Dexter snorted a few times at his lazy owner, before taking a drink, and settling down to graze while he waited.
==========
[Dungeon]
The construction of floor seven had gone very smoothly and I hadn’t run into any problems doing it, well… except for the lack of dungeon points but that wasn’t so much a problem with floor seven specifically, as it was a problem with all floors right now. I could only hope that when I had adventurers continually delving me, I would end up getting dungeon points for something, because it was not particularly sustainable to only get them from level ups.
Progress on floor eight had gone much slower, though just as smoothly. It was to be a huge room. After sliding down the seventh floor – assuming they made it through the icy maze of routes and didn’t die – they would either end up slamming into the wall causing icicles to fall from the ceiling which they would then dodge: something I had added when I began to plot out floor eight, or they would end up sliding down the slope and through the entrance to the eighth floor, I thought it was fitting, seeing as they had already descended quite far. No stairs this time, though having said that, I would need to add stairs at some point to allow them to backtrack. Asking them to climb back up those routes was a bit much, it might push adventurers away from delving me, and I couldn’t have that, no, nothing that would prevent them from continuing to delve time and time again and thus dying, could be allowed.
If they didn’t slow themselves down enough, they would just slide straight off the platform at the beginning of floor eight and plunge into the icy cold water I was planning to put there; a very likely death followed that.
If they managed to stop in time, or avoid the icicles, then they had two options, they could walk up the stairs that I had yet to put in or they could press onwards, exploring floor eight and those beyond.
If they decided to press on, they would have to navigate across floating blocks of ice and flat sheet ice platforms that bobbed and shifted on the ocean I was creating in order to get to the other side and the entrance to floor nine.
The giant blocks would roll around in the water and the adventurers would have to be quick, nimble, and careful to avoid such a fate. Scrambling across them one at a time should be fine though. The sheet platforms wouldn’t roll but they would contain fights and treasure.
This level was the most linear in regard to how it was explored, since the water was pretty much impassable other than via the platforms and blocks. They would then be faced with an accessible path straight across the cavern, although there would be several different routes across the icy obstacles that could let adventurers risk more with jumps between platforms and slippery rolling blocks, or take more fights. It was fairly straight forward.
It took me about four days to dig out the cavern, in part due to my increased skill, but also due to the fact that there was a large cavern already in place, that took up about a third of the space I needed to excavate. It extended a touch too far down, so when I finished excavating the rest of the room I used some of the stone to seal up the natural split in the rock and then I began filling the place with water.
It took another four days to fill, and I had no clue how long it would take to get to the right temperature, I was expecting to have to play around with the balance of temperatures but it would come in time.
When last I looked at my status, I had noticed something odd, it seemed as though I still had a perk or something.
Focusing on the weird symbol it came up with a notification telling me I had not finished accessing all parts of the perk.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
What had I missed?
Thinking back, I realised, and I felt incredibly stupid for doing so. The notification had said:
~~For making it to level 30 without killing anything sapient, you have been offered a special one-time deal:
2 greater mana atmosphere regulators, Treasure Blueprint set 1, 15000kg of random material (including 360kg of rare materials and 10kg of super rare materials), 1x 75% discount on elemental based mobs pack and 1600 dungeon points.~~
The elemental based mobs pack! I had used the mana atmosphere regulator to create these icy floors, I had used the treasure blueprint to create some of the treasure I offered, and as soon as I knew how to replicate the potion that the adventurer had dropped I would be including those too. I had examined the super rare materials, mithril and orichalcum were useful for sure, but I hadn’t done anything with them, but the discount on the elemental mobs pack. I hadn’t used it. 50% off could be amazing.
Quickly navigating to the store, I brought up the options:
Reading the entry initially I was excited as the 75% discount would reduce one of those packs from 2100 points to 525 points, only two levels worth. But it was a question of which one I should get.
I knew I was going to need to get the advanced options, the kobold village had a danger rating of 2.2 and my Yeti had a danger rating of 1.6 so I couldn’t very well make the future levels easier.
I was also nearly at the end of my ice floors so it might be a waste to get an ice pack.
I scanned the list once more before, stopping as I read the last sentence. What? How had I missed that before. The discount was already applied meaning I would need many more levels.
Since it was already applied. That would mean that the Combination pack worth 2100 points was originally worth 8400 points!
It better have a lot of good mobs I thought to myself, as I mentally committed to buying one.
The Fire and Ice pack, worth 1900 points, I decided, enough to finish off my ice floors and get started on the fire ones.
Doing a few calculations, I realised I would just need to get to level 36, to get the required points. Great. At least it would set me up for a long enough time that I would hopefully be good on points until the adventurers came back. Then I would figure out what I needed to do to gain points from them.
It was time to begin absorbing mana once again. Yay!
However, after having blown open the entrance of the dungeon, ambient mana had poured into my awareness, and I had had a much easier time of it. While pondering this fact I had a realisation.
All life gave off mana, mana with its own unique properties. That same life absorbed other, different mana and used it to fuel their growth, spells, whatever… and by doing so it stripped away some of those unique properties and made the mana into their own. Which then ended up back into the environment.
Dungeons were no different and I had absorbed all of the ambient mana in my domain, thus reducing the mana density of mana that was not my own and making it more difficult for me to gain mana and level up.
When I had broken through to the surface, I had opened up the floodgates and ambient mana had spilled back in. A fact which should help me complete my next set of level ups in a similar time to the previous ones, despite needing much more mana.
This theory explained why I gained mana for all the creatures that were inside my dungeon, as well as explaining why adventurers delved dungeons, apart from all the treasure; because living within my environment meant that they could absorb my mana - which was foreign to them - and use it to grow stronger, especially since dungeons represented some of the most high mana density places accessible.
The joy of growing stronger, mixed with the challenge and difficulty of a dungeon as well as the rewarding treasure meant that there was a perfect combination of factors to provide for adventurers, and dungeons in turn had learned to feed off of them, a symbiotic relationship.
I was missing that vital component, and without it I had been struggling, but I was willing to bet that killing adventurers would give me dungeon points, though how whatever entity that created the store for us, benefited from this was unknown.
*** 3 weeks later***
~~Level up: 31~~
~~Level up: 32~~
~~Level up: 33~~
~~Level up: 34~~
~~Level up: 35~~
~~Level up: 36~~
Yes!
Finally, success. I had done it. Level 36 and enough points to buy the advanced Elemental Fire and Ice Mobs Pack. Getting to level 36 had given me 2085 points. I spent 1900 of which on the pack giving me 185 left over.
It was time to see what I had got in the pack. First the Ice ones.
Wow!
There was a lot to take in with that, I had gained 28 monsters and another 12 animals which I could use to populate my waters, and that was just in the Ice Part of the Pack.
It was certainly enough to finish off my ice floors. I wanted to place them all immediately, but I also knew I wanted to look at the fire ones.
If the fire pack was equally good, I thought that I would end up with at least double the number of monsters I could have bought with the points required to buy the pack alone, even without the discount from my perk. A deal, though you didn’t get to choose, so maybe it was more risky, and I had been lucky so far that all the ice monsters were a perfect fit for my dungeon.
Oh well, the fire ones now, I couldn’t wait, it was bound to be excellent.
Another excellent plethora of monsters that I couldn’t wait to implement. Though I doubted it was enough to get through all the fire levels. For sure it was enough to start. Though I couldn’t see myself using all these different creatures in one floor. I would also have to buy some more of them as there were definitely not enough to fill up the floors on the scale that I was creating.
The scoria stood out to me, despite its description not doing a great job at explaining it, I thought this could be one of my most dangerous monsters. Perhaps too the noxious komodo dragonling would fill that role, depending on the extent of its toxins.
I was excited and intrigued to play around with them, but it would have to wait.
For now, I had to finish up the ice floors placing monsters on floor seven and eight before creating floor nine and the boss room.
Placing the ten yeti throughout the Ice Run I tweaked a few bits here and there, making it more difficult in places and less in others, trying to balance out the visuals of each run down the slope, to try to give no clue away.
For the battles on the platforms in the Ocean floor, I went with the Icy Polar Bears. From a distance it was hard to figure out which platforms had one on and as such I hoped adventurers wouldn’t be able to try and plot a path that avoided most of them, still the treasure was in the same place, so it seemed rather pointless to avoid the fights. They wanted treasure the most.
The Polar Bears were the main threat to the adventurers on this floor, with the Icy Crash Birds perhaps capable of knocking an unwary few into the waters or dealing small bits of damage, there were a few of them and they would dive at random so it would be a distraction at least. I thought I would get a couple of kills with them over time. But my dungeon was untested at this point so only time would tell.
Up in the roof, 50 metres above the perilous waters, I made the nests for the crash birds, it wouldn’t be a special area this time, there was no need as I had plenty of other options.
The Greenland sharks and White sturgeon went into the waters, as it was the only place to put them, and I filled the water with lots of krill, small fish and other normal animals that could be picked up in the store for an exchange of materials.
That was one of the great features of the store, that I could pick up lots of the decorative elements and key parts of the food chain in exchange for stone, iron and coal, and since I was more efficient than a quarry at mining it, it meant that I never ran short of the things needed to give my monsters food and exercise. Yes, I knew that they could just lie around waiting, feeding on my mana, but I liked the feel of the ecosystem, and watching them hunt and eat. It kept them sharp, especially without regular dives from adventurers. Hopefully that would change soon though.
Unfortunately for me, the orcas required a lot of space, so much so that I had had to expand the cavern to 1800m across and 700m wide with a depth of 200m. But once it was done and they were happy enough I placed them I and gave them a few mental commands, watching them soar out of the water and come crashing down on to the empty platforms.
That…
That was brutal, I loved it.
They would definitely be killing a lot of adventurers. Any that fell in the water would fall prey to them. If I added a freezing fog to the floor too it would prevent adventurers from seeing and planning out the route and hopefully would surprise them the first few times.
Trading some of the iron I had mined, I picked up a few rare creatures; crabs in the depths and various crustaceans which could be fished for, their carapaces and claws or eyes were valuable.
The bony spurs along the side of the sturgeon and the heart of the Greenland sharks were worth a lot of money and considering that the creatures held so much value, there were few treasure chests on the ice course.
They would have to use their ingenuity here to eke out a profit.
Lastly, as it always was, would be the secret area. I had included one in every level so far and I was planning to continue that here. I could have done the roof nests for the crash birds, but instead I made a small cave in one of the far corners that they had to boat to. It was hidden behind a sheet of ice that in addition to the fog helped to obscure it.
Inside, I needed a challenge, I wanted it to be unique but I had not got anything in the pack that I felt was fitting here, I wanted something else. I was determined to get it now, confident I could find something within the store that fit the bill, it didn’t need to be ultra strong, close to a danger level of 2 would be fine, but just unique, something that was hard to figure out and tricky to fight.
I was well and truly stumped on this one though, there wasn’t much available for 185 points. But in the end, it came to me as it always does.
It was a perfect sentinel to guard a big supply of treasure, I would outfit it to be around a danger level of 2.5 and it would be accompanied with 2 Ice Phantasms, which I picked up for the last 40 points I had available.
It was perfect. All points used, and all my floors (for now) were fully complete.
Watching the Orcas, I noticed that as they came crashing down, they would create a wave that would make all the platforms unstable as they rose over the crest and fell down the trough of the wave, potentially a game changer.
I loved it.
The difficulty was starting to ramp up now towards what I imagined to be the serious adventurer rating. I wasn’t sure but I imagined that my dungeon would be enough for most adventurers to have a few month’s worth of delving before they grew familiar enough to reach my current floor. And by then I would be far ahead.
There was one more level to do before the boss level. After all woodland had four levels then boss. Starter, forest, swamp, rainforest and boss. Ice would have, Tundra with the dragon, Ice Run, Frozen Sea – I was calling it frozen sea now rather than ocean, something else and then boss.
The question was, what would that something else be? A Frozen forest maybe. Or a frigid ice maze, getting them lost and slowly freezing to death, I liked the idea, but it was too similar to the ice run which was kind of a maze with the many different paths.
No, I needed something else. But what to do for an ice floor.
What to do?
What to do?
I pondered to myself.
