FINAL CORE - Chapter 5

Like any living being, dungeons have one core desire and that is to spread themselves out.

There are typically two ways a dungeon will develop as it presses itself out beneath the surface of the world.

Horizontally: The dungeon will spread itself flat and very wide, just beneath the surface of the world.

Vertically: In these cases, the dungeon will burrow deeper and deeper in a small area, like a needle being pressed towards the heart of the world.

There have been no identified reasonings in a dungeon’s approach to growing. They seem to just identify something to their liking and then proceed with that in mind, like a school-boy choosing his favorite path home. As for differences, the principle is the same, but many adventurers will attest that vertical dungeons are much more exhausting to delve, because of the many, many staircases.

Horizontal dungeons can be treacherous in their own way, as they can quickly become very complicated mazes and labyrinths of rooms and chambers.

In general, most dungeons only have one, single entrance and exit; the dungeon-gate.

~ Chapter one of Laylad’s list of lateral dungeons.

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Isaiah sleeps.

The night is filled with the songs of croaking frogs, with the babbling of the water of the river and with the working sounds of the uthra. The little creatures, sustaining their life energies off of the ambient magic of the dungeon, don’t seem to need food or sleep themselves. Though they do take an occasional break to sit on a branch or to chase a firefly across the water.

As Isaiah sleeps, old connections and memories come back together once again, a familiar feeling returns to itself, pressed into its head in a vague, half wakeful dream-state.

Isaiah opens its eyes, remembering.

“I had a nest.”

It sits upright and rubs its face.

Immediately, it drops down from the very big tree, hovering and then flying down a few trees deeper into the forest. As long as it stays inside of the dungeon’s area, which seems to encompass half a kilometer at the moment, flying is basically for free. The used soul-points regenerate at about the same speed at which they’re used, thanks to the ‘hallowed ground’ perk for the dungeon.

Isaiah lands and looks up at a familiar tree, in which sits a familiar nest, in which sits a familiar blackbird.

This is its own old nest, back when it was a bird. Those are its eggs up there. That is its mate.

The blackbird atop the tree stirs, sensing a disturbance on the moonlit forest floor. “POOK-POOK-POOK!” it starts chirping right away, having taken over the sole burden of keeping the nest tended to and the eggs warm. This is a lot of work for one creature, especially since it rarely has time to go and find food.

“It’s me!” says Isaiah, floating up into the air, towards the branch.

“POOK-POOK-POOK!” The blackbird doesn’t leave the nest and it snaps, slapping with its wings once towards the encroacher as a warning.

“Don’t you recognize me?” asks Isaiah.

Apparently not.

The creature frowns, seeing that the blackbird it had paired with to make the eggs in that nest simply doesn’t recognize the entity that it itself has become.

‘It’.

- Isaiah frowns and flies back down to the ground. If the blackbird is spooked too much, it might knock some of the eggs or the whole nest down. It’s sad, but it shouldn’t try to force the issue.

Isaiah remembers, when it was a human, it was a male. When it was a bird, it was a female. Now that it is Isaiah, it is… Hmm…

- The creature lowers its gaze and stares at itself. But it doesn’t really find a specific answer to its question.

This body is strange in many ways. It has not seen anything like itself anywhere, apart from the statues that the uthra have made, which are depictions of itself.

“Should I hunt it?” asks a familiar voice. The red uthra.

“No,” says Isaiah. It points up at the blackbird. “That’s mine.”

“Uh… okay?” replies the uthra, shrugging. “Not sure what you want with a bird, but you’re the boss.”

Isaiah points down at the ground. “Bring it food. Every day.”

The uthra blinks. “The bird?”

“Yes.”

It shrugs. “Sure. Whatever. You want a tower? We’ll make a tower. You want me to feed a wild bird? I’ll feed a wild bird. It’s your life.”

Isaiah nods. “Thank you.”

It flies away, back to the tower, sparing a glance over its shoulder for the agitated, hungry looking blackbird, still chirping at the intruders in the night.

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[New Area Added]

Floor {1}

The first floor of the tower dungeon. It is currently empty.

Capacity: {4} Monster-Points

{1} TRAP

Monster-Point prices per monster

• F-Rank: 1
• D-Rank: 4
• C-Rank: 8
• B-Rank: 16
• A-Rank: 32
• S-Rank: 64
• SSS-Rank: 128

Isaiah nods, pleased. The very bottom ground floor of the tower, previously made up out of logs and stones, has now been entirely remade out of an ornate construction of well-placed and leveled quarried stones. Each piece of the brickwork is as large as it itself is.

“So, what we’ll do is this,” says the builder uthra, the one with crystalline wings. “We’ll have the dungeon-gate here, visible from the hot-spring, yeah?” Isaiah nods. The uthra grabs its hand and pulls it inside of the new room. The first room. The lowest room of the tower is wide and circular and currently, very empty. The only feature is an archway in the back with a staircase behind itself, leading up to the next floor. “Then, here in the back of the room, there’s the staircase,” it explains. The crystalline fairy points around the room. “The idea is that they gotta kill everything in here, before they can get up the stairs to the next floor.”

Isaiah nods.

“But we’ll need some dungeon-magic for that.”

“Dungeon-magic?” asks Isaiah.

The entity nods. “May I?” It grabs Isaiah’s taloned hand and lifts it up to touch the archway, by the front of the room. This is the dungeon-gate, which is, essentially, the front-door to the tower.

A blue light shines out and Isaiah feels its magic draining from its body. The doorway quickly fills up, as if a rising tide were inside of itself. A thick, glowing, blue fog fills the archway.

[Dungeon-core Sealed]

The dungeon has been activated.

• Your territory has been increased by 0.5km (1km Total)

[Stockpile]

• Berries:

Red: 46

Blue: 63

• Meat: 54kg
• Bones: 8kg
• Quarried Stone {15kg}: 98

You now have access to [Treasure Chests]!

In the back of the room, by the staircase, a red fog rises up to block it off from sight.

“Great! We’re open for business now,” says the uthra.

“We were not open before?”

The uthra shakes its head, lifting a finger. “That wasn’t really us having a dungeon, that was us having a stone heap in the woods,” it explains. “Now we’re officially a dungeon and that comes with perks.” It points to the ‘treasure chest’ window. “Dungeons don’t just have monsters outside of them, they have monsters inside of them too! But also - treasure!”

“…Why?” asks Isaiah. Placing more treasure inside of the dungeon seems like a terrible idea? Won’t that just attract even more threats?

The uthra taps its head. “Bait.”

“Bait?”

“Sure! I bet you’re thinking, why the heck would I do that?” it asks, seemingly reading Isaiah’s mind again. “Well! I’ll tell you.” The fairy-like entity gestures to the room. “So they can die here,” it gleefully explains. ‘They’ being whoever tries to attack us.” It nods, pleased. “The more people and threats we beat, the stronger we get. So there’s an upside to luring in the greedy. They’re often unprepared types, you know?”

Isaiah thinks for a moment. The crystalline uthra is really good at this back-end dungeon stuff. It seems to really know what it’s doing and the sentiment does make a little sense.

The boar attack was a problem, but in the end, it was a boon. It dying here had only helped their situation. Though, in hindsight, Isaiah realizes that the mistake wasn’t with the now-dead uthra, the mistakes were its own, for giving poor orders.

It must be more careful with its commands in the future.

Perhaps there is merit to luring in weak and low-level threats with the promise of material rewards? That will allow them to grow.

“Okay,” affirms Isaiah. “Make some treasure-chests,” it orders. “What about monsters?”

“Monsters?” asks the uthra. “Well, that’s up to you. I just build stuff.” It points at the empty room. “We can also design this room to look however you want. I suggest making it ‘fit’ with the monsters. Gotta stay coherent with the design.” It thinks for a moment. “We can’t do traps until you take the ability though. Rules are rules.”

Isaiah thinks for a moment, closing its eyes to better sort through its jumbled memories of a human-life, now long past.

They are making a holy-themed dungeon, so something low-level, but fitting to that theme is needed to guard this floor.

Small angelic monsters? Something akin to cherubs, perhaps? It could summon four of those.

There will also be the hot-spring outside. So something wholesome and related to water could work too. They could make this first floor a sort of ‘wading pool’ with some water enemies? It could play into the symbology of entering the place clean. Some large, singular spirit of some sort?

Or they could continue the trend that the will o’ wisp has set, with undead type monsters. Undead don’t need to be ghastly and grisly, after all. They could be something like ghostly priests, perhaps. Or maybe a crew of skeletons?

Or maybe even something more traditional? Four slimes, made up out of holy-water?

Hmm…

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I'm open for suggestions, by the way. If you have any preferences or any cool monster suggestions that fit, I'd love to hear it! =)