“Take those greaves and be thankful! Didn’t your tutorial guide teach you about gear? Not the random scrap we are wearing but true blue magical equipment?” Jeremy pauses and looks at Ruby, but she gestures for him to continue. He shrugs, “Guess I get to be your guide while my wife finishes with the olives.”

From behind them Susan shouts at them that, “it would be quicker if you helped!”

Jeremy ignores her, “so anyway, for an item to be magical it needs to be a masterwork. That requires a couple of things such as, you know, a master crafter. Dungeons cheat, though. Notice how the description has that little bit about being enchantable at the end? That means that once the system recognizes our place as a town and we get another system store setup, you can make it magical. Anyway, do you at least know about equipment slots?”

Jack shakes his head.

“Sigh, of course not.”, Jeremy facepalms, “long story short your being can only handle so much active magic equipment. If you ever played games and complained about how you have more than two fingers to put rings on, this is the cause. A little more free-form as if you want to deck yourself out in just magic rings that is fine. All that matters in the end is the power of the persistent magic you’re decked out in.”

“The system simplifies it and gives a nice round number to represent how many slots you get instead of you having to feel out your limit. How many slots do you get? Take the three categories of stats you have and add them together separately, then divide by ten and round down. Add the three numbers together and boom, you got your limit. Yes, you can have a negative number and more powerful items can take up more slots. Paths muck with it, but you would already know this if you were even within a light year of such a thing. Now let’s fight that kobold I spotted in the last room and her goats.”

Susan smacks him on the back of the head, “yes, now that I have harvested all these olives By Myself we can move on. That should be the last room up ahead before the core.”

Ruby claps to get everyone’s attention, “almost done everyone! No need to sit around. Jack and Sammy, both of you get your butts into the next room. I took a glance myself and it looks like we have one heavily armored lady and her retinue of four goats. A little disappointing as a last fight, but if my guess is right, the dungeon has plans for her. Though that might just be the throne she sits on.”

She continues to blab on but has to stop so she can catch up to the others as they have gone ahead. The tunnel between the two rooms isn’t long and Sammy now stands just outside the small room inhabited by the kobold and company.

The armored kobold gives her a hard stare before it motions its goats around to the side while taking position behind the throne.

Jack slaps Sammy on the shoulder and they both enter the room. Sammy with her shield turned to the side to defend against the goats. A good thing too, as one with a spiked helm had edged right up beside the door and slammed into her as soon as she entered.

The Barrais slip in past her while she holds back the goats and Jack slams his cement mace into the back of the stone throne breaking the back off. After the dust settles on the first exchange Sammy shouts back at Ruby that, “there seems to be some sort of stone door.”

Ruby nods and gets up right at room's entrance and chants out five syllables. A small ribbon of fire forms in her hand and the ends connected. With her other hand, she gives it a spin and tosses it around the corner.

Back with Jack, the kobold is doing quite a number on him. Unlike the previous kobolds, she seems to be freer with her smash attack and has forced him back. Then a flash of fire draws their attention.

That circle of fire Ruby had thrown out landed behind the goats. After the flash of fire that attracted everyone’s attention, the circle expanded outward, slicing and dicing the goats. The fire isn’t strong enough to cut all the way through, but all the goats are now covered in a chaotic pattern of burns.

The closest goat doesn’t survive the magic, and the rest are in too much pain to defend themselves. Sammy and Jeremy are kind enough to put them out of their pain.

The kobold over by Jack was far enough away to be outside the magic, but now has something else to worry about. While the magic distracted everyone, Susan decided to join in on the fun. Being armored prevented an instant kill, but being hamstrung isn’t any better for its health.

Jack then comes in with an overhead swing to cause some fatal blunt trauma to its head and the fight has ended.

Doctor enters the room with his hand over his mouth. After he observes the room, he lowers his hand and sighs, “a bit of an anti-climax, but we expected that. Sammy, Jack, and Jeremy. You three should have the best strength in the group so how about you roll that door out of the way?”

Jeremy turns to the rolling stone door and squints, “We open that and it will block our way out. Is everyone okay with that?”

Jack shrugs, “we need to open it if only to check if there is a second floor. Who knows, there might even be even more dungeons after it.”

Ruby shakes her head, “there were enough monsters that I bet what is behind that is the core or the way to the next floor. But yeah, we are here to check on the dungeons state. Open it up.”

The three struggle for a moment to get a grip on the door, but after that they open the door easily enough. Rolled out of the way reveals a tiny room. Inside of which all they can see is a fist-size purple crystal floating in the center of the room.

Ruby gestures for everyone to stay back as she enters. Inside the core room she glances around but sees nothing of interest. With a shrug she turns around and leaves. “Nothing else in there, guys. Looks like we are stuck with only a single floor for the moment. Not that I can really complain about it. We can get meat to supplement ourselves, and anyone who can fight the last goat room can pick some berries and harvest some honey. Plus the chance of loot drops and those olives I think we are golden in fact.”

Doctor nods, “That and we are sending enough people in that give it a week and I am willing to bet we see a second floor has formed. Hell, with our time in here it might even form over the night.”

Ruby nods, “now let’s head out shall we?”

Everyone agrees and so they make their way back out of the dungeon. The only event on the way is right before they leave. Jack cocks his head to the side when they get to the entrance room and points at the portal. “Since when has it had those carvings there?”

Of course none of them had the answer to that, so Jack gets volunteered to check into that once everything else is settled and the group all step through.

Back in the dungeon Ally flies out into the core room after having hid in her room while the group scoped it out. ‘So, now that you’ve seen a Real loot drop do you understand?’

Doyle nods, ‘that was a thing. When he reached into the swirl, I could feel my territory connect to him. There was a large rush like I was trying to chug a drink and in the background it was like I could almost hear someone explaining the exact dimensions of his legs. Not that I can recall a single thing, quite odd.’

Ally grins and exclaims, ‘exactly! When someone gets a loot drop, their soul connects to us. Then in exchange for a large quantity of their energy cruft, the item is finished to their dimensions. There are enchantments to let gear size itself but none of it works quite as well as dungeon fitted stuff.’

Doyle rolls back, ‘huh, well that is impressive. You would think magic could do something like that easily. Anyway, I do have a question. How does that magic gear slot thing work? The explanation wasn’t the best and I can’t exactly wear rings.’

Ally grimaces, ‘yeah, that was a bad explanation. Though it is really quite simple. Take your body stats, add them together, divide by ten, and round down. Then do that with your mind and soul stats and add the three results. Their explanation was so close to but so far.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘So I would have 11 slots? That seems like a lot’

Ally shrugs, ‘Well just look at your basic gear setup. A weapon, shield, helmet, chest piece, pants, boots, armguards, gloves, a couple rings, and an amulet. That is eleven pieces of gear right there. Actually, you have exactly enough slots, don’t you? Plus you can always enchant underwear, piercings, tattoos, and all other manner of things. Though the big thing is that better enchantments take up more slots.’

‘Though that brings us to what you as a dungeon core you can use. For instance, you can totally wear a hat. Though that brings us to the rub. You are a dungeon core. While the dungeon is technically a part of you. Gear has to be worn on your actual core to work. A little out of your range at the moment, but ion stones are a popular option. Plus they look sweet. You’re already a magical crystal so having a bevy of smaller magical crystals orbiting you would look amazing.’

‘As it is though, there aren’t really that many enchantments just lying around that would benefit you. Most cores just end up with a bunch of magical shields. Your monsters are a different story though. You can fit them out with all kinds of magic gear. Not that you have that option until they become common enough for parties to lose them in you.’

‘Though I guess I should mention the one weakness almost all of your monsters will have. No matter how much cool gear you want to give them, they will be quite limited. After all, most of them don’t have a soul stat. You’re honestly impressive 11 slots drops to only six if we remove your soul stats. Even worse are the mindless ones like the assassin vine. Sure you likely weren’t going to slap magic rings on it, but with only body stats they have two slots available. Now how are we doing on that next floor?’

Doyle bobbles, ‘oh, right, new floor. Well, if you would look at the wall over there you might notice a full bar.’

Ally claps and giggles, ‘awesome! We can start on that then. Though I do have to shake my head. An idiot literally dying barely moves the meter and then those guys traipse through us and fill the tank.’

‘Meh’, Doyle shakes his core, ‘it was mostly the loot drop. I wasn’t paying all that much attention, but that really filled the bar up. Though since most of their energy went to that and they did a full clear, it will take me a couple hours to respawn everything. They even got some loot, which takes a nice chunk to reinstate as well. Though before that lets check the message log.’

{Sage goes from lv0 to lv3

Aloe goes from lv0 to lv3

Herb patterns go from lv3 to lv4

Food patterns go from lv4 to lv5

Shrubbery goes from lv4 to lv6

Greaves go from lv3 to lv5

Armor Patterns go from lv4 to lv5

Kobolds go from lv4 to lv5

Dungeon Pattern Database goes from lv13 to lv14

Level Gained!

Level goes from 0 to 1, Agility goes from 11 to 12, Constitution goes from 14 to 15, Wisdom goes from 9 to 14, and Karma goes from 20 to 21}

‘Oh, huh, I gained a level.’