Okay Okay! Tom here to review something I’m not even sure is a dungeon.

I got it dear readers. Gods knows I’ve received enough letters demanding I review the newest craze. The “Void Crossroads” as they’ve been calling it.

Well somewhat annoyed by the constant barrage of communications I went to the void crossroads with a more critical eye than I would have otherwise.

I entered. Docked a few marks for the suppression feeling particularly unpleasant. Noted the similarity to the plasma dungeon in Karth. Tested for myself it was truly located in the almost mythical void.

…and then partway through this very methodical review, I found a room depicting a story of a young researcher with dreams of immortality. Countless research notes dated over the course of years – but in an unknown notation. All written in a forgotten language I had troubles translating – me! Having trouble translating words!

Whole notebooks of information I’m sure 99% of delvers wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

That was the moment my thoughts began to change. I started trying to figure out more about this character. Is this simply a dungeon? The verdict seems to remain undecided on that – I for one could not determine if the facility contains a core.

The location itself has muddied most of the ways I would find out conclusively what the answer was and…

And that’s when I got it. Quite a few dungeons you’ll come across have a story to them. Quite a few claim facts – sometimes it's based on reality and sometimes it’s a fabrication. Often an adventure is much more fun to commit to if you pretend the story is real…but there's always a part of you that knows it’s a fabrication. Knows the inside of a dungeon is fake.

The facility is in such a state that… I don’t know if I want to find out if it's real or not. The goal of complete immersion has been achieved.

And thus began my second run-through of the void crossroads. This time as a proper adventurer.

What's a bit of discomfort for a true adventurer? My bones felt like they were resonating at an incredibly high frequency and all of my bodily functions felt strange.

I travelled through twisting hallways and found hidden rooms with secret riches.

I felt young again. Not many of you readers know much about me and I like it that way. I started this series just over 10 years ago but I’m…old. Much older than you are imagining dear reader.

The last time I felt this way was when I travelled to Luna. The dungeon its been commonly known, is mostly located on the moon.

That dungeon is special for space twists in such a way you can’t tell where our planet ends and the moon above starts. Ancient magic has created a stable but unreplicable pathway.

The facility however is…just a portal away. An open and closing portal that links it to the rest of the crossroads.

It's located in a place incredibly few have ventured and more importantly…seems safe? I spent three weeks of time on my delve and never once felt an ounce of fear towards the ancient enemy of reality. The facility contains demons yes. But they remain contained. Controlled and corralled. Lower levelled than the true horrors demons represent.

I realize this article is not quite the same tone as you may be used to dear reader. The answer to that is in part because most articles I write are for entertainment.

They are honest reviews but…this article is different. It's less for entertainment and more for myself. I wanted to capture and convey my honest reaction in the hope one day you may feel the same.

Because yes. The facility is not for the faint of heart. It doesn’t start at a low level and works its way up. It starts where many dungeons end.

My personal opinion, is all solo adventurers should be well above level 100 – ideally the true level 125 transient barrier. Teams can delve most of it safely closer to level 90 but should remain vigilant at all times – for while the upper range of strength is not too much higher…there are a few entities contained within that could face even a true level 180 warrior evenly.

Excerpt obtained from the numberless issue “Bonus content. Tom reviews a maybe dungeon”

Once more and for a final time going back in Innearth’s timeline: a portion of his thought process had been dedicated to figuring out that one line in his status dedicated to the requirements to rank up.

[100 different "Types" of adventurers hosted]

It was a vague sort of requirement. Based on his first thoughts and some conversations with his friends, Innearth determined all he had to do was “test for different things he cared about”. He just had to decide what types meant to him, manually store adventurers in those types, and then move on.

Easy.

The thing was…the problem with this requirement…was how nebulous the “what he cared about” goal really was.

Innearth didn’t want an opinon based requirement for no real reason. That didn’t feel right. Innearth wanted a reason to do something and now that he had time to sit and stew on it Innearth began getting annoyed by the whole concept.

“Tag Adventurers…because I said so.” Oh yeah system? I mean I’ll eventually end up doing it because I have to advance... but I won’t like it. I can’t see what purpose it gives. Reaching the surface? That was an obvious goal. I needed to reach the surface to get adventures. Tagging them however? That feels like busy work. It feels like…

It feels like it's there because something has to be. Like the system ran out of ideas and threw some random goal at us.

I don’t like it.

Innearth put off starting this task for a few months because of that initial annoyance. From what he could tell it wouldn’t take too long…

While researching it however, his opinion began to change. There were theories about why you needed to do this task after all and his annoyance was leading him to search them out.

Some of these theories were absolutely made by cores just a wee bit too bored – like the idea the system was being hacked by space aliens that wanted them to spy on adventurers in the hopes they could learn their weaknesses to smooth along their invasion.

What?

Ignoring the insane conspiracies one of the main explanations began to make a lot of sense. Essentially the largest unproven theory required a lot of setup... but the fact that it was given by hundreds of different packets traded and sold by dozens of different cores did lend some credence to them.

The common theme contained in this theory was that the [system] was a [system] of [systems].

There was a grand [system] that oversaw everything, while every individual attached to this system had a sort of…personalized smaller [system]. A sub [system] that was attached to individuals and grew as they grew.

One particularly strange and “oracle-like” explanation of this phenomenon claimed every creature with a strong enough soul had its personal system seeded into it. This system seed hatched and grew with the soul as it increased in strength – it explained the system was a living spell that grew and evolved. This explanation went on to claim the oversystem was built into the soul of the planet – Gaia herself – because she was mother to them all.

A more analytical explanation along the same lines, described how subsystems were not a whole copy of the system or living things – they were simply relays. A personalized interface that couldn’t do much alone – without the over system nothing would work – but that helped individuals interact with the oversystem.

The majority of explanations blended these two sides together. They claimed the personal system grew and did some things itself so the grand system didn’t have to do as much…but all the big things were done by the grand system.

…that last one made a certain kind of sense but Innearth was incredibly hesitant to just believe random claims – without proof or evidence, the descriptions just seemed like stories. Especially because the core who sold him most of the packets claimed they were not the one who wrote them – just collected and distributed them from others who also hadn’t written them.

Innearth was down a rabbit hole of theories and slowly dragging himself back out.

Assuming this theory of individuals having a personal system was true. Assuming each node attached to a person grew as they did. Assuming all sorts of plausible descriptions were real a leap of faith could be made. The “required task” he had now might actually have a purpose not for himself but for his “personal system”.

There was a heavy chance that the actual reason his system needed several delves was to familiarize and train it to interact with other individuals sub systems. Despite all being connected to the same oversystem the personalized sub systems had deviated and he could help the interface…

I’m maybe being told to help grow my system. What I focus on at this point will increase in strength when I do. The ‘type’ of delver will be a new interface and maybe…when I increase in rank it will do so as well.

I feel like if this isn’t how things work…it costs me nothing. But if it is how it works it would be stupid to not actually try and deal with it.

…and of course, I could have just blindly done it without all the research and waste of time. I think most of my friends have already done it and gotten their 100 types already.

I do like at least pretending I know what the purpose is so it's not a complete waste of time. Especially as I’m now going to intelligently try and pick a type.

So. Min max the best possible interface.

I could try to base my categorization on something like race? …but unless the system gets real cool about calling monsters delvers real fast that’s going to be hard to find a 100 of. I don’t even think there are 10 different sapients let alone 100.

I could base it on level pretty easy as well. Let my system see the difference between different subsystems at different levels of growth…but at the end of the day, I don’t actually care to know exactly how strong an adventurer is. I can see that pretty easily by their actions or whatever.

I could be super literal with “types” and base it off of different personalities and positions…but really I already know what I want at this point I’m just running through a list of my options for the sake of it.

I want to base the ‘type’ off of what mana affinities they have. Adventurers are obviously more than just their affinity and what position they have will change how they use mana…but I can probably sum it up with a “warrior or mage” split plus the affinity.

Besides. If I assume this is increasing the abilities of my system it might help me better analyze unique materials and figure out unknown mana types in objects!

Plan finally determined, Innearth immediately began setting up empty events around adventurers and writing down his own thoughts to supplement them.

It started off…pretty rough. For some reason, Innearth had briefly forgotten that adventurers could have multiple affinities so when a [Fire? Warrior?] coated his short sword in radiant darkness he became momentarily confused.

A switch to writing down “main affinities” and “minor affinities” fixed that problem and he was well on his way to categorizing all the adventurers.

Craig got a [Wind-Needle Mage] tag in his list. The shock trooper got [Lightning Warrior]. An archer that shot arrows coated in poison got [Poison warrior], a scout that sent off smokey birds got [Ethereal-Mist Mage].

The more he added, the better his system got at prefilling stuff in and – after storing over 50 different adventures – it finally updated to 51/100 on his status.

The process snowballed at that point and the system started picking up stuff Innearth had missed. It tagged adventurers correctly that hadn’t used any skills yet and started filling its dictionary automatically.

It was…kind of fun. Even though Innearth had initially shunned the task, that had just been based on the worry it had no point.

With a proper goal and likely reason it became a game.

Careful studying of adventurer bodies sometimes gave clues, when adventurers used skills it helped, abusing system controls he already had helped. The only problem was trying to find the actual affinities adventurers had – not something close enough. The system was really good at generalizing the affinity but Innearth didn’t want a guess that was similar he wanted to know the real mana types being used.

The number of fire affinity adventurers who twisted their mana into something closer to “power mana” and the number of kinetic affinities that twisted their mana into “speed mana” was absurd. Single-use spells to increase the power of their strikes with a completely different root…

Sometimes it was worse than that. The spells or skills an adventurer used made him think they were something like a water mage but then it turned out they were a specialized [Liquid Mage] that only used generic water most of the time…sometimes adventurers like the wizard in the shock troopers party almost didn’t seem to have an affinity. They switched stuff up every time they came and their true affinities were impossible to figure out.

After 100 adventurers the task was done but his system kept chugging away automatically and silently storing adventurers. All Innearth had to do was focus on one with the slightest desire to know what they were and the system happily spat out a blue box with their information.

All that was left to do was grind levels – his experience ticked up nearly constantly at this point and it felt like only a matter of time.

While waiting for the inevitable rank-up, Innearth spent some time watching his dungeon and the facility. At one point the endless crystal mass – the phoenix-like unique monster made years before – ascended after someone stepped on them in the crystal caverns. They then travelled into the facility and found the fragile crystal materials finding the similarities comforting.

It lived in a “lab” dedicated to the stuff playing with its surroundings by growing everywhere like a cross between moss and a particularly energetic dog.

An entire floor in the facility was bulldozed by the Snake scout as it created a new lair to rest in between hunting trips into the deep void – unlike the Illusion wurm this monster liked to return and rest for longer and longer periods as it grew stronger. Unlike the wurm it hadn’t ascended once in the void and lacked some of the navigation senses its younger cousin had…so unwilling to get lost it remained close to the facility at all times. The snake scout even occasionally slithered past the windows and startled an adventurer or two.

Some events were gradual. Watching Craig increase in strength to the point where he could hunt in the facility consistently happened over a large several-month timeframe.

Others came out of the blue – an adventurer wearing an incredibly shiny pelt arrived one day that reminded Innearth of the silver otter. It looked like the old monster hadn’t managed to become a dragon – and Innearth felt a strange sort of loss as he watched the adventurer move about wearing the processed skin of one of his first delvers.

As Innearth gained more ascended, his attachment to them began to loosen. He still cared about them like they were his children but…he didn’t feel sad when they left him to explore the world or hyper-focus on everything they had done.

It was also hard to keep track of them all after a while. Some monsters like his first floor bosses were killed and remade too many times to ascend. Large parts of them were looted by adventurers as either materials or trophies and after a year not a single part of them was the same as it had been years before.

Other bosses further down like the crystal “dragon” never died due to their scripted retreat…but were much stronger and didn’t ascend because of that.

The monsters that did ascend were almost always nameless and overlooked. A spider with the ability to spin webs of almost invisible lazer light. A unique snake with a flower on its head. A 5th crystal dwarf that seemed no different from its peers.

Without the focus Innearth had given some of the first ascended, these newer ones nearly all left soon after they evolved. Innearth wished them luck with life and promised them a home to come back to if they ever wanted it…but they all left.

Finally came the day FED advanced to rank 4.

It was an event. It was a push for Innearth to gain that last level and catch up to him as soon as possible.

Now, there were two very important parts of this event..

One, FED was…still a part of the facility. He had been booted from their server when he advanced but was still physically able to communicate with them by writing notes in the shared space.

It was a massive breach of the data barrier they could take advantage of. The problem was partly who had advanced however. FED kept giving cryptic hints at what the next rank was like but his affinity for drama kept him from spilling much. He told them their next mana affinity was likely not going to be a rank 4 mana type due to it being “unavailable”…told them the next rank was the last grouping of dungeons because there was such a wide range of levels…told them Abyss said hi.

But he more importantly refused to tell them any big secrets.

Not that there necessarily "was" any big secret held at the next rank… but Abe kept writing “I know theres some sort of secret, what is it!” and getting back a “secret? Theres no secret! What are you talking about? Who told you about the secret!” suspicious series of answers.

After two weeks of this back and forth FED reminded them about triple mana materials and hinted if they managed it there was a good chance they could push through the last level or two right away.

That was the second most important part of the event. The hint they were given right at the cusp of Tier 8.

Triple mana matierals. They were an annoying spell to cast – the difficulty jump between adding two different mana types simultaneously and three was immense. All of them knew it was possible but had basically been told most dungeons weren’t able to manage it – at least in rank 3 who knows about the future.

Innearth had tried it once…over a year before and had failed continuously for several days. If FED was hinting at doing it now well. That was enough of a push to try again.

He picked calcium carbonate (CaCO3) as his physical material – there was plenty of it in certain rocks or fossils and it piled up over time.

The easiest and most likely to succeed mix was one done with all three of a dungeon's mana affinities. Dungeons were more likely to be able to manage this spell if they had easier affinities...but they were also better off using the affinities they had – in Innearth's case Earth, Crystal and Void – despite them potentially being harder to use (Void being harder than Fire or Water despite having an affinity for it).

Okay, You can do this. Innearth hyped himself up. Made a safe room in his dungeon to experiment in. Created balls of all three of his mana types. And then pushed them together as fast as he could.

Crystal as his easiest to control hit a millisecond sooner and spread around/bounced off. Void and Earth hit simultaneously, but the spell had already failed.

Trying again and again Innearth slowly dropped all of his “Always separated” threads of consciousness to focus on this single task.

All of his attention focused on timing it exactly. Placing his balls of mana at different distances so they would hit on time. Clenching space to prevent any single uncontrolled variable from messing with the transmutation.

Finally, after hours that felt like weeks, the stars aligned and it worked.

The three flavours of mana overcame some time-related barriers and melded. The material in front of him twisted changing from white to pitch black to purple.

And the rush of experience pushed him to Tier 8.