Chapter Fifty Four

Dev’s Defense of Goulcrest

Dev watched as raiders climbed over the walls like a colony of ants swarming over a dead bird. His count had already topped three hundred and they were still lined up and waiting for a chance to scale the walls or breach the main gate. He had just finished his work when he felt them enter his dungeon.

Dev had just caught the tail-end of Tooth’s fight with the ogre, and he was glad to see that his companion had held his own before finally taking the monster down. If he’d had them, the core would have licked his lips in anticipation of making a couple of ogres of his own. That would have to wait for his “delvers” to leave. He couldn’t initiate any changes so long as an invader was within the confines of his territory. Rules were rules. He didn’t make them, and he couldn’t break them.

Or could he? Wasn’t that his very purpose? Breaking rules, flaunting established regulations, ignoring the law? He was a Deviate Core. DV-8, that’s what they’d called him. Why he’d been built to do just what he wasn’t supposed to do. How could he have forgotten that? The answer was simple he realized, he’d purged most of his dragonness from his soul and in turn had grown more dungeon-like. He’d taken away all of his rebelliousness and anti-authoritarian views, and left himself with a middle-of-the-road way of thinking. He’d gone from being spicy salsa to plain yogurt.

The last several days had been spent preparing for the raid in the manner that a normal dungeon would handle things. He’d gotten so swept up in thinking like a dungeon that he became just another dungeon. Sure, Dev had things pretty well in hand, but there was still a margin of error that he didn’t like. Yes, he was creative, but he wasn’t experimental. He began to wonder if he’d done the right thing separating his soul. He could think clearer, but he couldn’t think radically anymore. He never realized just how complicated being a hybrid Dungeon/Dragon could be. Thankfully, he wasn’t completely void of inspiration. He had come up with the sticky bombs.

All of those web-grenades, for example, were slick and would work well to pacify opponents, but there was a risk that if he used them that their uniqueness would draw the attention of the town, and then the Overseers. That would not be good, and he resigned himself to employing them only as a last-ditch defense option.

But, Dev wondered, what if he ignored the number of defenders he could make? What if he ignored the no changing his dungeon’s configuration if there were adventurers inside? What if he could react in real-time, and not have to strategize things in advance?

Was that cheating? Not from Dev’s point of view. That would be like telling a swordsman he couldn’t mount a horse because he had a moat in operation. Every other sentient and sapient being made adjustments as things happened. Why couldn’t dungeons? Fair play was the only reason he could see, and if he only made alterations when he was under attack and not when he had outsiders inside his confines seeking treasure then he could justify it. He wouldn’t be able to do it all the time; just when he was in complete defense mode. He opened his HUD and made the adjustments.

He would normally have limited defenders and would not be able to make alterations unless his dungeon was in danger of complete and utter destruction. Naturally, he would be the one to decide just how extreme the danger was, but essentially, he would not alter rooms, traps, or the number of minions when people came to gain experience, cultivate, and earn some money. Fair was fair, and Dev had no problem playing by the rules when his and other lives weren’t in danger. He was still mostly a normal dungeon after all.

He flipped his screen and scrolled until he found the tab that read Control Center. Opening the tab, the core immediately recognized that this was an area he shouldn’t be in. Dev was probably the only dungeon in the universe that could even see the folder he was now casually perusing. Inside he found tabs marked General, Notifications, Maps, Minions, Defenders, Traps, Meshes, Skins, Energy, Territory, Expansion, Magic, Spells, Weapon Frameworks, Item Frameworks, and countless others. Dev estimated that it would probably take him an entire day just to look over all the various categories, and then months or years finding out what each file held. Thankfully, the ones he was looking for were right in front of him.

He went to the Defenders tab first. He saw that he was allowed ten defenders per level of Dungeon Mastery. Dev assumed that the progression was meant to match his expansion and keep him from overloading the dungeon itself with an endless army of monsters that no raiding party could ever hope to get through. He hadn’t checked, but he was sure it correlated to the number of rooms that he could design and build per level.

On that front, Dev had cheated before he’d even thought about being a deviant core. So far, in total, he’d created a total of about three rooms. The first was the core room in which he resided and Tooth would visit him in. The second was the core room that he’d walled immured his other half, and the third was the entire town of Goulcrest. The shops that he built, and the ones he subsequently subsumed later were all interior parts of a room; it was like adding a wall or a closet. It was still the same room; he’d just rearranged it a little. Of course, in his case, this was more on a macro-scale than micro but it was all the same in the end.

Dev eyed the slider below the Defender Counter. At a glance, it was barely moved, and there was a lot of space for him to slide the counter tab to the right and increase his defender count by an insane amount. The slider, Dev assumed, was something a normal dungeon wouldn’t ever see in the course of its lifespan. His status was not only what allowed him to see it, but to disable it. With a thought, the bar that had been grayed out turned white and Dev found it easy to move the slider in either direction.

The core pondered just how many defenders he wanted to call in to defend his town. He didn’t want to just have an army materialize and wipe out the raiders without difficulty, but he also didn’t want to make it possible for the raiders to overwhelm his people. Dev wanted the townsfolks to participate in their own defense, and he had a sense of justice. He could and would only tip the scales so far before his meddling would make for an easy route of Chibot and his warriors. He was defending himself as much as the town, but Dev had an integrity that told him that he had to play fair. The raiders did not number in the thousands, and neither should his own combatants. There had to be some sort of equality preserved. He didn’t know if that was his own belief, something that the Overseers had seared into his soul, or if he was plain stupid. Most likely it was a combination of the three.

One item he noted was that a subsection of the defenders was the dungeon Boss, and he took stock that there was one immutable fact regarding said defender. There could only be one per floor. There were no tabs he could manipulate to change this fact and there were no other options to try. A cold chill ran down his nonexistent spine. Dev wasn’t building a standard dungeon. In fact, he couldn’t. If he dared to do such a thing then he might as well announce his presence to the Overseers. He and Tooth would be discovered and that would be the end of them.

That meant that he could only ever have one Boss at his disposal. He didn’t see any way to work around that immutable fact. He looked over the description of the boss.

Dungeon Boss

A Boss is the strongest creature relegated to a singular level of a dungeon. Each level may have a boss, but one is not necessary if the core does not deem one necessary. Some levels may be designed as resting places, such as botanical gardens or rooms designed to house delvers who wish to remain in the dungeon for long periods. A boss must be at least 25% stronger than any other defender on its level. Bosses may travel freely or be confined to one location in the level they defend at the core’s discretion, but they may not move from floor to floor. A boss may be free-willed or completely controlled by the core; this is dependent on the core’s desires. It is strongly suggested that the Boss be attuned to the level’s theme, although it may behoove the dungeon to alter the Boss and Level’s relationship in order to surprise invaders. For example, a level devoted to fire should have a Boss with fire powers, but might, instead, have a Boss with cold or water affinities. Again, this is up to the core.

There it was. He would forever be limited to a singular Boss, and it was something he would have to worry about later. Dev looked below the slide bar and examined the second one that was still grayed out. It was what prevented him from adding new traps and defenders while he was occupied with invaders. It was a simple on-off switch, a simple flick and it was done; when it came to including new defenders, it wouldn’t matter if he had adventurers within his territory or not.

An invisible and ethereal smile formed before Dev’s physical core. He had just obtained the greatest monster mesh yet when Tooth killed the ogre. His boss could be an ogre he realized. He could and would make it even stronger once he had time to make some modifications. Increased testosterone levels and adrenaline production and his ogre would have made short work of its template donor, and that was just in the muscle department. There would be numerous modifications to its physical form and capabilities. Dev let out a slight chuckle, He could make an ogre boss, but it didn’t mean he only had to make one ogre. He would be fair about it, but if he was honest with himself, he really wanted to teach the raiders a lesson they would regret learning. Fair play was great, but including a life, lesson was even better.

Dev suspected that the raiders were really poor students, so he would have to do something to impress upon them the message he wanted them to retain. Nothing like cracking a few skulls to make it easier to insert a new way of thinking for them.

While he was in the menu, Dev figured that he might as well free up his minions, and get some help there as well. Dev scrolled up to the minion tab and took a gander at what was there. Yes, this was something he should have done much sooner, but he had been in a constant state of motion since he’d arrived in Goulcrest. He’d been putting out fires more than he’d been settling in and it was beginning to show.

The minion tab showed that he could have twenty minions per level. Minions were technically things to give an area atmosphere. It could be something as simple as a squirrel in a tree or to be used as distractions for adventuring parties. Most often a minion was used as a liaison between the dungeon and adventurers. They might be a dying old man who gave out a cryptic clue to the location of some hidden treasure, or they might interact with locals in some capacity. Their uses were innumerable, and Dev had only applied his as menial workers and shop dealers so far.

Minions were useless in any kind of fighting capacity. They were killed with the slightest blow, and could inflict no damage; so while a minion might be a snake it would not be venomous, nor would it be useful in fighting invaders. A dungeon raiding party could, of course, eat the snake since it would be a real snake in every meaningful capacity; it just would never pose a threat to them. In other words, they made great fodder, but that wasn’t how Dev saw it.

That way of thinking was how other dungeons might see their minions, but not him. As far as he was concerned, they could be just as deadly as his defenders, in some ways they could be even deadlier. Dev’s mind began to whirl with the possibilities. There were so many things he could do with his small army of pawns, and that was all they were to him. Yes, some had memories and were based on the personalities of original people, somewhat like Trond, but for the most part, his menial workers were nameless and had no connection to Goulcrest or himself other than for the fact that he had made them. And he liked it that way. Minions were not meant to be full-on creations; at best they were window dressing. At worst they could become a wall of bodies if he needed to slow an opponent down. Right now, his needs fell far away from either of those options.

Dev moved the slider over so that he could have fifty minions at one time, anything more than that was excess and would only serve to get in the way of the real warriors. Satisfied with that the core turned to his Traps tab.

Traps were fairly basic. He could have one for every three defenders that he used on a floor. In order to use a trap, he needed to have a blueprint or design one himself, which was fine except that he had to spend actual time engineering the details, then test the design, and work out any flaws. Dev had hoped that there would be a secret stash of meshes for him to pillage, as he had with life forms, but sadly no such hidden treasure existed. If it was there, he didn’t see it. Of course, what would he expect from a hidden tab? He would need to devote more time later to see if such a thing might exist. It always came down to how much time he had available. It was the one commodity he needed most and never could seem to find.

To his dismay, Dev found that he could not change the rule regarding the number of traps. There was a note that said that he could populate a dungeon with only traps, and in that case, he could use the same number of traps as he could defenders for his level. Any type of mixing of the two and the three to one rule would be applied automatically. So, he could change the timing of the creation of traps when delvers were within his metaphorical walls, but he could not break the limitation on how many he could use. Which meant that if he managed to acquire a hundred defenders; he could only employ about thirty-three traps. Dev didn’t do decimal points. Besides, what would a point three-three-three to infinity trap look like? That seemed too much like a mental puzzle, and even if he had the time he had no desire to indulge in such a thing.

For better or worse Dev had done everything he could to counter-balance the situation. The one wild card was Tooth. The companion was like the payload of a catapult, hard-hitting, striking from out of nowhere, and impossible to stop once he got going. His presence didn’t count in the whole “defend the dungeon” scenarios. For the most part, his understanding was that most core companions were weak and basically acted like a warning system for the core. They were meant to give guidance, not pitch in with the dungeon’s defense. Tooth was a whole other kind of companion. He was a consigliere, an assassin, an enforcer, and most importantly, a friend. Dungeon rules didn’t apply to him because there had never been a companion like him before now.

As a unique entity like Tooth was new to the universe the Overseers had not foreseen to put restrictions for companions into the Dungeon System. Tooth was a man of his own agency, and that made him the greatest wild card Dev could hold.

Dev closed his HUD and pulled up his Creation Kit. He had separated it from the main menu and made small changes to the layout. He now had a rotating wall of meshes that he could examine in several ways. He could look through all of his meshes, he could look at individual categories that ranged from humanoid to insects, altered meshes, meshes with multiple legs, and so on. Right now, he only had a small number of options to choose from, but in the future, he would have a plethora of forms to pick from when making defenders. It was better to set his workstation up the way he wanted now than later when he was overwhelmed with meshes.

He mentally thumbed the humanoid tab and rotated his meshes like they were housed in a virtual Lazy Susan until he found the Ogre mesh. He looked over its stats and he was impressed, by Tooth. The werebear had managed to take down a beast of much higher levels and skill. Dev wished he could have seen it. It must have been magnificent. The ogre was much smarter than most of its kind, but he did not a small speech impediment, which he absentmindedly corrected. This was something he’d been dying to get his non-existent hands-on, a monster of quality.

Dev immediately began forming two of the creatures on the spot. As short on time as he was the core wanted to enhance his Boss enough to justify him being a Boss. The real work would be done later, but he could already sense that the raiders had overrun the walls of Goulcrest, and within minutes blood on both sides was going to flow. He turned his attention back to his new Boss and kept in mind that if all else failed he had a secret weapon that he could use.