2.4.3 The Core plans for the next stage (Core PoV)

"Hey General," Gunny smirks "Looks like the Sky Arrows finally found the node of floor fifteen. Took them long enough."

"Yes, this time my ideas for an underwater floor really paid off" I had the current duty-speaker answer for me.

Together we watch as the adventurers quickly finish the immobile boss, check the node and collect the token from the remaining mess of algae. Then they proceed for the way up to floor 12 again.

"THREE DAYS!!! Three days underwater just because our so-called graverobber messed up her map in a three hundred meter open cavern!!!" Holgun whines.

"HEY! My map was always correct. It's 315x315x20 meters by the way. And whoever heard of dungeons that plan up? Every other dungeon has always remained on the floor itself. Who would have thought that this one uses the fact that someone can swim up underwater to declare a node fifteen meters up the wall to be accessable and create a truely three-dimensional floor with coral growths as obstacles?" Gladia looks pissed-off as well.

"Calm down, both of you" Park interjects. "Everyone is tired after combing every millimeter of the floor six times in two days before we thought of going up. Let's take this as another lesson of never assuming anything in this dungeon."

"Racist! I'm calling racist on this core! This floor was clearly made to prevent dwarves from going deeper!"

"You're just pissed off that being water-challenged prevented you from participating in the battle against that algae-based boss-spawn." Gladia answers. "What did you get from it, Tom?"

"Nothing special, it was just like a regular plant-based spawn. I think the core used this instead of the piranha-boss we expected because the piranha would have given the position away due to it's movement range from its spawn point."

After reaching the entry point and beginning to swim up Corvin speaks up "But I can see Holguns point as well, even if I'm not one who eats iron and has to climb instead of swimming. This dungeon is extremely tiring for the very few EXP we get only from bosses due to us being that high ranked. I don't know if I would have agreed to be the exploration team if I had fully understood that before."

"You'll sing another tone when it finally gets deeper." Park answers "We now know that it is [Heroic]-ranked, and previously we would never even have dreamed of getting up to those ranks with all other accessible dungeons around being only [Very High]-ranked.

And this contract even earns us priority access later..."

"I would really like to see their faces when they realise that you can go deeper than the 100-floor-limit of a [Heroic] dungeon core, General."

"Of course someone with your perverse sense of humor would like to see that." Lia answers before the speaker can relay an answer from the core. "But I would like to know why you expanded this section of the [safe] floor, Core? I thought you wanted to preserve all Mana until you can build the floors twenty-two to twenty-four..."

"Ah, but I almost have that Mana. I'm only waiting for Orwen to be inside to watch him while I place those floors as I can finish their contents later. And in the mean time I had another idea for a new type of treasure to be won on floor 19 above, one that would also allow me to better hide that planned temple if the Sky Arrows get here before Briar can bring in Rolandro's Priest." the core answers that question.

"That new treasure will be unique key tokens to the side rooms here, and I made the hall longer and added more side rooms to have some more of those keys before running out of rooms. And since I still want the stairs down at the other end of this hall I had to add that before placing the next floor down.

It's not yet finished - most of the doors just lead to a one meter dead end where I still have to excavate the room that should be there. I'll do that slowly when I get more Mana. But there will be only one key to each room and some furniture like for shops inside. That should convince some merchants to purchase one of those keys and setup a shop there as they don't have to carry their wares in and out then - or perhaps some adventurer parties might decide to use those rooms as store room for their equipment and similar options.

And if I'm careful they won't even realise that as soon as they lock the room and leave the floor, the room content will count as "dungeon-owned" for the system, allowing me to absorb and recreate anything I don't have yet.

And having my own dungeon economy with my own coins to distribute - like I already have done with some treasure chests and token riddles - will aid some long-term plans as well. So I hope that those merchants will adopt my coins as one possible way of payment. I'll even aid that by placing token riddles as exchange stations in those rooms."

"I hope this works out, General" Gunny comments "But I agree that having our own coins and shops will probably be helpfull in the long term. What about mid and short terms? Anything planned to surprise the adventurers there?"

"Well, short term the Sky Arrows will enter floors 16, 14 and 18 in that order - a swamp, a snow forest and a desert. Those will be the last of the nature floors and then the big surprise of floor 19 and the [safe] floor 20 above.

I hope that they'll have to spent a lot of time in the swamp, because I tried something new there. Unfortunately the System forced me to place a small hint as the loot on the two bosses, but the tokens themselves aren't loot. They simply lie somewhere around on the floor - somewhere on the bottom of the swamp..."

"So you hope that they spent extra time fishing through the swamp?" Gunny answers "That should add to the time they need. Most of the nature floors so far they took in a single day, only the underwater floor added two extra days to that. Briar estimated he needs eight days to get to Rivansea overland, and that means it will be a head-to-head race who gets to this floor first, the Sky Arrows through the floors or Briar with using the teleporter platform."

"Unfortunately he will need to find that Tricksters priest first" Aria, chief of the naga, objects. "So it is unlikely for Briar to get here first, unless the Core can really pull off another stunt to delay the Arrows."

"We'll see that tomorrow" the Lizardman currently relaying the messages of the core for all to hear sounds a bit tired. "Luckily the Sky Arrows have not yet realised that another advantage of the dead-end-caverns is that they can't feel the Lifeforce release of changes to other caverns - the wave only goes up, never down another stair after all. But I don't want to invest too much Mana into changes there because it is more important to place the next three floors. While that floor effect was a nice surprice to gain, the requirement to place the three floors at once is a problem at the moment.

Let's see how the Sky Arrows handle the swamp floor tomorrow."

"Ah, finally Orven makes an appearance. The Sky Arrows are already down in another dead-end floor, so any LifeForce wave from deeper will pass them undetected. Let's make the next floors."

Mastermage Orven Windriver wanders along the main hall of the first floor toward the office section at the other end, accompanied by Kerstin Lamera. The former receptionist of the Travellers Guild had been promoted to his secretary and assistent when the guild was changed into an adventurer's guild and gained responsibility for handling the dungeon entrance.

"Kerstin, please schedule a meeting of the Dungeon Council on the rules for the System Quest on the Insanity Triplet Floor. Yesterday the System made the first modification to the Quest Rewards for that floor, giving a bonus for low level adventurers entering it.

So far we refused to let anyone below level 20 enter due to the fact that it would be basically suicide for them, but with the System giving bonus rewards for low levels now a lot more people will demand to be let into that floor and its quest."

"OK, Master Orven - I think we can fit in the meeting in three..."

Everyone on the entire floor stops what they were doing when a massive LifeForce wave passes them.

"What in the... That wave was stronger than anything I ever felt, even in much deeper and higher-leveled dungeons. It has to have been the creation of multiple floors at once, because I don't want to consider what other things might require to spend that much energy."

"Master Orven, I think I can send messengers to schedule an emergency meeting tomorrow morning. Do you want me to include the discussion points for System Quest in the Insanity Triplet floor as well in that meeting?"

"Yes, Kerstin, please do so. We can always re-schedule that if we need more time than we have tomorrow. I only hope that Park was able to quantify that wave - it was too much for me to even guess how much energy it contained."

"Nope, Park is currently hunting snakes in a swamp and doesn't even know there are new floors..."

The Sky Arrows watch as Gladia turns and tries to match two wooden grids with holes and letters on them. "Why can't this dungeon use regular hint tablets? You know, stone plates with half of a sentence on them? ... No, this combination also makes no sense - let's try turning... Ah, finally! Eeew...

Guys, the hint sentence is:

The tokens lie hidden and unprotected at the bottom of the swamp.

We'll have to search through this entire mud again, ew.."

"I don't think so" Tom objects. "For the system to allow the statement 'unprotected', the tokens have to be outside the movement range of the spawns from the spawn points, so get your map out and draw in those ranges, Gladia."

Holgun's face lights up at this "And a core as tricky as this one will never risk the tokens to be accidentally found in the open, so it has to be a place that is a dead end and behind some of those spawn areas as well."

"And bottom means that it can't be at the higher points of this floor either...."

"Shit, another point for the Sky Arrows. I really hoped that they would start searching the entire floor, but with that kind of filtering on the map they'll find the tokens after a quick search." The core is anything but pleased.

"No plan survives meeting the enemy, General. And we know that the Sky Arrows are good. But they're still too late, the new floors will stop them when they try to go beyond the next [safe] floors. Do you think they will be delayed by the other floors?"

"Not by the snow forest that comes next - that leaves that so-called desert floor as floor 19 was always a hit-or-miss type of blockade, and the Sky Arrows are too good to fail there."

"Agree - but how could that environment be called a desert? It is nothing like anything of a desert from earth..."

"Most likely another one of those xenotic translation messes. If we had any idea what the sphere is we might even be able to get how that was named..."