Day 2 Phase 1 Construction

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After I finish my retelling of the meeting in the afterlife I watch how Parsi thinks it over.

After a short while she begins to speak.

“OK, since everything was made to look like from your previous life, I didn’t get enough descriptions to even guess which god that might have been – or if it even was someone from this world.

But I can tell at least two additional points where you were misled, for lack of a better word.

First, pretending to be someone that has conquered this dungeon will be a lot more difficult than you think, because our System enforces truth in its contracts. It is not impossible, but that god accepted your suggestion too fast to really care about your chance of pulling it off.

As you already heard, the System in this world enforces the truth. That is not the same as being nice – there are slave contracts after all.

But you need to be very careful whenever a System Contract is involved, and you will have to make some of these contracts with adventurers to pull this idea off.

Second, any true merchant with that class can initiate a System Trade Contract – and those would actually be better than using a Dungeon Contract for that idea. So if he really changed the regular floor 10 reward (and yes, that is the regular reward then), it has to be for a different reason.

Both points together indicate that he has something else planned, something he didn’t tell you anything about. But at the moment I can’t even guess what that is.”

“True, and I basically expected that. Hell, I was even suspicious while discussing this with that Power, I just didn’t see another alternative to my obliteration as a person.

Oh – I just got the notification that the next three rooms have been rolled and need to be placed within the next eight hours. Should we do this now?” I ask Parsi.

“No – we have eight hours for this after all. I would prefer if we check on those additional treasures you got there on the table. I originally dismissed them as the usual materials, but that was before I heard the story of how you got the job as Dungeon Keeper here.

It might be that that god gave you something special with them, especially if it really wanted you to succeed in whatever it manipulated you to do.”

“Yes, we should check that. But keep in mind that those valuables might be part of that manipulation, especially the books. From what I have seen it is some food, the books and two dozen coins or chips. One of them I already absorbed for some wood points.

Why the food however? Do we have to hunt for food in the forest?”

“No, we can feed on the mana from the dungeon” Parsi answers “But I carry a bottle of nectar as well for a reason: in the first two days or so we simply don’t have enough mana and it is better to not draw from it. And later we will want to have some real food for the taste anyway.”

We slowly walk or fly over to the table, then Parsi continues: “I can’t read any of those books, so I can’t really guess their worth. It is possible for me to lean your language knowledge due to the dungeon magic - that is usually done when a reincarnated soul hasn’t got the local language bestowed on them. Unfortunately that takes some time, so I suggest we put the books aside and I check those other coins.”

I watch as Parsi begins to check, before she begins to sort them with an exclamation. It looks a bit strange as the chips are as big as her head, but it seems as if she was right and there was something more to those valuables. When she is finished, six black tokens are moved away from the other seventeen remaining coins.

“OK Claudia, that god definitely wanted you and our dungeon to get the attention of adventurers. You got six dungeon tokens for additional selections, and I can only classify three of them.

They are one trap, two monsters, one rune, one obstacle and one treasure token. The trap and one monster are Rank F, the rest is Rank G.”

The G monster is classified as a slime – not a problem aside from the question if we really want to have slimes in our dungeon. But the F monster has an unknown classification, and that means it will be of extreme interest to any adventurer.

The trap is an unknown holding trap that does no damage. That is strange because it is rank F, usually all F traps do at least some damage.

And the treasure is some form of writing. In itself that is not a problem, but it will draw mage-classes and is a type of treasure rarely rolled.

The rune and the obstacle are both rank G and completely unknown.

There are two problems with using those tokens however, and I think we should wait until we have larger space on floor 1 before placing them there.”

I think a bit about what she explained and how she explained it. “I assume one of the reasons is that we can’t remove them once placed and don’t want them outside the official dungeon, but what is the other reason?”

“We will need some time to discuss if we really want to use them early. I’ll explain it on the example of the monsters.

Only the very first monster you got with the dungeon is truly random, even if I suspect that in your case it was manipulated by that god. You being able to transform into albino tiger variants and the first monster being a white tiger is a bit too much of a coincidence.

The second monster roll has a chance of 50% of being of the same classification as the first (animal or cat in our case), with only the other 50% being truly random. And the third is only 33% random and one of the first two classifications 33% each.

Basically only the first four monsters have a chance of being new classifications, beginning with the fifth it will always be one of the first classifications.

Monsters gained by other means after that will remain available, but they will not add to the random selections ever again.

So if we wait until the first slots are filled, we still gain those token monsters but no chance of similar other monsters later. However if we use the tokens early, then it is very likely we get similar monsters of whatever that classification is on later random rolls.

This can both be good or bad depending on how the adventurers react to them. I don’t know if you really understand the consequences of a new classification.”

“Don’t worry, Parsi. I understand that very well. In my original world there were a people who said that the worst curse you could place on anyone was ‘May you live in interesting times’. And I think this is the same.” I answer her.

“Oh yes, these tokens would make us ‘interesting’ like that, that is a very good way to put things.

OK, then on to Dungeon Construction. We only need to fill one additional square to open the next floor, so that is easy.

Let’s see – a new small room 2x2, those are always nice fillers even if we are still missing the 1x2 for that place top left. Another long corridor we already had yesterday – perfect for several places. And a medium room with a corridor from its side that we also haven’t had before. We now know eight of the twenty structures we’ll have in our room list.”

“That medium room and the small room together would perfectly fit into the 3x4 area top right, and could easily be used as a shop area with a secure storage room, what do you think?”

“Good idea, Claudia – and that clears the last condition, 72/61 squares filled. See how the requirement list is now replaced by the button to open floor 1? Let’s do that.”

Floor Opening in Progress

Copying Heart Room as new Entrance to floor below

Opening Stairs to lower room

Special Function: Copying Deep Stairwell 60 to floor below

Special Function: Copying Deep Stairwell 40 to floor below

Special Function: Copying Deep Stairwell 20 to floor below

Floor 1 Available

Dungeon Barrier currently closed

WARNING

Dungeon Heart outside Dungeon Barrier

Designate new Heart Room on floor 1 to move it into the Dungeon below

(1/2) Hidden Requirements met

Tower Staircase can be raised for 100 Mana when all requirements are met.

1: Tower floor number less or equal to half Dungeon Floors rounded up (requirement met)

2: Foundation (floor 0) needs to be 100% filled

Somehow I’m aware of a new room being opened below us, and a stairway going up to a square beside me where the floor turns into an energy barrier, but I’m too dumbfounded by what I read to react.

‘Hidden Requirements? We have to get the floor 0 to 100% to raise the tower?’

“WHAAAT?!?!” shouts Parsi “We are stalled, we don’t have the two-grid-room and can’t fill floor 0!!!” She begins to fly in panic through the entire room “I’ll never get a class, I’m a disgrace to the pixies, why didn’t I insist on being careful, I should have demanded priority, we are doomed…”

After watching her panic for a few minutes I grab her out of the air and pull her before my face. “Calm Down!”

“eeeep…ok….ok…panic bad, calming down...”

After another minute Parsi adds “Thanks. I’m calm now. Uh Claudia? You’re squishing my wings…”

“Sorry” I set her down on the table “Better now?”

I watch as she stands up and straightens out her wings, then she nods to me.

“It is not your fault – when we placed those rooms you didn’t even know that the tower floors are an option, and neither of us knew of the hidden requirements.

And didn’t you say that we may get that room later?”

“Yes” Parsi nods before slowly continuing “The system has somewhere around thirty different rooms in total. I never bothered to remember the correct total number, because only the twenty in your dungeons list will really matter. And since that list is randomly assigned, there is a two in three chance for every possible structure to end up in a dungeon’s list.”

“So we still have twelve chances to get the room we need, we are not yet doomed. And Parsi? Have you forgotten that you will get up to five bonus levels from my race level as well? So even if this dungeon stalls tomorrow – which will not happen – you are still guaranteed to reach your class level one day. It will just take longer.”

Parsi brightens at that “Right, I keep forgetting that we have an unusual contract. So let’s go back to the construction window, we still need to place at least one more room.”

We study the table with our dungeon floor for a while before I say “OK, I know how we could place everything safely, but I don’t want to commit the big 4x4 room yet – not until we have a better idea what other rooms might come.

The long corridor needs to go into the bottom left, and that means we’ll have to use that strange cross-edge room here.”

“Are you sure, Claudia? That will leave a rather rugged edge south of the center.”

“Yes, I try to never make a mistake twice. If we don’t get the two-square-room, nothing matters. But if we do get it, we can fill the entire floor with the already known rooms.

Look, the big room to the east and a second of the cross-edge rooms here, and everything fills.

I would just prefer if we find another way because this way we would need four of the two-squares. That is why I don’t want to commit the big room yet and hope to find better rooms to fit.”

“Right, that would go. So what are we doing for placements? Even after healing and recharging you, we are now at 85 mana.”

“Pay 40 Mana for two hundred mana collectors for the next phase. Yes, I originally said that 80 mana is enough of a reserve buffer – but that was before the demand of 100 mana to raise the tower staircase. I think we should go to a reserve of 200 before spending anything. And we need more rooms in the floor below to place the monsters, they wouldn't fit in floor 0 anyway.

Keep the other 45 mana for now, I want to try something else first. Due to the dungeon barrier being between floor 0 and 1, we can leave the dungeon now – even during a construction phase at night.

This opportunity will be lost as soon as we move the Heart to the next floor, and I want to try to get as much as possible from it before we have to go down. And yes, if we encounter anything I will run toward the dungeon – not only because the tiger here can help in the fight, but also because I hope to get another animal-type predator as a monster option.”