by Alston Sleet
Minutes ticked by while I mentally held my breath. Then I started to whoop and holler (in my head) as I didn’t have a repeat of the moment before when I had no entrance to the outside.
I still planned to add in traps and monsters and all kinds of things down through this tunnel, but at least this way I should be far safer. If no one can ever find a dungeon core, then this dungeon might just be seen as totally different and maybe, just maybe, as a resource and training ground rather than something to be slaughtered or enslaved.
Optimistic I know, but I like to think of it as lazily hopeful.
With my core hidden far better than it was before it was time to build out my challenges. I didn’t have any real spells and only one kind of magical manipulation and I didn’t want to help train anyone else on that for safety’s sake. That left melee challenges. Assassins, scouts, warriors, ranged combat, tracking, there were plenty of options possible.
I was planning to offer for the first set of challenges a set of relatively easy tasks that should be possible for anyone with a little bit of skill. After that, I would ramp up the difficulty until I reached a point where I was honestly trying to kill anyone involved with the challenge. If they reached that far, they either are trying to kill me, or they honestly want that level of challenge.
First I created a tunnel on the left of the portrait which would be for ‘melee’ skills. On the right side, I created a tunnel for magic. Once my prayer skill resets tomorrow I would talk to Coldona and see what I could do for that, that sounded like a decent segue into her new naked portrait. Yup, optimistic.
Creating another arched room I added five further tunnels. I would label each once I finished my challenges. Oh, finished challenges. Hmm. That’s going to be difficult. What do I do once someone has passed a challenge? I can’t just have them turning around and walking back. I planned to use multiple series of one way squish hallways to control the flow of challengers. It would be annoying to focus on that each time someone wanted to move forward, but hopefully, I would be able to automate that somewhat once I learned more magic.
After considering the problem for a while I tried to snap my fingers, a habit I had developed in college when I solved a problem, now something I could never really enjoy again.
I would just repeat the trick of the one-way hallways and just use it to reverse the whole process. I would create a third hallway in the main gathering hall and call it the hall of champions, then connect all the exits from the challenge rooms back to this hallway. This would let people know if someone succeeded and also block people from trying to go back through the challenges.
I was a bit concerned about basing so much of my dungeons design around a single trick, but until I figured out more types of magic, there was little I could do about it. So, what should be my first challenge?
Eventually, I decided to create an agility challenge, a glorified obstacle course. First I created a large cavern. This was a single room with a large pit that dropped more than thirty feet. Once the basis of the room was finished, I started to place evenly spaced columns of marble with central supports of metal. It took roughly ten minutes of focus to form each stepping stone, mostly because of the metal inside of each column. These jumping stones were actually relatively easy to traverse. At first, they were spaced within a handsbreadth away from each other and more than three feet around. By the end of the cavern, each stone would be between four and five feet apart and be less than a foot around. Mostly the only way to really fail would be to show off or fail to focus.
Part of the reason for the easy start was to convince challengers that my dungeon was indeed different. If most people consider dungeons death traps, then this would be seen as easy and in no way dangerous except for the foolish.
At the exit I created a waist-high polished dark marble pedestal that would have whatever I finally decided would be the prize for completing the challenge. Chewing through the hallway I created a twisting warp of space which finally connected back to the champions hallway. When I created a new challenge room to continue I would just create a second hallway and then label this one and the further challenge. Simple and repeatable. Strangely enough, because of all my spatial shenanigans, my dungeon was barely larger than a football field from the outer most edge to edge. Most of that space was still solid rock where I could put more challenges.
Next was a basic melee challenge. My solution was metal stands with two arms, one with a target and the other with a razor sharp blade that stuck out. Creating the sharp blade was simple. The tricky bit was splitting the crossbeam with the blade and target from the central post and then allowing it to smoothly turn. Once I polished the inner metal surfaces it swung around easily.
The goal here was simple. Hit all the targets one after the other and don’t die from the spinning blade. Get through and the door would open. In later challenges, I could just create melee creatures, once I figured out how to do that. So far my easy challenges were looking to be far more manual for me to handle than I was happy with, but not beyond anything I couldn’t handle.
I underlined the mental note that I needed to beg for magic lessons on how to set up triggers to handle things for me. It had to be simple but even after trying everything I could think of I failed to pull off any other magical effect. Though I doubted calling out ‘abracadabra’ would work, I tried it anyways. No dice.
Challenge numero…um…threeo? My third challenge anyways. I was thinking a perception puzzle. After careful consideration, I decided this would be a mental puzzle and I would put it on the magic side. It wasn’t exactly the same as magic, but it seemed to fit.
For this, I made a large grid of hallways. Entering on one side, the goal was to reach the other side and exit.
Easy.
Except there would be only one way to go and each intersection would use the one-way hallway trick. Only by going the right way would you be able to make it to the exit. Each intersection would offer a choice of two directions with the other two directions appearing to be a blank wall. Then I created a tile pattern on each hallway leaving each intersection clean marble. For extra fun, I made each hallway dip up or down slightly and shifted the vertical spaces involved. I couldn’t wait to see someone’s face the first time they took four left-hand turns and ended up in a new hallway even though it would feel like they should have gone somewhere else. To solve the puzzle all that someone had to do was notice the disturbance in the tile pattern. Turn the direction of the disturbance, simple. To make it as simple and easy as the first set of challenges I made the disturbances start from blatantly obvious and devolve to minute but noticeable with little effort.
Even with making it so blatantly simple I’m sure someone will get it wrong.
Best of all, I could try out a few different combinations so when the next person tries out the challenge it will shift from what it was before. I’m sure someone will try and sell the solution and someone else will try and cheat and follow the ‘solution’. I was starting to get a sick kind of joy over figuring out tricky ways to mess with people. In the background of my mind, I had been ignoring the repeating ‘dings!’ as my blessing of cunning kept firing off.
Once I looped the exit of the puzzle maze back around to the Hall of Champions, I considered what I wanted to work on next. The moment I took a break my instincts started to holler at me again. Apparently building a dungeon, but not actually building things in direct line with the core was something my instincts didn’t like. That actually comforted me. If normal dungeons always throw challenges between adventurers and themselves then adventurers must become trained with the idea that if it’s tough, the dungeon core is that way. Dead ends, mazes which don’t head to the core, subtle tricks and misdirection, all these would be abnormal and another way to hide my true nature.
Before starting on the simple firing range challenge, I decided to increase my personal defense and use the maze trick I had used before. Only this was a trap to protect myself and I had no reason to play nice.
If someone came this way, they were coming for me.
When Jessica had left me, I had decided to get in shape and find someone new. It had been a childish reaction, but it had been heartfelt. My solution was to buy a gym membership. With gym memberships, the gym already has your money. If you never use the gym, then they get the cash and none of the cost. Hence the free trainer session which came with the membership. Joe was his name and he hammered me mercilessly on the Stairmaster. My legs had felt like someone had beaten them with a tire iron.
My defense was based on the same idea.
I created multiple sets of branching stairways which all looped back on each other. After a short stretch of downward spiraling stairs, I pulled my one-way wall trick again on both sides of the staircase. Then I looped multiple sets of upward only stairs together. From the inside of the trap, it would look like a spiral staircase downward that quickly reached a dead end. Once you turned around and headed upward, the spiral became an infinitely long upward staircase that became a dead end again if you tried to go back down. There were no resting places. Nothing to differentiate anything else, and if you did know the trick to pass through my one-way spatial door, you would have to watch for it constantly since there were twenty different stairways that all looped back on each other, all identical. Just finding the original entrance would be a challenge.
That calmed my inner dungeon core down and let me return to my challenge planning.
CHAPTER TEN
Pretty Toes and Mental Ice Picks
I spent hours building my tunnels and challenges. When I finally surfaced from my focus I realized that I had built almost thirty levels into the ground, each challenge more difficult than the next. For some areas, I could only just reserve space. Most of the magical area remained empty. For the more physical areas, it was just a matter of increasingly difficult challenges based on physical acts. I especially liked the collapsible track for speed challenges. This was another one of those challenges that I hoped that magical learning would help me improve over time.
For the lower level combat levels, I built a series of arenas where a central button on the floor, when stomped on, would open a gate and release a monster. Once I had a monster to release that is. Later arena floors had tricky raised platforms, areas to setup spring-loaded traps, spikes, and eventually oil and fire hazards. Most of that was not possible at the moment though. It was only a matter of time until I figured out new etheric patterns or found samples of the needed resources. It’s actually very scary how easy it is to gain seriously disturbing compounds from seemingly simple sources.
In one challenge I needed a pool of thin, but non-harmful, slime to make an area slick. Without thinking about it I made a large amount of thin slime and filled the pool. It wasn’t until later that I wondered where I gained the slick liquid. Finding out the slime sample came from the liquid inside one of the wizard's eyes was horrific but it led me to wonder about other samples and what else I might have. Bones for ambiance was possible and stomach acid for a weak danger, but other than those I couldn’t really find anything too useful. As wigged out as the idea made me, I considered that I would have to pay attention to whatever samples I find and search for any advantage I could claim.
Once I had my basic layout, I thought about using [Directed Prayer]…then I thought about how nice it would be to reinforce every tunnel I had with metal behind the walls. Just in case challengers decided to try and break through the walls. After an hour of slowly reinforcing the walls with a mesh of metals and then metal plates, I admitted to myself that I was just staling to avoid finding out if Coldona was going to freak out on me.
Girding my (nonexistent, and wasn’t that a pisser) loins, I triggered my skill and tried to contact my Goddess.
I could hear the smile in the goddess’ voice when she responded, “Hello Dale, I’m surprised you waited four days before contacting me again.”
Wait, what? Focusing outside I noticed that it was dark. I thought back to while I had been working but I couldn’t pinpoint when it had become night, let alone four times! It felt like only hours! I knew that I could get tunnel vision when I eventually got into something I was enjoying, but I had never gone days without coming up for air. Then again, I usually had sleep, food, water, or even hygienic needs to distract me in my focus. I had none of that anymore.
Letting the matter slide, but making yet another mental note to not let myself get so engrossed next time, I put on a more formal tone. “My goddess, I present for your approval my image of your future form.”
I tried to mentally convey a bow and gesture at my rendition of the goddess, and I was concerned when I had no response for the longest time. But eventually, my fears were put to rest.
“Oh, I’m going to look so pretty! Look at me, oooh, I have tiny little toes, and they are painted also! Ooooh.”
Not exactly the response I had expected, but it worked I guess. She didn’t seem to be upset over the skin showing or any of the inhuman beauty, so it worked I guess.
“Oh, and those claws are wonderful, they match the toes and I still can rip and tear things if I have a need.”
Allllright. Blond college student meets murder fan: scary-chic. I guess I can’t be too surprised since she was ‘Mother of Monsters, Birther of Dungeons”.
While I was glad she was happy, and her continued gushing about both the ‘pretty’ and the ‘function’ said she was, I still needed to cover magic lessons and the plaque.
“Ma’am? I was wondering if I could cover a few other things with you? For example, does the text on the plaque work for you?” I asked.
“Hmm? Oh, Denda said it’s fine. She is tricky, so I just go with her plans. She is always looking out for the family so it’s better to just go along with her ideas.”
All right, add trusting and potentially ditzy to the list of adjectives.
“Could you explain how magic works, at least how it’s supposed to work for Dungeons?”
Again with the long pauses. I had never liked those long pauses when talking to a woman, it always let me know I had said something stupid and she was waiting for me to figure it out as well.
“Well, you…a dungeon just wants things to be and they are. You have already been making things with etheric patterns, you don’t really need more than that.”
Not the best tutorial, but I guess I had been a bit vague there.
“What I mean is, I’m trying to create traps, or triggers to act certain ways when people step over them. I’m also trying to set up mage challenge areas and I need to have things like magical items for rewards and testing. Oh, also things like spell rewards.”
By the end, I had started to get excited about all the awesome stuff I could start presenting to my challengers and how I could create the magical equivalent of paintball or laser tag. Fantasies of magic goblets with never-ending wine, or staffs of magical power, and of course the bog standard magic sword, all floated through my head.
“Oh, well some of that you can do because you are a dungeon, just pushing your mana into a location then…well…wanting it to act will set up a type of resonance there? Welden explained it to me once but I had just lost my last sapient worshippers at the time and I’ve been a bit fuzzy. I’m mostly running on the goddess version of animal instincts at the moment. Sorry.”
By the end, she sort of faded out into sadness and sounded very down.
That last bit left me feeling kind of bad about all the snarky comments I had been making in my head. This wasn’t who she was, she was just reduced to ‘this is pretty’ and ‘I need to be scary’ because of her instincts. I knew what it was like to have simplistic and conflicting instincts messing with you.
“That’s ok. Could I talk to Welden then? He could explain it to me.”
And again with the long, drawn-out awkward pauses…
“Not really. You’re my [High Priest] now so he can’t really talk directly to you unless he descends and no one but Denda likes to do that. The only reason the rest
were able to bless you was because they had marked you before you became my [High Priest].”
When I started to grumble Coldona quickly admonished me.
“No, it’s actually a good thing you know? Otherwise, the other pantheon’s gods would just wipe each other out since they could just find the worshippers and just poof! Gone city! We can’t do that, it would break the rules.”
I knew that Coldona didn’t actually look like my portrait yet, but I couldn’t help but imagining her puffing out her cheeks and shaking her head. The imagery kind of ruined for me the stern mother image I had set things up for with the portrait and plaque.
That really wasn’t what I was worried about at the moment though. What I was worried about was the ‘find the worshippers and just poof!’ bit.
“Am I in danger of some other god hunting me down and killing me in order to kill you?”
…
Ah, maaaan. Come on! That really should have been a part of the discussion of the deal here!
“Not…really? I mean, yeah if they figured out I only have a [High Priest] and they could get a [Champion] or an [Avatar] involved maybe. One of the [Paladins] from the Empire of Welt would definitely call a [Crusade], but that’s just Tuesday. Oh-oh-oh! And watch out for anyone who worships Vetta, the Goddess of Order and Light. They are nuts and basically banned all over because of some crazy stuff they have done. Well, not all of them, but well the ones near there. You know?”
Coldona’s efforts to calm me down started out less than comforting and went downhill from there. By the end, I was very concerned. It sounded like the gods were nice enough to their own worshippers, so far at least, but caused a lot of issues when they came in conflict.
