Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience
Page 21
“He was telling the truth. There are a lot more monsters heading this way – and they are moving fast. I can’t tell exactly what they are, but some of them are…huge. My Movement Detection spell is limited, but it appears as though they came from the direction of the Plains of Grass before fanning out; it’s almost like they are searching for something and rolling over everything in their path…which will include Death’s March if they keep heading in that direction.”
“We have to save them! My sister is supposed to be staying there tonight before heading off later today to the north,” the surprisingly high-pitched voice of the Assassin shouted, which caused Fred to look at his – her – name: Pollianne. Hmm…Pollianne the Assassin? I guess I’ve heard stranger names.
“How far away are they, Metlin? Can we get there in time?” Trenk asked.
The Druid-Thief seemed to consider it for a moment, while the Assassin was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet in apparent worry. “We’re at least three miles away from there which will take us at least an hour; even if we run, it’ll be inevitable that we’ll get caught by more of the undead. If we ignore them completely, it’ll still take us at least 45 minutes—”
“I can get there in half an hour or shorter,” Pollianne interrupted him, looking like she was about to take off running.
“Hold on, Striker,” Metlin said, addressing the Assassin. I guess she doesn’t go by her real name – good to know. “You didn’t let me finish. My best guess is that they’ll be here in about 30 minutes…and to Death’s March in less than 20.”
The group fell silent as Fred looked at Regnark and Eisa, noticing for the first time that Deecy had shrunk down to her Pup form and was curled protectively around the woman’s feet – and looking as unthreatening as possible. I’m guessing that she saw how powerful these Adventurers were and knew they could likely kill her if she exuded any type of threat.
The other group almost appeared to have forgotten about them – at least until their leader turned toward Regnark and quickly asked, “I don’t know what’s going on, but we have to try to save as many of them as we can – even if we get there late. Will you help us?”
Regnark immediately replied in the affirmative. “Of course, we will…but a quick question: What is Death’s March?”
“Death’s March is the town just to the north; it was named so because the founders were exiled and forced to—” Metlin started, before being cut off by Pollianne/Striker.
“We don’t have time for that – we have to go!” And she started to run out of the small clearing surrounding the dungeon entrance. The Assassin was so eager to get to the town that had just chased Fred and his friends out that she didn’t even wait to see if anyone followed her.
“Wait!” Fred called out, his first words since the other group arrived so insistent that the Assassin actually paused in her run to look back at him. Well, he assumed she was looking at him – her hood was still pulled up and he couldn’t even see her face. “You’ll never get there in time to make a difference, if what I think is heading that way reaches the town,” he started, and could almost feel the anger pouring off Pollianne/Striker in waves.
“I can’t just let my sister die without trying to help! I’m going even if no one else joins me,” she said as she turned around to leave.
“Hold on! I didn’t say we didn’t want to help – but there is another way,” Fred said, as a plan flitted through his mind. It wasn’t the most ideal of plans as far as they went, but it might just have a chance of succeeding. As much as he didn’t like the people running the town – Death’s March, apparently – that had tried to murder them and take their stuff, there were hundreds of relatively innocent Adventurers (those that had laughed at his Guild’s misfortune, notwithstanding) that would ultimately suffer for Fred’s actions.
“What are you talking about…and how do you know what’s headed their way? What do you know about all of this?” Trenk asked, stepping over to Fred and lifting him off the ground by his shirt.
Fred waved Regnark off with his free hand as the big man appeared to move to help, which calmed him down – slightly. Eisa looked worried as well, but he smiled in her direction to try to reassure her, before turning his attention back to the large armored man holding him a few feet off the ground. “It’s too long to explain all of it and we’re wasting time as it is. Basically, we need to go inside that dungeon there.”
“What? Why? Is this some sort of trick to get us in there to look for Shadow Glass? I should just kill you right now!” Trenk said, shaking Fred so hard that he thought his neck would snap.
Refelynn – the Channeler that hadn’t spoken yet – stopped Trenk from inadvertently killing Fred, for which he was thoroughly thankful. “Put him down and let him speak – I’m curious to what this plan is,” she said in a surprisingly soft but authoritative voice. Luckily, the Knight-Mage was listening and did as she asked without question – which made him reevaluate who was really the one in charge of their group.
“Thank you,” Fred said, using his Heal Minor Wounds spell on himself to repair some the damage to his neck that had been inflicted. “Look, we’re not here for Shadow Glass or any type of loot – we don’t care about money in the slightest. What we were planning on doing was hiding out in this dungeon, but now that innocent lives are in danger, I don’t think we can sit by and allow that.”
“What do you mean, you don’t care about money; everyone cares about money,” Metlin asked, confusion plain in his voice.
“Look, I’ll explain along the way, but we better get going if we are going to save everyone. I’ll even give all of you some gold if you want – like I said, money isn’t important to me or us.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m in,” Metlin immediately replied with greed painted all over his face.
“Are you sure this plan of yours will work?” Pollianne/Striker asked with the tiniest sliver of hope in her voice.
“I’m positive.”
“Well…then let’s get going. If this saves my sister, I’m willing to do anything,” she said, before heading towards the dungeon entrance – before turning back to Fred. “But if you’re lying or my sister dies, you better hope you can run faster than me, because I will hunt you down and take my time killing you.” The Assassin then turned back to the dungeon and walked inside.
“Fred…what are you doing?”
“Only what I have to, Deecy. Only what I have to.”
Chapter 25
Depending on the size of a dungeon, it could take hours for every defender and defense that had been killed/deactivated or whatnot to respawn. While Fred could do it faster if he had free Mana lying around from destroyed defenders – such as when he was in Gatecross and could manipulate the Nature Mana into the blueprints directly, without absorbing it – actual “real” Dungeon Cores did things a little differently. They absorbed the Mana straight away when a defender was killed, or a trap was activated/deactivated, and then stored it in their Core until they needed it later.
This allowed them to have the Mana at their “fingertips” so to say, which would allow them to change the dungeon around if they wanted to when the humans went away. The downside to that was that it took longer for the automatic respawning of all their defenses, as it needed to be pulled directly from their Core, which could only handle manipulating so much Mana at once. Fred could do a bit more due to his unique Human Core which shared some of the stress pulling so much Mana at once would incur, but even he had pushed things a bit too far sometimes.
The end result of that limitation meant that it took longer to replace each individual room’s defenses. In a small G-1st or 2nd-Rated dungeon, for instance, it could repopulate everything in less than a minute; from what Fred had heard, an S-Rated dungeon could take up to almost a full day if the entire place had been wiped out.
He learned most of that information from Deecy, who seemed to have facts in her mind from his parents’ Core shards she was created
from; other than what he had learned regarding dungeon construction and territories, most of it had been largely unhelpful – because it didn’t really apply to him. In this instance, however, he used that knowledge to help the group heading back into the dungeon – by telling them what they were likely to expect.
Since they had only been outside no more than ten minutes, there wasn’t a lot of time for the Dark dungeon to respawn its defenders and defenses, but if it was aware of what was happening with the Earth defenders invading the Deadlands, then it had probably stressed itself a little bit trying to repopulate as much as it could. There was one thing that hindered it, however: procedure.
When the dungeon was refilled with the appropriate defenders and defenses, the automatic procedure put in place was to finish everything nearest the core first, before expanding outward. That way, if any other humans or even wild creatures entered the dungeon before it was completely reset, it would have the strongest defenses available near its core. It also allowed Adventurers to quickly check to see if the dungeon was ready to be delved again if the first room was repopulated.
“What Rating is this dungeon?” Fred asked, heading down the entrance tunnel behind the other group and letting them lead the way.
“Don’t you know?” Trenk asked, before shaking his head. “Never mind. It’s a C-3rd-Rated dungeon, which is a little below what we usually delve through, but we were looking for Shadow Glass.”
Fred hadn’t been in any dungeon higher than E-Rated (his parents’ dungeon didn’t count, even if he knew its actual rating) so he wasn’t sure what to expect. However, he sighed in relief when he saw that the first room wasn’t repopulated yet. “How long did it take you to go through this whole dungeon?”
Metlin answered this time. “It took almost all night, but we did explore all of the side passages and cleared every monster in here looking for loot.”
“We’ve got maybe 15 minutes to get to the last room, where you probably had to fight the boss-level monster. Fortunately, the Dark Core in here hasn’t had time to repopulate everything, so if we rush right there it hopefully won’t be too bad,” Fred told them.
They looked shocked, which wasn’t surprising based on what he had just told them. “Are you insane? Even if we skip all of the side passages and go straight there, you’re talking like 30 rooms to advance through in that time – at 30 seconds a room, that’s impossible.”
“It shouldn’t be too bad, though,” he responded, trying to instill confidence in his voice – even if he wasn’t completely sure he was right. “In a dungeon this size, only the last few rooms should be filled with anything, and if you deactivated all the defenses – traps – on your way, they should still be safe.”
Trenk still looked unsure, but Pollianne was impatient. “C’mon, let’s go – the sooner we get this done, the sooner I can make sure my sister is safe back in Death’s March. I’ll do a quick check of the traps I deactivated earlier to see if he’s telling the truth, but we need to hurry!” So saying, she took off for the tunnel leading to the next room.
Fred followed along, looking at the atmosphere of a Dark dungeon for the first time. Whereas his parents’ dungeon was filled with an aquatic/flaming atmosphere with pools of water, rings of fire, and even a small lava pool – and the Nature dungeons he had visited with Eisa and the Guild had plants, trees, and other nature-type accoutrements – the Dark dungeon was, well, gloomy.
The lighting inside was down very low, with just barely enough light to see more than a few feet in front of your face. Fortunately, he had his Magelight still up – which had to be cast every five minutes as the spell wore off – and they could see quite well. Not that there was a lot that he wanted to see; the walls were a dark-reddish color (nearly black) that appeared to be a representation of dried blood, there were rusted chains and iron spikes draped across everything like a macabre backdrop, and there were clouds of inky darkness that – when he looked at them in his Mana Sight – appeared to be made up of very small amounts of Dark Mana spread out like a mini explosion caught in mid detonation.
Metlin saw him looking at the clouds and told him, “That’s where the mobs were that we killed earlier.” As they passed on to the next room at a run – which looked very similar, but with minor changes to the layout of everything – the Druid-Thief went on. “They would hide in there and emerge either when we got close or we passed a certain part of the room. It makes it…interesting, as we never know what’s going to come out and attack us. Unless you’ve run this dungeon a few times and have their locations memorized, it’s a mystery every time.”
Interesting – that certainly does add an element of surprise that I’d never thought of before. Fred ran with everyone past a small pit trap that was exposed near the tunnel leading to the next room, seeing the darkness inside that looked very uninviting. The third room had more of the same, though it was bigger than the previous two rooms and had exits heading off in three directions instead of just one. Without hesitation, Pollianne – who was still leading the way and quickly checking to see if any of the traps had been reactivated – turned to the right, heading through the tunnel there.
“Those were some of the side passages that led us to a few optional areas, which were good for our wallets, but otherwise had no major surprises,” Metlin continued his explanation unprompted, even though Fred didn’t necessarily need it. This close to the Dark Core, he could pinpoint it unerringly even through the walls.
Speaking of the Dark Core, it had been uncharacteristically silent up to that point; every other dungeon he had been in (which, admittedly, were only run by Nature Cores) was filled with chatty Cores that were constantly talking to the dungeons around the area. At the time, they didn’t know he could hear them, fortunately, or his nature might’ve been found out earlier – and it also led to hours of one-sided (he couldn’t hear incoming Communications from external sources) inane gossip between low-Rated Dungeon Cores. So, either there was something wrong and he couldn’t hear the Core for some reason, or it was silent for another reason.
Though, when he thought about it, it was probably because Eisa and Deecy were obviously anomalies, as they were identifiable as having an aura of Mana inside of them, unlike his own (hopefully) hidden status of his Cores – and the humans with him, who didn’t have any Mana inside of them at all. Or, it could just be that it was listening to others speak and wasn’t paying attention to the invaders in its midst – which turned out to be the real reason.
“Yes, from what I see, they’re entering into my territory now.
The female voice of the Dark Core sounded a bit scared at the presence of Eisa inside her dungeon, which was understandable. It almost sounded like the Core had put a lot of her repopulation on hold when it became obvious that the Earth defenders were heading her direction. Not only that, but it was interesting how they were actively looking to save the humans in their “livestock pen”; all for selfish reasons, of course, but it was good to know that the Adventurers in the town would have a little bit of unexpected help defending themselves in case Fred
failed.
He decided not to even attempt to talk back to the Core, even though he was curious if he could use his Mana Communication from his current location. While he could hear her, he remembered that he hadn’t been able to speak to any of the Nature Cores that had been brought to him in Gatecross until he was touching them. Granted, even if he could Communicate with her, he wasn’t sure what he should say.
“Hello, I have to apologize. I’m here to absorb you so I can establish a territory and distract the Earth defenders heading toward the human town of Death’s March. Can you please submit willingly to your death?” just didn’t sound like it would go over well.
The larger group sped through more than two dozen rooms without encountering a single obstacle along the way. They were making excellent time, since the defenses were all deactivated and the way through was fairly straightforward. Along the way, he could hear the Dark Core keeping up a running commentary on their progress – and on the progress of the reinforcements.
“They’re getting closer and closer to my Core Room. I don’t know what their plan is, but something about them is worrying me. This Earth defender looks like livestock, but I can see an aura of Earth Mana around it; not only that, but there appears to be some sort of wolf with not just one element, but two! Do you think these are what Dryvenhelixia was seeing earlier in her territory?
Probably unnecessarily, Fred directed his Mana Communication strictly to Deecy and warned her not to use any of her abilities unless it was looking like they’d need it to survive. Not only would it alert the Dark Core to the further danger of their presence in its dungeon (which, honestly, was probably a moot point), but he also wasn’t sure how the other group of Adventurers would react. Without asking, the Dire Wolf Pup passed on the warning to Eisa, who likely agreed with him for at least that last reason.