Chapter 3

- New Floor -

“Day-da-lus? Where have I heard that name before?”

“The name is from Greek mythology. Daedalus created the labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur.”

“Oh yeah… but didn’t his life end in tragedy? Which eventually drove him insane- oh wait, maybe that name is perfect for you.”

“Shut up. And are you sure that he went insane? I don’t remember that being a part of the story.”

Parallel Me shrugged, “Well it’s not like I can go check. Anyway, Daedalus, have you finished sulking? Let’s go upstairs.”

“OK.” We left what was our core room, the third floor. Fourth if you count the surface. Moving between floors irritated me. You see, the floors got bigger as they went down, yet remained aligned through their centre. A cross-section would look like a buried step-pyramid. As such, the positioning of a traditional staircase would be a little awkward. But no, The System just space-warped a solution, connecting the entrances and exits with no apparent twist, turns or even distance between them. If it weren’t for the fact that I could feel my Dungeon floors existing one on top of another I would of thought that I was just walking through different rooms on the same floor.

As we arrived at the second floor I called out to Parallel Me to stop.

“Why?” He replied.

“You want to start building defences on the first floor, right?”

“Yes. What makes you ask?”

“Well, it’s about something you said during our, err… trip. How it’s ironic; our floors will get bigger and bigger but the earliest floors, the smallest, will always be the most crowded and in need of space.”

“I did. A guild basically always has more adventurers then their dungeons capacity, especially with lower level adventures. It varies from guild to guild in how they manage the problem.”

“Well, I think we can do something, using the first floor, to alleviate this problem.”

“How?”

“OK, we have already decided on the rough outline, template, of our Dungeon, right?”

“Yeah, a handful of normal floors then one World Floor, repeat. Wait, you’re not going to try and argue for more World Floors again, are you? I told you they are expensive and best used sparingly in spite of their benefits since it sacrifices control.”

“No- well, yes- but that's only part of it. Hear me out. We turn the first floor into a World Floor, but only using the common level World Floor upgrade-”

“-The lowest level World Floor upgrade is still 10,000DP,” Parallel Me interrupted.

“What?! OK then, forget the world upgrade, we just do the second part of my idea; Teleportation.”

“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“Yes, if it’s ‘intentionally let intruders skip floors in the dungeon’.”

“You stupid?”

“I don't mean to let them do as they please. First and foremost, I want to use one of those teleportation traps you have mentioned, so we can turn it off whenever we want. Secondly, they would only be eligible if they used a ‘boss token’. Which we could only make available through defeating the boss. Third, it would only be to the floor after the one the boss, corresponding to the token, guards.”

Parallel Me sighed.

“So, you want to do it?”

“Of course, I want to do that! It sounds bloody awesome,” Parallel Me snapped.

“Well then-”

“-Sshhh. I need to think of counterpoints. Someone has to be objective and responsible around here.” A few moments later he collected himself and spoke, “First off, what a waste of a floor. You know we would not be able to afford that for ages. Speaking of which brings me to my second point, do you know how expensive that would be? Even a generic teleportation trap is expensive, let alone one you can give parameters and conditions to.”

“And repairing damage done by high level adventures as they waltz their way through the earlier floors to get to the harder ones?”

“Just stop. It's a moot point; we can't afford it. And if we decide to do it latter we will just renovate the first floor. Happy?”

“Oh, all right!” I begrudged. “I thought that was a really good idea,” I muttered.

“It has potential,” Parallel Me commented, already moving towards the first floor.

***

“It’s a hole…. that I have to pay for.” I enunciated slowly.

Parallel Me’s gaze jolted up to lock onto mine, his posture indicating his readiness to rip someone's head off.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” Came my hurried reply.

Parallel Me relaxed his posture somewhat and continued his talk, “At just 10DP the basic pitfall trap is cheap.”

I looked down at the new hole forming on the floor of the tunnel that connects the first floor and the surface. “I can see why, it doesn't look very threatening.” I suspected only Dwarves would have trouble jumping across it. It didn't even look like the corner of the pitfall would hit anything ‘ideal’, like their head, if an intruder did fell in.

Parallel Me ignored the criticism and moved further into the tunnel, entering the first floor. “Since we are all alone you don't have to worry about misplacing traps. Traps can be moved in uncontested territory.” The pitfall trap moved along the ground. It came to a stop if front of Parallel Me’s feet. “And never underestimate a good hole.” After a few clicks four ghostly apparitions of doors appeared. They were wooden with some iron trimmings. They looked sturdy, if not intangible. They floated away from Parallel Me, all in opposite directions, before stopping and becoming solid. Walls grew from the ground, reaching for the ceiling.

“Did you have to pay for the walls?” I asked.

“No, they come with the doors and before you ask, yes I picked the sizes.”

Looking around I could see that Parallel Me had created four rooms. One in each corner so that for every room two of the walls were the outer, indestructible, walls. Two hallways, in the shape of a cross, separated every room from one another. The pitfall was at the intersection of the two hallways, which itself was slightly off centre from the centre point of the floor- closer towards the surface tunnel. If an intruder was so inclined they could walk in a straight line from the tunnel to the staircase that leads to the second floor, pitfall jumping excluded. The doors to the rooms faced each other and were in the branching hallway.

[ Author’s note: I tired putting the basic outline of floor plan (image) in the post chapter notes, but apparently, I’m stupid because I can’t do it. Here is the Imgur link: https://imgur.com/n9hZuOf ]

“What kind of doors are those?”

“Aside from the fact that they are purchased with DP, and will thus repair using mana and don’t count as blockage, normal doors. They’re not even locked.”

“What’s to stop intruders from ignoring the side hallways?”

“We’ll put some treasure chests is some of the rooms. But ultimately, we don’t care. We don’t want adventurers exerting themselves on the first floor, it will make us stand out. Although, since we can’t justify a spawner right now, we will have to purchase monsters as replacements every time they die. That does mean, however, that the monsters can leave the rooms if we need them to- flank any intruders we deem threatening enough.” Parallel Me paused. “Feeding them is going to be a constant drain on our DP, however.”

“Is that your passive aggressive way of bring up Operation: Harvest.” Working title. Actually, not really, I liked the refence. We had been debating on which operation to do first. Goblin World or Harvest? The idea behind Harvest was to have fertile World Floor to grow food, allowing us to support boatloads of monsters without the associated costs of buying food with DP periodically. Even its location was up for debate. Currently, though, the plan is to put it on the floor below our Core room. It isn’t as crazy as it sounds, the idea has merits. The way Parallel Me put it was ‘Dungeon’s are under a never-ending siege. An endless invasion.’ So, having territory behind our Core meant we would always have a safe place. It was really the only location that could be considered ‘behind the front lines’. It could also be used for my secret experiments. I recently learned that I can not only buy monsters out of thin air, but also manipulate them on a biological level. Obviously, I’m going to have to experiment. I’ll get a white coat if I have to. And a tower with lighting rods. And a crazy-hair wig.

“I thought we talked about this.”

“I know, I know. Operation: Goblin World first. It’ll have to do both jobs until we can afford another World Floor for Operation: Harvest.”

“…No. About you putting the word ‘operation’ in front of everything. Don’t.”

“But it sounds cool. I sound cool.”

Parallel Me turned and stared at the floor. “Let me show you the final piece. A spring trap.” In response to his words a pattern of lines and circles lit up a small portion of the floor, just after the pitfall trap, in the direction of the second-floor staircase. “It triggers a monster spawn when an intruder steps on it. I’ve linked a Hobgoblin with a spear to it. It’ll be a nasty surprise to any adventure that jumps over the pitfall.”

“You can control what it spawns with? Now that I think about it there are actually several topics about monsters that I want to clarify.”

“This is a good sign. What are they?”

“I know that you said the catalogue of monsters are divided and grouped by their attribute and rating and that you can only access monsters in a given attribute group if a) you have that attribute and b) the monsters rating isn’t above yours.”

“Correct.”

“So my first question is; what happens if a monster has more than one attribute? And my other question… Goblin Shamans seem to have multiple attributes or is it that their spells don’t count.”

“You noticed that huh? I glad you’re paying more attention. If a monster has more than one attribute, and it can, you have to have all of its attributes to be able to buy it. As for spell casting, yes, you have to have the spells attribute to be able to cast it. Or even learn it.”

“But Goblins are in the neutral section of the monster catalogue. So how the hell were they able to cast all those spells. Just of the top of my head, I remember there being fire, lightning and earth spells.”

“Has it struck you as unfair?”

“Err… My life?” I responded, unsure of Parallel Me’s line of questioning.

“No. I’m talking about a Dungeon Core’s abilities been so heavily tied to their rating.”

“It makes sense, it is called their rating.”

“Well, we both know that The System is nothing if not a game. Which means there must be some level of sportsmanship. Which is why there are built in things that every Core has access to.”

“Which are?” I asked, unenthusiastic.

“You have already seen the catalogue of monsters. Every Core receives the same copy-”

“-But-” I interjected.

“-YES, weather a Core can purchase or even see all the monster depends on their rating and attributes. BUT, all Core’s get the Neutral attribute upon spawning AND a bunch of variants.”

“Variants?”

“Monsters that differ from a typical example of their species in some way. Like a Goblin that spawns with the Shaman Class, which, by the way, gives them the basic elemental affinities.”

“Oh? Why didn’t you give me the Shaman Class instead of the Sorcerer Class?”

“The Shaman Class gives you the basic elemental affinities but restricts you to those attributes. Forever. Something I know a greedy collector like you would hate.”

“Are you implying that I can collect them all?!”

“I think you can.”

“That’s awesome, I’ll have to put it on my bucket list,” I replied as a hobgoblin came through the second-floor entrance and handed me a piece of paper.

“You told me that you were using that to write down my teachings!”

“I did. I also used one to write down my bucket list.”

“Bucket list? Are you planning on dying? I already gave you that inspirational speech, what more do you want from me? Here, give me that!” Parallel Me snapped, attempting to snatching it out of my hands.

I moved the piece of paper out of his reach and handed it back to hobgoblin. “Could you stop interacting with the physical world? I uses up so much of my mana. You said it was a resource not to be wasted and I would like to use it to practice.”

“Oh, you want to take a look at the other spells I bought? That’s fine, but we’ll do it after setting up something on the second floor.”