It is not currently known if more powerful dungeons arise from stronger concentrations of Wild Mana, or if stronger concentrations of Wild Mana are condensed by more powerful dungeons. It seems likely that, given the existence of both Alpha Tester created and natural born dungeons, it is a combination of both. No experiment has conclusively proven what is the truth. In comparison, how dungeons utilize greater concentrations of Wild Mana has been observed. When a dungeon has an excess of Mana, as many of the largest do, they do two things. A small amount of this excess mana is consumed by the dungeon to drive the dungeons expansion. Greater territory, new traps, new rooms, et cetera. The rest is purified and released within the dungeon’s territory. This allows their monsters to quickly grow stronger and the young to quickly reach maturity. This same affect can be harnessed by adventurers in the dungeon, drawing in the excess pure mana to gain additional benefits when leveling. - History of a New Age, pg 31.

Li spent most of his first day in the entry section of the dungeon. His brush with the arrow had greatly sobered him and he paid close attention to his surroundings, worried that another trap could be anywhere. The arrow trap had been hidden rather cleverly, and he didn’t think any of the other traps would be different. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Archimedes, or whoever had created this place if not the famous Greek, seemed to be of the opinion that traps on their own were a waste of resources.

There were no long hallways filled with pit traps if you stepped on the wrong tile, darts being shot from walls as you tried to pass an open clearing, or spikes appearing out of nowhere at chokepoints. No, the Alpha Tester who had made this place much preferred traps as an added “spice” when dealing with more obvious dangers.

When he had needed to cross a fast-flowing stream of water using small pedestals, he had found that one of the larger stepping stones would crumble if you stepped on it. The only warning had been tiny cracks webbing the rock. Cracks he had failed to notice as he focused on not rolling his ankle while crossing slickened rocks that had been polished to a shine by centuries of passing water.

He had survived by immediately launching himself toward the far bank with his reinforcement armor. He hadn’t made it of course, but he’d managed to slam himself into one of the larger rocks further along the path. As he desperately clung to the rock with his enhanced strength, getting thoroughly soaked by freezing cold water trying to drag him from his perch and into the dangerous rapids, he had managed to slowly scramble his way up onto the platform. It had drained the entirety of his reserved energy, but that was fine. Keeping him alive in situations desperate situations such as that was what the armor was for.

The rest of the crossing had been nerve-wracking and incredibly exhausting. Constantly trying to keep himself balanced across multiple rocks, ready to instantly shift his weight if one started to give, he had quickly grown numb to anything but the placement of his feet. He had barely even registered it when he stepped onto the far bank - wet, shivering, and numb.

Which was how he had missed the next trap. When he had safely made it to the bank, he had landed maybe twenty feet from a rock sculpted into the image of a large serpent. The sides of the snake were stylized with hundreds of eyes carved with excruciating detail. The eyes were made so that they had almost seemed as though every single one was following him. Never letting him out of the beast’s sight. The thing also let out a constant sound, further adding to the mystique of the statue. Later examination had revealed that a number of the pupils were actually holes connecting to an eye on the other side, allowing the wind in the area to produce an earie cry as it passed through the rock.

More pressingly, a good number of those pupils had also served as hiding places for tiny launching mechanisms. When he had landed on the bank, he had felt the tile beneath his foot depress into the ground. Then he had felt almost a hundred small darts launch from the rock in a wide arc with his motion sense. He had barely managed to throw himself back into the river, gripping desperately at the rock that had served as his last stepping stone, before the darts pin cushioned the entire area.

After dragging himself up again using most of his remaining mana, he had spent almost five minutes looking at the bank and picking out the tiles he thought triggered the trap. If you looked closely, there were two different styles of tile. The differences were minor. A circle rather than a hexagon at the very center of the design, eight sections on the surrounding pinwheel rather than six, and pentagons rather than heptagons decorating the outer edge. Just to be safe though, he had worked his way across a few more stepping stones in the river to emerge maybe a dozen feet upstream, where a small ledge on the bank existed. The extra cover was a little bit of insurance in case he was wrong and the trap launched again, providing solid cover he could jump behind.

He had taken a minute to catch his breath, then he had leapt onto the bank. His first thought when he landed had been that he was wrong about the tiles. This one, too, had immediately sunk down at his weight. His next thought had been “Oh shit” as he heard the phew of the statues launching mechanisms going off and he flung himself toward cover.

He made it halfway over the ledge before he had realized nothing had been launched from the rock. Apparently, the dungeon took its time reloading the ammo in the trap. Thinking back on it he came up with a hypothesis. Must have been meant to decrease mana costs. With how big this place is, anything that decreases energy costs is probably worthwhile.

Thankfully, the trap had not been entirely bad. After he had reassured himself that the rock really was out of ammo, this accomplished by purposefully depressing a tile while he was under cover, Li had gone to take a look at what had been shot at him. Most of the darts had ended up in the river, but he had managed to find a few that hadn’t been swept away by the current. Then he had left, too exhausted to think about them much.

Pulling one out of his bag, he took his time examining it in detail. The dart was a fat purple ovoid shape similar to an egg, with a long syringe attached to the fatter side. Four wings made of some kind of feather adorned the outer diameter of the purple egg. When he squeezed, the egg easily collapsed and a clear liquid was forced out of the tip of the syringe. Some kind of poison? There was no real way to test the theory. Not without injecting it into himself, and there was no way that was happening. Still, waste not want not. Hopefully I can find something to test it on later.

#

He had taken a long rest after that challenge, regenerating his mana pool and catching his breath. After that, the next challenge had been a corridor where the ground was covered in about a foot of quicksand. Not deadly, but incredibly effective at limiting movement. Also, it turned out, very good at hiding spike traps. He had had forewarning this time thankfully. Some kind of giant insect had tried to pass through before him. The creature had been somewhere around 4 feet long, with a good foot of its size being a pair of passive jaws. Its large head had made up another foot of length, with a comparatively small thorax connecting to an abdomen barely longer than the head but two or three times as wide. The creature had looked almost comical, like a giant ping pong paddle with jaws on the handle.

The comedic value had been cut short by the 2 dozen long metal needles skewering through the creature and raising it above the sand. Each spike looked almost dainty. Barely an inch in diameter and long enough the they looked like they should bend under their own weight. They had been incredibly solid though, resisting movement even when he used his entire body weight to pull on the tip of the spike.

Approaching the spike trap had taken every scrap of his will power, but he had reasoned that a bug would likely follow a straight path and therefore walking the handful of yards between the start of the quicksand and the spike trap should be safe. That had thankfully turned out to be correct, and had given him easy access to an already sprung trap that he could observe. Jumping on the opportunity this had provided him, he had worked hard to try to figure out how to identify other instances of the trap while moving further into the hallway.

Unfortunately, even up close there hadn’t been any obvious visual cues of the trap. At least not if the spikes had been retracted. The sand wasn’t a different color, there were no unique patterns, and there was no marking on either wall. Or rather no marking that stood out as a potential clue. The walls had been carved as mirrors of each other, each showing the same grand mural of some kind of journey. Five warriors working their way through a desert, fighting and killing monsters until they reached the far end and faced a positively massive scorpion. The story ended with the creature’s tail hanging menacingly over their heads and two of the warriors holding off its claws with shields.

Still, he had taken his time examining the trap. Using a force blade, he had cut off one of the bugs legs and used it to prod at the ground in front of him as he had slowly worked his was entirely around the trap. With nothing to show for that, he had grabbed one of the spikes and followed it down into the sand, hoping to find a clue with one of his other senses.

That had actually panned out. It had turned out that the spike traps were mounted into a metal base plate, while the rest of the floor was stone. The difference between the two materials was immediately obvious when he touched it, the metal being significantly smoother and with a slight chill in comparison to the rest of the ground. There was also a small lip right at the edge as the baseplate was raised about half an inch above the rest of the floor.

With this discovery, Li had quickly returned to the entrance of the hallway and removed his shoes. These were quickly followed by his socks before he had rolled up the ends of his pants and dropped back into the sand after packing everything away. From there he had slowly shuffled through the hallway, never taking his feet off the ground. It had taken quite a while to make it from one side to the other, but he had not needed to dodge a single unexpected trap.

Thinking back on it, that had likely been a disappointing trap simply because he gained nothing after he beat it. Sure, you could argue not dying was gaining something, but the previous trap had at least rewarded him with those weird darts for surviving. Something he could hopefully put to use with traps of his own. Then again, the spike traps WERE significantly easier to deal with, so I guess it all balances out.

Of course, at the end of the hallway had been another unpleasant surprise. Not a trap for once, an actual monster. The giant scorpion from the mural in fact. Well, maybe not that big, but large enough. The size of a large dog, a German Shepherd or Labrador maybe. It had been lying flat, hidden under the quicksand. Li now theorized that the creature had had had some kind of infrared vision or vibratory sense or something, because no way it should have been able to see him with normal vision.

The thing had been cranky, apparently tire of sitting still and waiting for prey to pass, and had quickly raised its tail above the sand in some kind of threat posture as soon as he got within a few yards. The segmented black appendage had easily been twenty-five inches long and maybe a half a foot wide. Rows of tiny spikes had run lengthwise along the tail, like extra fine teeth on a saw. The things size and obvious weight had been positively club like, and would likely have felt threatening even without the four-inch-long stinger adorning the tip.