Fenrir

“Yeah, of course it’ll be hard,” Dawn says as her flame begins to grow in size whilst turning a yellowish-orange in her excitement, “it’s a boss room after all!”

My amusement at her words comes out as a chuckle that ring out only to my monsters in the boss and core rooms. Afterwards, I focus entirely on the intruders again.

The lycans continue crossing the bridge towards the intruders without any signs of stopping; not even when the annoying archer starts shooting arrows at them.

My core lets out a faint pulse due to my annoyance at the existence of ranged attacks before I’m distracted by the sight of one of the intruders approaching the end of the bridge.

Did they realize it?

I certainly hope not, because if they did then that might make this room a decent amount easier for them.

The room itself is designed so that the bridges don’t vanish if someone is on them, seeing as they are too long for someone to cross before the switching interval causes the bridges to change. But there is a switch on each bridge – one at each end of the bridge – that cancels that safety measure, making it so that the bridge just continues on its normal interval regardless of intruders or monsters on it. It can be pulled by either side, so even if an intruder pulls it to make the monsters unable to cross with an absolute guarantee of safety, a lycan on the other side could always just pull the lever on their side to reverse it.

Assuming there is a lycan alive on that side. It’s unfortunate that the normal wolves don’t have as much intelligence as the lycans.

I’m not really sure why that is to be honest. The bipedal monsters just seem to have slightly higher intelligence than the quadrupedal and arachnid monsters.

As for the levers, they’re a two time use thing, so when it’s used twice – regardless of which bridge it’s used on – it can’t ever be used again in that dungeon run.

“Are they…” I hear Dawn mutter before she lets out a sigh of relief – which I still have difficulty understanding how is possible – as the intruders begin to try cutting up the boards instead of looking for the hidden lever.

“Actually,” Dawn continues, this time drawing my attention towards her in the process, “why did you set up those hidden levers anyways?”

“To make things more interesting,” I answer while turning my attention back to the intruders who have already given up on removing the enchanted wood and are focusing on defending against the monsters from the entrance platform. “I’ve realized that I haven’t branched out much from what’s become my norm in my floors, so I decided to try something different this time. And doing things this way also gives the possibility of both the intruders using the lever on my monsters, and vice versa, with my monsters doing it back to them.”

Dawn simply says, “Oh,” before focusing on the intruders again.

“Aside from that,” I begin again a few seconds later as the intruders proceed to fight against the oncoming monsters, “I’m also planning on changing things up a little with my next floors. Making them quite a bit different from what I’ve been doing so far.”

This seems to catch her attention, causing her to focus on me again and ignore the current battle.

“Like for the next floor,” I continue while sending a glance at Fang, who is currently just lying down on his belly whilst in his black-furred form with his camouflage up, “I’m planning on making it entirely composed of one long arena, like I had mentioned a while back but never actually did.”

“You mentioned…” Dawn begins only for her flame to flash yellow as she adds, “Oh yeah! I do remember that!”

Surprisingly enough, Fang actually turns his head around to look at my core before laying it down again to continue watching the intruders.

My core briefly pulses slightly in surprise at this, but I continue speaking despite it, “I’ll also be able to incorporate portals into the floors once I eventually get that down, even with the damn things being so expensive on my mana.”

This part seems to flip some sort of switch in Dawn as she turns a bluish-pink and begins speaking with a noticeable passion, “Ohh, I have some ideas on that! You could use the portals in mazes! They could each lead to different little areas, with maybe some obstacle courses in them that have several different paths to different portals that lead to other locations in the maze!”

I completely focus my attention on her again before she continues speaking, “You could also try using them as traps, making them send them into some sort of monster room, or even a random pit of lava! Or maybe incorporate the portals into puzzles by having them under the correct answer in a quiz or something!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I exclaim, my telepathic chuckle echoing through the monsters currently in my core room, “Slow down!”

Dawn pauses at my words before her color shifts back from a bluish-pink to a pure pink out of her embarrassment. “Oops…”

I simply chuckle even louder at her reaction.

Who knew she was so into portals?

It kind of makes me wonder why she didn’t remind me about portals earlier on after I reached Tier 2.

I watch her fidget in her own wispy way for a few more seconds before turning to watch the intruders again, who have slowly managed to clear out the monsters that had crossed the bridge before starting across it themselves.

Although it’s possible that Dawn didn’t mention it because she had thought I was already planning for it.

Also, by the looks of it, one of the lycans is about to pull the lever on their side. So this might just get more interesting.

Dawn also seems to notice it, seeing as her pink color quickly begins to go back to her usual blue with flecks of black after she focuses on the intruders again.

“This will be good,” I mutter without taking my focus off of the intruders.

And it will make a good test for the bridges’ usefulness.