Fenrir

It doesn’t take long for me to finish the staircase to the new twelfth floor before I quickly get to work on the floor itself. And just like with the eleventh floor, I decided to change things up a bit for this one. So instead of a maze, or straight route, or even a large cavern-like floor like most of my floors, this one will be consistent of a maze filled with quizzes and riddles.

I quickly make the entrance hall at the end of the stairs and link it with the other portal hubs before moving on to the first room and making it in the shape of a large cube with three different portal arches on each side except for the entrance.

“What did you say this floor was going to be?” Dawn suddenly asks me as I’m designing the room to look nice, making the walls made entirely out of obsidian with steel arches and a large tablet connected to the ground and walls in front of each of the arches, blocking them from view.

Without pausing in my work, I answer her, “It’ll be a maze where each room in the maze has a separate riddle or quiz that has to be completed before the arches will be revealed and the portals will be activated. The rooms themselves won’t be dangerous though. Not unless someone fails at a quiz or a puzzle.”

I continue working as Dawn slowly begins to float through the room while looking around.

“And if someone fails one?” Dawn asks right when she stops to look at the large tablet in front of the center door.

“Well, various things could happen, with the punishment being completely random every time,” I continue before pausing for a moment to glance at the entrance, where I notice the City Lord and his party entering the dungeon. “It can range all the way from traps being set off in the room, to a portal opening up in the floor and teleporting them to a random room on the floor, or even random monsters spawning.”

I return my focus to my work, pausing my explanation for several more minutes to designate all of my attention to the portal arches. However, once I finish all three of them and set the enchantments in them, I turn to Dawn again and continue, “Every instance of the dungeon will have a different layout, with the portals leading to a different room for each run.”

I sense Dawn turning her attention back on me as she asks, “So that means the intruders could theoretically make it to the mini boss room after finishing just the first room?”

After sensing a wave of confusion and disagreement with that coming through our bond, I return my attention to the room while saying, “No. They can’t. I’ll be setting up the enchantments in a way that, while the doors outcomes are always random, they will still have a small pattern that they always follow. And that pattern will be that the intruders must finish at least three rooms before they can even possibly come across a room with the mini boss’s room portal as one of the portals within the room.”

All of the emotions coming through our bond are instantly replaced by both surprise and satisfaction as her flame starts glowing yellow.

“Huh,” she mutters while floating up to the portal, teleporting past the tablet in the process to look at the enchantments inscribed in it. “That sounds like a good floor design. Although it might be…”

“Annoying to implement?” I answer for her without taking my gaze away from the many enchantments I’m putting on the floors, ceiling, and walls of the room. “Yeah, it’ll be a bit of a pain to deal with. But I think I’ll be able to do it given some time.”

Or at least I better be able to. Otherwise this floor plan will be rather annoying.

After all, if I can’t do it, then I’ll be stuck just taking the mini boss room out of the random destination possibilities for the first room of the floor. Which will leave it as them possibly being able to get through the floor with just two rooms having been cleared.

Right as I finish another enchantment and am about to move on to the next, I pause.

Huh. This floor might be a pain for people with terrible luck.

Which reminds me.

“Is luck an actual thing?” I ask Dawn, turning my attention away from my work for the moment.

Dawn stops looking at the enchantment and answers, “Do you mean the luck element? Yeah, it’s a thing.” She then goes back to studying the enchantment as if she hadn’t just said that.

I stare at her for several seconds before asking, “What can it do?”

“It’s an extremely rare element to have, but it’s also not a very dependable one,” Dawn explains without taking her gaze away from the enchantments. “Luck is a fickle thing after all. You can’t be certain of what might happen.” She then finally looks away from the enchantment again and finishes, “It’s actually a lot like the chaos element in that regard. Just without the habit of turning things it touches into other random things.”

Chaos element? That’s a thing too?

I stare at her for a few seconds before giving in and asking, “Would you mind giving me a list of the elements at some point? And maybe a little bit about what they can do?”

“Oh.” Dawn suddenly mutters, just to turn pink a few seconds later as she turns her attention away with embarrassment – likely at not having thought of teaching me about all of the elements sooner – and muttering, “Sure thing.”

Hmm. Interesting.

I turn my attention to the intruders before looking through each of their status’s for different elements.

There really are a lot of interesting elements in this world, aren’t there?

After all, an element controlling a person’s luck…

I can’t help but let out a mental chuckle, catching Dawn’s attention again before she looks away just as quickly.

That’s probably something that Rose girl needs rather badly.