Dungeon Core Chat Room.

Special personal transfer report.

Preface:

The concerning dungeon is still on our watch list. The system hasn't found fault in it nor do deeper scans come up with issues but there are still a solid group advocating for its destruction.

Demonic dungeons are dangerous for any demon they summon could break out of the Dungeon and attack the surroundings. Either through carelessness, the core getting prematurely destroyed or through deliberate harm, demonic dungeons are regularly insanity tagged by the system and this one has only been allowed to stay after a thorough review and with the caveat of the Golden goddess being stationed there.

She is there to make periodic checks of both the defenses and security threats the concerning dungeon supplies and to immediately put it down according to her own judgement.

Personal information:

Name: Aurum Warbreaker.

Personnel Rank: Gold.

Level: 187

Class: Unknown. Metal based and deemed strong enough to deal with any threat the concerning dungeon provides.

Race: Halfling (Dwarven mother, human father)

This transfer has been approved by Superintendent Brown. Dated K.11.1988 Post System.

Excerpt from the police database of the city Warren 1998AS

ZeMadDoctor: I believe it's my turn to share a bit. I don't feel the need to show off. But. Due to the two that have already happened. And Abe’s insistence that he will show his soon. I've determined it's only fair.

ZeMadDoctor: Information you've been sharing.

Monster Name Lore Description.

Lab Rat

A humanoid rat that is dressed in tattered clothing and carrying various weapons depending on the area. Weapons are usually suppression-type shots of paralyzing and sticky goo's but at critical points they switch to disintegrating shots of void.

Demons

At least partially safe demons. Warning, Demons pose far greater threat than equivalent monsters. Because of their danger and containment inside this dungeon it is currently one of the only places in the world you can safely fight demons without summoning them yourself.

The Concerning Dungeon [Dungeon Information]

Known floors: 10.

Traps: This dungeon employes several puzzle rooms with strange goals as its main attraction. Solutions are varied however and most of these puzzles can be solved by thinking outside the box.

Loot: Loot is supplied based upon performance in the puzzle rooms. If a group completes a room in a new way they get relatively good system loot. If they ask someone else for the solution and copy them rewards diminish.

General Notes+Bosses: Most of the challenges can instead be completed by fighting a demon but in every single case that is the worse choice.

The "Skip" demons are contained in large rooms below most testing chambers and are all stronger than they have any right to be.

Which brings us to our main note for the concerning dungeon. A "Special inspector" is frequently found observing the dungeon. Despite this dungeon existing a few kilometers south of the great dungeon belt, this dungeon is not considered a neutral area. Due to the special inspector waltzing in, this dungeon follows Warren Laws. The inspector acts both as judge and jury and actions and existences that are usually safe in the neutral "great dungeon belt" such as: necromancy, blood magic, or kill stealing; are punished if done in sight of the SI.

Warren laws are the laws of civilization. If anyone has a problem with them they can take it up with me in my office - look for the gold house on top of the dungeon entrance. ~GG

Innearth grew slightly excited when Doc started sharing. He had to admit they were the dungeon they were interested in seeing the most. The experimentation he was doing for experimentation's sake. The excitement!

The past few weeks had gone by quickly, Innearth and Abe had made a monster. Innearth’s scout had given him the note that wild monsters liked to eat their prey and, knowing that, Innearth was able to set up more bait. A few monster incursions had happened and Innearth figured out how to reward them with quest items – something that took a while to convince the system he wanted to do. The weeks could be summed up as Innearth had gained quite a few levels but was just short of tier 5.

As the last of the group entered the stream, the noticeably less enthusiastically shared information disappeared. The room beyond was displayed in a simple manner, with square white tiles lining the walls, ceiling and floor. Each looked to be reinforced somehow and was set in a slightly glowing calking.

The result was brightly lit from all directions with no visible light sources while maintaining a sterile and futuristic feeling.

Doc used Abyss's “teleporting still camera” method.

First, he showed a bunch of mostly empty corridors, with dwarf-sized upright Rats holding weapons and pointed out dozens of "panic doors" similar to the one outside Innearth’s core room. Most had "Swiss cheese" cutouts or holes letting influence through – however some were solid metal.

ZeMadDoctor: There's a few more defences around here as well. If you look at this hallway. The end has a mana lure I made out of a cracked tier 3 core given life. It constantly outputs a sweet source of mana that attracts demons. This whole hall's ceiling can be brought down to mush a demon to paste and it’s held up by kinetic mana. When a demon sucks mana out of the material it falls and crushes anything beneath it.

ZeMadDoctor: These are mainly traps for demons not adventurers however...let me bring you further down. I can show you more.

The camera blipped down and started showing off Doc’s more interesting floors.

Once you went down to floor 4 the hallways opened up into several large rooms each with a numbered pedestal saying "testing chamber XXX" where XXX was a 3-digit zero led number.

Testing chambers 001-025 were for the most part in parallel positions such that you didn't have to complete them all just one depending upon where you came across them.

After those 25 were two paths (an "even path from 026-036 and an "odd path" from 027-037) they were split roughly into "physical" and "magical" solutions. Finally, there were chambers 038-046 which were sequentially setup and had harder and harder tests.

Each testing chamber was a puzzle of sorts, with items like a "testing cube" and both small and large red buttons that had to be pushed or activated in various ways and orders. Most if not all of them had portals.

The first 25 had activatable teleports that were open for less than 10s after a button was pressed. The last few groups however had "permanent" portals, linking areas of the testing area to each other. They also had more dangerous requirements – turrets were set up that could rapidly fire metal balls or burning liquid at either careless adventures or errant demons that came through the portals.

For small demons did wander in through the open doorways to the void constantly.

White spinning fans of feathers and ears would float in and up. They had a bunch of parts that would appear and disappear as if breathing in and out of existence, while their feathers seemed to be connected to an invisible ball – no mana providing any indication of how they were attached.

All light that passed through these angelic floating feathers was altered…providing a glimpse of various strange “mirror” images of the room – with faces in the wall, or bubbles that floated about and made everything seem like it was underwater.

As these demon birds floated through the room, the air they passed through was altered as well – becoming tinged in colours or radioactive light. Their path was thick and suffocating as if suddenly the light passing through had mass...or maybe the air simply had a much greater weight.

Seeking, bulbed, clear and iridescent tentacles would poke through the portals and grab stuff not tied down – seeming to pass through items to grab hold of its core, before pulling it back to their owner. The owner itself was unable or unwilling to fit through the small doorway, but the crunching noises and wet shrieks that leaked through every time it ate a bag, or a stone, or a loose turret, unnerved Innearth all the way through the screen.

Still other lesser demons would roll or run or crawl or swim through the portals – broken geometric shapes with too many tongues or teeth or eyes peeking through. Each “Unique” and different, but when seen repeatedly the same. Similar to how “no two snowflakes are identical” and yet when you see several snowflakes in a row they all start to feel the same.

Special little paradoxes of body horror that bled mana and rainbow blood as they entered the firing range of Doc’s turrets.

Despite their quantity and inherent…weirdness, none of the lesser demons that Innearth saw gave a similar pressure or irrational mental fear that the one he had faced a year ago.

They still make me uncomfortable when staring directly at them but…I can see what Doc was talking about with them not being that bad. I…don’t know if I want to spawn a small demon in my own dungeon just yet but… it's fine to watch through the screen?

Innearth: Hey how dangerous are these portals?

ZeMadDoctor: They are...hmm. The first few ones were pretty bad. These ones I'm letting the adventurers use are "relatively" safe. I've had two 3rd rank ones appear but for the most part, the stronger demons don't notice the portals when they are this close and small. The shrunk void path has been reinforced as well and I'm getting better and better at blocking them from coming through.

ZeMadDoctor: The only reason it's taking this long is I don't really like expanding through the void. Even though It lets me reinforce the path. Some of the things in there...some can and have eaten my influence and that feels absolutely horrendous.

Innearth shuddered. Yeah, I didn't know that was possible.

Another feather fan drifted in this one leaving a faint white sort of mist behind it that falls and covers the ground in a waxy sheen.

ZeMadDoctor: Wait. Let me check something. Sorry for pausing partway through but I want to check some stuff.

Doc started pouring a faint trickle of water towards the Demon watching as it passes through the feather and falls as a milky substance

ZeMadDoctor: Yes!

Abe: What it is?

ZeMadDoctor: Candle wax completes my set! It joins two chains together and. One sec.

The Camera turned to testing chamber 029 and was abandoned as Doc went off to experiment on something out of sight.

029 was a tall room with slick frictionless walls.

I recognize the directionless kinetic material!

At the top of the room, 35 meters up, a pedestal hangs carrying a small red cube. The door has a matching red slot and an adventuring group currently is attempting to knock the cube down to them.

The group has 3 "mages" all getting in each other's way as they shoot various magical projectiles upwards. Bullets of different coloured fires, slow moving pellets of grey, arcs of lightning and spinning cubes of purple force.

While the group bombarded the strangely unaffected top, one completely armoured dude stood helplessly at the back. He had tossed a chained pair of hammers up to it once at the start and then given up relatively quickly when it fell ineffectually to the ground.

Finally giving up when they admitted their projectiles weren’t effective the spells slow down and stop. One of the mages spins around slowly looking at the walls before deciding the next course of action.

Turning to the wall he shoots out several hazy strips of force nearly invisible in the light.

Each strip hits the frictionless wall and stops – creating a rough set of dangerous looking stairs.

Turning to his group member he sticks his thumbs up watching as the armoured man visibly sighs before walking over and testing the hazy transparent platform.

It dips ever so slightly under his weight and he turns to stare back at the “still grinning, still offering a thumbs up” mage.

Visibly sighing in the direction of his teammate, the armoured warrior begins to climb the questionably stable set of stairs.

30 meters up he looks down and makes a pointed look. The mage nods upwards seeing the problem and shoots several arcs of force once more. Each shot hits and sinks into the previous shots slowly but surely stacking in a mostly vertical mostly flat makeshift bridge.

The warrior sighed once more – the action becoming a habit at this point - before carefully making his way to the center of the room.

Reaching the hanging dais, the man pulls the cube out of its perch – the cube sticking and shaking slightly before being ripped out when a second hand is used as leverage.

Next turning to the ground, he considers the drop, then the way back. Flipping between the two the warrior decides the drop is better and hypes himself up for the action.

Attempting a "cool" hop, the warrior drops the full 35 meters – hitting the ground feet first then bending down into a half roll before agily popping up into a standing position…and then tripping.

Picking himself back up the warrior spends all of a second reorienting himself before turning to his teammates. A wide grin split his face as he offered an identical thumbs up to the one he had been given and turned without giving them a chance to react.

Sauntering over to the doors the warrior acts as if his landing was significantly more impressive than it was, while not seeing the look his teammates shared behind his back.

At that moment Doc returned.

ZeMadDoctor: OH! I love the groups that don't just fly up they come up with much more interesting results. Those force…platforms. That looks like a shield skill? Humans are just so versatile and fascinating.

ZeMadDoctor: Anyways I finished room 047!

ZeMadDoctor: Come see!

Doc pulled the Camera over to his newest testing chamber – this one his largest yet.

50mx50mx15m the room held various artifacts and materials in different distinct areas. Dozens of small platforms and holes sprinkled the room with the centrepiece being a “Island” pillar surrounded by a doughnut-shaped portal that connected the floor to the ceiling. Several items fell endlessly in this vertical portal loop – some that needed to be collected, others that fell as obstacles.

ZeMadDoctor: Okay in order. Rock to wood. Organic matter (Including the wood) to unidentifiable green goo. Green goo to blueish blood. Blood no matter the colour to pure water. Water to wax. Wax to bone. Bone to emerald!

ZeMadDoctor: The goal of this room is to take any of the surrounding stone, transmute it to liquid wax and place in a mould before it cools! Then transmute the shape into emerald and place it in the door to open it! There are also a few dead ends: wood to ash, water to smoke, bone to fire, bone to unstable powder that explodes in your face, bone to rock again...quite a few bone transformations. Those break the chain and force a group to restart.

ZeMadDoctor: There are also a few more random ones in the room that are not connected to this list (hair to snakes is the best) and several are dangerous if handled carelessly...bone to fire sounds dangerous but it turns out bone to emerald does more damage to someone who touches an errant bone to it.

Amy: Who's touching their bones to stuff? I mean I get it; fragile adventurers are really dumb sometimes – but how do the logistics of that even work?

ZeMadDoctor: Someone had an arm bone poking out...it wasn't pretty. The emeralds had to be removed before the bones could be revealed.

ZeMadDoctor: Anyways. Beyond here is more personal experimentations and isn't really meant for adventurers.

Doc pulled them through several halls with cages of stronger demons. Several passed that made Innearth’s brain hurt – the worst being a humanoid demon with two legs that head down and somehow become 3 once they touch the ground. Its arm was also bent up and pushed straight through its own head it's human-like hands wiggling about and its lamprey-like mouth grinning unharmed.

Looking at each part the demon had looked fine – the head was whole with no hole for example and the arm was straight without bending or breaking in any position…But as soon as you attempted to observe the whole. As soon as you saw its arm passed neither in front nor behind the head. Shifting slightly, it suddenly appeared as if it was both in front of and behind the head at the same time…but it didn’t split in two.

It didn’t make sense and trying to force it to make sense – trying to explain what he was seeing – hurt Innearth’s mind in some fundamental way.

Finally, Doc stopped at a kinetic barred...something.

There was a cage and there was definitely something inside the cage…but Innearth couldn't see what it was. It was like a blob of space simply didn't exist...even through a Camera. Not invisible but removed from his mind somehow – even through a screen.

Abe: what in the...doc what am I looking at. I can't see it.

ZeMadDoctor: I don't know! Isn’t that interesting? I barely managed to contain it and it kills any monster I put in this cage…but I can’t see the monsters die. Just the messy results afterwards.

ZeMadDoctor: Anyways. Let's talk about something before we continue.

ZeMadDoctor: I love humans and their skills. They are so varied and useful. I've been studying them quite a bit you know.

ZeMadDoctor: I've also taken to figuring out stats and health. Do you know how weird health is? It's just the system quantifying how much vitality something has...it's not something that actually exists as a resource like mana does. But somehow. It's like the more health something has the more it matters?

ZeMadDoctor: Like health is unevenly distributed to vitals for instance. A low-levelled adventure can get stabbed in the arm and have some damage or be stabbed in the head for critical catastrophic damage and die...in comparison a high-levelled adventurer with 1000s of health getting stabbed in the head for similar damage as their arm. Isn't that strange!

ZeMadDoctor: Oh, also a sneaky assassin can hit that same head with a "vital stab" and suddenly strip away that health defence so it's critical again? These skills work in weird ways and apply to your monsters in weird ways too!

Abe: Yeah I’ve noticed a bit of this. Is there a point to this conversation? No offence m8, but I can’t really draw any lines between that empty monster you’re showing us and…this tangent.

ZeMadDoctor: Oh, and the way some of these skills work is fascinating. You can't even see most of them, but others appear as weird lines and pentagrams of mana the adventurer pushes mana through in seconds before the mould disappears.

ZeMadDoctor: It doesn’t really relate per se…I just thought of it right now and wanted to talk about it. I'm just so curious.

Innearth: honestly I'm intrigued as well. Please send me anything you've figured out! I'm loving this

Abe: I'm getting bored tbh. Do you have any exploding testing chambers? I'll settle for a good fight or two.

ZeMadDoctor: I don't have many positions with "fights". I have some rats right now. But I haven’t been making many monsters recently.

ZeMadDoctor: It's so much less interesting than testing. I do have some skips where adventurers can fight a demon instead of doing the testing chamber… but I've only put those at the ones that get failed often and they aren’t really chosen…

Amy: I'm interested in learning more about health. How does it work for your monsters?

ZeMadDoctor: sure...dammit pause that question she's back…

Innearth: who's she?

In response the Camera swivelled to face a bored-looking woman strolling into the dungeon.

Reaching out a hand to trail along the wall everything in its path seems to melt and bubble before turning red and then gold. Dripping down it pooled below her before rapidly cooling and solidifying into a disc

Standing on the disc with her hands in her pockets the woman came more into view.

She was slightly short and blond. The tips of her hair dyed – or maybe coated – in solid gold.

Her disc formed around her feet embedding the end and bottom half of her shoes and holding her in place as it quickly picks up speed.

Moving around corners the disc quickly picks up speed as she positively flies through Doc's dungeon. Reaching the testing area in under a minute she simply smashes through doors and walls instead of attempting the challenges Doc laid out. The more reinforced doors turned to molten metal as she transmuted holes in everything and left puddles behind her not caring or even acknowledging Doc’s defences…She completely ignored all the work doc put into each room treating each the same and melting through them all only acting differently in rooms that had active adventurers.

When an adventuring group was active in a “testing chamber” she paused and watched them awkwardly perform any “test” they were completing – suddenly having to deal with an audience removed a lot of the natural feeling interactions as people stiffly attempted to act normal.

All 3 of these occupied rooms were blasted through more carefully – the wall instead of the door turning to gold and then reforming and solidifying behind her.

The more and more Innearth watched her the more annoyed he got. It felt like every single one of her actions was designed to dismiss all the work Doc put into his dungeon.

Innearth: Roood.

Amy: she looks like she might be a good fight for snorkems!

ZeMadDoctor: she would rip "snookems" into pieces in under a second. She hasn't even put on her work outfit yet. You don’t even understand she could turn that underwater beholder into a statue before it even attacked. This woman is way too much for you to handle Amy.

Reaching the last testing room the bored woman paused her expressionless face straightening and growing serious.

Staring around with a discerning eye she checks the new edition – pulling out a golden plate covered in runes and looking through it before satisfied.

Walking over to the large vertical portal she reaches out a hand and catches a solid black ball falling at terminal velocity – her hand barely moving as it snatched it out of the air and brought it up to her eyes.

Abe: I think I’m going have to side with Doc here Amers. She looks stronger than your monster no offence.

Amy: I guess. I still think snookem needs a real challenge and I’d love a stronger group or two to start delving me.

Innearth: I’d settle for a group. No need to be strong to start I just want an adventurer.

Abe: esh.

Turning to face the "experimentation" section of Doc’s dungeon her arms reached up as she stretched and pulled her arms out to either side. Twisting her fingers in a loop the woman breathed out…and was changed.

First her disc flowed upwards – wrapping her body in its entirety.

The majority of the resulting “armour” was skin tight and clung to her form like a jumpsuit. A few additions in key places broke away from that mould – her hair was pulled back into a backwards-facing cone that thickened around her face and neck and smoothed over her expression being the main change.

This all came together to give off a very solid feeling presence – despite looking skin-tight, its seamless surface gave off a weight... as if she could be hit by a mountain and stay unharmed.

Waiting till her transformation was done, the golden figure began walking down the hall – her legs moving but her feet remaining a few cm above the floor.

Every nook and cranny was checked – the “smooth face and silent floating” giving the whole inspection an ominous air that wasn’t present in the dismissive violence of the start.

A few minutes of inspection brings her before the “unknown unseeable” demon causes her to stop in place and consider what she was facing.

Her head tilted sideways as she stared into the cage but with her face hidden beneath metal Innearth wasn’t able to get a read on her.

Reaching an arm into herself causes the tips of her fingers to meld with her side and shuffle around. After a moment of random shuffling, she finds what she is looking for – her hand emerging with the “golden checking disc” she used before. Staring through the bars with the disc caused the golden woman to make up her mind.

Nodding in a matter of fact manner the woman pushes her disc into herself and breaks the cage in a single action. Stepping forwards as if the cage isn’t there lets her armour come in contact with the force and bars causing both to bend and snap like string.

Ripping into the blank spot a horrid scream rings out and various unidentifiable absences of anything are stuffed into a golden ball that formed from a section of armour.

The rest of the inspection takes little time – the few monsters and demons that attempted to attack her being skewered by hair-thin needles of gold that extended out of her armour at nearly untraceable speeds.

Each hair dug into and ripped apart the insides of – and then returned to – the arbiter of Doc’s fate.

Finishing her inspection beside Doc’s core the women raised a hand and pulsed mana as a holographic figure formed.

The figure was wearing a uniform and spoke quickly – responding to her report in an impatient manner but not making any sign that she should stop. The dungeons couldn’t understand the conversation – the very concept of communication with sound was strange to them – but it was easy enough to figure out the main contents of the report just based on their body language.

"Everything is fine. I found something good. Will report back soon."

A single finger was raised in a salute before she ended her call and retreated through the mess she had left behind – rebreaking the few walls that Doc had started to try and rebuild as she passed through the testing area once more.

Amy: she's pretty awful. Is this our next hit squad? Protect doc from that monster?

ZeMadDoctor: don't! She's mostly just here to check the demons and make sure I haven't gone insane. She’s just doing her job okay?

Innearth: how do you know that?

ZeMadDoctor: she told me. Weird mind bridge thing when she first touched my core. Told me to pretend she wasn't there and to not unleash any calamities even by accident or she would melt me down into a puddle and use me as a paperweight.

Amy: ...okay. I don't approve of adventurers threatening my friends but if you are okay with it that's fine.

ZeMadDoctor: it's still annoying when she breaks my defences. I'm setting up a teleporting hub soon that should reach every part of my dungeon. It's hard to get her to go through my portals but if she can skip straight to the end, she might use them.

Innearth: assuming it would also act as a shortcut for adventurers that have reached that far?

ZeMadDoctor: Exactly! Short teleport burst for testing chamber reached – it's not interesting re-testing the same adventurers multiple times in the same room.

Abe: Well good show my dude! Anything else you have hidden away?

ZeMadDoctor: Not really. I'm working on setting up portals that can link to multiple locations and ones that can be moved while open without too many negative effects. I'm also looking forward to seeing a proper adventurer reach my last room now that it's finished. I've left a few hints in previous rooms and it's much easier than some of the previous but I'm still excited to see what they will do.

Innearth: you thought of rearranging rooms?

ZeMadDoctor: Yeah but I don't want to change numbers.

Fated Eternal Design: sorry for not providing much feedback. I love the decorations you've setup. Have you considered making a storyline for it? I love the puzzles, but none seemed to be tied together. Maybe this could be set up as a lab? Or a factory with product testing? I really think you have something great here, but it seems almost wasted. You could write stuff on the wall about how "they escaped" or make some testing rooms old and runner or dilapidated. Would do wonders for your ambiance and prevent all the white rooms and halls from getting as repetitive.

ZeMadDoctor: Thank you for your feedback but I'm fine. I have enough test subjects and don't feel the need to make their experience fake. I want real results in my tests.

Fated Eternal Design: no one listens to my honest feedback :(

Innearth: I've started setting up a storyline.

Fated Eternal Design: oho! My apprentice! Thank you I eagerly await your dungeon tour!

The stream ended in good spirits as the dungeons returned to talking about anything and nothing. Talking about health and skill and loot. Innearth spent part of his attention socializing and listening to their descriptions of adventurers and the rest slogging away.

Closer and closer to tier 5 and catching up.