Dungeon Core Chat Room.

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Excerpt obtained from a typical mana corps device ad.

The “initial design” as Fed called it was mostly just the layout.

At its base, a wall setup was made and refined. Its central “core” was a vertical block of voidstone filled with dungeon circuits from all six Cores stacked upwards and occasionally splitting down different paths.

On both sides of this center there was a marbled group of: layers of blast protection, “slowly growing and strengthening over time void plants”, strips of nullstone, “kinetic distributing wires”, unlife and undeath blobs, and a muddy cement-like material from Queen – were all packed in tightly like the output of a trash compactor. To finish up this “standard” wall, Doc laid his slightly glowing and reasonably strong white panels everywhere. The floor was a similar affair, but it included a plate of gravity sucking material on the top and gravity pushing on the bottom.

Over top of that “standard”, area-specific decorations were placed – hallways were laid with soft carpeted floors from FED or stone mana cement-like utility from Queen. Some hallways had hanging light mana bulbs set in crystal domes and others were lit by reddish “danger” lights.

From top to bottom, thousands of “floors” were laid – with long empty hallways periodically peppered with empty rooms in different shapes. When Innearth heard they were only halfway through the initial design he thought of those walls and floors – the sheer amount of material used – and had to agree. Digging was easier than growing – making walls that were difficult to impossible for adventurers to break instead of just compressing stone a bit was time-consuming.

Going forward from this point, when enough compressed and reinforced walls were laid, the whole place needed to actually be populated with monsters and decorated. Throughout the past year the dungeons had been designing things on the side, but – now that most of the infrastructure was put in place, they could focus almost solely on the more fun aspect of being a dungeon. Design.

Every single one of the six had ideas they wanted to include. While the “concept” allowed a massive amount of innovation, it also let each of the dungeons include a bit of themselves into it. It let them build what they were comfortable with while still matching the “abandoned lab” theme that was bringing them all together.

Doc expanded his “demon containment” portion of the facility and had Innearth design a massive porthole type view of the outer void – solid void as the glass, this section of the facility was the only real proof of where they were. Theoretically sensitive enough adventurers could tell normally but this porthole allowed creatures with proper sight to see shifting figures deep in the depths of the void.

Doc experimented a lot with portal mana in the void. It didn’t seem to work correctly but it wanted to do "something" so it agitated the void more than normal when he used it. –Instead of punching a hole in space you could travel through, it simply punched space repeatedly until space was sore and looked funny.

What Doc could do was make multiple portals in his dungeon and then move the endpoints about the facility…but having too many of those began breaking down their claimed space so he stopped.

Doc then made kinetic “springboards” that hurled adventurers about large open rooms. He designed sections where delvers would be flung towards shock absorbing/kinetic distributing “landing zones” and – while they were only going to let high levelled adventurers into this combined project – he and FED worked together to try and prevent flight as best as they could. Something to do with fluctuating the density of gasses and focusing gravity…Innearth drifted away as soon as they started talking about higher forms of Air mana.

How can Doc stand that…he has an earth affinity too doesn’t he?

Amy and Queen designed a massive section of the lab to be a full ecosystem. There were small rat and bunny-like creatures with a “tasteful” number of tentacles – according to Amy – at the lowest rung of the food system. Technically there was a level below them – they ran about eating specially cultivated plants with the capability of giving them minor abilities. Buffs like speed boosts and armour, or the ability to blur their bodies and hide themselves better – but most of the plants weren’t part of the ecosystem and the prey monsters didn’t need the plants to survive.

Directly above these prey monsters were a group of moving plants that ate anything that got near along with some mutated golems queen made. Essentially she took some dirt golems and shoved pipes and wires through them to make them appear as if they were using parts of the facility. She seemed to have had some sort of epiphany while helping design the walls and now her monster flesh could be best described as “ceramic”. These solid golems were then doused in a variety of liquids – poisons or acid mana or some diseases we will get back to later….much later.

Above them was a series of monsters Innearth would consider mini-bosses on his lower floors. Each unique in some way, most with rare or useful materials embedded in them. One was a mirror that flew about and froze anything that looked into it – somehow altering light that bounced off of it into an invisible “slow down to nearly stopped” beam. It was created by accident from some of Fed’s eternity mana mutating materials he had laying around and he donated it to the zone.

Another in this category was a metallic spikey ball that rolled around leaving holes in everything. A third a moving ball of reddish-yellow – not orange just yellow with hints of red – goo. A fourth an upgraded beholder. A fifth a large “furnace” with wheels and arms that flung any grabbed monster into its ever-burning gullet.

They were having fun shoving more and more levels of the food chain into their area. Between the two of them they made sure to design relationships that cycled around – for example, a relationship between the goo and some plants that appeared nurtured by its passage. A symbiotic relationship between some rats who lived inside of a particularly large and tube-filled golem. A blood-tinged plant that was more dangerous than anything else in the ecosystem…but that couldn’t move and helped protect some rabbit-like prey that were immune to its existence.

There was only really one problem that stood out to Innearth currently.

I’m worried any high-levelled adventurer will just rip through this level of monster. I don’t know what our level goal is, but I was thinking of diverting adventurers here after the nightmare ice floors…I’ve only finished the nightmare crystal ones and those are aimed at adventurers at least level 70+…but they are having fun so I’ll let them continue. Maybe some of the highest predators in the zone will be a challenge?

Moving on.

Abe had obviously taken his “vault” concept and transplanted it into the lab – figuring out how to make whole “living sections of dungeon” that interlocked with the facility. They could break and heal themselves back to full in sped-up time fields after an adventurer left.

He was designing explosive rocket-like weapons with Doc and equipping rats with heavy artillery and landmines to ensure his sections were smashed.

Everywhere his friends were designing things in the way they liked and Innearth was left feeling slightly lost.

He could grow crystals all over his designated portion but…that felt like a cop out. Even if he included the corrupted crystals in enemies, it didn’t feel like enough of him went into the zone. That felt like what he was supposed to do – it didn’t speak to him the way all his friends started working and obviously knew exactly what they wanted from this.

Innearth wanted to stand out.

Playing around with different crystal materials, Innearth spent some time designing loot instead of his area – procrastinating something he really did want to do with something he had long ago delegated to his dwarves.

A pair of beautiful crystal earrings were designed and linked with mental mana – two separate adventurers could wear them and speak mentally or one could be given to someone on the surface while an adventurer delved…Innearth designed them for the aesthetic and imagined one half could be given to a lover – so the married adventurer could tell their significant other if they were going to die or were unable to come home in time for dinner.

A key part of the mental connection was boosted by the dwarves, but the design was all Innearth.

He made alternative versions that were ring-shaped and then made crystal mirrors and jewelry boxes. A second pass through of X crystals made useful foci – simple tools an adventurer could use to blow wind in their hair or heal minor wounds in the absence of healing potions.

Nearly all the devices Innearth made could be improved with runes…but most he kept as is. The point of making these devices was to clear his mind and relax.

Finally, as if all the stuff he had recently seen had been bouncing around in his core digesting, Innearth suddenly realized what he wanted to do.

I’m going to make a boss! The strongest boss I’ve ever made! And I’m going to use something I’ve been saving for so long I almost forgot it existed.

When Innearth had been working his way up towards the surface he had broken into a section of an older dungeon's area. That core had been partly eaten by a demon and – while Innearth had used a small chunk of it on the crystal “dragon” – the majority of it had been buried around the dwarves workshop in a solid lump.

At one point in time it had existed as a reminder of Innearth’s mortality. Now that Innearth had mostly gotten over his fear of demons, it existed as something that could make a unique monster – perhaps even more unique than anything Innearth had designed before.

The crack-filled and teeth-mark pocketed crystal ball was dug up and examined from every angle by Innearth. It looked different now that the dungeon was older and stronger. Faint hints at a deep sort of magic floated about within its depths. Sparks of…something close to space and void mana spun about in the very center of it. Remnants of some rank 3 mana outside the 4 bases?

Despite being covered in cracks, the gnawed ball didn’t feel fragile enough to shatter initially – Innearth wouldn’t be tossing it about – but it felt strong enough that Innearth could work on it safely.

The first step was figuring out the overall theme Innearth wanted to work towards.

It feels like giving up to shove it into the body of a regular monster and hope they become strong. This core used to be a dungeon…so if I make a monster that’s close to a dungeon it will provide a massive sort of boost to my goal…right? That’s how I understand it at least.

I think…I think I want to make a caster-type boss…actually I want to make a boss that spans across the whole zone! That can be my theme. This boss! I have just been dealing with mental mana connections so I can try and link it to everything.

…but it seems like a more fun problem to design if I make the connections physical. I can use crystal circuits like the ones I use for my influence as the “connections” for this monster to spread throughout my area.

Mapping out where the parts of the boss would go Innearth realized he wouldn’t want it to be killed at any cost. The shattered dungeon core was essentially irreplaceable and he actually wanted this boss to be an antagonist that adventurers could fight.

With all those points in mind Innearth had a base set up. The “shattered core” was surrounded in a single massive “monster core” that Innearth designed at the absolute top of his ability to work mana. At level 93 Innearth had a pool of “absolute mana units” 31119 large. A tier 17 core took 30600 mana minimum in its 17 layers… but even with Innearth’s mana concentration being higher, at this level that would still be impossible for him normally.

Innearth (Dungeon Designation: Crossroad Link from Murek)

Level 93 9123/9682 exp to next level.

System Access Level 7 1/4 requirements met to advance.

Mana regeneration at 200. ✓

-50+ floors

-100 different "Types" of adventurers hosted.

-Level 101+

Stats

Mana Regeneration 249.01 personal unit/min

Mana concentration 3.21 AMU / personal unit

Mana Storage 18976.21/31119.17 AMU

Regeneration over time 13.33862482 AMU/s

Time to Full Mana 15.2 Min

Physical Storage 3% Capacity

Age 7 years

Current Year 2004 AS

Distance underground 500 meters

Number of floors 41 floors

Titles.

Earth Mana Specialization, Crystal Mana Specialization, Void Mana Specialization, Customization.

…impossible without his cheating mana ovens...which needed to be resized just to hold this core that Innearth was designing.

Mana was compressed and shoved in materials and compressed and shoved in more materials – the innermost few directly around the central core being nearly 30000 all on their own.

Theoretically the concentration was a mathematical concept – for a tier 17 core the innermost layer needed 3400 amu, the shell directly around it needed 3200 amu the one around that 3000…but Innearth wasn’t working towards a tier 17 core. He was trying as hard as he could to make a core as high as he possibly could and regenerating between each layer.

Nearly a day of effort for something he could do at higher levels with a simple print and Innearth had made a tier 20 core with a unique center.

The sphere was roughly 2.5m in diameter and Innearth carefully placed it in a hollowed-out “indestructible void box”. He then hid it in a nondescript location in his section of the lab and obfuscated the location as best as he could.

His friends commented in interest while two crystal dwarves rolled it into position – appearing out of a portal he had moved right near the construction site, they awkwardly moved it about and then carefully lowed the giant ball into its container – treating it like a bomb.

…which in fairness – due to how much mana was condensed in – it might as well be.

After making the true center of the facility boss untouchable to the best of his abilities, Innearth then designed a fake core. Circuits looped around from an odd angle and joined up to a mechanical crystal hybrid. The fake core was made by pumping a massive amount of mana into one of the “fragile but reforming” materials and surrounded it by a hundred different “attachments”. Wires snaked off of it into a panel that sparked with lightning mana. Various weapons and tools appeared to be drilled directly into the center – with bolts and runework affixing saws or claws to the machine.

The idea was that this “puppet” central device could be broken and shattered quite convincingly before being healed back to reset the boss.

After making this central source Innearth began making nodes throughout the 10km sphere.

An elevator a massive 2500 stories tall was situated in the exact center of his zone and hallways radiated outwards from it in spokes. Most “floors” were slices around 3m tall with a 1m thick floor. However. Not all floors were created equal – some were densely packed and others consisted of nothing but a few hallways. Additionally most of the floors meshed together throughout the zone – large rooms would be 31-39m tall on average while periodic “mega hallways” cut through 2-3 floors at once.

For the rooms that cut through multiple floors balconies with metal ladders bumped out their edges – or catwalks crossed their center allowing agile adventurers to jump up and down floors.

At first, Innearth was designing each floor with loving care. Rooms were placed in almost mathematically pleasing spots and he made sure nothing looked alike. By the 20th floor he began copy-pasting setups – he used as little of his attention as he could to simultaneously grow walls everywhere for his friends to reinforce. To make up for how “samey” large chunks of hallway were becoming Innearth placed three “massive” rooms in his zone. Each was roughly a kilometer wide/long and 100m tall. These are important plot rooms. I’m not just making them because I want a break from hallways – nope!

Each of these “massive sized” rooms had an exposed node that needed to be broken to weaken the central boss of the facility.

The first room Innearth designed was centered around one giant laser turret – resting on top of a truly massive pyramid of laser mana materials focusing up to a swivelling beam of death.

Innearth ran connections up to the mini-boss and pretended it was the source of the master boss's laser capabilities – upon “disabling” this turret, the Crystal Intelligence System Core (CISC {Boss}) was no longer allowed to use any laser mana devices or magic.

To finish off this boss Innearth built a shattered room with a large number of hiding spots and barriers adventurers could hide behind. Broken offices and collapsed walls acted as barriers the adventurers could use while picking their way over to the central “death beam” factory. There was also a series of small bots with less lethal but still annoying laser weapons modified from his crystal bat template patrolling this room.

A second mini-boss was placed in a sea of void acid. The whole zone was made to look like it was sinking into the liquid – with broken off “chunks” of office buildings set at diagonal positions that shifted when stepped on. Innearth created a group of poison and acid monsters to harass adventurers trying to reach its center and resulting “acid turret/controller”.

Destroying this boss prevented the main boss from dumping or spraying acid in its fight.

The last themed mini boss was a room full of magical barriers of all sorts. Innearth wasn’t the best at this part but he got Doc to help him set up some kinetic ones and then went off on a tangent with his crystal dwarves making different barrier runes.

This “barrier generator” when broken, removed the main boss's shields and prevented it from locking doors…just for fun.

Beyond these 3 main themed goals, Innearth placed 12 hidden device rooms that each disabled a different weapon on the boss and made it slightly weaker. The idea was that most adventurers would need to wipe out the main mini-bosses for a fair fight but they could try and go for a “perfect run” to gain additional rewards.

Theoretically, if all 15 of these devices were disabled the main boss would be entirely helpless…but Innearth was trying to time the mini bosses and device rooms to regenerate within 4-5 hours. Unless an adventurer had some way to remotely destroy bosses – or was incredibly fast – the “perfect run” was nearly impossible.

Beyond those mini bosses and core rooms, Innearth placed wires and exposed runework panels that sparked occasionally – pretending they were important.

Throughout the whole facility “cameras” were linked to the core along with mental mana plates in the floors the boss could use to taunt adventurers.

In fact, every single trap in Innearth’s section of the complex was eventually attached to this system. Doors, hidden compartments with deadly gasses or sharp implements.

He had one room that locked and began slowly filling with acid until adventurers found a hidden button to turn it off – that room was disabled when the other acid defences were – there was a laser filled hallway that Fed had made him make for some questline –

Fated Eternal Design: A series of laser beams made even more visible with mist mana that had to be bypassed with agility and strange contortions to fit past beams of burning light. This is the security system of a mad scientist working on some project the rest of his coworkers don’t know about. Top secret weapons! I’m having doc help me make some weapons to store on the other side of this door as a reward for adventurers that reach this point. I’ll keep you in the loop! So much to do!

– That was disabled as well when the laser node was taken offline.

The CISC didn’t extend just to traps however. At some point, Innearth began setting up the main monsters of his area.

The most plentiful monsters were a group of “Shards” each containing a linked mental mana connection to the network. His first iterations were rather simple monsters. Scuttling creatures that looked kind of like crabs or spiders with a giant pointy crystal for a main body. These shards sometimes contained explosions, sometimes contained vats of acid that spilled everywhere when broken and sometimes contained secondary monsters – one line of shards would shatter revealing some of Innearth’s strongest crystal snake variants. As much as Innearth liked setting things up to run automatically and “naturally”, he also made one shard that spawned random crystal monsters while running around. Those spawned monsters were artificially setup – Innearth actually needed to make/tie up a printer and an event loop leaning on the system to get it to work.

Some weren’t even made as conventional monsters. Innearth had one shard that sprayed liquid crystal everywhere in an annoying manner until killed. That left slippery surfaces and gummed up any open devices adventurers had.

Some larger shards were Innearth’s “crystal trees” and included aerosolized health potions to spray and heal their comrades.

Still others simply attacked with sharp crystal weapons – or ranged magical skills.

These plentiful shards were not the main enemy of Innearth’s lab however. Imagining how strong the average level would be here, Innearth designed a series of super soldiers that stalked the halls.

“A jumbled mess of faulty runework and redundant cores worked into a twisted crystal frame.”

This was the initial description Innearth left for adventurers. These monsters looked like broken humanoid golems, but unlike its description, contained a lot of complicated engineering. Each solider had to be individually covered in runes from his crystal dwarves – and rather than “redundant cores” being slapped over them haphazardly, the whole monster was a pinnacle of Innearth’s dungeon circuit knowledge.

Innearth was starting to feel like he was coming up against some greater truth with circuits and, while designing these super-soldiers, he pushed ever onwards. These monsters were the first time he really focused on the spell in ages.

Now, he had been using circuits constantly in existing monsters and he was randomizing a few a token amount but…it had definitely started to feel like he wasn’t trying anymore.

Of two major problems, the first and most pressing one was that he couldn’t logic through what changes made what results – it was mostly repeatable…the same circuits usually made the same skills or spells…but the hidden variables were incomprehensible. Add to the fact he had to print designs multiple times to get their effects to show up reliably in his system design panel…and the process ended up being a chore.

The other main problem was that every time he made a new monster it felt like he had to restart from scratch – the different shapes meant different circuits did different things and designs did not transfer. If Innearth found a good circuit he couldn’t change the monster anymore in case it broke the strong circuit he had stumbled into.

There were two main breakthroughs with circuits that Innearth came into in this period of time. Both fixed the problems he had with circuits in different ways.

The first breakthrough was the invention of skill organs. Frustrated with his inability to transfer circuits that worked between monsters, Innearth suddenly remembered the idea of making a “separate” nested monster.

For the steam horse that had resulted in a madness organ – steam mana based – that didn’t make the outer monster insane. Working backwards from that, Innearth made a “skill” organ – a simple earth mana cylinder – that was not affected by the outer monster.

Each cylinder housed a circuit – for example one layered design of hundreds of small water and pure cores made a generalized “water manipulation” skill. This skill organ – when implanted in a monster and connected to its own core – allowed the greater monster to control a limited amount of water around them. A second version that had three kinetic cores in key spots let the resulting monster shoot a bolt of water much stronger than the generalized skill.

None of this was something new in terms of circuits. Over a month of time Innearth hadn’t made any circuits mimicking his absolute strongest/most iterated skills – but they were transferable and that was what was important. They were transferable and he was getting better and better at eventually reaching his goals.

As fundamental of a change as that was, the really revolutionary one was what these skill organs meant for his system. By making sperate “monsters” and storing enough of them in a panel the system finally allowed him to start simulating circuits without building them.

It didn’t debug his circuits or anything useful like that – just displayed the result without him needing to print the monster once.

That was enough.

Being able to slowly change the length or angle of circuit sections and watch the projected result change instantly completely broke circuit optimization – in a good way. Rapid Agile Development swept his system in a series of incremental slowly moving shifts that were "zeroed' in on the best position.

This “break” though was so exciting for Innearth he nearly completely halted all of his jobs and hobbies. He shifted nearly all of his attention just to focus on creating any possible circuit he could think of – as long as it fit inside of his skill organs.

Watching adventurers delve his own dungeon? Something more important came up! Building walls and floors across the whole 7 sphered complex? I’m not having fun doing that anyways! Socializing with his friends? I’m sure if something important comes up they will contact me.

Innearth spent weeks upon weeks doing nothing but designing skills and storing them in transferable cylinders – the more he added to the panel the more control he had over it. A nested tree of skills linked by similar effects, or similar nodes, or similar shapes slowly grew.

Besides the panel, Innearth began making connections in his core – creating a massive mental map of what changes did what. This map was less structured than the system’s neat catalogue but it was what increased Innearth’s skill steadily and let him begin making jumps of logic.

Occasionally the system became confused by a skill organ – either spitting out a “Unsure” projection or giving multiple answers with a percent chance of each being the right result – but by printing out the organ a couple hundred times and shoving them in different shards or monsters in his dungeon the effects were narrowed down.

…even as he was narrowing down what the effect was some problems cropped up. Knowing what he knew now, he was likely solidifying what the spell did for future generations.

…with that knowledge looming over his head Innearth always tried to “confirm” results that made sense to him. Some variants had a strong sounding option right beside one that made much more sense to Innearth so he forced the weaker option into becoming the true one – in an attempt to improve the quality of circuits as a whole.

Sometimes he figured out a way to get the best of both worlds – he saved the strong but confusing options like “a skill made from water and earth cores that made monsters shoot sticky beams of light that sunk into living creatures and glued them to any surface they touched” into a light mana cylinder while saving the second option that made more sense to him – water walking and turning liquids temporarily into a solid – into the original “earth cylinder”.

…

That being said, if he was the only one using the schematic the chance that he was solidifying the spell just for him increased as well.

A few experiments on variants that had “fell” a certain way, made him realize he wasn’t always making a circuit that worked for everyone when he brute forced hundreds of prints of a design. In fact some of the ones he had done thousands of times were almost “Innearth only” as they didn’t seem to work for his friends at all. Others kept randomizing no matter how many times he was the one who made them.

That led to a second period of time where he “better solidified effects” by giving his friends skill organs schematics and forcing them to print monsters several times while telling them what the organs actually did.

As his knowledge moved ever onwards he found he was even able to design skills he wanted from the “unsure” seeds.

The easiest way of designing custom skills was by first looking at similar designs and what they did then confirming they made sense to him.

He then designed a monster based “somehow” around using that skill – for example wanting a specific stone swimming skill and building a monster that couldn’t move if it didn’t have the skill he “intended” for it to have.

Somehow despite having made the inner section before the outer, the whole process rolled over and kind of worked.

He couldn’t just think “I want this to be invincible” and pretend it was... but by convoluted and roundabout methods he was actually able to make it feel like he was creating skills from scratch – or at least creating the blueprint that defaulted to skills that already existed.

Returning slowly to his facility design, all of Innearth’s favourite skills were placed in the “super-soldiers”. Through a connection circuit and some liberal runework that was simple enough for his standard crystal dwarves; he designed a system where soldiers could swap out skills and socket them in.

When condensing skills down to this “easy to use” state, it became more apparent that the central “soul” could only host so many skills – with each “skill” taking a different amount of space. For super-soldiers with a tier 4 core that skill limit was anywhere between 5 and 10 skills on average. For tier 8 cores it was closer to 20-30…but certain skills like a generalized way of casting magic with various effects based on movement “cost” 3x the amount of space for the weaker one or 10x the space for the stronger one.

It was like a puzzle that Innearth could spend hours interlocking together for while specialized skills were usually stronger sometimes a series of building blocks were even stronger than that – For example: a skill that outputted mist constantly, linked with a skill that sucked mist into liquid shapes combined with a skill that corrupted water into poison, then linked to a skill that froze liquids and a final "propel small objects" allowed a nearly endless fast and strong barrage of sharp poisoned spikes.

Not all skill combinations were that obvious. Some were simply multiple similar skills that synergized well together – like a skill that manipulated fire paired with one that made fire burn hotter. The ones Innearth found the most satisfying were skillsets he designed around skills that seemed useless on their own. Those were the ones that proved the worth of this skill organ design.

It was also a puzzle that only existed because of his separation of skills into separate organs – Innearth hadn’t come up against it while designing monsters up until now…but he also hadn’t been able to pick and choose a dozen complementary skills to design a monster much much stronger than its “cost” would indicate.

The CISC Boss was harder to implement this system in. Certain points were given specific custom skills – Innearth made the main boss able to control acid for example. It let the main breakable boss move caustic liquid about the air with an incredibly specialized acid control point…but for the majority of the CISC’s design it was Innearth returning to building “blind”.

Because the dungeon circuits he was designing spanned the whole facility. It was built into the existing walls and contained more mana than he could possibly hope to print at the same time.

To give a matter of scale. Circuits travelled through most of the floors – they didn’t blanket every floor and most of them were spread far apart from one another…and that translated into literally thousands of large nodes over hundreds of thousands of kilometres worth of end to end circuit.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth and up and down circuits were weaved. Like a giant cats cradle of high mana concentration materials. Thick tier 4 tubes spread to key areas like the building’s veins. Thin tier 1 lines spread out like capillaries.

Innearth leaned heavily on his budding “Monster circuit spell instinct” to add branches organically – the web of previous knowledge guiding his path.

Despite being unable to model the whole setup in his system Innearth felt good about the project.

Every single mana type Innearth could use was represented at least somewhere in the circuit – something that logic dictated would lead to madness…but his instincts said was fine at the levels and distances he was using them. The few Fire cores Innearth placed around the laser pyramid were far enough away from the water cores by his acid setup – passing through a dozen other nodes between them – that he felt it was safe. Felt with a faint feeling that was so strange Innearth spent time checking himself for outside influences – seeing if a demon or adventurer had managed to control his mind somehow – before listening to it.

This sense wasn’t strong enough to be considered a voice in Innearth’s mind. Instead it was barely a whisper and almost pushed information about what to do into his subconsciousness. Any time he focused on this whisper it disappeared…and any time he stopped to look at something he had designed – he suddenly didn’t remember why. He remembered making them...just not why exactly he had decided to make some of his larger choices.

It was like he was doing stuff for the first time based off of experience and a memory of failures he hadn’t made…

Either way his main boss was made and ready to be given life. Calling his friends over to watch Innearth gave life to the hidden core.

Lines of visible soul flashed like a lightning bolt through the thickest circuit paths.

Traps were taken control of and a slight weight settled over everything.

The facility came to life.

Lights flicked on and off, Alarms blared and then shut off and doors opened and closed experimentally. CISC was a go!

No less exciting was the effect on all the paired monsters Innearth had made.

In a hidden section of the hallway, a server room connected hundreds of mental mana “usb’s” from monsters to the boss of the zone. The boss had quite a bit of mental mana in its circuit and that became obvious the moment every single monster stopped moving. They froze in a show of control before one by one they were released and returned to their previous fighting/shambling/patrolling.

One or two of the soldiers refused to submit and were melted from the inside out – and then the new status quo was made. Monsters went back to what they were doing and connected devices stopped spazing about. It was like there wasn’t an omniscient overlord breathing down all their minds.

Finally testing complete. The boss spoke – a faintly robotic feminine tone listing in Innearth’s mind.

I’m sorry about the horrible mess of this place. Please allow me to fix everything, I simply don’t know what’s happened – I just woke up you know.

…you know it's strange I just woke up, I just said that didn’t I. Sorry my mind feels all strange. I just woke up, but I feel like…I feel like I have some strange memories of magma and magma related experiments?

That has to be wrong...or am I misremembering? There’s no lava in this facility. OH! Maybe that’s why its such a mess. Something broke my magma devices. Probably those useless insubordinates…

That simply cannot do. Don’t worry boss, I’ll make the changes you wanted!

Mana twisted and raced about hallways. It looked and felt like everything was flexing slightly as existing connections were leaned on and added to and new ones were forged. As the mana settled the boss made a strained sort of whine in Innearth’s mind. Like a chipmunk trying to lift a boulder and screaming with the effort.

All throughout the facility changes started to be made.

Walls spun and slid past each other with that strange whine a constant companion. It was almost as if the boss had been made with “Facility, Lab, Hallway, Room, Wall and Floor” mana types and had a generalized “Facility manipulation” spell.

Occasionally a shard was smushed by passing building parts and smeared across whole hallways before the boss noticed.

Occasionally a super soldier was squished between walls and left still alive in the shift.

The process of moving rooms and hallways wasn’t smooth nor satisfying – but it was surprising it was even an option.

After reorganizing the haphazard copy pasted setup Innearth had done, CISC had made a massive boiler. The boss then began flaring laser and fire mana about – attempting to melt scraps that had been uncovered by the renovation.

Don’t worry boss! I’ll get the lava. Give me a bit! It’s taking longer to melt than I thought it would.

Innearth spoke to his monster for the first time – ignoring his heckling friends for a moment.

Do…do you want me to make you lava? Lava that never goes out? Also do you remember your time as a dungeon core?

…dungeon core? What…are you talking about? I’m the Crystal Intelligence System Core. You’re the dungeon! Did you forget? Do you need to take a break? I feel much better now that I fixed everything to how it was supposed to be. You should take a break. Do you smell burning? Is it burning? Am I making lava! The floor is a deadly laser!

Abe: You tell him Cisc! Atta girl. Get Innearth to come play with explosives.

Fated Eternal Design: This boss is truly wonderful. I wish it was located in the central area…it feels like it should be a controller of the entire facility! Worthy of being the very strongest!

Innearth: …I’m second guessing if including multiple madness combinations didn’t break a screw or two loose. See I thought it would be fine…and I guess it is seeing as how the boss hasn’t attempted to attack me…but its personality seems off?

Abe: In all honesty bro. You’ve gone mute for a bit. You good? Come back to us. We are all going t'play around with mutations and diseases soon! It can be a good bonding experience! It looks like your boss is done so you have no excuses!

Innearth: Oh…Sure! I was wondering how that worked. Thanks for inviting me…

ZeMadDoctor: I’ve already gone through this once before. I’ll provide relevant unique materials if you need them. But I want to try playing with this boss while you guys repeat experiments I’ve done. It sounds like a plan.