No Need for a Core?

“Wake up sleepy head.” Kazue stirred reluctantly at the words, the redhead blinking her way into full consciousness. She still felt sluggish, but far better than when she had collapsed last night. The voice that was teasing her belonged to Moriko, though both her spouses were cuddled onto the bed with her.

She yawned and stretched, then lightly swatted Moriko with a tail. “Evil woman, waking such a sleeping beauty as I.” She giggled then sat up. “Good morning? Yes, morning!” She had a much better sense of time as a dungeon than she had as just a kitsune, but it took a moment of thinking to make sure she knew what time it was. “Wow, I was out for 12 hours?”

“Yep!” Moriko replied, then poked the ticklish kitsune in the side. “Mordecai said you were mostly recovered, and sleeping wasn’t going to be a lot faster at this point, so I want you to have breakfast with us.”

Kazue turned to Mordecai quizzically, but then got distracted by being met with a kiss, and she melted into it for a moment. “Oh, that was nice.“ She sighed. “Wait, I had a question, oh right! How did you know?”

“My own experience, and sharing a core. We both have our own sections, but there is information and process sharing at the borders. I spent some time experimenting with how much information I can send and receive across the boundary. Anything relating to the dungeon and general status can be shared directly. Combine that with just the feel of your mind across the bond, and I had a good sense of how you were doing.”

Moriko sighed and pouted a little. “You know, it’s a touch unfair that you two get to share another bond like that. I mean, it’s not like you can do anything to fix that, but it is the one thing slightly unequal in our relationship. Eh, don’t worry about it, our other bond does most of the same thing, and I don’t really need to know the dungeon stuff that way. Alright, enough of that, let’s get dressed and have some breakfast!”

Once they were settled at the table and eating, Kazue asked, “Have you guys had a chance to check out my library yet? What do you think?” She felt a little nervous, which was probably silly, but she put a lot of work into this and it was important to her.

“It looks like a grand bit of fun, and when we’ve collected enough knowledge we’ll probably get various sages and historians visiting just to do research. It’s a shame so many of the books are duplicates or blank right now. Oh, I did take the liberty of scattering some beginner spell books in there, each with a random selection of cantrips and novice spells. Even if someone can’t make use of it, they should be able to sell them, so it’s a random reward if they stumble onto them.”

Kazue bounced in her seat at that idea. “Oh, I like it!” She eagerly turned towards Moriko. “What about you?”

“Er,” The half-elf looked a touch embarrassed. “Well, I saw what Mordecai showed in an illusion, and it looks very pretty and the maze part is interesting, but I have to admit I am not much of a book person, so it doesn’t have a lot of appeal for me.”

“Hmm.” Kazue pondered a moment while savoring another bite of her breakfast. “I’ve got an idea. When Mordecai runs off to do his half, why don’t we go through it together? I can’t make myself not know the puzzles and stuff, but I can set it to easy mode and just follow you around. It’ll give me an idea if I’ve got it tuned in for people who don’t read a lot.”

She knew Moriko was not stupid, but she was the sort of person who usually only sought out knowledge that directly affected her, so she’d make a great data point to evaluate her settings. Kazue blinked. Data point? Settings? They weren’t new concepts to her, but she didn’t usually consider things that way. “Um, I think being a dungeon is changing how I think,” she announced with a nervous twitch of her ears. “Mordecai, do you often think in stuff like ‘data points’ and ‘settings’?”

Her husband chuckled at her. “Oh, that makes sense. I had to adapt the other way when I was first able to send an avatar outside of the dungeon. People who talked to me in my home expected dungeon ‘weirdness’, as my first traveling companions called it, but to blend in with normal society I had to learn how to not talk like that. I think it won’t be a big issue for you, since your personality was established as a flesh and blood person, but our cores do have some distinct biases in how that part of ourselves think, and after your little project I think you are syncing between your avatar and core more.”

“Huh. I guess that makes sense. It’s still kind of weird though. Anyway, Moriko, what do you think of my idea? We can make a date of it too, my treat at all the shops. Those I’ll bring you to, you won’t have to go looking for them.” She grinned slightly, her tails swishing around her stool. She might use a chair to look impressive when she needed to, but goddess stools were more comfortable, especially now that she had more tails. Hmm, maybe she could get them to switch to low tables and cushions, but they could talk about that later.

Moriko smiled as she thought about the idea. “Alright, could be fun hanging out at least. Not sure how well I’ll do at the puzzles, but company you enjoy makes everything better.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as her smile turned wicked. “Just be careful, you never know when you might find yourself getting pinned in a dark corner somewhere.”

Kazue blushed and shifted in her seat, but she had to admit to herself that she didn’t hate the idea…

When the women went off to play in the happy library, Mordecai made his way to the fourth-floor entrance. He already knew what he was going to do, he’d had days to think about it after all, but he needed to tweak a few things first. The two paths exiting from the stairway were 120 degrees off from each other, which was normally enough, but things were too crowded with the current setup. He didn’t change the doors, but he did change the paths, causing them to bend outwards fairly sharply. He moved the rest area and rearranged a little bit of the corridor beyond, but in the end, the setup was functionally identical to what Kazue had set up before, and looked nearly the same. Kazue and Moriko were already in the library proper before he started anything, so he made sure to set speed, acceleration, and jerk very low for that chamber, to keep from disturbing anyone, but both paths needed to spread out more than normal. Kazue still noticed of course, and he sent back a reassurance with a visual of the tweaked floor plan.

Now, the first part of his plan was simple. He mirrored Kazue’s layout of the rest area, changing only one thing. Instead of a plaque beside the archway, he put a big sign above it:

Silence is Golden.

That was a clue on how to make this floor a bit easier. His corridor past the sign was simpler, as he was only going to allow one party at a time in. Now he copied and mirrored the entire layout and capabilities of Kazue’s library, minus the puzzles. This was a lot less costly and quicker than creating it the first time and set things up for a bit of fun. Once the room was grown and fully implemented, he changed the nature of the zones, giving them a set of life-like rules and making them hostile to each other, with a potential to grow into and ‘eat’ each other’s territory, changing the layout and style of conquered territories to match their own. Chaos promptly ensued.

For the next few hours, Mordecai simply sat in the rest area and watched everything unfold. He kept track of how well each was doing, and occasionally pruned a tiny bit to help sculpt the final results. He wanted them mixed, and didn’t want any given area to be only a single type of zone for too large a distance. He also entertained himself by switching his focus to the other library, and see how his wives were getting along. They were hanging out as much as they were working on the puzzles, so Moriko’s progress was slow, but she was learning to see how research could be seen as a type of hunt where you had to narrow down where your prey was. Though she seemed to be having even more fun teasing Kazue.

Also, they came up with a couple of other puzzle ideas, though implementing one of them would wait until Moriko could get some spare training manuals and bring them back. Though she remembered the lessons, she was no artist and couldn’t remember the exact pictures. The idea was going to be a ‘one of these things doesn’t belong’ puzzle involving the pose sequences for various moves and fighting styles, ranging from unarmed katas to formal fencing duels.

The other idea was copied from a toy she remembered from the temple, though Kazue’s version would be a touch bigger: Take a square picture, cut it up into even tiles that are confined to a flat box, and either remove one of the tiles or make 1 to 2 spaces outside of the main square, then scramble them.

Mordecai was switching his attention between them and his project, as it was mostly growing by his 'program', so he almost missed what happened closer to the end of their outing. That was very interesting, enough so that he slowed the zone war for a little while so he could pay more attention to the other library. Kazue was definitely becoming more confident. And had spotted him 'spying'. Well, he had an invitation now, and it was nice seeing this part of Kazue.

Once the three zones were thoroughly intermixed from their warfare, Mordecai ‘killed’ them, freezing the war in place, and promptly deactivated all the wall-shifting abilities. Now he focused on the concept of age and decay and used it to flavor the mana he streamed into the broken library. Once the entire setting was sufficiently decayed he stopped that, then gave the entire library a new sort of life, one that he intended to keep, so this was going to move beyond simple behavior instructions. Mordecai gave it the personality of a haunted house, though he was not going to use any undead or spirits. With that personality he gave a few abilities and limitations. While visitors were present, a more restricted ability to change its layout was enabled, giving the library ruins only so much energy to work with, slowing down how fast it can move a wall, and a trickle of energy to slowly refill that capacity. The exit was modified too, it was hidden and could be moved, but only so often, and then there was a total number of uses that slowly regenerated. Also, it couldn’t be moved if any visitor was within 30 feet of it, and the library couldn’t select exactly where it would reappear.

All of this was of course set dressing. The real challenge was going to be the monsters, or avoiding them. The first thing he created were little bookwyrms, origami-like constructs in the shape of tiny dragons. They were fairly fragile, but they could fly and each knew one cantrip it was fairly proficient with. And naturally, they were vulnerable to fire.

Next up was to enchant some of the ‘ruined’ books and turn them into monsters too. They would look like normal books until disturbed, then animate with eyes opening on the front cover and the pages opening up to reveal a toothy maw. They could fling themselves at people, and if they got a good bite in they would grab on and chew. Naturally, he named them Biting Words.

Mordecai looked around and decided to focus on the vines. While Kazue’s library had these soft green blooms of plant life in open, airy spaces, his had twisted dark tendrils woven throughout, with random shafts of dim light illuminating the place. Most of the vines and roots one passed were perfectly safe, others would reach out and try to strangle you, or burst from the ground to try and pull a person into a pit of digestive juice.

Now he littered the place with lots of minor book stacks and bookshelf traps, along with creaky floors and steps that could break when you stepped on them. These weren’t meant to really be much of a hazard in and of themselves. They mostly made noise and might give someone a few bruises. But he had put up that warning at the entrance for a reason.

He didn’t create an actual creature for this last encounter, so much as a template. Any laganthro who so chose could come and play the role of a raging bunbrarian. Dressed in the rags of once fine, scholarly clothes, these fierce, sharp-eared guardians roamed the ruined library, ready to punish any intruders with their giant, book-shaped hammers. Once any enemies were within sight, the bunbrarian automatically cast a silence aura upon itself and charged into battle, eyes practically glowing red with berserk rage, making an eerie spectacle as they moved utterly noiselessly. The silence aura shattered when they were defeated, as they let out an amplified death scream backed with fear magic, the combination enough to potentially stun their killers. Naturally, Mordecai made sure the shriek would happen no matter how they died.

When he was done, he took a little while to examine the results of his crafting, and though he was fairly happy with it, he wasn’t quite satisfied. Oh, overall he was rather pleased, but they were also trying to create a challenge course, not a murder pit. Any group who got past Betty and took the time to rest up should be able to handle it, but accidents could happen. So he slightly weakened the strangling vines and the digestive juices of the pitcher plants then ran a set of tunnels through the floors and walls with emergency hatches. Any time a standard group was running through here, there would be laganthros skilled in both magical healing and mundane medicine on standby. He was worried that simply stopping aggression wouldn’t be enough if someone got themselves into a tight spot. It still wasn’t perfectly safe, no combat trial like this could be without some higher-tier magic available, but it was a reasonable balance.

It was now time for the final piece. The ‘exit gate’ for the ruined library did not take you out entirely, no, it took you to the special library annex, aka the Boss Room. Although, he did make sure that it specifically led to an antechamber where a group could gather themselves and prepare.

The boss room itself was a round, 5-story affair, with stuffed bookshelves filling every inch of the wall. And guarding this precious trove was of course a dragon. A winged, four-legged dragon made of books and paper, and smallish for a dragon at a mere 20 feet in length, whom Mordecai dubbed ‘Biblios’. His claws and teeth could cut as sharply as any thin, stiff paper material, but they had the strength and resilience of steel. Whenever he took flight, there would be a flurry of dust and paper that made it difficult to see, and his breath weapon alternated between either a flurry of small, cutting pieces of paper, or a flood of dangerously fast, bound reams of blank paper. Additionally, he could latch onto any bookshelf and pull out a scroll to cast a random novice spell.

Unlike most of his bosses, Biblios would not get support from undefeated mobs. After all, avoiding fights was part of the challenge on this floor. Instead, bookwyrms and biting words would spawn randomly amongst the shelving and throw themselves into the fray.

Fire was the easy way to win this fight of course, but it could be costly. It would easily spread amongst the bookshelves, and force people to flee when the exit opened up. Most of the treasure was in that room, for the very same scrolls that Biblios used were available for others to grab as well. Yes, he was happy with this.

A quick check showed that Kazue and Moriko were already back at the suite, and he’d apparently missed dinner. Well, he could still enjoy dessert.