No Need for a Core?

Kazue waited until the next morning to set about pushing down to the fifth floor. She didn’t need to, but she liked having Moriko be part of the process too. It wouldn’t always be possible, but there was no reason to not include her when it was possible, and as such the three of them were now seated around their private dining table. “Alright, ready? Down we go!” This was the fourth time she had done this, and she felt she had a pretty good feel for it now, though it wasn’t quite automatic yet. So, mentally grab the entire end area as one concept, then modify the last chamber into a stairwell and push the whole thing down. The motion was smooth and gentle, then everything settled in with that soft ‘click’ sensation in her head. Kazue and Mordecai suddenly staggered, almost falling out of their seats, and Kazue gasped from a suddenly light-headed sensation, which was even weirder because even her core felt like that.

Mordecai recovered slightly before her, then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Son of a -” He wisely cut off that word, given the look Kazue was giving him. Whatever the other races thought of it, Kitsune did not appreciate that word being used around them, even if it wasn’t directed at them. “Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, I think I figured it out, and it’s sort of Zushi’s fault.”

“Zushi?! How can it be his fault?” Kazue could feel her expression twisting in confusion, then she made her focus switch to Moriko, who was looking between them in concern. “Um, sorry, not sure what happened, but I don’t think it’s actually bad? It was just weird. I think he’s figured something out though.”

“O-kay.” Moriko said slowly, clearly not sure what else to do. Unfortunately, Kazue didn’t have anything better to tell her, so shifted her attention back to Mordecai, who did seem to have something to say.

“I noticed this when we had our guests, but it wasn’t the time to mention it and then we kind of got on with things, and I didn’t think it’d matter, but it seems Zushi has been a raid boss this whole time. How much mana did you dump into him that first night? No, it doesn’t matter, it happened.” He took a breath, obviously trying to gather his thoughts, which was a strange sight to see, from Kazue’s point of view he always seemed so composed.

“Alright, let’s take a look at this from a different point of view, then it might be easier to explain. Sorry Moriko, I can’t show you this part, I’ll fill you in after. Now, Kazue, I want you to sort of ‘step back’ in your point of view, and try and look at the dungeon as a whole. But not the physical part of it, I want you to see how the flow of mana ties everything together.”

She closed her avatar’s eyes and tried to follow his instructions as best as she could. She hadn’t ever really looked at the whole thing this way, and it took a bit to get her mind into the right state, but eventually she had it. And she could ‘see’ what she had been ‘feeling’ before, the steady flow of energy from the outside world, the trickles of energy from life in the warrens that mostly, but not entirely, fed back into keeping its environment lush and rich, and even more life energy from what were technically ‘invaders’ in their sewer system/punishment path. All of the energy flowed down in gentle streams to eventually seep through their chambers and into a swirl around their hidden core.

“Now, look here.” Mordecai’s voice spoke directly into her mind. “See these nodes attached to the mana weave on each level? There’s supposed to be only one per level, but we have two. I didn’t notice this before because Zushi is stronger than any first-floor boss is supposed to be, and he’s been taking up the extra node on every floor. Now here, these two nodes that have grown near the core, those are Raid Boss nodes. Again, there’s supposed to be only one. But we get these about every five floors, and now that Zushi is taking up one of these raid boss nodes, and his proper first-floor boss node, all the others have been freed up suddenly. That was what the rush was, four extra floor boss nodes opening up at once.”

It was a lot to take in at once, so Kazue latched onto one thing at a time. “Raid Boss? You didn’t mention those before. And what’s up with the weird name?”

He sounded chagrined. “Sorry, I figured it was easiest to just show you when the time came, I wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal. You had a lot on your plate already, and I wanted to let you focus on your library. But raid bosses can freely roam the dungeon, and are usually strong enough that normal parties can’t take them out on their own. Zushi is a ‘hidden’ raid boss, in that he’s a normal boss that fakes it until called upon to use his full strength. As for the name, honestly, no idea. I heard some adventurers call them that, and the name stuck for me.”

… “You know, you kind of have a bad habit of not telling us everything as soon as you should.” She chided him. “Though I guess things were a bit hectic. Still, I think we need to sit down soon and have an overview of everything I should expect. Piecemeal has been fine up until now, but I have a good enough grasp of what’s going on to get a big-picture explanation. Now, why do we have two nodes? Oh wait, that’s because there are two of us.”

“Correct. I should have realized that since we have double the capacity for everything else, but I didn’t notice the discrepancy because having one boss is normal. I think we can drop out of this point of view now and get Moriko into the loop.”

Kazue agreed, and moments later was blinking her eyes open again, images of mana streams and entangled webs of magic constructs lingering like the after-vision of a bright flash of light. That certainly explained why he hadn’t shown her that way of looking at things before, it was disorienting and she had enough trouble being a dungeon and her avatar at the same time already. Then she turned to Moriko. “So in summary, our husband once more failed to mention quite everything he should have, and it turns out Zushi is actually super strong but has been faking it. Also, we are supposed to have 2 bosses per floor, because of the whole double core thing, but at least that part he simply didn’t realize, in part because Zushi’s been hogging up the extra spot.”

Moriko gave Mordecai an exasperated look before switching back to Kazue. “So everything’s OK then? And what gives with Zushi?”

“Eh, seems like I overloaded him when we had our first two, um, visitors.” Kazue did not feel like calling them by name right now. “I had a lot of extra energy to offload as fast as I could. I’m not sure what he can actually do though.” She gave Mordecai a questioning look.

“I’m not sure either actually, but at a guess, I think he has some sort of inverted breath weapon, where he can inhale and draw stuff to him. It matches his demonstrated abilities, I’m just not certain what exact effects it has. We can test him later, but I think you are right, now’s a good time to go over what to expect for the future.” He glanced between the two of them, and Kazue and Moriko both nodded then listened carefully.

“Alright. Well, about once every five floors we get a ‘raid boss’. Two of them it seems for us, but normally only one. Raid bosses are separate from the boss of that floor, and can roam the upper floors without any restrictions, which is part of what makes them dangerous. Also, they grow in strength with the dungeon overall, and are not limited by the energy available on their floor. Usually they aren’t sent to harass random explorers, but sometimes a group seems like it needs a bit of humbling, and they are great as emergency reserves to protect the dungeon core itself.” He paused, waiting to see if either of them had questions. When neither of them spoke up, he continued.

“OK, well, in general, as a dungeon grows it sort of adapts to do even more of what it is doing, though there are limits. I’ve kind of been encouraging certain things that seemed to be in line with what Kazue wanted. We’re being very careful to offer a peaceful route and to keep things as safe as is reasonable in the combat path, if we’re careful to keep doing what we are already doing, eventually the dungeon magic should resonate in a way that will make it easier to keep people alive even in the combat route. But it’s also why I made sure Kazue wanted to make a tribe of sentient people and warned that it might end up affecting all of our inhabitants. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I just wanted to make sure that it was something she wanted. As to which will have an impact first, or how, I don’t know. That part seems to work on its own. Like early on, I was very worried about keeping us all safe, and that seems to have triggered a growth in my ability to use spell magic that didn’t happen until much later on in my original dungeon. It never really came up, but I was prepared to use it when we were facing down those bandits. In addition to what I can do as my avatar, I have two cantrips I can attack with using any inhabitant as my focus point.”

He raised his hands defensively. “Yes, I probably should have said something sooner, again we were rather busy with a lot of things and I didn’t want to overload Kazue with too much information while she was learning how to do everything, and then I just forgot to mention it. It didn’t seem important, and in a way, it sort of still isn’t, except that it is important I let you both know things. It’s the principle of the matter.”

Kazue frowned, wanting to berate him a bit, and could tell that Moriko felt the same way, but it was harder to do when he fully acknowledged his mistake up front like that. “This does sort of feel like when you ate my book-familiar. Mordecai, I love you, but you are kind of absentmindedly arrogant sometimes.”

He gaped slightly in surprise, but Moriko snapped her fingers and leaned forward. “Yes! That’s a good phrase for it. It’s not like the snobby sort of arrogance where someone thinks they are better than you, he is just sort of arrogant about deciding how much to tell us at a time, because he’s worried about overwhelming us with too much at once. And then stuff falls through the cracks, because he is so very not infallible.”

The two women nodded in agreement at this assessment and gave him near-matching glares. They were rewarded with a rare look of embarrassment on his face. “OK, I concede the point. I do have a lot packed in my head, and have been deciding on my own when to give out information. I should have taken the time to try and at least find a way to let you both know how much more I could have told you. Like when Moriko was on her trip home, there was a fair amount of downtime, I could have done this then. But we also have a lot more to get through, so shall we set all of that aside for the moment so I can at least tell you all of this?”

Kazue leaned back and gestured in his direction. “You may continue,” she replied, using her best haughty tone. The little half-smile from Moriko and the eye roll from Mordecai made it worthwhile. She was still a little annoyed, but he was right that they should focus on the information.

“Where was I? Oh right, so, stuff to come in the future. The next big one should be about floor seven, that’s when Kazue should be able to reform her avatar and be able to go outside. A few important bits on that however: Because an awakened avatar has to be self-sustaining, its link to the core is a bit thin. The first side effect is that a lot of your progression in controlling your magic will be reset. Not all of it, since you hadn’t awakened it to begin with before you became a dungeon, but a lot of it. That’s because currently you manage a fair amount of it with your core, which lets you grow faster. That crutch will be removed.”

That made Kazue pout a little, but it sort of made sense. In a few weeks she had gone from nothing but a couple of weak cantrips common to many kitsune to being able to blast things apart and set them on fire. That wasn’t a normal growth, especially for someone just practicing a little every day instead of being forced to push themselves into exhaustion constantly as a matter of survival.

“The second side effect shouldn’t affect you, since the form of your first awakened avatar will probably be exactly as you are now, but in the somewhat distant future, if you start making avatars with different forms and capabilities, it will have some effect on your avatar’s personality. The flesh affects the mind, and the link between the avatar and core is more distant, so there is always variation. It’s usually not a huge amount of change, but, well, it has been what has killed some of my relationships before. We’re all linked together at the core level, so I don’t see it affecting us as much anyway, but it’s something to be aware of.”

That was weird to even think of, her avatar not being quite her, but hopefully he was right and it wouldn’t matter for her first one. The idea had her excited, she kind of wanted to know what it was like being outside of her dungeon while still being a dungeon, but that would have to wait a while.

“The third thing to make sure you know is that I won’t be able to make an awakened avatar for a lot longer than that. I’ll be unable to leave for quite a while, so I am expecting the two of you to go out and explore the world without me.”

“What?!” The exclamation came from both women, but Mordecai raised his hands to show he had more to say before they got started asking him more details, so once more Kazue settled back to listen to what he had to say. Maybe this was part of why he never got around to telling everything, they kept getting sidetracked.

“I don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to make an awakened avatar. I think it’ll be a lot earlier than how long it would normally take me to be able to possibly design an avatar like my current one, but I locked in the abilities for this form back when I was working out the ritual with Moriko. I can’t change it, and both our cores together can’t quite process this into a fully realized form. There’s a reason that a lot of things can happen in dungeons that can’t happen outside of them. Mana constructs are simpler than real flesh and blood, and sometimes there’s simply magic to bridge the gap to help a physical body along. I’m hardly unique in this, the silencing ability we gave to the librarians is part of the library’s magic, and won’t work outside of the dungeon. It’s a lot harder to give those sorts of powers to people and creatures who have to support the magic being processed through their own body and brain.”

That hardly seemed fair, and Kazue was ready to object to the idea of leaving him behind like that, but he seemed ready for her argument, as well as any Moriko might have. “We’ll still have our link, and Kazue will still be present here as her core, so I won’t exactly be alone. She just won’t have a physical presence here. And it’s important for a dungeon’s growth to go out and experience the world. There are some dungeons that never do, but to experience and learn and grow as a person, and bring that all back to your core self to harmonize all that information, and then to do it again as a reborn self in a new avatar, all of this helps a dungeon expand its horizons. Also, it’s rather good at keeping a person from stagnating.”

She supposed that made sense, but she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea. “That’s kind of all I can tell you for sure about what the future holds, as I said what we do will affect what sort of dungeon magics become available to us, so I can’t tell you what those will be exactly. I guess that just leaves covering exactly what a Breach is.” Before he could continue however, they both felt the presence of new visitors at the entrance, and Mordecai looked visibly annoyed at being interrupted when he was finally getting all this information out.

Kazue’s reaction was quite different however when she sent her focus to the entrance, and a surge of excitement welled up. “Princess!”