No Need for a Core?

“Oh, that’s so adorable. What a cute little tiny dragon! OW! Bastard!” These words were followed by a piece of conjured rock crushing the offending bookwyrm.

Mordecai couldn’t help but look over at Kazue with amusement, as she resolutely refused to acknowledge the look. It was clear where she’d gotten some of her personality traits from. He could entirely see her forgetting about being in danger. The swearing, not so much.

And he was happy the fourth floor was finally giving the group some trouble. The first thing that gave them pause when they entered the mouldering library was a concern about fire. They had quickly agreed that fire, lightning, and even acid magics were out, as the acid reactions could produce heat.

The second issue they were having, or that Akahana was having specifically, was that the library was his first floor that didn’t have a natural theme to its landscape. A druid was strongest outside of the bounds of worked metal and stone. Having put metal plates as part of the backing for his shelves to prevent brute force was paying dividends, and the landscape no longer bent itself to her whims. This meant that they had to navigate the maze.

Actual combat was a different issue, however. It was simply a matter of raw power. Sure, they had double the capacity in numbers of a normal 5-floor dungeon, but how much mana they could tie to any one creature was still limited. Kitsune and dungeons were some of the few creatures that had a numerical feature that roughly represented their power. Kitsune tails were less reliable an indicator at one or two tails, but at three they were starting to gather some significant power. Without the use of raid bosses or other tricks, a normal five-floored dungeon was a suitable conquest target for a group of 4 to 6 three-tail kitsune.

A similar group of seven-tails could expect to take on a dungeon of thirteen to fifteen floors with some difficulty, as long as they didn’t have to deal with the raid bosses. The parallels started to fail once a kitsune had nine tails. There weren’t any higher forms so that just told you the minimum power they had to have. And dungeons got weird after their twentieth floor or so. What that meant Mordecai couldn’t have said, but there were a couple of nodules of information marked for when he had more floors, so he could only assume he’d left notes for core dungeon information that just wasn’t going to be relevant to know for a while.

And while a raid boss’s power scaled with the dungeon rather than the floor, it was also limited to the dungeon’s power, so poor Zushi had been in a bad spot all by himself. Though at least the library was giving Mordecai some ideas on how to fortify Zushi’s room later.

Oh, their noise had finally brought in a BunBrarian. This should be interesting. It was just one for the moment, and the odd silence certainly threw them off stride for a moment, but the party quickly rallied. They didn’t even have to use any magic as Xarlug clashed his naginata against the oversized hammer long enough for Paltira to sweep its feet, and Casey jumped in to take out its throat before it could recover.

Then it gave its death scream, which he had been so careful to make sure happened no matter how it died.

And Shizoku was out. Oops.

It wasn’t the magic, though the amplification with fear effect hadn’t helped. Despite being smart and powerful, the three-tail was still a slightly sheltered thirteen-year-old girl who had just heard her first rabbit death scream. Mordecai was pretty certain he’d potentially traumatized her. That was a problem. But it was also the sort of thing that the world dealt out, and she was a potential heir to the clan matriarchy. He looked over at Aia, who shook her head. “No, don’t stop. This won’t break her, and if she doesn’t get over it by the end of the floor I’ll help her grow beyond it later.” She smiled softly with a bit of sadness to it. “If she’s going to be my heir, she has to be stronger than this. It doesn’t mean she can’t care, but she has to be able to take the things that hurt her like that and put them aside so that she can think and act.”

This new issue compromised the team as Shizoku had barely started recovering when the next two showed up and she froze. Mordecai immediately updated his instructions. “Don’t target the white-haired girl, but do your best to look like you are going to, then take advantage of any openings in others as they protect her.”

The second one to die caused Shizoku to flinch hard. The third caused her to crouch down and cover her ears as she tried to not sob, taking in deep gulps of air. Akahana took up the role of being her guardian, standing alongside Casey to keep all threats at bay. With the weakest party member out of the fight, and the strongest tied up into a defensive position, Mordecai’s creatures were no longer at such a great disadvantage.

Akahana snarled when she realized that the monsters were coordinating their attacks to take advantage of Shizoku’s weakness. “Mordecai, don’t be a bastard!” He snorted, then generated a wooden sign that dropped out of the ceiling and landed at her feet. It simply read:

[Matriarch said "Don’t stop."]

This simply made Akahana swear at Aia instead, which amused the nine-tail to no end.

Now the party was essentially rooted in place every time one of the laganthros was present in battle, and the dungeon coordinated to take full advantage of that. Locking the group into one location made it easier for the bookwyrms to ambush with their spells or swoop by to spray their paper flechettes. And then they discovered another monster, as a book they had passed on the floor turned out to be a Biting Word. This discovery was made when it clamped onto one of Akahana’s tails. The druid yelped and jumped, then smashed her tails on the ground several times to break the book, which distracted her from covering Shizoku. And when others tried to cover that gap, they created more openings.

It didn’t take long for everyone other than Shizoku to be covered in tiny bleeding wounds and more than a few marks from the repeated barrage of cantrips and the occasional solid blow from an oversized hammer. More to the point, they looked haggard and were taking a very long time to work their way through the maze.

This was great for the dungeon, as they were supplying a healthy amount of mana as they worked their way through. It also gave time for Mordecai to finalize a modified boss fight, which he’d designed after checking with Kazue to make sure she was okay with a couple of his ideas.

There was his special prize to consider as well. There was a staff currently laying across his and Kazue’s laps, and each of them was supplying it with a trickle of energy. The design was mostly the same as the ones he’d presented, except for a series of small inlays of thorned roses, each rose made out of a single ruby and the stalk and leaves for each rose made out of a single emerald. Being able to grow gems to specification was useful for tricks like this. Mordecai’s ongoing contribution was simply to keep the wood in a ‘live’ state, while Kazue was focused on implanting all her love for her mother into the staff. He didn’t know exactly what this was going to do, he wouldn’t know until Akahana claimed it, but he was fairly confident that it would be a worthy gift.

The party eventually made it into one of the sections with ‘broken’ ceilings and dull sunbeams. Mordecai was not surprised that this area was far less of a challenge, as his strangling roots and carnivorous plants were solidly in Akahana’s domain, and Shizoku was no longer mentally frozen by the BunBrarians. The plants had a chance to attack once, but they quickly fell to the druid’s commands. After that first attack, she had identified what they looked like and preemptively took control of them.

Not a surprise at this point, but it did make him itch to create some sort of plant-type creature that was immune to her will. Oh, a boss wouldn’t be controllable like that, but he wanted plant-type mobs that were immune too.

And this pretty much described the rest of their time working through the maze. Plants were nothing, while bunbrarians teamed up with bookwyrms and biting words to wear the group down and make them tired. Eventually, they tracked down the portal out of the maze and finally exited, only to find themselves in the Annex. But it wasn’t the Annex that Mordecai had designed before.

The space now had a loose latticework of branches growing between all the bookshelves, with large clumps of greenery growing wherever these branches came near each other, creating three-dimensional intersections that would make it hard to judge which way a creature was going to come out. Between the reveal of Akahana as a seven-tail and the start of the fighting there hadn’t been time to decide on and design secondary floor bosses. But between the rest break and the slog of the maze, Mordecai had had the time he needed for this one, as he had a natural fit already lined up. And very specifically handed dominion over the arboreal pathways to that boss, which should be sufficient to keep Akahana from taking control of them.

The party regrouped in the antechamber, then warily progressed in the chamber. “Alright, I think this is going to be a touchy one. Let’s be careful.” The druid said, then she started them off with a spell to create a shimmering field around everyone that took on the form of thick, tough bark.

The addition of the foliage made Biblios harder to keep track of, and in this case he started off completely hidden, hanging on a branch with several different growths breaking the line of sight. Once the entire group had made their way inside, he simply let go to start dropping in near silence. Casey’s head snapped in his direction, giving the group brief warning, but that was only enough to brace themselves before his falling form had a clear shot, and a giant cone of bound & wrapped reams of paper slammed into them. Bound tight like that, these 10-pound bricks were only slightly softer than being hit by solid chunks of wood and left trip hazards scattered across the floor.

This was also Mordecai being slightly badly behaved in his boss's design, technically the paper was collectible loot, and if anyone so chose they could pick up a stack of some very nice high-quality paper, all of it embossed with a nicely embellished “K&M”. Each ream had one of several different light tints to it, so you could pick the ream you wanted. Making it potential loot, as well as part of a boss attack, gave him more flexibility in Biblios’s firepower. Right now he had it tuned for maximum impact.

Admittedly, finding a completely undamaged ream could take a little bit of work, but since they wanted them to be available as loot, the ones that didn’t hit people didn’t take damage from the dungeon surfaces. Intent had interesting interactions with dungeon creations, which was a thread of research he wanted to follow up on now that he knew that Ozuran created and oversaw the rules governing dungeons. But he was thinking that serious research was going to have to wait for a floor or more to make sure he could unpack enough of the right knowledge that he wasn’t duplicating learning effort.

Biblios's dramatic entrance certainly caught their attention, and his rapid descent had forced him to land on the ground despite unfurling his wings as soon as he blasted them with his breath weapon. Their front liners moved to engage immediately, intending to try and pin the dragon to the ground. Paltira called out, “You two, take his wings!” Xarlug and Casey followed his orders, which freed the monk to focus on the dragon’s head. A dangerous spot to be sure, but if there was any place where he could strike hard enough to interrupt its focus, it would be there.

Biblios’s papery design may make him look frail, but paper was simply a form of wood. And the multiple layers that made up his wing made it hard to cut through in a single strike, especially when they weren’t at full tension. The book dragon lashed out at his attackers, giving the spell casters time to begin their assault. Akahana decided to change where they were taking risks as well, “Feel free to use lightning and acid!” That still left fire as forbidden, but that was a wise move.

Takehiko and Orchid spread out to find angles where they could blast Biblios with bolts of lightning, while Shizoku gleefully broke out her supplies for acid bombs. The previous spell limitations on this floor had somewhat unbalanced their spell and chemical reserves, and they were happy to use resources they had more of. Akahana decided to stick with support for the moment and started working on a wind barrier that could help deflect the dragon’s breath weapon.

Then a pot of black ink smashed into the side of Takehiko’s head, leaving a few glass shards embedded but more importantly splashing ink across his face and temporarily blinding him. “Shit! Where did that come from?!” The purple-haired five-tail swore as he wiped at the ink while deliberately stumbling about, making him a harder target to hit until he could actively defend himself again.

Akahana determinedly finished her wind barrier despite the distraction, and only then did she look up to search for the source of the attack, just in time to see another bottle of ink fly out, this time aimed at Xarlug. Or more exactly, his feet. The orc was too far away for her to spread the wind barrier and her shout didn’t come in time. Oily brown ink spread out on a slippery pool just as Xarlug was winding up for a powerful strike, his foot coming down on the pool and then sliding out unexpectedly. The warrior landed hard, briefly disoriented, then rolled away to find a place to get his footing.

This gave the battered and lightning-scorched Biblios a chance to dodge in Xarlug’s direction and get enough room to safely spread his wings as he jumped, regaining air once more. Akahana however was targeting the patch of greenery where that ink pot had come from and spun out several blades of air to slice through the thinner branches concealing the thrower.

Despite the rain of leaves and small branches, the partially denuded hiding spot held no enemies. Then she spotted a flick of orange in her peripheral vision and turned just in time for a thrown encyclopedia to slam into her gut. Even with her armor spell, she briefly lost her breath, which cost her time as she had to force herself to inhale. “Second target, can teleport, between greenery!” she forced out. “I think, it’s orange.”

While they were distracted by this increase in threats, Biblios had time to latch onto a bookshelf and pull out a scroll. Three blue rays streaked out as he activated the incantation, one each targeting Akahana, Shizoku, and Takehiko, who was just barely getting his eyes cleared. Akahana and Shizoku managed to dodge enough to only be grazed, but Takehiko took a full hit, causing him to yelp as ice coated the left side of his chest. Shizoku’s little slime familiar briefly took on a blue tint, and hardly a speck of ice formed on the girl’s sleeve, while Akahana had to smack one of her tails onto the ground to knock off the ice beginning to form there. That hurt.

“Nine Hells, it can cast spells too? Paltira, Casey, go high! Xarlug, switch to your bow! Everyone else, spread out to not get caught in blasts! Look out for our unusual sniper!” The monk and the cassowary jumped onto shelves and then up to branches to chase after the dragon, forcing it to move rather than have the chance to sit in one spot pulling out scrolls. Biblios was also out of range of the witch’s alchemical bombs, so she moved in towards her cousin while selecting other reagents, putting together a pair of healing elixirs, and handing them off. Then she scampered away before they could form a tempting target together.

Then Akahana noticed something that annoyed her. The hiding spot she’d targeted before was beginning to regrow. First she tried to extend her will over the living growth, but quickly found out it was claimed by another will. “What? Wait, this is only the fourth floor, and the dragon is clearly the boss. How come – oh come on.” She took a deep breath and shouted, “Two cores, two bosses!” She didn’t know why they hadn’t faced double bosses before, but this fight just got harder than she had expected. Then she began casting a summoning spell, pulling 5 small air elementals into existence. “Thrash all the bushy areas, strip the greenery!” She didn’t know if it was going to be enough to force their second assailant out of hiding, but it was worth a try.

Takehiko had cleared his eyes and gulped down his elixirs in fast order, the ice dissipating and easing his breath. Then he focused on the dragon, drawing up more bolts of lightning to join the steady beat of arrows from Xarlug. These were smaller than the big one he’d started off with, the spell creating a charge that let him keep throwing them for a while. The steady stream of attacks was having an effect, and battered Biblios hardly had time to grab a scroll before having to launch himself again to avoid Paltira and Casey. But he proved capable of using the scrolls in mid-air, and luck was with him as a wave of healing power washed over him, mending his wounds.

Shizoku had backed up to a wall to consider her next action, as her supply of reagents was getting low and she had a lot less magic to throw around than the others. The bookshelf she pressed herself against abruptly fell backward to reveal a dark recess, and a powerful, furry orange arm snaked out to grab her from behind, its hand covering her mouth before pulling her back into the darkness.

“Shizoku!” Akahana cried out in a near panic, but a pair of bookwyrms and three biting words launched themselves from the bookshelf to attack her, forcing her to fall back a step as she blasted them with a cone-shaped blast of freezing ice. By the time she’d cleared her path, the bookcase had slid back into place, and the youngest kitsune was out of the fight.

“This blasted place is full of tricks!” The druid shouted. “Watch out for the walls, sliding panels, and more constructs!” Then she drew her hands close to begin casting a spell, swirls of water beginning to form as she channeled her will into the blast. If this didn’t take out the damn dragon, maybe it would render it too waterlogged to fly and drag it to the ground where they could finish it off.

And while she was focused upward, a stony fist suddenly uppercut her.

Two Cores. Two Bosses. Two Raid Bosses. Their earth elemental friend had received an upgrade, and a name. Enki had entered the battle, and his most unique ability was that unlike most nature creatures of earth, neither worked stone nor dungeon stone impeded his movement or abilities.

The blow knocked the druid backward, her jaw in agony. The angle hadn’t given Enki a clean shot as she’d been looking up, and her spell had padded the blow, but it still stunned her a moment and she kept backpedaling as she tried to clear her head. Then the upper body of stone that had risen suddenly from the floor sank back down into it.

She reflexively channeled her mana into a regenerative spell as she began putting the pieces together. There was a silver lining from her point of view, and that was if Mordecai was throwing in his second raid boss, this was probably the last fight. “DOWN! But watch the ground!” She shouted as she pulled out a small diamond, which shattered to fuel a spell. Her entire form shimmered, then her skin took on a texture similar to gray granite.

Akahana saw when Enki started to rise behind Orchid, but all she could do was mentally offer an apology, as she had started putting together another spell and had to chant this one. Casey and Paltira had taken her at her word and were dropping as safely as they could, which gave the monk a clear view as his lover was attacked from behind. The rocky fist slammed into the back of the princess’s head, knocking her forward to skid on the ground. “NO!” He shouted as he dropped the rest of the way to the ground and sprinted forward.

The druid finally finished her new spell and released it upwards. A dark vortex of stormy clouds swirled into existence in the center of the room, and as she released the spell she began running to Orchid’s prone form. “TO ME!” Xarlug scooped up his dropped Naginata then joined everyone else closing in on the spot. Her air shield was still in effect, she just had to mentally grab it and pull it into a sphere around them as the storm finally unleashed.

Lightning and ice blasted everywhere indiscriminately, driven by violent winds and torrential rain. It was the most powerful storm she could conjure indoors. It absolutely shredded Biblios and tore apart the branches as the group took shelter. “Takehiko, get us off the ground, now!”

Paltira was already focused on healing Orchid, and Takehiko obeyed unquestioningly. He wove together a shield of force directly under the party, then created a cushion of air under that to raise them up. The five-tail began sweating as he did so, and was kneeling with his hands on the disk as the combined spell was taking up all of his concentration to maintain. While he was occupied, his fairy started flying around the group, scattering a cloud of glittering dust from her wings that gave off an invigorating aura and slightly healed their many small wounds.

It took almost a minute for the storm to abate, and the constant pounding had forced Akahana to pour more energy into her wind barrier to protect them from her own magic. But it did finally die down to reveal a devastated room practically bare of branches. Or books. Nor were any enemies immediately visible. Orchid sat back up, her wounds healed but blood staining the back of her hair and clothes.

Then there was an echoing “OOOK!” as a bookshelf was kicked off from an upper level, the entire wood structure headed their way. Akahana growled and channeled more energy into her barrier, forming it into a blast that knocked it away. Now revealed was the full, glorious form of Horace the Librarian. The orangutan had two satchels on him, the straps creating an X on his chest, and he began reaching into one of them to draw forth another object to throw.

At the same time, Enki reemerged from the floor, punching upwards on one end of the disk to tilt it and send them sliding. He’d had no desire to be exposed to that storm either. Paltira, Xarlug, and Casey reacted to the sudden movement by leaping toward the earth elemental, while the mages slid off the other way. Orchid managed to roll to the side in a graceful motion before reaching the end of the platform, which meant she was the only one of the three who did not land on the fresh patch of oily ink that Horace had thrown.

Paltira’s leap turned into a somersault and ended with an axe kick on Enki’s head. The monk’s reinforced body was strong enough to create a small crack in the hard stone, but it was tiny. At the same time, Xarlug had landed on the ground in front of the earth elemental and crouched down before thrusting up with his entire body and legs, slamming into the stony chest. The tip barely drove an inch in, but the impact also forced Enki up higher from the ground. Casey’s leap had taken her behind their target, and she leapt again to slam her powerful claws into its back, driving it further onto Xarlug’s naginata.

Meanwhile, Orchid had decided the gloves were off, with waterlogged books scattered everywhere. She also gave up on precision and conjured a swarm of fire bolts that flew after Horace as he scrambled across the empty bookcases. A few hit, singing off fur and leaving black burns on his tough skin, but he was returning fire as well. Orchid did not know what sort of ink was in those pots, but the noxious scent rising from the puddles nearby made her head spin, and she was pretty certain that the splashes on her clothes were going to take magic to get out. The odor forced her to move out of the area before she could focus on casting a new spell.

By now Akahana and Takehiko had gotten back to their feet, and the druid simply pointed toward Enki as she stared up at Horace. Then she began casting. Fire, earth, air, and water were pulled into existence and woven into a new shape, forging her own elemental of chaotic form. As soon as it was created, she sent it off after Horace and began preparing her next spell.

Takehiko had joined the fray against Enki and had decided upon using a set of smaller spells, alternating rays of ice and fire to stress the stone composing the elemental’s body. Enki was raging against Xarlug, who was grimly holding firm to keep his weapon pushed into the stone chest, despite the blood running down his face. He was keeping his head lowered, letting the horns from his tiefling heritage take the majority of the punishment, but one of those had already cracked in half. Casey was maintaining a flurry of kicks to Enki’s back, which was what was keeping him from backing off of the naginata as those powerful kicks gouged the stone itself. A normal cassowary wouldn’t have had the strength or the hardness of claw to leave those marks, but a druid’s bond greatly empowered their companion.

Paltira had decided to switch tactics and had drawn his temple sword for the first time during this delve. The blade bloomed into a twin aura of light and shadow, the blade having been blessed by priests of both Amirume and Mericume. With this weapon in hand, Paltira was hacking at one of Enki’s arms, and the magic blade had already hewed halfway through, weakening the swings from that arm.

The combined physical and magical assault was spreading a web of cracks across the stone body, and it was clear Enki was slowly losing. While this was happening the area behind them was wracked with spell after spell as the druid and the princess relentlessly hunted the librarian. Hurled tomes were shrugged off by Akahana’s protective spell, and Orchid proved much too nimble to be caught easily when she could see the attacks coming.

Then both bosses suddenly disappeared, leaving the party disoriented for a second as they tried to figure out what was going on. Then the boss door slid open, victory was theirs.

Oh, Mordecai could have drawn it out longer, but the ending had been clear, and he didn’t want to leave his dungeon cleaned of all of its defenders. So he and Kazue had acted together and despawned Horace and Enki. And unlike those that had been completely defeated, they did not need to wait until the next dawn to respawn their bodies, though the process did not heal them. He’d have to tend their wounds personally to take care of that, and that was only possible because he already had healing magic.

The party gathered itself together and quickly treated the most serious wounds, then made their way down to the empty fifth floor, and thence to the feasting hall. Here they were greeted by Kazue, Mordecai, Moriko, Matriarch Aia, and a rather sulky-looking Shizoku. “Congratulations on your hard-won victory.” He’d had to use everything at his disposal shy of direct action to make them work that hard, and even so, he was pretty certain that Akahana had a few more of her most powerful tiers of spells available, but he had forced her to start using them with the way he’d rigged that last battle. "We would now like to present to you the spoils of your conquest.”

Moriko and the reluctant Shizoku stepped forward, carrying the special staves for everyone, with variations that Mordecai had worked out with individuals previously, namely that Paltira specifically wanted a Bo Staff, and that Xarlug had asked for a new haft for his Naginata, keeping the back end knobbed to use as an alternative form of attack. “Akahana, this one is yours.” He and Kazue were holding a staff upright between them, keeping their respective trickles of energy flowing into it as the druid approached, and they did not let go until she had fully grasped it and claimed her loot.

For every staff, the moment that it was actually claimed in response to having won a contest against the dungeon, or from fair trade, that was the moment they became completely real. There was a pool of mana set aside for creating loot, which refreshed at dawn along with the rest of their capacities, and the mana only fully and completely left the pool when that loot was claimed. And this was part of the ‘intent’ aspect Mordecai wanted to think about when he had a chance. Everything had just seemed normal to him about it when he’d simply always existed with these rules in place, now he had more reason to question the logic behind them, because now he knew that there was indeed a logic to be found.