by DB King
With that, Marcus told Ella about the strange message that he had been shown, and the option to show his new spell stats or to save them for later. “Have you ever heard of anything like that before?” he asked when he had finished.
Ella smiled. “Yes, actually, I have. It’s quite well known that as a dungeon master levels up, he gets more control over his management of the magical environment in which he operates. What level are you now?”
“The last time I saw stats for my dungeon master level was after the battle of the Underway. I was dungeon master level 3 then. But I wonder, if we use the augmentation view, will we both be able to see the stats?”
“Oh, good idea,” Ella said enthusiastically. “Let’s try it.”
Together, they slipped into the light trance-like state that was the precursor to getting into the augmentation view. Marcus reached for a spell at random, and brought it into the front of his awareness. The augmentation view took effect, the familiar dreamlike state settling over him. He felt lucid and clear headed, but detached. When he looked at the fire, the flames flickered very slowly. Time had slowed.
“It is really quite a pleasant feeling,” Ella said, her eyes shining. “It’s good that in battle we don’t need to spend too much time here, but that we can also choose to extend our use of this view if we need to.”
“True,” Marcus said thoughtfully. He was reaching for the message he’d received earlier, letting it take the place of the spell he’d summoned. As soon as he turned his attention to it, the message appeared, its letters of golden, afterimage-like light floating in front of him, about four feet away.
“Can you see that too?” he asked Ella. She nodded.
“Right,” he said. “Spell: display level updates.”
Immediately, the message dissolved away, and Marcus was presented with the updated levels for the five spells he’d used in the dungeon fight.
Spell: Fleetfoot Level 2
Level Increase: 6%
Progress to next level: 12%
Spell: Hero’s Might Level 2
Level increase: 10%
Progress to next level: 14%
Spell: Ultimate Stealth Level 1
Level Increase: 5%
Progress to next level: 73%
Spell: Ward Detect Level 3
Level increase: 4%
Progress to next level: 42%
Elemental ability: Water
Current Mastery Level: Apprentice
Level progress: 5%
Progress to Journeyman level: 10%
Ella laughed out loud with pleasure. “I can see them!” she cried. “I can see your spell upgrades! That’s amazing!”
Marcus laughed. “It’s certainly a lot of spells!” he said. “Looks like Ultimate Stealth is the one closest to achieving the next level, and Hero’s Might and my Water elemental ability are the lowest.”
“Those elemental abilities are notoriously slow to level up,” Ella said. “I think it’s because they’re so powerful, it’s harder to make progress on them. 5% is actually quite a lot for that spell, and I imagine the increases will get smaller as you get into more and more advanced uses of the spell.”
“Well, at least I’ve mastered the art of shooting jets of water from my hands. That’s a useful ability and likely to become even more useful as time passes.”
He waved a hand, dismissing the stats for now, and the letters all faded and dissolved into the air. “Right,” he said, smiling. “Now for the important bit. I’m going to see what new dungeon options we have.”
Chapter 8
When Marcus had last seen his dungeon stats, there had been the option to create two new dungeons. Now, he let the augmentation view fade and approached the fire. With a twist of his willpower and a wave of a hand, he conjured the dungeon management table.
This was a magical device that allowed him to get an overview of his dungeons and see all the information about them. He smiled as the table appeared—it, too, was newly upgraded.
Before, the table had been shaped like a cut tree stump with a flat top, about waist height, three feet across and made of black volcanic glass. The dungeon management interface appeared on the flat top of this. Now, the table had developed. It was the same height and had the same shape of base, but the top was much bigger and shaped more like a regular table. It was a big, perfectly flat rectangle of obsidian, about the same size as Marcus’s desk up in the study. It was still supported by the waist high obsidian, however, and the same red runes glowed gently against the dark gleaming surface.
“There’s so much more detail!” Ella said, flying over to his side and hovering above the table. “Look, here are the dungeons, as before, but what is this? These little groups of figures?”
Marcus leaned over to look closer, then laughed. “It’s the adventurers!” he said with a smile. “Look, here’s Kairn, and here’s Anja, and this one over here is Dirk. Unmistakable!”
The figures were small, not much bigger than Marcus’s thumb, but they were perfect little renderings of Marcus’s friends. They looked as if they had been cast from silver, and they gleamed against the dark obsidian surface of the table. Marcus reached for the little figure of Dirk, but his instinct told him not to pick it up from the table.
He held a hand over it and watched as bright words, written in glowing light appeared next to the figure.
“It looks like the letters are under the surface of the table,” Ella said in wonder. It was true. The letters formed in golden light as they did in the augmentation view, but instead of being suspended in midair, as it were, they were displayed directly on the surface of the table. Marcus leaned a little closer to marvel at the letters. She was right, he saw. The letters were just under the surface of the black glass, shining through.
With a sudden jolt of recognition, Marcus moved back from the table. “Woah,” he said, “Ella, you see the script the letters are written in?”
“What about it… oh!”
For some reason, it gave Marcus a chill up his spine, and a glance at Ella’s face showed him that she was feeling the same. The words under the table glass were written in the same flowing, elegant script as the labels on the loot parcels had been.
Next to the little figure of Dirk, Marcus read:
Dirk of Nine Lives
Armor enchantment slot: Silence
Weapon enchantment slot: (empty)
Marcus nodded. He could see how this was going. He moved his hand to Anja’s model.
Anja Drakefell
Armor enchantment slot: (empty)
Weapon enchantment slot: Speed
Finally, he looked at Kairn’s readout.
Kairn Greymane
Armor enchantment slot: (empty)
Weapon enchantment slot: (empty)
Experimentally, Marcus reached for a spell. He slipped into the augmentation view, and as he did the images on the table changed. In the enchantment slots that were marked (empty) Marcus saw a space where he could place a spell. With interest, he saw that the filled enchantment slots did not seem to have any possibility to be changed.
His hand hovered over Kairn’s empty enchantment slots, and he held the spell there for a moment, about to place it. With a quick shake of his head, he withdrew the spell.
Ella looked at him questioningly.
He shrugged, letting the spell drop away and coming back out of the augmentation view. “It just feels wrong,” he said. “The armor enchantment may well be permanent—at least, I can’t see any option to remove the existing enchantments. Kairn should have a say in what enchantment goes where, I shouldn’t just do it without consulting him first. Also,” he added as an afterthought, “I don’t know what effect adding the enchantment would have on him. It might give him a shock to feel an enchantment applied without any explanation.”
“Yes, I agree with that,” Ella said. “That’s your good intention right there, not to use your dungeon powers without the consent of those affected. That’s good—you keep that u
p, and you’ll go far.”
She grinned at him, and he smiled back. He had not forgotten her warning about what happened to dungeon masters who did not have good intentions when using their powers. Such users were liable to be destroyed by the very powers they had created.
“What about the dungeons?” Ella asked. “What options do you have available there?”
Marcus shifted his attention from the model adventurers, and looked at the four miniature dungeon chambers represented on his table. These were little models made of a darker substance, with a clean gray color like unfired clay.
“Well,” Marcus said, “Here are the dungeons. Here’s the grove, where we are, and arranged around the grove we have the three combat chambers.” He pointed to them one by one. “Here’s the Bladehand chamber, which we’ve just run. Here’s the Harpy chamber, and over here is the Pirate’s Cove chamber.”
“Why are the Harpy and Pirate’s Cove chambers so unclear, do you think?” she asked.
It was true. While the Grove and the Bladehand chambers were both rendered in perfectly detailed little models, the Harpy chamber and the Pirate’s Cove chamber were unclear. Marcus could see them, and could even see some details that allowed him to know which was which, but there was a gray mist over them which couldn’t be penetrated, and the closer he looked at them the thicker and more obscure this gray mist became.
“I suppose,” Marcus said slowly, thinking it through, “that they are grayed-out like that because we haven’t explored them yet. They will also have achieved upgrades since the battle of the Underway, but they’ve not been opened since the upgrades have been achieved. That’s the difference. The Bladehand and the Grove chambers are visible because I’ve been in them and looked.”
Ella nodded. “I understand. That certainly makes sense. When will you explore them?”
“Oh, soon, I think—as soon as I’m rested and have the time. For now, though, I want to see what the options are for creating an entirely new dungeon.”
Marcus turned his attention to his dungeon levels. This time, he found that just focusing his intention brought up his dungeon master level. He didn’t need to go into the augmentation view to do it. The words floated, as before, just under the surface of the table. Marcus leaned over, and the shining light of the letters in the polished volcanic glass illuminated his face.
Dungeon Master: Level 3
Dungeon Chambers: 4
Dungeon fights: 9
Progress to next chamber: 225%
New Standard chambers available: 2. Create?
New Arena chamber available: 1. Create?
“Hold on a minute!” Marcus said excitedly as he read through the options. “What’s an Arena chamber? I’ve never heard of that before. Do you know what it is, Ella?”
He turned to her and found that she was grinning at him, wide-eyed and open mouthed. “I certainly do know what an Arena chamber is, but I never thought… that is, usually that’s a chamber that only becomes available to dungeon masters of at least level 10, and usually higher. You have that available already? That’s amazing!”
Marcus chuckled at her excitement. On the table, the letters glowed serenely up into the evening light. “But what is it?” he asked again.
“Oh,” she said, gathering her thoughts, “well, it’s what it says it is. It’s a fighting arena where the dungeon master can have duels with enemies, either dungeon monsters, or enemies from outside.”
“But couldn’t I do that in any chamber? What makes this one special?”
“I’m getting to that! The difference in this chamber is that you pick the monsters! In the arena chamber, the dungeon master has total control over what spawns and when. You can draw on all the monsters that exist within your dungeon system, and you’ll probably also get access to at least one new one that’s unique to the arena chamber.”
Marcus felt excitement course through him as he considered this. “So I can choose to summon monsters at will?” he said. “Imagine combining that with the Full Dungeon Meld spell that I was able to use in the final battle! I could summon the monsters and fight as the monsters, controlling them from inside!”
“Woah, I hadn’t thought of that, but you totally could do that if you wanted to!”
“Are there any other differences that I should know about?”
“Well,” Ella said, counting the points on her fingers, “the arena dungeon won’t close off from the outside world in the same way that the others do, because there’s no clearance mechanism. In the others, you have to clear the enemies before you can get out of the dungeon, but because in the Arena chamber you’re in total control, that doesn’t apply. What else? You can summon traps, too, I think, and again you can draw on any trap that already exists within your dungeon system.”
She thought for a moment before continuing. “There’s also some differences in the creation process for the dungeon chamber. It doesn’t use ingredients in the same way as the others do for the creation process. For the Arena chamber to evolve, you need to put a special token in the blank chamber, which you should get when you first enact the initiation spell. Um… you can also put one ingredient in to influence the environment, but that’s it. Oh, and of course there’s the most important part, which you shouldn’t forget.”
“Which, of course, you leave until last,” Marcus said with a teasing smile.
“I was getting to it!” Ella said, pretending to be offended, but smiling. “The most important thing about this? Creating an arena dungeon uses up the same resources as creating two regular dungeons.”
Marcus looked back at the last three stats of the dungeon master levels displayed on the table.
Progress to next chamber: 225%
New Standard chambers available: 2. Create?
New Arena chamber available: 1. Create?
“Ah, that’s why there’s two standard chambers available for creation, but only one Arena chamber,” he said.
Ella nodded. “Yes. As you know, your dungeon system builds up a creative resource as fights happen in them, which you then use to create dungeons. That’s the Progress to next chamber number. If you use that resource to create an Arena chamber, you’ll be using the full 200% that could otherwise create two standard chambers.”
Marcus thought about it for a moment. “I think it’s worth it, you know,” he said. “My three original chambers have already evolved entirely new versions, with new traps and new enemies, and better loot. I’ve not even finished exploring the new versions yet. Those three will be plenty for the moment. If the Arena chamber option is available to me at this level, I suspect there’s a reason for it. I’m beginning to get the idea that this dungeon system knows much more than I thought before. If it’s giving me the option of creating an Arena chamber, I think I should listen to that suggestion.”
Ella nodded in agreement. “It’s not unheard of for dungeon systems to take on a level of sentience over time,” she said. “It’s unusual at this level, but perhaps the huge amount of energy consumed during the battle of the Underway has something to do with it. I agree, you should listen to it if you feel like it’s trying to tell you something.”
She gave him a strange look. “You know,” she said, “this idea of the dungeons as a sentient being goes right to the heart of the dungeon system. It’s… well, it’s the core of what can go wrong as well. When a dungeon system becomes a living entity, it takes on a character of its own, with personality traits, likes and dislikes, and needs and desires too. It becomes like a powerful beast that you need to keep a good relationship with. You are the dungeon master, it’s true, but be aware of the dungeon’s sentience, since that seems to be what’s happening here. It’s no longer an unconscious entity for you to control as you like. The more powerful it becomes, the more you will have to cultivate and care for your relationship with it.”
“And you think that’s definitely happening?”
“I can’t explain what we’ve seen any other way. The writing on the labels, th
e unique gear, even the feeling that it was impatient to get rid of us after the last fight—there’s no other way to explain that except by accepting that on some level, the dungeon is directly aware of the people within its walls. Yes, Marcus, I think it’s undeniable. Your dungeon system has woken up.”
Marcus looked around himself at the peaceful grove. A warm breeze moved over the grass, the leaves of the trees stirred. The waterfall splashed contentedly into its deep pool, and the cheerful fire crackled and popped nearby.
He could feel it. There was a sense of presence in the dungeon, it was undeniable. There was no sense of threat there, just a steady watchfulness, a detached awareness of everything that was going on.
“You feel it too?” Ella asked quietly. Marcus nodded, and Ella gave a small shiver, half excitement and half fear.
“Do you think it can hear us? Understand what we’re saying?” he asked, looking around the grove.
Ella shook her head. “It’s unlikely that it’s hearing our words or understanding us in a direct way. It will be very aware of our intentions, though, and it will have a strong sense of our magic. It’s only just become aware, I think, and it’s still very young. Give it time, though, and it might learn to communicate directly with you.”
Marcus looked around, half expecting some sign of response from the environment, but there was nothing, just that continued steady sensation that some large presence was aware of them. It was more than a little disconcerting.
“Well,” Marcus said, giving himself a shake, “I’m sure everything is working out as it should, even if I can’t see that far ahead. I’ll take the dungeon’s advice, and create the Arena chamber.”
He turned to the table and held a hand over the words which were still displayed there. Looking at the line that read “New Arena chamber available: 1. Create?” he focused his intention on it.