As Ceras started to move toward the large cavern in his field of vision, his progress appeared:
XP 4 of 15 too level 6 Wizard (Task required for progressing from Apprentice to Journeymen completed)
He smiled thinking that at least I got some experiences from the attack, and said in his mind, "That strange as there was no quest for the experiences?"
"As we are connected, all that happens in the dungeon give us both experiences, so this should help you and myself gain levels," said Hidden-Caverns, "but we need to start the defenses. You're the one in charge with the imagination I hope to develop the defense." The last was said with a sarcastic tone of voices.
Ceras had just entered the large cavern on level two of the dungeon, as was looking around at the large open space thinking of what he should create.
"The dungeon has four levels, and this is the second level," he said out loud knowing that Hidden-Caverns would be listening to his musing, "I think that we should start here first and then expand our defenses to the other levels. I'd like to create a labyrinth on this level full of traps and monster to attack anything trying to get through."
"Sounds good to me," said Hidden-Caverns with a tiny bit of respect in his voice.
In the air, in front of Ceras, a three-dimension projected image appeared of the large cavern that he was standing in with details highlighted given him information about the surrounding rock in the area.
"This will help you develop the area, by the way, this is all in your mind; it just a representation of how I see the world. You use it by thinking of what you want to design, and the image will change so we both can see it," said Hidden-Caverns as the image rotated to show Ceras the cavern from all angles.
Trying out what Hidden-Caverns had said about thinking what the design should be Ceras first thought of a reception area, from the above tunnel, with several corridors leading off it. In the three-dimensional image, the imaged changed, showing what he had imagined. Not satisfied with the layout he changed to the image until he was happy with the layout. The next few hours were then full with Ceras creating a labyrinth full of a dead end, traps and lairs for monsters to ambush people.
As he reviewed his work, he was particularly pleased with one room he had created with a deep chasm with thousands of stone spikes at the bottom to impale anybody that tried to cross the thin exposed bridge, of they fall into the chasm. There were defensive positions for monsters to attack the oncoming horde of creature that tried to make it across the thin exposed bridge. Looking at other sections, he smiled at all the different trap he and made and killed the zone that was full of hidden monsters waiting to ambush anything that entered. Reviewing his creation, he still wanted to refine it more but was pleased with initial his design.
"I think that you have forgotten something," said Hidden-Caverns in a tone that spoke of knowing it all but not being too helpful.
"What would that be," as Ceras look at his work wondering what he could have missed.
"How are you going to get back and forth through the dungeon," said the Hidden-Caverns in a smarmy tone of voices as he had found some great fault in Ceras design.
Ceras looked at his maze that he had spent hours designing and thought that he's right, the overblown, self-important dungeon is right this time if I have to transverse this all the time it's going take me forever to get anywhere.
"I'm always right," said the self-important dungeon to try and antagonize Ceras more, "while you at it you might want to change the design so you can access different areas quickly as well."
As Ceras sat down and started to change his design to incorporated hidden, guarded paths as part of his labyrinth, he muttered to himself about the helpfulness of some dungeons.
By the end of a few more hours, he had something that he thought would work as he reexamined the three-dimensional image of the labyrinth.
"That should do, so do you just create it out of the rock around you magical?" said Ceras with a tone of curiosity as to how this change of the dungeon would work.
"I wish," said the dungeon with an earnest voice, "but for large scale work, we have to do it the hard way. While you've been having fun, I've created lots of help to do the hard work of construction."
As Hidden-Caverns said this, a table appeared in Ceras vision showing the amount of monster in the dungeon under his control.
Name of Monster
Level
Agility
HP
MP
Skills
Number in Dungeon
Rabid Rabbits
1
1
5
-
-
-
Forest Wolves
2
2
10
-
-
-
Fanged Rats
1
2
7
-
-
-
Fanged Rats Queen
3
4
21
-
-
-
Tusk Pig
3
4
30
-
Charge
-
Goblin
4
4
40
-
-
-
Goblin gang leader
5
3
60
-
-
-
Earth Trolls
5
1
100
-
-
20
Rock Troll
7
2
150
-
-
100
Cave fanged spiders
5
3
40
-
Poison fangs
100
Queen Cave fanged spiders
7
3
80
-
Poison fangs
1
Kobolds
5
3
50
1
Building
200
Banshee
8
5
120
-
Scream
5
"Wow that's a lot of kobolds and rock trolls, are they for the construction of the dungeon?" said Ceras in wonder.
"Great observation, "Hidden-Caverns said in, ‘you're getting better at this guessing. You might want to move as your in-construction site now."
Off in the dark edges of the caverns, Ceras could see the outline of vague shapes moving toward him. As the shapes got closer, he could see hundreds of kobolds and rock trolls walking toward the entrances of the caverns, where he was standing. The kobolds were wearing leather outfits over their bodies and vary in height between two to four feet, with scaly, hairless hides, reptilian heads, and tails. Their hides are typically a rust-brown or reddish black color, with ivory-colored horns. Their heads were dog-like, but some were more like crocodiles. Their eyes glow red that they can see in lightless conditions as they carried no touches. The scales covering their bodies were like that of an iguana or another large lizard. The scales that cover their tails are very fine so that they resemble the naked tails of rats that swished around helping their stability. Around their neck, they had necklaces full of teeth and other ornamentations. One of the front Kobolds came up to Ceras and saluted standing there with his well-groomed, regularly polishing their horns, claws, and teeth.
"Reporting for duty sir," said the well-groomed Kobolds, with a toothy smile that Ceras could see sharp pointed crocodile teeth all around the mouth.
"Thank you," said Ceras slightly bewilder with what was happing," go ahead and get to work."
This seemed to work as the Kobold started to shout orders for the wo
rk to commences and start to order the rock trolls around. Ceras watched in wonder as the Kobold's used the rock trolls to start breaking up a rock from the wall of the cavern with their large pounding fists that seemed to have grown spike of metal that they used as pick axes that broke up the rock. The rocks, of all colors that had been broken up, were moved toward the large piles by Kobold that seemed to be directing the rock trolls. Each pile seemed to be sorting a different type of rock by the colors and textures.
At each of these piles of accumulating rock fragments were other rock troll standing around and eating the rock. Ceras saw them gain bulk over time as they ate their fill of the rocks from the piles. When the rock trolls were bursting as if they could contain no more rocks the Kobold led them toward, where some other Kobold's had been clearing the ground and marking outlines to build structures on. Looking with amazement Ceras watch as the first rock troll bent down in a squatting position, as it slowly dawned on Ceras what was going to happen next, he watched in fascination as a semi liquid-solid passed out of the bottom of the troll as if it was pouring liquid stone. Once the liquid stone had been extruded by the troll, the Kobold moved in and shaped the stone into the final design with wooden tools.
After watching this slightly disturbing process for a few minutes, Ceras started to see the formation of a wall from the caves level floor. Walking over to a section of the wall that seemed to have been finished, he placed his hand on the wall expecting it to be slightly soft, but all he felt was solid rock. As he examined the rock, he saw that it was granite that had a smooth polished surface. Surprised, he ran his finger along the side of the wall and felt no bumps or seems. Amazed with the construction, he hit a few times with all his strength that he could muster, only resulting in a solid thud and an aching hand that he healed with his magical healing spell.
"Great way of testing the wall," spoke an amused tone from Hidden- Caverns, "I suggest trying your head next time as it might be less painful as it's so thick."
"Ho, Ho, and Ho," thought Ceras back.
"By the way, your friends are waiting outside for you to let guide them in," announced the dungeons voice, "for some reason they seem to be wary of the spider guarding the entrances.”
Chapter 3 Helpful Friends
Ceras started to run up to the first level passing the Banshee that was sucking some of the life essences out of the rabbit they had killed. The sight of them with the bodies of the rabbits to their faces that were coved in blood, as energy flowed into the Banshee with blooding suck sound effects, sickened Ceras, so he passed them quickly moving upward toward the spider webs on level one of the dungeon.
The spider webs parted as he thought about how he would get through and as if in answer to his every whim it seemed that the dungeon would mold itself to his desires.
“That right oh great and powerful dungeon master,” said an annoying tone of voice in his head from Hidden-Caverns, “we are all here to serve you every desire!”
“You better believe it,” thought Ceras back as he smiled and passed through the corridor that had been created by the webs with the spider pulling on the cords of the silken cord.
Once he was out into the daylight, he saw his friend up against a bolder trying to keep warm out of the shared wind.
“Took you long enough to get here,” said Rhef with her usual blunt manner and she strolled forward to meet Ceras, “I hope its warming inside the caves.”
All of them had bags that were full of the item on their backs as if they had been on a shopping spree collecting as much as they could.
“We brought some items from the town,” said Grikius as his dog Apollo pocked his head out of this clothing and snared at the spiders, “most of it is junk, but Symania says that she read some lure that dungeons can repair and duplicate items.”
“Is that right?” enquired Ceras to the dungeon.
“Yes, anything that is dropped within the dungeon we can duplicate and improve on, but I have to have the right materials to make it and if its magic I need to know to spell. Normal this is a problem with any magical item, but as you’re a wizard-warrior we may be the first dungeon to be able to use human magic.” said a happy sounding Hidden-Caverns as if he was salivating at the thought of being able to work magic.
Ceras instructed the group of adventures just to drop the bags anywhere. As the dungeon started to absorb the equipment everybody but Ceras was astonished by the glowing light that was covering the equipment. A table appeared in front of Ceras telling him what had been absorbed into the dungeon.
Equipment Name
Type
Effect
Worth
Spell book
Magic
-
150c
Steel dagger
Weapon
Always sharp
100c
Simple Bow
Weapon
-
70c
Arrows quivers
Weapon
-
10c
Arrow head
Weapon
-
1c
Iron dagger
Weapon
-
20c
Shovel
General
-
10c
Leather scraps
General
-
-
Wool Cloth
General
-
-
Needle kit
General
-
-
Seed of many plants
General
-
-
Pots
General
-
10c
Pans
General
-
10c
Iron bar
General
-
-
Steel bar
General
-
-
Copper scraps
General
-
-
Scraps of wood
General
-
-
Saplings
General
-
-
Cooked meets (Unknow)
General
-
12c
Collection of insects
General
-
-
Rats
General
-
-
Mice's
General
-
-
Beer
General
-
-
Duck feathers
General
-
-
"What a load of junk," said Hidden-Caverns in a voice that seemed to expect more as if he was a bratty child opening his Christmas present and only seeing clothing.
"Work with it!" said Ceras in a loud voice as the others looked him questioning.
"Whom are you speaking to?" said Rinaldo as he looked around for another person.
"It the dungeon," said Ceras with a sigh," he was just complaining about the stuff. Hidden-Caverns could you please make yourself heard to my friends."
"If I must," said the dungeon aloud so everybody could hear him, "I'm Hidden-Caverns the intelligent part of the Dungeon team. All of you I recognized from the lesser mind of the other part of the Dungeon management team, so no need for you to introduce yourselves."
"Well, now that we are all introduced, I need some help with defending this dungeon. Hidden-Caverns please can you show them the same three-dimensional map and other dungeon facilities that I have access to and get the creature to obey their command," said Ceras
"If I most," said the eustatic sounding voice of the dungeon as the three-dimensional image appeared in front of the group of adventures.
For the next while, Ceras explained the map of the labyrinth of wh
at he was trying to create with his traps and maze in the level below. It didn't take long for the ever-critical Rhef to start making some pointed subjections about his design that started to get on Ceras nerves, mostly because she was right.
"Why don't you have a go them," said Ceras to Rhef in a forced patient tone of voices.
"I will then, see you later," she said as she walked off to the second level of the dungeon.
"I like her," said Hidden-Caverns, somehow expressing a smile in his tone of voice.
As the others discussed what needs to be done, Symania wanted to arrange some living quarters as they would be here for a while, and Grikius wanted to take to Hidden-Caverns about the dungeon system in more detail as he had heard that dungeon produced money. Rinaldo and Ceras were going to stay at close to the entrance of the dungeon to defend it if any new hordes of monsters attacked, while the defenses were being prepared.
--
Rhef was walking with speed and determination toward the second level where the labyrinth was being created. Her creative juices were flowing with the idea as she imaged designs of how to produces killer traps for the defense of the dungeon. Rhef admitted to herself that Ceras plans had been good, but they had not been great, and she was the one to make them great with a few finishing touches.
Around a corner on her way downward, she was deep in thought, so she did not notice the five banshees until she was upon them. Looking up, her first reaction was to scream and then run, but then she noticed that they were ignoring her as they feasted on the fluffy balls all around them. Ducking under them, she quickly passed the gruesome sight, and wonder what they were eating but not wanting to examine them closely ran on and downwards.
At the entrance to the large cavern, that was such an open space before; she saw hundreds of kobolds and rock troll's construction wall and other structure.
One of the more distinguished looking kobolds came over to her and said in an annoyed voice, "The dungeon says that they're going to be some changes to the plan and you're the person who's going to be instructing me to what needs to happen."
Dungeon Master Page 3