Dungeon world 5 a dungeo.., p.18
Dungeon World 5: A Dungeon Core Experience, page 18
He had to make sure not to activate them for too long, however, as he discovered that a Beam that was focused on a particular section of his maze for more than thirty seconds would start to melt even the Magisteel. Luckily, Fred had experience with altering his Defenses via the Defense Alteration Program.
Randomized Invisible Beam Pattern (Base Cost: 250 Light Mana)
Beams 1 [ ] 2 [ ] 3 [ X ] 4 [ ]
Beam 1 Angle 0 [ ] 180 , 0 [ ] 180 Random [ X ]
Beam 2 Angle 0 [ ] 180 , 0 [ ] 180 Random [ X ]
Beam 3 Angle 0 [ ] 180 , 0 [ ] 180 Random [ X ]
Beam Diameter [ * ]
Intensity [ * ]
Duration [ * ]
Interval [ N/A ] Random [ X ]
Opacity [* ]
Trigger Sensitivity [ * ]
Trigger Area [ * ]
As a result, Fred created a whole new blueprint that he called the Randomized Invisible Beam Pattern; again, the name wasn’t overly original, but it described what he had designed quite well. First, he discovered that the Defense (which was placed along a flat surface such as a wall, floor, or ceiling) could have up to four different beams, though each additional beam increased the Base Cost substantially; he settled on three as the best cost-to-result ratio, as four would be just barely possible for him to create, and would take most of his Light Mana. Four weren’t really needed, either, as three would be plenty for his purposes.
He also was able to randomize the angle at which the three beams emerged from the Defense, which helped, in a strange way, to reduce the Base Cost – necessary, because at that point, it was over 400 Light Mana for a single Defense. That amount went up, too, because he increased the duration during which the entire Defense would continue to operate, though a random Interval was also included to reduce the Cost; from his experiments, the Interval turned on the beams for a period of time lasting from 1 to 15 seconds, before turning off for another random amount of time. Just to pile on to the Base Cost, he brought the Opacity all the way down, turning the brightly visible white beam to the point where it could barely be seen.
To reduce the cost to more manageable levels, Fred made the Beam Diameter much smaller, though he kept the Intensity the same. It was now just barely as wide as the shaft of a nail used to build houses, but it didn’t lack any of its damaging properties. With enough of the beams set up inside the passageways, along with some Blinding Flash Defenses, he really didn’t think it was going to matter. Size doesn’t matter, right? As long as it gets the job done, I can work with this.
After making sure there were multiple windows looking inside the room from the outside, connected to his exterior tunnel, placed in cleverly angled places so they would be hard to initially spot, he covered them with Viewing Portals and called Roady down to check it out.
“Wow! I’ve never seen anything like this before; what are those mirrors made from?” asked the Light Shard, moving from window to window on either side of the maze, which was made easier through some connecting tunnels underneath the entire room.
“It’s Magisteel—”
“What?! That’s impossible! The amount that we needed for the construction of the prison took years to create and millions of gold pieces’ worth of materials; are you telling me this entire room is full of Magisteel?”
“Well…not completely. There’s only a very thin sheet of the metal covering the basic stone, which should help protect it from being destroyed.” Fred had not known that it was that difficult to create; to him, it was fairly easy, now that he knew how to utilize Earth Mana for its creation.
“That’s still amazing; do you think you could create weapons or armor made from Magisteel?” Roady asked, a hopeful lilt to his voice.
Fred thought it was possible, but not something he could do right now. “Most likely, but I’ll need an example of a weapon or piece of armor made of Magisteel to understand how it looks in those shapes; I know what iron and steel weapons look like, but this material is…different, in a fundamental way. Right now, I can make sheets, bars, and probably pointy sticks, but that’s probably about all.”
“Hmph…well, I’ll see what I can dig up as far as that goes. Still, I’m impressed at what you’ve created here. Is this…my room?”
“Exactly. Here, let me show you what Defenses I have available to set up in here, and then you can figure out how to best utilize them to coincide with what you can do.” It didn’t take long to explain everything, and Fred left Roady to contemplate the best strategy; he found that he could split his concentration as a Dungeon Core much more easily than he could in his Human body, so he was able to follow along and place Defenses where he was told – all while starting to dig out the next room.
Fred knew that Ravenne needed her own room to defend, even though she had been fairly useful during the last attack, chipping in where she had the greatest effect. To that end, he built a room much longer (around 300 feet) than wide (around 10 feet), though it was taller than it was wide (30 feet high, in fact). As opposed to having the entrance at the bottom of the room, however, the entrance was about two-thirds of the way up the wall.
That originally caused an issue with his dungeon system, however, as it wouldn’t let him create that without a “safe” way down; apparently, anything over a five-foot drop from the entrance was considered unsafe, and, therefore, couldn’t be created. It was one of the reasons he couldn’t just create a 500-foot-deep pit and let everything that invaded his dungeon just fall to their deaths, or at least be trapped down an inescapable pit. There always had to be a way to get to the exit, even if it was convoluted or difficult; it was something – even with his new-found knowledge of Mana and Power – that couldn’t be altered, as much as it would help him right now.
The solution was easy enough, as he remembered that he had done something similar back in Gatecross. At the time, he had built a winding bridge, which crossed a large pit that was filled with a maelstrom of water, where Flower Trippers had done their best to knock invading Defenders down below. In that instance, he had created the bridge first and then the pit, so there was no real difficulty there – so, all he needed to do now was repeat that…sort of.
Instead of a winding bridge, Fred’s new creation was completely straight, tied to the Air Mana upkeep of the room, and only 2 feet wide on each side. When it was all created, and he finished digging out the rest of the room, it looked like a thin, stone pillar that was laid on its side, floating without any supports of any kind – the upkeep kept it intact. He briefly thought about using some of his Adventurer-based Abilities to eliminate the narrow walkway after it was constructed (thereby making it even more difficult to cross to the other side); some mysterious Dungeon Core intuition told him that, if he succeeded, his entire dungeon upkeep would disappear until it was fixed. That was the last thing that he wanted; so, he left the walkway alone.
That didn’t mean he left the rest of the room alone. First, he used more Earth Mana and – inspired by his conversation with Roady – he created sharp, pointed sticks made from Magisteel. They were literally needle-thin and only 2 feet long, because he needed a lot of them and it would’ve cost a lot more Mana to create them much thicker or larger; nevertheless, the set of 7,000 of them he was able to make with 270 Earth Mana was enough to attach them over the over the floor, walls, and ceiling of the room, sticking straight out. This only left a three-foot gap on either side of the walkway, and anything traveling down the path would have to be careful not to fall off.
This, naturally, was the crux of the design behind the defenses of the room. Ravenne had multiple Options she could use, to knock invading Defenders off the walkway; and even as she was still increasing in Shard Level, she was gaining some…interesting…Abilities. Combined with the Blueprints that Fred had obtained from the Supreme of Air, this final area of his dungeon was going to be extremely deadly for anything that tried to break through to his Core Room.
Before he set up anything else other than a few small Viewing Portals along the side, he called Ravenne to check it out. To say that she was impressed was an understatement.
“I love what you’ve done with the place! I know that if I ever saw this when going through a dungeon, I’d be hesitant to even set foot in the room! It makes me squirm, just thinking about accidentally falling on those spikes.” She looked around for a moment and then frowned. “The only thing is…it seems too easy. What is supposed to be the major danger here, other than obviously accidentally falling off?”
“Ah, that’s actually why I called you here. This is your room to defend, and I need your input in how you want to go about that,” Fred requested, before telling her what types of Defenses he had available to set up. They talked about it for a little while, but right around that time, Fred found that he had finally obtained enough Air Mana, after paying for the upkeep of the room to create a Defender unlike anything else he had in his dungeon – at least one that he could create himself.
At the end of the walkway, just in front of the exit leading to his Core Room and the Guild Barracks, Fred pulled out one of his newest Defender Blueprints and filled it with Air Mana. He felt extremely drained after using a total of 500 Mana, leaving him with only ten extra Air Mana in his Core; but it was worth it. Finally, after all this time in multiple dungeons, Fred had a “Boss Monster” of sorts. A Devastating Wind Elemental.
The Elemental was huge: It fit in the 10-foot width of the room – just barely – and extended down and around the walkway at least 30 feet. It was wider on top, looking almost conical-shaped, and it consisted of rapidly circulating air, with a very faint, pale-yellow color to it; Fred had to stare at it before he realized what it was supposed to be: a tornado. A miniature whirlwind that was inside his dungeon, floating up and down the end of the room like it couldn’t stay still. I guess that makes sense; moving air rarely stays in the same place, after all.
For all that it was a tornado, the Devastating Wind Elemental didn’t look overly dangerous. Sure, Fred supposed that being in that wind would probably knock quite a few smaller invaders off the walkway; something as simple as – for example – a Stone Golem would have no problem staying on, because it was heavy enough. To test that theory, Fred expended 25 of his Earth Mana to create that Defender and ordered his Wind Elemental to stop it from going through.
As he had suspected, the Golem was buffeted a little from the wind raging around it; other than sliding a little to the side as it got closer to the Elemental, nothing much happened. Suddenly, two bulges of darker yellow air appeared on either side of the tornado, looking like, if anything, arms. Faster than he could easily follow, one of the arms punched out and the end solidified upon contact with the Earth Defender, hitting it so hard that it practically shattered as it flew off the walkway. The chunks of the Golem crashed into about a dozen of the Magisteel needles, where they were broken apart into even smaller pieces before fading away.
The Magisteel needles held up remarkably well, despite their thin nature; unfortunately, more than half of the ones that were hit had broken off of the wall. “It looks like I’ll have to attach them with something a little more durable.”
“Probably a good idea; we can’t have this whole place falling apart after the first few dozen monsters roll through here. Watching that thing gave me some ideas, though…” Ravenne mused, a thoughtful look on her face. After that, they continued their lively exchange of ideas on defense that they had started earlier, trading ideas back and forth.
Eventually, Fred and his Air Shard developed a plan that seemed like it would work, and when she helped him, with a little more Mana from her growing pool, he was able to set them up without too much difficulty.
All of that took time, however; when they were finished, it seemed like the time was rapidly approaching when the Fire and Dark factions would arrive. From what he could observe, they would both arrive in about an hour and a half, so that didn’t really give him enough time to create another complete room for defense. Well, technically I could, but then I might be a little low on Mana at that point, and I wouldn’t have time to absorb enough Mana from the environment to fill up again. Instead of designing a whole new defensive room full of traps and unique characteristics for defense, all he did was create a large empty room that had more Viewing Portals along the left and right sides; it would be a last-ditch fallback area if it came to that.
After that – which didn’t consume too much in the way of his Mana at all – he thought it was a good time to ensure everyone and everything else was prepared for the coming assault. He kept up his constant transfer of Mana to the Shards, while they rested, along with the Core Power Guild members, ready for him to call for them to take their places. They all had a general idea of when they were going to be needed – courtesy of Fred’s ability to finally see his territory again – so they were going to take as much time to rest as possible.
An hour before Fred estimated their visitors would arrive, he was absently looking through Allroads and was just about to wake up everyone in his dungeon…when there was a commotion along every section of the city’s walls. At first he thought that the factions were finally sending in their Defenders along the border, but when he looked, they continued to sit, basically motionless, along his territory. It was when he noticed that the Adventurers and the guards along the wall weren’t looking down at the forces along the border – they were looking farther out.
Hmm…I guess that means they don’t want to wait anymore.
Part IV – Advancement
Chapter 17
Agelstein raced toward the walls within minutes of the alarm going up; he just happened to be nearby in the DAS Headquarters, checking up on something, when a commotion outside caused him to walk outside to see what was going on. Instructing the squad of Allroads Guards that had come with him to follow, he rushed through the crowd of residents, merchants, and even some low-Rated Adventurers who were fleeing from the northern walls. He couldn’t help but think, Is this it, finally? Is this the attack we’ve been preparing for?
Ever since Fred’s territory had suddenly shrunk, half a day ago just before dusk, everyone in the city had been on edge. Possessing the knowledge that there was a vast army of monsters somewhere in the distance, that you might or might not be able to see from the walls – depending on your vision, of course – was vastly different than seeing that same army appear within a few hundred feet of the walls. To say that the residents – and many Adventurers, to tell the truth – were freaked out was putting it mildly.
Luckily for everyone, Agelstein and other members of the Allroads Government had been informed, fairly quickly, of what had happened, so they were able to calm most of the populace so that there wasn’t rioting. In the last ten hours, the Government also started to take matters into their own hands, since it appeared as though Fred the Human/Dungeon Core had failed to keep his end of the deal and stop the monsters from reaching the city. Agelstein knew for a fact – through his own experience with the man, and information from Roady and Chareese – that Fred was doing the best he could. But that didn’t look like it was going to be enough.
So, that was why the Government had opened all of its coffers and started buying up everything they could get their hands on from the Merchant Quarter. They weren’t hoarding it, either; they were distributing weapons, armor, and other important items that were necessary to survival to everyone willing to help with the fight that looked destined to come. The Council had also convinced the DAS to start handing out all of their SDIAs free of charge, which was part of the reason Agelstein had been at the DAS Headquarters building, instead of overseeing the deployment of guards along the border.
Getting a promotion tended to add to his list responsibilities, somewhat.
He didn’t really think that he deserved a promotion, especially after what he had done to Roady and Ravenne, but he guessed that the Government losing two of their most trusted and powerful members meant that someone had to step up and take on more responsibility. Agelstein didn’t really mind the extra duties, but he just hated that it came at the expense of Chareese, Roady, and Ravenne getting demoted to being junior members.
It made sense, unfortunately, because they were now tied to Fred and his Dungeon Core self inexorably, and that kind of thing tended to affect loyalties just a bit. Not that he expected them to do something that would hurt those they had sworn to protect decades ago, but he could see how it might be difficult to follow orders from the Council that might deliberately hurt Fred or those with him. Especially since Agelstein had doubts that he would be able to go through with something like that, given that Fred had risked his life to bring Chareese, Roady, and – of course – Ravenne, back to life.
He was just glad that the Council had allowed them to live down in the dungeon underneath the city, instead of locking them up or exiling them, which was usually what happened with members of the Allroads Government who had divided loyalties. Those were a bit extreme in measure, but examples of it being the correct procedure was seen throughout history, including the secret histories of the city that not many were able to peruse at leisure. From what he was able to read as Chareese’s second-in-command, it didn’t always work out for the best, but most of the time it did.
Their loyalty wasn’t really a big deal right now, though, because he had to get to the walls to see what was happening. He was being apprised of the situation down below, and supposedly, within an hour, they were going to have another attack; they were reportedly better prepared for this next attack, however. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened when the Plant and Water dungeon monsters attacked; all he knew was that it was a close thing, and they all barely just survived. He had been down there periodically checking on the large team of Governmental Guards, preventing anything from coming up into the city, and from what little he saw of the monsters heading down into the dungeon, he didn’t envy those inside.
