The Dungeon Without a System

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The Guild Hall, Medea Island, Kalenic Sea

After the Delve

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It was all rather quiet after the second group ran my first floor. The leaderless first group left the day after, with Meser glaring at the entrance to my dungeon until I was too far away to see. It was a little creepy and foreboding, not gonna lie. It was made worse because the Crab Knight absorbed half of Rorgas's mana, leaving me a bit in the dark with regards to his life.

One of many siblings, lived a comfortable life, struck out with his sister to make a name for himself. The memories were lacking in details and names, which I assume went to the now-deceased Crab Knight.

Shaking off that tingling down a spine that doesn't even exist, I turned my mental eyes back to my dungeon.

The crabs had performed well, but I felt that they were being brushed aside by guilders too easily. There should be no "easy" floors in my dungeon. The obvious answer was to give them the ability to use magic but I felt that was a bad idea. To do that I would need to invest a lot more mana into them, upping the size of their cores and impressing how to use magic into each of their minds individually. Making my first level trash mobs have such a high start-up cost wasn't desirable.

So, when quality was out of reach, quantity was just as applicable.

I'd already experienced this myself, throwing waves and waves of crabs at the parties delving me. If I made every crab just a little better, then that adds up to a whole lot better. I upped the toughness of my crab's shells, grew them another few inches and increased their brain sizes by more than enough to perform group tactics without me needed to be an intermediary.

By extension their worship of myself and their veneration of the Chosen Crab Knight increased tenfold, along with the spontaneous generation of a language.

I might have made them too intelligent.

Or, maybe just intelligent enough. They were obviously happy to throw themselves at my enemies. Like ants; 'For the Core' and all that baloney.

I increased the size of their breeding rooms and tunnels, where they formed their own communities. I let them take care of their own breeding, lowering their reproductive numbers from thousands per breeding to a couple of dozen, and the growth rate to a week. I'll tweak this over the next few weeks to make sure there are always enough crabs to defend the floor and a sizeable helping in reserve.

It's strange. I've made three floors and two have species with basic sentience.

The stalactite traps I enchanted, making 'pressure plates' of mana under the sand to detect humans. Once triggered, it would release a stalactite 'glued' to the ceiling by mana. I'd still need to replace the traps, but no longer needed to trigger them manually. With this, my first floor went from micro-managing hell to largely hands-off. All I needed to do was empower the bosses and replace traps, now.

Anyway! That's enough of that. To the second floor!

The fish hadn't been tested yet, though that would likely change soon. I'll look for parts of the maze to improve, traps to tweak and monsters that could use a tune-up. The third floor was much the same. It's untested monsters and environment giving me very little data with which to change it.

Logically, the only thing to do now was keep digging.

I had the perfect animal to monsterize, and an appropriate theme for this floor.

How does "The Skaven Warren" work, for a maze-like set of hobbit-sized tunnels filled with giant, vicious rats?

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Three Days Later.

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"Welcome to Medea." Layla said, inclining her head at the Guilders disembarking the ship. "We've been waiting eagerly since we heard you were coming." The first man off the groaning gangplank, a veritable mountain of muscle and metal, stared down at her with a hurt look on his face.

"Ah! Little Layla! You wound me with such a cold greeting." He kneeled, a smile gracing his handsome face. He opened his arms wide. Layla's serious expression melted into a happy smile.

"It's good to see you, uncle." She said, hugging the man for all he was worth. Behind him, someone cleared their throat.

"Get out of the way, you big lump. Let me see my niece." The woman said. Laughing, her uncle Jerrad Losat stood and moved aside to reveal an albino lady gliding down the gangplank. Her eyes were, like Layla's, covered by a black silk blindfold. Layla curtsied to her aunt.

"Aunt Isid. It's lovely to see you." She said. Isid smiled daintily down at the younger and slightly shorter girl.

"Oh none of that, dear." She insisted, waving a hand through the air. "There is a time for formality, and a time to disregard it. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have married this one." Isid ignored her husband's sudden outcry. Three other Guilders joined her aunt and uncle on the pier.

"These are our current party members." She continued. "Lieza is a lightning mage; Platinum, like Jerrad and I." Layla shook hands with the woman, whose mana rushed and sparked through and around her body without rest.

"This is Lione, our ranged expert and Ferai, a cleric of Unna." Layla shook hands with the man covered in monster leathers, then bowed to the man in robes. "I assume you have rooms prepared?" Isid finished.

"Of course." She answered, "Though our little colony lacks much, they at least made a basic guild hall a priority." A short walk down the pier and along the beach's edge had them reach the wooden structure. Before they entered, Isid stopped, turning to face the dungeon's entrance. Layla likewise stopped, and joined her aunt.

The dungeon's manastream had increased noticeably in size in the last few days, the speed and width both. Privately, Layla wondered what the dungeon could be using all that mana for. Many things, some potentially good for them and some of them horrible to contemplate. Hopefully, no one would push the dungeon enough that if felt it needed to... remove us all as a threat.

She had also thought briefly on the nature of dungeons herself, not long ago. Why did they tolerate Guilders delving them? What were they getting out of it? With the amount of mana they absorbed, surely they could create whatever they wanted... Another mystery not even the many dungeon masters across the many kingdoms of this world had discovered the answer to.

"That unearthly light..." Jerrad mused, her uncle having joined the woman in their observation. "That would be the large mana-lights? How did you describe them in your report... 'on the verge of explosion at all moments' I believe?" Layla nodded.

"Indeed. It was... most unsettling to observe." She admitted. "But enough of that. Let's get you all settled. A proper briefing can wait until tomorrow. Our cook has quickly become adept at utilizing the local fish in a great assortment of ways." She confided.

And so, they had a wonderful evening. Isid inquired of Layla's progression in her abilities. (Satisfactory, thank you). Felin was goaded into an arm wrestling competition with her uncle. (Which he lost, terribly).

It was the next morning when they all found themselves in her office, going over all the information they had on the dungeon; it's layout, monsters and recent behavior.

"You've really only explored the first floor? I thought you would have reached the fourth by now," Jerrad exclaimed. Layla sighed at her uncle.

"It's a Lost Dungeon. Age unknown. We have no clue how intelligent it is, or how it would react to us going deeper. It tried its best to kill Felin and I when we first delved it, and it did kill one of our party members. Since then, it's seemed content to let us run the first floor, take the mana water and leave. If we had attempted deeper it might not have been so benevolent." She explained, then frowned. "To be honest, I'm not sure if anyone ranked less than platinum would survive exploring a floor for the first time."

Jerrad reached over and gently clapped his hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, little lady. We'll be just fine." Layla gave him a smile but inwardly, she wondered.

"I think we're as prepared as we could be," Isid suddenly declared. "Let's go."

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This new group was no joke.

They pushed through my crabs easily, even when I resorted to the wave method. Speaking of, they made special note of that.

"Wave attacks. The dungeon is worried about us." Isid said offhandedly, when they'd defeated the latest wave.

Hm. Maybe a little. I don't know how they'll fare against my next three floors. Hopefully they're as thrown by the layout and monsters as I think they should be.

They handily defeated the Crab Knight, expecting his fire magic and preparing for it. They took it's core, filled a flask with mana-water, then proceeded down the staircase.

The first foray into my labyrinth had them follow the mana-flow through the maze. This path was completely dry, and took them ten minutes to find themselves back at the staircase. Isid frowned.

"It's layered and twisted the manastream through the maze." Jerrad nodded. The second attempt followed the right-hand rule. This time, the path took them through a flooded tunnel. They stopped at the edge of the water, staring down at the black water as it reflected the light of their torches.

Jerrad took point. He waded into the water, down the steady incline. It was only when he reached the point where it evened off that I struck.

He had heavy metal armor and full coverage. This in mind, I pointed a group of Bloodfish his way. The big, red, sharp-toothed fish struck quick and fast. They struck not his armor, but the visible straps. In one bite, the thin leather was pierced and ripped away. At the first impact, Jerrod knew something was wrong and began wading out of the black, churning water. The fish struck another three times before he finally made it out of the water.

The rest of the party watched, blinking in astonishment, as Jerrod's waist and leg armor came apart, falling to the wet stone.

"I think there are monsters in the water." He stated, ignoring that he now stood in his under-clothes.

"You think?" Isid drawled, sardonically. "Fish, or something else sea-going with sharp teeth. The dungeon is directing them, given they targeted the straps. It's a warning. 'I could have just killed you, but I only removed your armor.'" She took a breath. "Well, we wouldn't be Guilders if we folded at the first sign of danger. Lieza shock the water, then ward us from the lightning."

The mage obliged, a stream of electricity leaping from her outstretched hand into the water. My fish died in the dozens, though the ones who survived snuck off to the breeding pools, now possessing a very mild resistance to electricity.

With Isid holding an actual mage-light under the water, coincidentally showing me how it should work, the group moved on. None of them harvested the fish for Cores, though they hadn't for the basic crab monster either.

Passing through this shallowed tunnel, they continued on. Several more shallower tunnels followed. All were electrified before they waded through, and the survivors were bundled off to breed and experiment with.

They passed the first fully submerged tunnel with ease though they looked miserable, fully soaked as they were.

It was when they found themselves back at the staircase that Isid's calm cracked, even if slightly. Another attempt, this time following the left-handed method. This time they went through more flooded and half-flooded tunnels than dry. Dripping wet, exhausted and out of patience, for the third time they wandered back into the entrance room.

"This is incredibly... frustrating." She growled, through clenched teeth. "The one who designed this maze; the dungeon or it's old masters, knew common methods to navigate them. They made sure that we couldn't just rush through. We're going to have to explore every tunnel and passage in this dammed maze." She stood there a moment, breathing heavily after her rant. A few seconds later she was rather more composed.

"Let's get out of here. We need to better prepare for this new challenge," she stated. Sounds good to me. If they have to leave and come back, then I have more time to adjust the fish and maybe move the walls to mess with them. Each of the party members reached into a pocket, or pouch, then disappeared in a flash of light.

Teleportation? Sounds interesting. Something to figure out later. Absently, I noticed the party appear outside my dungeon, in cordoned-off area that must have been created for this purpose.

My mind was already racing with ways to bolster my second floor monsters. First things first, let's figure out how to make them not all die the moment someone casts sparks at the water.

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