B3 C50: Fabrication Forge

As it turned out, the system might have been a bit preemptive in telling us about the room we’d discovered. That was because, rather than spitting us out directly into the room in question, our secret door opened up to reveal a tunnel, or, given that it was coated with the same steely sheen as everything else, perhaps “hallway” was more apt a description.

Of course, that wouldn’t have been too noteworthy, save for the fact that it was a long hallway. So long, in fact, that we were growing concerned.

“Are we sure this isn’t the secret room?” Emin questioned. “Perhaps we’re stuck in some sort of illusion or loop, doomed to walk forever until we perish.”

With how long we’d already walked, I was tempted to agree, but no. As far as my Perception skills were telling me, it really was just a long hallway. I said as much. Of course, I could have been wrong, though. Something had been bothering me since we’d opened the hidden door, and I kept finding my mind returning to it.

“Hey, have any of you ever heard about a secret room like this? If someone else had already found it, they would have said something, right?” At least, that’s how it had gone back in Emer’Thalis when I’d found the secret garden room.

“Such a thing was not in any of the supplemental readings for class, no.” Naturally, Emin had read the supplemental readings. “Though that could mean any number of things. Perhaps it’s new -- dungeons are known to mix things up from time to time. Or perhaps no one’s discovered it yet. I doubt many people with your Perception are spending much time on the first floor of the dungeon.”

That was true, I supposed. Doubly true if we included all the other requirements to get this far -- mining, flight, fire magic, illusion piercing, and mental magic, just to name a few. With all that in mind, I could believe that no one else had stumbled upon this room yet, but if anything, that just made things even stranger. It almost felt like the entire puzzle was too perfect for us. What other first-floor adventuring party was rocking a miner with illusion resistance and mental magic?

“Or it could be that people already have found it” Emin continued. “After all, some rooms won’t appear if you’ve been told exactly how to reach them, so they’re banned from being placed in dungeon guides. We’d never even know.” It sounded as though that would be all he said on the matter. A moment later, however, he shook his head as if just recalling something. “Of course, it could also be a Pre… ah, but never mind.”

He trailed off as if content to leave it there, leaving it to Nella to voice what we were all thinking, if perhaps more forcefully than I would have put it: “Nuh-uh, Knowledge boy! Now we’re all wondering. Finish your thought.”

The rebuke brought Emin’s hand to the back of his skull, sheepishly scratching at his head in a well-practiced manner. “Well. A Prestige event. You know, when a dungeon will occasionally include special quirks if your Prestige is high enough. They tend to be a bit more personalized and with better rewards. It was all in the supplemental readings, right?”

Nella scoffed. “Of course I know about Prestige events from the supplemental readings,” she retorted, clearly not having read the supplemental readings, “I just didn’t mention them because that wouldn’t apply to us. I probably have the most Prestige out of any of us, and I doubt even I would trigger something like that if they’re that special.”

Emin gently bowed his head, conceding the point. “Precisely. That’s why I, uh, figured it wasn’t worth mentioning.”

The group fell into an equally bored and pensive silence after that, and on we walked through the infuriatingly long tunnel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The endless tunnel, as it turned out, wasn’t actually endless after all. When at last we saw the hallway open up in the distance, all of us breathed a sigh of relief. Those same sighs were rapidly sucked back up with a set of gasps, however, as we took in the interior of the secret room before us.

Even before we could take everything in, the first thing to hit us was the heat. The temperature progressively rose as we neared the room as if we were slowly marching head first into a furnace. Almost automatically, I continued to cast Chill on myself, going so far as to summon my frost armor once we got closer.

Unfortunate as it was, the cause of said heat wasn’t a mystery, either.

Spanning nearly the entirety of the room was a massive pit.

And filling that pit was a sea of bubbling, churning, lava.

Although, does being in a dungeon technically count as being underground? So would it actually be magma then? I shook myself out of it, focusing on the more important details for now.

Only two sections of the room were exempt from the maybe-lava, maybe-magma, both of which were paved with a burnished brown sort of metal, like an odd mixture of bronze and gold. Elaborate geometric patterns were embossed and filagreed into the metal, and where the paved surfaces met the lava pit, tall railings separated the two, no less ornate than the floors.

The first such section was a bridge leading to the very center of the room. And there, at the center, was it.

“What in the blazes…” A series of awed exclamations came unbidden from all of us as we stared at the thing hanging there. “What do you think it is?”

Or perhaps the better question was what it wasn’t. Suspended in the air above the magma was an uncountable number of concentric silvery rings, all of which rotated and spun about to create the illusion of a sphere. They shrank and grew seemingly at random, melding through one another. If perhaps not doing the effect justice, it was as if someone had combined a giant rubber-band ball with a lava lamp, each band undulating fluidly over and over again.

That in and of itself would have been strange enough, but each ring was constantly unfolding as well. Knives and hammers and gadgets I couldn’t even guess at lifted themselves from the metal before folding themselves back in, as though each ring was the world’s most complex swiss-army knife.

To add to the mystery, a short, black obelisk stood in front of it.

The scene continued to fill me with wonder for a time until that wonder slowly waned, morphing into a more sensible sensation: ambivalence.

“Not to, uh, go through all of that and get cold feet now, but are we sure we actually want to do this?” I’d gotten so caught up in the thrill of filling the progress meter for Detect Secret that I’d forgotten just how hellish secret rooms could be. My two previous experiences -- the shower elemental room in Drawgin and the community garden in Emer’Thalis -- had held some of the closest brushes with death I’d ever had. And those had been with an actual dungeon-delving party, not a bunch of students.

The puzzles made it easy to forget just where we were, but something about the freaky floating sci-fi orb drove the point home. Anything capable of creating that was more than capable of squashing us. Plus, I was pretty sure none of us were magma-proof.

While I’d hoped to start a dialogue with my question, it appeared it had engendered an entirely different response.

Four sets of eyes bore into me as if to say “Do you really think we waited for hours for you to do all that mining just to turn around now?”

I held my hands up in a placating gesture to ward their stares off. Ultimately, it would be fine, I was sure. And in any case, it wasn’t actually like these things were always dangerous. If Barb hadn’t accidentally triggered a fight, our last secret room would have been 100% peaceful. Maybe this was another room that didn’t require fighting?

After all, there didn’t seem to be any enemies. Unless the weird ring thing was going to attack us. It did vaguely remind me of those depictions of old-testament angels, but I didn’t think it was sentient. Just for good measure, I hit it with God’s Eye, only getting back two words: Fabrication Forge.

Huh. Doesn’t really look forge-like, but that actually makes the rest of the room make more sense.

The bridge to the center was only one of two accessible areas, after all. A thin bronze-gold walkway circled the entirety of the room, forming a ring of its own around the pit. Spread equidistantly along this circle were eight minecarts, each of which sat on rail tracks leading from small openings in the wall.

Four of those carts looked quite familiar, too.

“So this is where all that ore you mined ended up…” Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Emin was the first to brave the new room, walking to the closest of the mine carts. It was one of the four we hadn’t mined, filled with some sort of green metal. Removing a chunk of ore, he brought it to his eyes, squinting at it intensely.

Unexpectedly, his actions caused Understanding to perk up, and a skill description popped up unbidden.

Property Research

The first of two hallmark upgradable class skills of the Bio-transmogrifier. Study a target in detail to ascertain its properties. Yields more information the longer you examine your target. This skill’s effects are greatly reduced when studying any non-living target.

I’d honestly had no idea he’d had such a good identification skill, although in hindsight, of course he did. It wasn’t like he could transfer properties from one target to another if he didn’t even know what those properties were.

“Adamantium.” Evidently, his skill had pulled through. “Another painfully rare ore. I wonder, do you think now that we’re here we can take some with us?” He started to pocket the metal.

No sooner did he do so than an ominous whine began to fill the room, originating from the forge in the center.

He froze. Very slowly, he returned the ore to its cart, and the whine subsided.

“I, uh… I believe further meddling may be… unwise.”

With that, no one saw fit to argue.

“Anyone have any idea what all of this is, though? I honestly didn’t know a dungeon could create something like this.” It was leagues above the other secret rooms I’d seen in terms of complexity.

This time, it was Oachin who chimed in. “Maybe it didn’t. Dungeons like this are built by absorbing nearby empty pocket dimensions. It’s not uncommon for them to use whatever they absorb as inspiration for bosses or treasure. If there was some ancient race living here before it became a dungeon, it’s entirely possible this is something they built instead, and the dungeon just modified it for its use.”

Ancient mystery forges? I wanted to follow up with a few more questions, but an echoing shout cut off further conversation.

“PPG! I am growing antsy. I wish to look at the thingy. Come.” Not waiting for any sort of confirmation, Alara strode forward. There wasn’t much left to see with the minecarts, and so, with varying levels of nervousness, the rest of us followed suit. The heat only intensified as we got further into the room, and feeling guilty for not thinking of it sooner, I cast Chill on the others as quickly as I could. Nella seemed to have an innate heat resistance and I was pretty sure Emin was granting himself some sort of resistance as well, but still, everyone’s relief was immediately visible.

“There are buttons! I would like to be the one to press the buttons.” True enough, there were buttons. Lines and curves covered the top of the black obelisk in front of the forge, dividing the dark metal into a sort of alien-looking keyboard. A rather large keyboard, too -- at a glance, there were hundreds of them, if not more.

Emin practically flung himself at the keyboard, draping his body over it protectively. He glanced back at Alara as if worried she would mash all the buttons.

“I, uh. I think I’d like to give it a try, if that’s all right. Some of the buttons could be dangerous for all we know. We should take this slowly and methodically.”

Alara pouted but hung back. “I will trust you DPM, but once you have had your fun, I wish to push them at least once. I have never heard of dungeon buttons before. This is a rare opportunity to seize!”

Crisis averted, Emin slowly, slowly tapped a single button.

One of the many rotating rings abruptly stopped.

“Fascinating! I wonder…” He tapped the button again, and the same ring began to move once more. “Excellent. It appears to be deterministic.” With a gusto that only Emin could have mustered given the circumstances, the reedy researcher pulled a notebook and pen from his pouch, hastily scrawling down a copy of the interface. He marked a single square before writing its description, speaking aloud as he did so. “But-ton C six. Tog-gles ro-ta-tion-al mo-tion. There! Now only a few hundred more to go! I’m sure I’ll have it all sorted out in no time.”

If by “no time” he meant several weeks, then that sounded about right. Was there really no way to speed things up? There wasn’t a convenient instruction manual lying around somewhere, was there?

Maybe it’s hidden with some sort of illusion like the door to get here? Actually, it’s pretty weird that someone would be advanced enough to make all this with magic and then use a keyboard to control it. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but they had access to literal magic. You’d think there’d be some way to control things with-

Oh. Maybe they do?

Even as Emin ploddingly mapped out the keys, I approached the obelisk. He shot me a curious look, but otherwise made no move to stop me.

I guess this already worked once. Might as well try it again. I dove into my mental space, standing atop the dark walls of the citadel as I cast Sense Minds.

And just as before, I found the barest hint of a mind.

I pushed myself into it, tugged it towards me with more and more force, until-

Pop.

…

…

…

<Mental contact initiated! Suspending manual fallback system.>

Mental Magic has reached level 14!

The mental communication was followed by a distressed cry as the keyboard lowered itself into the obelisk, seeming to melt into the metal until the top was entirely smooth.

“I didn’t press anything! Bring it back, bring it back!” Emin jabbed at the sides of the obelisk in a panic, looking for some hidden switch he’d missed.

Sorry Emin. “I, uh, think that was me. I touched it and it started talking to me through the system?” For all that I theoretically had a permit from the archmage, I had little desire to advertise my levels in Mental Magic.

Rather than getting peeved about being upstaged, Emin started to vibrate with excitement, and soon the others were too, all of them crowding around me.

“Remarkable! Well, don’t keep us waiting. What does it say?”

Sensing it had my attention again, the mental instructions continued. As each new thought arrived, I relayed it to the others.

<Booting… Booting… Booting…>

<Success! Fabrication Forge operational.>

<Please enjoy your fabrication.>