Eternium ~ Chapter 18!

I was losing my mind over all the new effects I could create with Wards. In fact, I was planning on designing an entire new floor based around the Wards. essentially, I was going to make a series of connected rooms that were a skill test. Normally this is not something that would be dangerous, after all, a skill test is a way to improve yourself!

I had been debating on where to place this new trial. After all, it would be easy enough to put it between different areas that already existed. After careful experimentation I decided that while I might use some of my new Warding schema throughout the dungeon, an effect overlooked by the infernal dungeon was deserving of its own floor.

It was a simple concept; whenever Mage entered the room would need to destroy an object in an area they could not physically access. I was thinking the target might be through a small tunnel or something. They would also need to put Mana into a core the same distance away. It did not have to happen simultaneously, but I assumed a lot of people would think that it would need to happen that way.

The reason this would be difficult would be the style of Warding in the rooms. It would be five rooms on this floor, and to progress to the next in the series you would have to complete them in order. The Wards were designed to increase the flow of mana and Essence in an area. If a technique was executed flawlessly, there would be no leakage of Mana or Essence. Unfortunately for most Mages, they did not bother to perfect their techniques. Typically, they would simply flood the spell form they were attempting with power, knowing that it would do what they wanted it to do in the end.

I planned to take advantage of their laziness, by doing nothing except making the power draw increase by double in each room. Since there were only five rooms, the maximum I could get away with was increasing the cost of a technique or incantation by thirty-two. Even so, I could increase the strength and power requirements of the object they needed to destroy as well as the object they needed to fill with Mana.

I started designing the rooms, and my hopes to create a new floor entirely were dashed. I could only make the rooms so big before the words would not affect them entirely. If I wanted to concentrate the power requirements, the largest I could make the room was a perfect square about ten feet wide. I was not going to waste an entire floor on five tiny rooms! instead, the rooms were added to the bottom of the elemental pit.

People who made it to the base of the pit could exit the dungeon immediately, or go into the skill rooms. Of course, I moved myself and the Silverwood tree to the end of the rooms, so now anyone who wanted to get to me needed to not only be vastly powerful, but extraordinary skilled! Or simply powerful enough to make up for their lack of skill. Or an S-ranker who could essentially ignore my setup. Or... yeah there were potentially a lot of people that could just come to see me. I really needed to find a way to defend against the S-ranks.

I shook off the morose thought, returning to the fun I was having creating this next trap. I mean... skill room. Heh. I was fairly certain that these five rooms would account for more Mages dying than any other portion of the entire dungeon combined. When they tried to shatter the target I was going to make, the Wards would siphon off any Mana that was not perfectly controlled, causing the Mages to increase the amount of power flowing through them, which would be siphoned off... pop goes the Mages!

Conversely, this would be an excellent place for a mage to perfect their abilities. If they could make it through all five rooms, whatever ability they were using to make it happen should be completely mastered. This will allow for incredible power and personal growth. Or they would be hasty, and I would see if they were tasty. Was that a poem? Can I call that a poem? Whatever, I am the Dungeon Core! I can call it a poem If I want, and no one but Dani can stop me!

I had created the five rooms, but I had only completed the Warding in the first two before I felt my control fluctuate. Drat, there must be adventurers stepping onto this floor. Creating anything permanently magical - such as Runes or Wards - was a task that demanded perfection. I had learned my lesson on this long ago, so I stopped what I was doing and waited for the challengers to make themselves known. I took a look at the adventuring group, and found myself slightly shocked. The lowest ranked person in this group was in the upper B-ranks. There were even two people in the early A-ranks, and all of them seem to be taking this floor extremely seriously.

The group waded through the Elementals, their movements extremely efficient and refined. Not every strike was a deathblow, since the condensed Mana bodies of the Elementals allow them to be extremely resilient. Still, this group of people outclassed the Mobs by a large degree. Luckily for me, their progress slowed greatly when they came across the first of the Runeforged Elementals. 

This one was an Elemental that had taken to defeating opponents and attaching their Cores to itself. It looked like a series of balls that were barely touching each other, and all of the Cores could be launched to allow the original Elemental to create itself once more. I called this a 'Hive Elemental', and I had Runeforged the controlling Elemental upon the principles I had learned watching the 'Love' Elemental take over the boss at the bottom of the pit. When this creature was in control of all of the cores, its power was boosted by a varied percentage. 

It could sacrifice that bonus to create a small - if uncontrollable - army to do battle. If these adventurers had not appeared, I had fully expected that this would soon be the floor boss. It was too young to have made enough progress, unfortunately, and after a hard-fought battle it was destroyed along with all of its minions.

One of the A-rankers stepped forward and picked up the core, seeming to be shocked at what she saw. “This has a mind Rune Inscribed on it! Do you think that was how it was controlling the others? Or is there something more sinister at play?”

“We already know that the dungeon has near human intelligence, why is it so surprising that it can come up with new, more powerful monsters?” her opposite drawled. I suppose he was correct, if by 'near-human intelligence' he meant far, far smarter than a human. “This does not change our goal at all, and we should be able to secure the necessary resources with a few passes through this room. Let's get back to work.”

They collected every core they found, everything they considered a potential resource, although they did their best to avoid large groups of Elementals. When they got to the ramp, they started descending into the pit and I was able to watch my newest traps in action! When the first of them triggered the moving walls, the rest of them groaned in annoyance. I laughed at that, in fact the only thing I like better than annoying someone with traps was hearing them groan from a bad pun.

“All right, looks like they are at least moving in sequence,” the male A-ranker looked at his team and rolled his eyes. “Just make sure not to get knocked off, if our information was correct, we would not survive the fall.”

“Which is just the weirdest thing!” A high B-ranked female Elf grumbled. “I haven't taken damage from falling in two hundred years. I just can't seem to wrap my mind around a fall being dangerous, you know?”

“Right?” The third person in line laughed. “I'm guessing it has something to do with all of that connected Runescript around this inverted-tornado of a pit?”

“You know as much as we do.” The female A-ranker shrugged and moved ahead. “Let's get going, you never know if something is going to jump over the edge of the pit.”

I stopped an elemental just before it was going to jump over the edge at them, that would have been too cliché. Every two or three seconds, the walls would shift and the group would be separated from each other. I kept attempting to activate traps, but these were a group of serious dungeon crawling professionals. If the floor dropped out from under them, they braced themselves against the very walls that were supposed to ensure their doom. Three times, an explosive Elemental popped out into the small area they were trapped and was chucked into the center of the pit before it could self-detonate.

In fact, they were so efficient and effective that I did not want my newly upgraded boss's trial run to be against them. I opened a small trap door, and the boss sunk into the floor. To compensate, I added a slightly larger treasure chest to the room with several tokens in it that should easily distract them. They cleared the entire ramp down to the base, and though they were struggling with the increased gravity, they hadn't passed through it fast enough to cause them harm.

Seeing that there was a follow-up room, they became excited and elated instead of confused and concerned as I had hoped they would. One of the Mages spoke, giving me an 'aha' moment. “The information we had about this floor is wrong! We must be the first ones to see this change!”

As a group, they passed into the next room. The door shut behind them but did not lock, I did not think that would be fair. If the only way to escape was to master or at least greatly improve an ability, leaving no way to retreat would result in unfair deaths. Also, I had flat-out written instructions on how to pass to the next room, so there should be no confusion as to how to get through here. 

I didn't explain that the Mana cost would be doubled in this room, but I was sure they would figure that out very quickly. One of the B-ranked Mage stepped forward and sent a vibration-based attack at the crystal sculpture they needed to break. He was successful, and shattered the object on his first try. I was pleased with the outcome as well, since I had been able to absorb a huge wave of siphoned Mana.

The Mage grunted and sank to one knee, breathing heavily. “Celestial feces, that really took it out of me! Not sure what just happened, but I couldn't stop channeling Mana into that technique. It wasn't deadly, but I sure wasn't expecting that! It took... at least triple the amount of Mana I had thought I would be investing.”

“That’s strange… let me try this part.” The male A-ranker looked over at the Core that was waiting to be charged with Mana, and sent a stream of power toward it. His diffuse Mana rolled off him, and in a few seconds his face tightened in pain and his fingers began to smoke. He squinted his eyes, tightening his Mana into a controlled thread. The Core was soon full of power, and the door to the next room popped open.

“Abyss, that hurt!” The A-ranker shook his hand, then poured a flask of water over it. The water turned to steam upon contact, and the eyes of the onlookers widened in concern. “If I didn’t put a leash on my Mana and carefully control it into the Core, the room sucked the Mana out of me! How is this possible? This is a level of sophistication I haven’t seen anywhere in this dungeon before now!”

“Then it must be new.” The female A-ranker looked into the next room, and narrowed her eyes when she saw an identical setup. “Who here has the best control?”

No one said anything for a long moment. Then the lowest B-ranked man stepped forward reluctantly. “I spent ten years longer in the C-ranks than any of you, but that was because I had pretty dense corruption. I needed to develop my Essence control really well to break into the B-ranks… so I’m likely to be the choice for this task.”

Any further discussion was interrupted as a treasure chest flipped out of the wall. The sudden movement of the wall opening up startled the Mages so much that they attacked it, even though the two High Mageous shouted at them to stop. The room began to hum with power, and the stone floors were vibrating as the Mages tried to rein in their power. Two of them managed to stop themselves, but the last one panicked. His body began to glow as more and more Mana was channeled, but before he could detonate the A-ranked female tackled him and pulled him out of the room.

The Mage fell unconscious as the backlash of a failed technique hit him on top of nearly burning out. The others didn’t mind carrying him along, so they dragged him back into the room so an Elemental didn’t get a free snack. The male A-ranker nodded at his partner and addressed the group. “New rule: physical attacks only unless needed to face these challenges.”

The treasure chest was melted to slag, and everything in it had been similarly destroyed. A plane of energy ran down one wall, and a one-way portal appeared. One of the Mages sighed. “Should we head out, or try the next room?”

“The first one nearly got us, and if we want to come back here, we are going to need to clear the entire Pit again. We can try the next room, but we are using extreme caution.” The female sent these orders, and I was confused about who the party leader was. Or maybe the two top ranked people simply shared the responsibilities?