Worthy Core

Xenia Worthy, Reincarnator Extraordinaire, glares at the large basin of water she'd added to her core chamber. There was nothing wrong with the basin itself, of course. It had rained a little that morning, and with a bit of reshaping around the doorway they'd been able to let enough in to absorb it and add 'WATER' to her list of resource patterns. Experimenting with monster spawns drained her limited mana pool pretty quickly, but reshaping the cave stone was free, so she'd been able to spend time working on perfecting a design - another clamshell to go with the core pedestal, ignoring how off-brand it might be for a mountain-based dungeon. The problem was that it didn't actually serve its purpose for what she'd been aiming for - the dungeon master could look into the basin but no reflection looked back. "Dammit! I'm like a ghost! Or a vampire, without the supernatural sexiness."

Guy hovers alongside, also finding no reflection in the water. "Oh, I wouldn't put myself down so much. You're certainly supernatural enough, and by my extremely low pool of comparison subjects, I'd say you're certainly in the top five sexiest dungeon cores."

Xenia scoffs as she pulls at her drab gray robe. "Please. Ain't no one that could pull off this fashion train wreck. Hell, given that you're the only one who can see me, I'm this close to just walking around in the buff instead. I don't get it, it kept my hairstyle like I had it back in my first go-around, but it gives me this for fashion? Not even a nosering or nothing?" Guy slides around to the center of her line of sight, and pops open a construction menu.

"First off, allow me to encourage your steadfastness in not doing your job naked. Second, you recall that we do have some crafting schemas unlocked now, yes? Low ranked ones, but they are there. And given we're talking about your virtual avatar and not actual physical objects, there would be no mana cost involved." At the words 'no cost', Xenia immediately perks up.

"Shit, I could've been playing dress-up all this time? Forget making abominations, why wasn't I doing this for the past day?" She immediately dives into the crafting menu, which she had only briefly glanced at before due to the lack of funds to make anything with, but is quickly disappointed. "Tattered Rags (F)? Soiled Underthings (F)? Simple Peasant Garb (D-)? What am I, a free-to-play player in a world of cosmetic unlocks? How many microtransactions til we get to something not utter shit, huh?"

Guy hovers a little lower, clearly put out that their suggestion didn't land well. "Something might be worth a shot? And yes, we are only at a 'D-' rank in clothing options currently. The more style examples and materials we absorb, the more options you'll have." Xenia taps the Peasant Garb option just to see what comes up, and finds herself in a drab brown and yellow dress, complete with muddy stains from a day working in the fields. She quickly returns to the old robe.

"Just edged one step closer to work-at-home Nudist Xenia there, Guy. New priority! Anyone who comes in, we're taking their clothes. Especially anything that looks good. Think they got fishnets out here yet?"

"In the sense of literal fishnets, yes. If you've spent enough time playing home decorator though, perhaps we should take another look at the second room?"

Xenia sighs. "Yeah, fine. I still got like, 6 points left today, maybe we'll find something that ties it all together." The pair had spent most of the previous day on the first room, and had things decently prepared given the tools they had at hand. The ceiling had been lifted up to a point, as if it were the inside of a pyramid, each of the four walls containing several of the new dart traps that had been unlocked by the ability to craft arrows. While the triggers still weren't well hidden, Guy had suggested that the angled surfaces might at least make it harder to guess what direction the darts would fire from. Torches lit up every room as well now, magically-powered of course so they burned without need of fuel. Meanwhile Xenia had run a few tries at crossbreeding avians and canines, coming up with a few results that were definitely worse than either, but had eventually come out with hawks with snouts full of fangs, a D- ranked schema that Xenia had dubbed 'Barkbirds'. It wasn't actually clear if fangs were any more dangerous than normal hawk beaks, but they were at least monsters of a sort, which felt more suiting. They had also at least proven adept at swooping down from the angled walls to pick off the trickle of rabbits Xenia had continued to bait inside, eventually increasing her Lagomorphs tier to D-, but any bunny crossbreeds would have to wait for another day.

Starting from the front then, Xenia next moved on to the hallway between the first and second room, pausing halfway through. "Alright, let's step up the traps a little bit, but keep with the classics, yeah? How about a pressure plate that makes a giant sawblade pop out and take off a dude's head, right? Classic!"

Guy tilts for a moment, but then pops up a construction screen with a 'Giant Sawblade' trap available. "As we have metal materials unlocked and you seem to have a solid idea in your mind of how it should look and how it should work, an option has been unlocked for you. But remember, our only metal construct option right now is F-grade iron. That design may be a little too complex for our resources."

Xenia shrugs, spending the points for a pressure plate and a large sawblade capable of reaching across the hallway at neck level. "If it's letting me pick the options, then it's gotta work at least a little, right? Not a lot of points left for today, though...we gotta be efficient for the next room, at least til we can upgrade it." She walks into the second chamber, currently little more than an empty square-ish cavern, populated by a few stray dungeon bunnies. While Xenia's spawns don't attack each other, it still seems like they prefer to avoid the birds of prey living in the first room. "Hmmm...what if I don't go for official traps, and just abuse the decorative options? I can make water, right, how about I just flood a room and make everyone hold their breath the whole way through, or something?"

"Unfortunately, magical fluids and gases don't tend to last very long...technically, even the stone will begin to evaporate after a few decades if not maintained, but a low-level poison gas trap for example only lasts about a minute. To flood a large chamber, you'd need to either access a natural water source, or have a large mana cap that you'd be willing to reserve towards keeping it filled."

"But I can fill a basin's worth, yeah? Hmm, hrrmmm...okay, I think I got something here." Xenia begins to make an inverse of the first room, with the floor angling downwards to a central point. It's not quite as steep, only going down a story or so in height compared to the two or three floors the ceiling in room one reaches to, but enough to make the footing a bit awkward. But of course, that's only step one. "Alright, we don't have copper constructs, but we do have it as a decorative pattern, for whatever that's worth. So...copper flooring!" With that, that downward-sloped floors turn from stone to slightly-polished metal.

"Hmm, I suppose that is a little more slippery than stone, but - " Guy is interrupted by a shushing motion from Xenia.

"But wait, there's more!" When Xenia filled the water basin, she spawned a water source at the bottom of the clamshell, raising the water level until the magical evaporation balanced out with the magical generation at the right level to reach the top of the basin. It was small so no mana cost had been charged, but in this case she's willing to push just a little further. This time, she spawns a trickle of water generation all around the walls of the room, coating the metal floor in a very thin stream until it gathers at the center of the room. There it builds up a little, but less than an inch or so before it reaches equilibrium. "Welcome to the Slip'n'Slide room! And for our finisher..." Switching to her traps, Xenia spends the rest of her mana filling the center with pressure plates, linking them to 'smashy rocks' in the ceiling above. Fortunately, like with dungeon creatures, it seems that dungeon water doesn't automatically set off the traps either. "Ta-da! ...Hmm, making the water didn't cost me anything, but my cap is down to 9 now? To keep it flowing, I guess? Well, whatever. If we need more later I can just turn it off, and hey, we don't even need to worry about drainage or plumbing!"

Guy looks at the room a bit uncertainly, as the rabbits hop their way into the dryer core chamber. "Hard to say if this will actually cause any slips, but I suppose with a limited mana reserve, it's not a bad idea. Suppose we'll just have to see..."

LATER THAT EVENING

The five members of the scouting party sit from their perch higher atop the mountain, looking down at the strange door carved into its side, finally happy to have something to talk about. Unsurprisingly, Laksha and Pusht had been very aware of what had transpired in Tassa's tent the night before, and while no one had said anything, the way they couldn't stop smirking at Grizza's constantly flushed expressions had made casual conversations a bit awkward. Neither Tassa or Ragrush were much bothered though, the drider just needed to get more used to a concept the Rangers were quite familiar with - never pass up a warm bunk on a cold wildlands night. In any case, it seemed Grizza now had finally found something to discuss.

"...Well, shit."

Ragrush snorts. "Is that your official determination of the situation, Mage?"

Grizza skitters back a bit to rest against a rock while he thinks. "I have to admit, I was really hoping we'd just find a succubus leading a pack of kobolds and slimes and that that would be it. It wouldn't really matter then what they were doing, we could just report that they were doing something, and that would probably be enough. But an entrance like that in the middle of a mountain? Far from any dwarven settlements? It has to be a dungeon."

Tassa can't really say that she sees a problem with that. "Isn't that even easier then? A dungeon is a dungeon, we just tell the Mana Weavers a new one popped up, end of story." The drider shakes his head at that, however.

"You think the Weavers don't know what a dungeon looks like? They said this felt 'wrong' somehow. If we want to say we didn't just half-ass our mission, we're going to have to scout it out, no other way around it."

Laksha speaks up from a nearby rock where she's keeping watch on the foothills below. "Is that a problem? I'm no dungeon newbie - cleared floor two in the Rotwood Dungeon once." At that, the others begin to volunteer their experience.

The Cleric, Pusht, raises a hand. "I've only done one floor, in the Highlight Mountain."

Tassa goes next. "Ragrush and I both went to floor two in the Spider Swamp. That's as far as the Ranger program goes for those of us aiming for wildlands assignments."

Grizza finishes it off. "Typically our Mage training program in the Undervalley encourages a floor in Longdrop for every level or two we achieve in rank, but I've been busy and only had time for up to floor three. It's good that we all have some experience at least, but normally every party would have someone experienced with up to floor five somewhere, and none of those are brand new, unexplored dungeons. ...There's also the problem in that, as I've never seen a dungeon core before, I doubt I'm qualified to determine if one is 'right' or 'wrong'. Unless it's very obvious it may be a waste of time."

Tassa shrugs. "Well remember, unless something weird happened this dungeon is only a week old. I'd be surprised if it has two floors let alone five. But no matter for tonight. Let's go back a bit and set up camp. First thing tomorrow, we'll see what this is all about..."