Longest Chapter yet (3k)...lots of info, but enjoy
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I woke up inside the game surrounded by darkness and for a moment I thought I was stuck in between the worlds, but soon realized that the bosses chamber just had limited lighting.
I was glad that I wasn’t transported back to the last city I visited after I died and assumed that must have had something to do with the fact that I died in a dungeon.
The smell of decaying flesh was drifting all around the room…as my eyes slowly adjusted to the room I noticed that the area was filled with dead bodies and creatures.
Grabbing my shirt quickly I brought it up to my face in order to try and block out some of the horrid odor.
It took me a few moments to push down the nausea and be able to focus on finding the loot pile that was left behind by the Headless Thak.
I searched around in the dark and stumbled over more than few rotting bodies, until I noticed a gleam of light out of the corner of my eye.
Fumbling my body over an armless Dullahan I made my way towards the small gleaming light.
I kneeled down beside the light and reached out with my free hand to grab it. I pressed my fingers against the sleek outer edge and found out that it was some sort of gem.
Picking it up slowly…a blue status screen popped up in front of me.
My hand started to shake with excitement and I almost dropped the gem back onto the floor.
‘If this is only the first item I picked up…what about the rest?’ I thought to myself.
I reached down and started to separate the items and equipment in the pile into separate piles.
The Headless Thak had dropped five items in total as well as a small bag of gold coins.
Normally a boss level creature would drop 1-2 really good items, but I ended up receiving five. I was guessing it had something to do with him being one of the elite type bosses.
I read through the items one by one…
Including the Token of Unification that I picked up earlier the loot I received altogether was pretty good.
I immediately equipped the vambraces, because it was the only piece of equipment out of the pile that I could actually wear.
The girls weren’t online yet so I didn’t know if they would care or not if I took all the loot from the boss…so I did.
The sword was something I couldn’t use because of my class. It had the same restrictions as heavy armor would.
The tome on the other hand was something I could learn later if I picked up dark magic mastery, but it wasn’t a type of magic that my magecore was particularly close with…so it would take me a lot longer to master it.
In the end I would probably sell it for a large sum along with the broadsword when I got back to a large city.
The last item I received from the boss was incredibly mysterious. The description only said ‘Eat me’.
I knew that it had to be a good thing since it was dropped by a boss…well I was hoping it was a good thing, because my curiosity was starting to get the better of me.
‘It could be some sort of power up or a new skill…maybe even a special race change or a…’ My mind was lost in ecstasy as I thought over all the possible things it could be.
Tossing the small seed down my gullet with no regrets I waited to see if anything happened to me.
A window popped up in front of me and I stared at it for a few seconds before the dungeon around me started to change.
The previously corpse filled room started to shift…morphing into a new shape. The bodies that had littered the room turned into dust and for some reason I received all the experience for killing them.
I started to get scared for a moment and closed my eyes. The loud noises and the changes in the dungeon soon stopped.
Opening my eyes slowly I found myself in a blank white room…the walls were like glass or marble. I touched the ground and expected to feel cold, but for reason it was like a thrum of warmth radiated from it.
“Greeting, Young Thak.” A soft and child-like voice permeated my thoughts.
I looked around and soon found the source of that voice. It was a child or what I presumed to be a child, but the child looked like he was the mixture of a human and a tree.
“What….I mean who are you?” I asked bewildered.
The tree-child let out a soft laugh as it wiggled its way over towards me.
“I am the heart of the dungeon. You may call me Grove.” The tree smiled in its own way by shaking the leaves on its body excitedly.
I reached up and scratched my head for a second. “What exactly des the heart of the dungeon do and why did I have to eat you?”
Letting my curiosity out of the bag I blurted out the first two questions that came to my mind.
“The heart of the dungeon is like its soul. The person who holds the heart of the dungeon is allowed to design the dungeons layout and its creatures and future evolutions.” The Grove spoke in a whisper, but for some reason its voice carried all the way over to me.
“The previous owner of the dungeon was an Undead Lich…an annoying man if I do say so myself. He turned my beautiful grove into an undead wasteland and myself into a withering tree. He used the experience he received from the dungeon to upgrade the boss into a 3rd Order Elite. He merely wanted a place to store a few of his treasures…so he let a bunch of 1st and 2nd Order undead roam around and pollute my once majestic grove. It was…it was infuriating.” The Grove screamed as its branches waved wildly.
I listened intently to the infant tree and felt a bit of its emotions drift into my own soul. I started to become angry myself for some reason. The tree’s thoughts echoed inside my own head and it was like I was experiencing the Groves memories.
“Ugh…calm down. I think my new ability is allowing my to experience your thoughts.” I yelled as my head started to ache.
The Grove looked at me confused for a moment, but then a flash of recognition passed over his face.
“My apologies…I forgot that Thaks passed on their most prized skill to the Thak that defeated them. You must have received the Dullahans Telepathy.” The Grove nodded as he calmed himself down.
“Thank you.” I muttered quietly as the tension that was pressing against my skull was relieved.
You should start training that skill. It will prove to be very useful to you in the future.
I could hear the Groves words aloud like he was speaking, but they were flowing directly into my head and stared at him with awe.
“I share powers with those who hold the heart of my dungeon. The previous owner had telepathy as well and gifted it to the other Thak. That is why I find it so easy to use.” The Grove chuckled.
I stood up and finally took a good look around the room. It was like a pure white marble box. The only colors came from the tree kid and me.
“I think you have had enough time to adjust. The dungeon cannot remain complacent for long. You must make the decisions on its layout and its creatures and bosses.” The Grove exclaimed.
“How do I do that…” Before I was able to finish my sentence an interface popped up in front of me.
I looked over the small window with a smile on my face. “So how do actually design it? Do I just click on one of the tabs.”
“Slow down…slow down. Let me explain as we go. The first thing you should do is click on the ‘Design’ tab. It will allow you to choose different types of terrain…within reason. You cannot stray to far from the dungeons original design. You can also change the structure of the dungeon and place the spawning points for creatures and bosses. And before you ask…no, killing creatures in your own dungeon will not give you experience or drops.” The Grove chastised me after it read my thoughts.
I brought my finger over to the ‘Design’ icon on the dungeon interface screen and tapped on it twice.
The moment I pushed on the ‘Design’ tab another row of tabs popped up in front of my face.
“The Terrain tab decides the basic terrain type that the dungeon will exhibit. The Original Grove was a forest type of terrain that surrounded multiple lakes. The original dungeon was full of fun-loving sprites and dryads.” The Grove spoke cheerfully and I could tell he was trying to influence my decision.
I leisurely clicked on the terrain tab…
I was excited about the massive amount of customization options that the dungeon interface provided and I assumed that I couldn’t choose a desert, mountain, or ocean terrain because the dungeon originally had a forest layout.
I wasn’t fond of the Grassland type and I knew that Grove would have disliked me if I chose it, because it promoted undead abilities.
My top choices definitely had to be Ruin, Jungle, and Oasis. The Oasis was a mix of the forest and desert type terrains and it would allow me to use a multitude of different poisonous creatures.
The jungle would be interesting and hard to navigate and it would allow me to chose a lot of different creatures that could jump out and assassinate intruders.
The ruin I choose just because it gave bonuses to really cool types of creatures…forgive me for thinking about coolness over layout for a second.
In the end I decided to click on the Ruins Terrain because well…I’m assuming you don’t get many chances to make dungeon and I wanted it to be what I wanted.
A small window passed by my vision as the white world around me started to change. Dilapidated stone structures started to pop up out of the ground and surround us. The ceiling was still made from dirt and roots, because the original dungeon was underground.
“DP are dungeon points and they are basically the cash you get to spend to remake the dungeon. The design should only take 10-15 DP. The expensive part is the bosses and mini-bosses and spawn rates.” The Grove spoke nonchalantly as he read my thoughts.
“Cool.” I muttered as I clicked on the next section of the interface.
Now that I was aware of the point cost of each of my choices I had to decide more carefully and not waste to many points until I checked over everything.
I wanted the dungeon to be difficult though so I decided to spring for the trick type and use 5 DP.
“Ah the trick type…a mischievous Thak you are. Explain how you want the trick or tricks to work so that I can create them.” The Grove spoke loudly.
“I was thinking of having the area be open ruins…like a city sort of like Nulia where I come from, but have the bosses chambers be closed off. I want to have three or four mini-bosses that each need to be defeated in order to obtain or do something to open the final boss gate in the ruin temple at the end of the city.”
The Grove wiggled its branches as it started to think of how my dungeon was going to look.
“That makes me think of the Ancient City of Mihalla…it was an old dungeon that was run by a cousin of mine many centuries ago. It was a large dungeon, which had many bosses and after each boss was a stone that needed to be activated in order to open the gates to the ancient cities capital where the final boss slept.”
“That sounds perfect, but make each of the activation stones only work for certain types of people.” I said.
“I can only make it based off of your soul. So I can make one of the stones activate with song magic and one of them activate with illusion magic. The last one would have to be brute force or telepathy since you have no other form of magic.” The Grove exclaimed.
“Telepathy is fine for the last one. It should be a rare skill and it would make the dungeon fairly hard to conquer for a long time.” I smiled.
Grove and I decided to skip over the ‘Structure’ tab and we modeled the underground ruins after the ruins of Nulia and it only cost me 1 DP, because I provided the layout.
The last of the four tabs under the ‘Design’ icon was the ‘Spawn’ tab. It allowed me to choose the location and the rate of the spawns.
I was up in the air about which type I wanted to choose, but Grove had an interesting idea…
Status: Chapter 24
Skills/Abilities:
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Equipment:
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