She walked up to the quest counter with a large smile on her face. The attendant had no such thing anywhere near hers.
“State your business,” she said, clearly extremely bored.
“Submitting a quest, as well as business with the guildmaster.”
“Quest Posting?”
Elise handed it over, as well as showing the pictures of the dead leader. She got a measly five silver for the quest, only five days work’s worth to split among four people.
“What is your business with the guildmaster?”
Elise leaned in and whispered:
“A new dungeon, five days walk away. I already have proof…”
She showed the pictures of the entrance and the monsters.
“And I need a verification team.”
The attendant perked up.
“You understand that if these claims are falsified, you risk fines of up to 10,000 gold?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
—
The guildmaster was a rather stereotypical woman, short and bearded, and only barely enough of a gold rank to hold the position. Not that that meant she was weak, no adventurer or gold rank truly was, but three parties of silvers, working in tandem, would have a copper’s toss at beating her, rather than the standard five for a man of his rank and level. Her voice was gruff and gravelly, enough that she could be mistaken for a dwarf, and she probably was half of one anyway.
“A new dungeon, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am. Here are the images.”
“Interesting. It certainly looks the part, but I’ve never seen that kind of monster before. If it has a legendary archetype, it could be very dangerous.”
“The most dangerous are always the most profitable, aren’t they?”
“Indeed, they are. I will go myself, to start the town. Isid, summon appraiser Mikah, please.”
“Yes, sir.” The attendant ran off.
“Start the town? Don’t you need evidence, first?”
“You have proven yourselves to be rather trustworthy, so far. I haven’t any reports of you all stiffing the guild yet, and you’ve been around five times longer than the average length of traitors. You’re good. Besides! I need to get out and start adventuring again. No idea why I ever thought it was a good idea to take a desk job, and a new dungeon will have an excess of desk jockeys to handle all the paperwork.”
Appraiser Mikah then entered the room. He was a tall, half high/half deep elven man (rather rare, inter-subrace relations were improving between elves, but they were still poor, especially between highs and deeps.) with white hair and many eyes, but also tanned skin and green pupils.
“Ma’am, you required me?”
“Yes, Mikah, there is a new dungeon about five days' march from here, in the primary barrier. We need to get Gold and a title recognition form for the dungeon bounty, enough resources to at least set up the guild hall-”
“Actually, ma’am, there is an abandoned Draconic Empire fort across the canyon from the dungeon,” interjected Elise. "It should furnish for the hall relatively well.”
“Very well, only the furnishings. Of course, we will also need a confirmation from you, Mikah.”
“Seems exciting, ma’am. Alarielle knows we need exciting soon.”
“Then let us sign the paperwork and set off. I look forward to delving with you once again.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
—
Now that I had some sentient race lattices, I wanted to make an avatar. The logic was relatively simple, just a standard monster core in a body without a brain, and some circuitry for detecting my focus and allowing me to assume direct control. Now, however, I needed a body, and I wasn’t going to settle for a standard one. I started by isolating the best traits of each race I had access to and putting them on a list. Those being:
- Gnome
- Brain/Body ratio. Their skulls were very spacious, which was why their heads were rather oblong, but this grated an abnormally high leaning speed and retention.
- Brain design. Their brains were incredibly optimized, though I could see some room for improvement
- Extremely dexterous fingers
- Human
- Extreme regeneration. The Indomitable human spirit is not a myth.
- Adrenaline / Emergency perseverance systems. The Indomitable human spirit is
- Elf
- Natural affinity for magic. These Elves come pre-equipped with what, as far as I can tell, are mana channels, particularly in the eyes. I can tell they come pre-equipped, because when I de-age them (Fusing skills must need a minimum to get a greater skill, but not all of the skills that the greater skill has within.), they are the only ones that still have these channels.
- Excellent hearing.
- Wood
- The eyes between the wood and the high are slightly different, but I don't know why. I’ll put one eye from each subrace on my avatar.
- Natural magic circles in their body, and the ability to grow more. They seem to be predisposed to a certain type of spell, probably as a result of affinities that I haven’t been able to detect yet.
- High
- See wood for notes on eyes.
- Mana channels seem to be more actively malleable. Perhaps wood elves are more sorcerer-esque and Highs are more wizard.
- Dwarf
- Dense bones, more durable than humans, but terrible regeneration. Likely owed to their higher-than-average rate of cave-in deaths. If you can survive getting crushed by thousands of tons of rock, enough at least to be able to dig your way out, more power to ya, but if you can’t dig yourself out, better a quick death.
- Huge muscles, enabled by their ultra-dense bones. Configured more for breaking stone than dexterous tasks.
- Halfling
- Tough skin, hard to pierce, especially on their feet. Good for long-winded but easy tasks.
- Very efficient immune and digestive systems. Can go for months without food, and weeks without water, and basically never get sick.
I wanted my avatar to be very versatile. I couldn’t make it shapeshift, I probably needed something like a changeling for that, (note to self, acquire changelings to make mimics with), but I could make the flesh extremely elastic and make the bones fold on themselves as required, which would allow me to change my height, at least. This would be extremely useful for mobility and combat. I put in all of the advantages listed above, with none of the racial disadvantages. Or I tried. Removing the disadvantages was tougher than I thought. The Dwarves might get a quick death, but the real reason they didn’t heal quickly was because their bones were so dense that their blood cells and other healing cells had a hard time I decided that I would put in some superfluous bones in the chest, around the lungs and heart (but not attached, we don’t want them weighed down) that were significantly weaker and less dense, but were capable of producing all of the blood for the entire body. The Wood Elf eye and the High Elf eye just so I had to make two entirely separate sets of channels for each eye. This also caused the brain to need splitting into two hemispheres, so I then had to make a third that would handle all of the decision making for both halves. Then, the eyes decided that they didn’t like the Gnomish brain, and wanted their own elven brains back. This, at least, was an easy fix, I just made the control hemispheres rudimentary Elvens with only control and sensory systems, which allowed the Gnomish brain to grow just a bit more. The Adrenaline that Humanity provided was too destructive to work on anything but Halfling flesh, so I had to put the emergency reaction systems in also subbed to the Gnomish one. Then, I had to put that hemisphere (or would it be quarter-sphere now?) in a separate, smaller skull, so that the adrenaline couldn’t access anything but the Halfling quarter-sphere. Thank God the Human and Halfling muscles and internal organs were just as good as anything else, if not better, because I don’t know what I would've done if I couldn’t access adrenaline-fueled strength. Finally, I slightly tweaked some of the flesh to better handle wear and tear, and my avatar was ready to go. It only took Thank God that party and presumably the adventurer's guild wouldn’t be back until ten days after they left.
Next on the docket, I need to revise my dungeon a little. I need to adjust the Ent AI so that the adventurers are allowed to retreat, I need to set up respawning systems, and I want to set up a puzzle after Alder. The AI tweaks are easy enough, though they won’t be there on lower floors, I just put in a conditional that says that the Ent should back off if they think the adventurers are, too. It will need a bit of fine-tuning, but that can’t happen until I have regular delvers, so it’ll stay for now. The respawn systems are even simpler, just repeats of Alder’s except with a lattice-storing d8s instead of a d20. When the d4 senses that an encounter has been killed, it sends a signal to a counter made with a d2 and a cone that rolls along until it hits the stopper, sends a signal to the respawn crystals, and resets. I have them set to five minutes for now, but I also have to fine tune this one. Additionally, I added this timer to Alder’s respawn system.
The puzzle is more difficult. I want it to relate to the next floor, but that means I have to pick both a general dungeon theme and a theme for the second floor. I have very limited resources, though, so I don’t think… Actually, I’ve got it.
The dungeon theme will be Man-made Horrors Beyond Comprehension