224, 2/2

Entering a dungeon with its master at your side was a completely different experience than entering one normally.

Mainly, there was no automatic magic purge, which was fantastic. If Soltic or Vanya had been exposed with Everbless and Aroido right there, then that would have resulted in a [Return], and them needing to solve that problem. Thankfully, that did not happen.

All that really happened was the appearance of some black boxes, hovering in the air inside the safe space at the beginning of the dungeon.

Soltic and Vanya entered Dungeon 6 just before noon, with Aroido and Everbless’s smaller form leading the way, and not ten seconds later, they could see the problem for themselves. Every dungeon had a ‘user interface’ malleable to the wants of the dungeon master, but they didn’t call it that here, they called it a dungeon interface.

According to that interface, the problem was a lot more than either Soltic or Vanya expected.

– –

Intake average of last 10 days: 130,000 mana

Outflow average of last 10 days: 102,000 mana

Masters: Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker, Aroido Tidewalker.

Boss: Radiant Coral Eel

Current Overall Judgment: UNTENABLE.

Notification 1: Monster enrichment <LOW>

Notification 2: Environmental enrichment <1%>

Notification 3: Delver enrichment <LOW>, <Too much Force Magic, not enough other magic>

Primary Notification: Due to the nature of the current iteration of this dungeon, minimal base mana is granted to whomsoever defeats the boss, with a usual base mana of <4/party#> per defeat of the <Radiant Coral Eel>

– –

Aroido (one of 7! Maybe more!) awaited Vanya’s judgment alongside Gold Taker, who spun in the air like a tumbleweed made of red tentacles and one great central eye.

Soltic waited, too, though he already saw a great deal of issues without needing Vanya to speak about them.

After several moments to think, Vanya said, “I will start with the good things. No one who delves this place would ever notice any of these problems without being explicitly told about them. It is a good dungeon, on its surface. Perhaps the lack of base mana granted to a killer of the boss would tip off some people, but only those who aren’t ready to delve in an advanced dungeon like this, who only have a few mana to their name, anyway.”

Aroido said, “Please get on with the bad things, Miss Vanya.”

“Okay.” Vanya rapidly said, “Gold Taker is an interloper in this entire dungeon environment. He is not listed as a boss, so he must have several [Familiar]s which exist in every dungeon at the same time. I assume he personally does work every day to ensure that the rules of the dungeon are followed. Knowing this, it is no wonder that this place looks a lot more organized than it actually is. Gold Taker cannot continue to do this if you want this dungeon to produce actual quantities of gold, and proper learning.”

Gold Taker sank in the air as Vanya’s words hit him hard, his tentacles turning lifeless as he landed on the stone floor, his voice soft, “But I’m doing… Good…”

Aroido sighed, then gave a half-heated frown toward Vanya. “That is unkind.”

“I’m about to be a lot more unkind, Lord Tidewalker, but I take your meaning.” Vanya said to Gold Taker, “You cannot participate in the dungeon like you are. Instead, you can work on the back end, ensuring that the rules are followed without actually interacting with people at all. That is what a normal dungeon master does, for the repros are the only ones who can actually change and work a dungeon without harming that dungeon. All people like you and me can do is to set up the system, grow what works, and trim what doesn’t work. That is it.”

Gold Taker looked up from the ground, and he looked angry. But he did not physically lash out. He just scowled, saying, “I don’t like you.”

“That’s fine.” Vanya continued, “As for the notifications, I can fix the third one through connecting the dungeons together and making the systems we have spoken about. When all the Elemental Dungeons are working, then the delver enrichment problem will go away. I suspect, based on what I think you have here, that the Water Dungeon will be the only one which works out well, at first. Therefore, I would change this dungeon here into the Water Dungeon, and do the other dungeons another day.

“The monster enrichment problem is likely an issue of space and dungeoneering, and it is bewildering to me that this is a problem at all. All you have to do to make monster enrichment not-a-problem is to corral the monsters properly and to build environments that they individually love, but which by that love, locks them to those areas. You can’t really close off any part of the dungeon from any other, but you can certainly incentivize monster habitats and actions.

“But the real problem there is that you’re killing more monsters than you’re growing. These are charnel houses; not the habitats that they should be.

“I assume from what I have seen outside that Gold Taker is the only reason at all that these dungeons aren’t collapsing all the time. He’s feeding them mana, and keeping the monsters in here happy. So that’s a good thing he is doing, and it is something that we need to keep happening for a while.” Vanya added, “Honestly I thought Everbless was doing that, so this is a strangeness for me… What were we saying?”

Gold Taker scowled at Vanya’s loss of track.

And then Gold Taker stabbed her with an ethereal tentacle, ripping out a spark of divine fire that rapidly vanished, as he declared, “I’m Everbless, stupid hag! Tell me what I do wrong!”

A moment passed.

Aroido sighed deeply.

Vanya’s eyes went wide, as recognition spilled into her soul; for Everbless had removed her intervention himself.

Soltic blinked a bit, unsure what to do now. He and Vanya had spoken before coming here, that if anything horrible should happen that he would reverse time and they would tackle the problem together, but neither of them had considered that Everbless would get angry with Vanya for not knowing the truth and then just… remove the intervention himself.

Could they just…

Could they talk their way into gaining full access to the dungeon? No need to fight at all? That would be the preferred option, and the one they were initially working toward, days and days ago, but when the intervention appeared it had changed things. Erick had been willing to go to war, and it was only Quilatalap’s decision which had stopped that from happening. And now, that intervention was gone.

Removed.

Just like that.

Soltic waited for Vanya to decide on the course of their actions going forward. And she did.

Vanya went down to one knee, saying, “Sir Everbless I—”

“No no no!” Everbless got off the ground, floating upward, his tentacles spinning wildly as he declared, “No worship! No no! Tell me what wrong with dungeon!”

Vanya paused, then looked to Soltic, then back to Everbless. She got off the ground, saying, “It’s… It’s a good thing that you’re feeding these dungeons mana, or else they would have collapsed long before now. Um.” She centered herself, then said, “I thought you were a sapient octopus, or something, granted Script access through… something. I’m not sure how to approach this issue with you as a World Tree and connected to Sininindi and— Well. I am a teacher of magic, most of the time. Am I here to teach you magic? Is that why I was Called?”

Aroido silently watched from the side, his eyes skipping from Vanya, to Everbless, and then finally to Soltic. Since Soltic was furrowing his brows at the appropriate moments, Aroido judged that Soltic was still under the intervention, and that was good. He had failed to step between Vanya and Everbless when Everbless had gotten angry, before he removed the seal on Vanya, because, apparently, Everbless liked to remove the seal from people so they could talk straight with him. But Aroido was ready to step between Soltic and Everbless; very ready.

Soltic was still ‘interventioned’, and Aroido would keep it that way, for now. Which was very, very good. If Everbless had tried removing something from Soltic and found nothing to remove, then there would be a lot of questions.

So for now, Soltic just had to act lost every now and then.

This was fine.

… Ah! And Soltic’s anti-touch magic would prevent Everbless from touching him, anyway. This was good. Erick almost laughed at the whole situation, but that would be bad for any number of reasons.

Everbless retreated from Vanya’s question a little. “… I know enough magic. I learn myself.”

Vanya said, “Well okay then.” Then she turned to Aroido. “All seven of you are masters of this dungeon. Are you in every dungeon? Are there 49 of you?”

“There are 49 Aroidos. The original was fond of laying at the bottom of the ocean and doing almost nothing, and we inherited that trait. Most of the time we’re [Polymorph]ed as anemones or rocktangles or coral, and filtering the mana into heavy bands down in the tanks to keep the monsters happy. It’s actually a really pleasant experience to be an anemone at the bottom of a pool, so I would ask you to keep your judgments to yourself.”

Vanya raised her eyebrows, but then lowered them, saying, “I would never judge someone for their preferred Familiar Form.”

“… Huh.” Aroido said, “You actually mean that, too. I suppose an immortal would know something about odd Familiar Forms.”

Vanya smiled a little. “I do.”

Everbless suddenly asked, “Have you tree?!”

Vanya easily said, “I have been a tree before. It was pretty calming.”

Everbless squealed a little, then turned on Soltic, asking, “Have you tree?!

“… Um.” Soltic pretended to have an intervention problem. “Why would I be a tree?”

Everbless saw what was happening. He pulled out a tentacle—

And Aroido rapidly stepped to Everbless’s side, saying, “Gold Taker. Don’t do that to him. He’s not approved to know.”

Everbless’s tentacles relaxed. “But they trees! I want talk trees!”

Soltic pretended not to know what was going on, but inwardly, he was happy that Everbless was listening to someone, anyone at all. It boded well. Maybe he was a good kid, like Rozeta had said.

Aroido said to Soltic. “You may be approved in the future, but for now, some secrets will remain secret.”

Soltic said, “… Okay,” as though he wasn’t understanding at all.

Everbless seemed a bit sad about that before muttering, “No one knows me.”

“I’ll talk with you, Gold Taker, and so will Soltic eventually.” Vanya pulled the conversation back to her. “I’m fine with working with 49 of you, but that will make it a lot harder to implement the dungeon designs I wish to implement. I might need you all to move to another dungeon for a while.”

“It’s horrible for us, too.” Aroido said, “But the Regent wants us all able to override each other, so that one person can’t commandeer a dungeon on their own ever again. In order to change anything we’ll likely have to disengage from whatever dungeon you want to alter first, and then move back afterward.”

Vanya looked a little surprised. “I expected more pushback on that.”

Aroido happily said, “This all works terribly, but it does work when we make it work.” He looked to Everbless. “Though Everbless is the only reason it really works at all.”

Everbless spun a little. “I know The Rules!”

Aroido added, “And since we got you in here several hours early, and since we Aroido can simply undo anything you implement, let us begin with the full tour, and then we can get to the restructuring. It all looks complicated right now, but the setup right now is barely above normal setup. Here— This will help, first—” He waved a hand, and the entire dungeon changed.

Every single thing everywhere turned into mostly-clear Force. The stone road turned to glass. The waters turned absolutely clear. The corals became almost invisible. The abyss at the bottom of the first floor vanished from sight.

The entire dungeon stood revealed below. Or most of it, anyway.

It was an aquarium ark, filled with millions of fish and kilometers upon kilometers of towering coral and stonework hiding places and depths for fish to inhabit, and hunt within. Kelp of all sorts grew at all levels of the place below, like green hairs floating upward to reach for artificial suns which illuminated the waters here and there, like a thousand pearls hanging in the ocean. It was like any of the downflows or upflows in the Underworld, where water flowed up or down throughout the world, as the physics of Veird decreed.

Another wave of Aroido’s hands caused a large, multi-person-sized bubble to rise out of the nearby waters. The bubble then opened, like a submersible, revealing a standing area and a ring to hold onto around that area. Aroido and Everbless went in first, with Aroido saying, “This is the common way for us to give real tours of the place. It’s actually the new monster transportation system, though— For the more cooperative monsters, anyway. It’s quite secure from the dangers down below. Come on in.”

Vanya easily followed, with Soltic close behind. Vanya said, “I assume it grabs monsters and drags them down?”

“If we’re lucky enough to have that option. Otherwise we Aroido create a mana channel and simply lure the monsters to the appropriate locations. That luring is what the majority of us Aroido do every day and night.”

The bubble closed up, and as they began to descend under the waves.

Soltic felt a little bit of childlike-wonder as they descended through a group of shimmering silver fish, and watched a great black shark chase the fish, and completely ignore them. He also had a small hunger pang, but he ignored that for now.

Aroido pointed out the clear bubble, as they passed by the top of a major stone tower, to an anemone sitting atop that tower. The anemone waved a bit. “That’s another me. He’s on top duty today. We usually find places we like to be and he likes there, so we usually give it to him. Lower down you’ll see where other mes are corralling monsters that move out of their biomes. When delvers come in, the core usually does everything automatically, [Duplicate]ing the monsters according to the floor layout and whatnot, but sometimes there are issues. The only one of us who works all the time is Radii; the Radiant Coral Eel. He’s a pretty good eel, who oversees the gold growth down at the lowest layers. He’s a leftover from Jenkins…” For a moment, Aroido’s cheer left him, and then he brushed off that lingering story and tried a bit of levity, “Jenkins didn’t have a good naming sense, but there’s no blaming him for that foible when we Aroido all call ourselves ‘Aroido’.”

As Aroido spoke, their bubble passed by a few more dangerous locations, where monsters roamed in the depths. Soltic saw more than his mana sense allowed, which was still only 25 meters inside the dungeon, so he wasn’t quite sure what he saw when a flickering, massive shape passed behind a tower of stone and riotous coral.

“I have an odd question,” Vanya began, “We saw Everbless— Gold Taker, sorry Soltic. We saw Gold Taker take the fish and kill the fish that we filleted or let go. What is up with that, if he doesn’t actually eat?”

“Feed fishes!” Everbless said. “Fish eat fish!”

Aroido nodded. “Fish have to eat, and they usually eat other fish, but Gold Taker likes his role as an octopus, so he often pretends to be something he is not in order to fool everyone else into lowering their guard.” With a small smile, Aroido added, “We don’t lower our guard here at the dungeons, though, for to do that is to die, as many delvers have found out over the years.”

Soltic almost sighed.

Vanya was more careful than him, by far, for as the bubble passed through a layer of subtly brighter water, Vanya purposefully turned the conversation to brighter topics than the danger of dying delvers. “You separate the biomes by light and shadow?”

“Vaguely,” Aroido said, before turning to Everbless. “Gold Taker? Can you go out and get the papers detailing last year’s gold flow? I think I left them in the office.”

Well at least he was sending the kid away.

“Okay!” Everbless said, before turning ethereal and intangible and zipping off, out of the bubble.

He rapidly passed out of sight.

Vanya and Soltic kept their eyes on Aroido, though, waiting for him to—

“Aaaand there,” Aroido said. The bubble came to a stop in a darker part of the abyss, where the ocean seemed deep, and it likely was. “We’re about four kilometers below the surface, and I just closed off the exit. We’re surrounded by monsters and you two are very accomplished liars. I would have a satisfactory answer about your origins now. If need be, Miss Vanya, I will keep your bodyguard occupied with a continual stream of ‘Everbless is Gold Taker’. It works so well and I rarely get to do that.” Aroido smiled as Soltic pretended to be lost. “Look at his eyes glazing over. But enough of him. You and I will have a proper conversation, just the two of us.”

The air began to speak, ‘Gold Taker is Everbless’, on repeat.

Soltic continued to pretend, though he was very, very close to not pretending anymore. One single word from Vanya, and the two of them would tear this place down. The only reason neither of them had acted in that direction yet was because it behooved them to let people act as they were going to act naturally, without changing their actions due to the overwhelming power that both of them still had.

Killing and disciplining people who were actively committing harm was one thing. Proactively committing harm to stop others from committing harm was a stance to gauge well, before taking that stance.

And this was not one of those situations yet. They were just talking.

Vanya easily said, “I was Called here by Sininindi—”

“I don’t give a shit about her.” Aroido said, “Every dungeon master who dances in here like they’re some Godly gift to the Storm’s Edge tries to kill me and mine. They say we’re a problem, but we’re the only ones who keep this place running. You talk about moving us around so you can make the dungeon work, but we all know that you plan to purge us from the core the second you can.”

Vanya was completely offended. “What the— No I would not! This place only runs because of you—”

“Stop lying to me. You know— Fuck you.” Aroido sighed. “This interrogation never works out the first time. A few deaths should loosen your tongue.”

Force Magic whirled up from Vanya’s feet, unraveling her—

But she pushed back on it enough to stop her death, flickers of power holding her flesh together, and holding her in the air. Her hands and legs were both half gone, but she had suffered much worse than that, because she allowed herself to be hurt all the time. Physically, anyway. In that way, she was the exact opposite of Erick. Emotional injury was Erick’s usual life; it was the physical stuff he absolutely could not stand. He could barely watch now, as he allowed Vanya to work as she wished to work.

Vanya breathed heavily as she stared at Aroido, her limbs half gone. “Don’t do this, Aroido. Don’t go down this path.”

Aroido’s eyebrows rose. “Impressive Force Magic. Not a true [Force Domain], though! Not like mine.”

The unraveling resumed—

“Benevolence,” she prayed, right before she died.

“You’re a Xoatist?” Aroido exclaimed. “Well the Wizard ain’t here to save you— Ah. Could be [Reincarnation]ed—”

Every time Erick saw Quilatalap die, it was yet another bit of trauma added to the pile. Luckily, the trauma train was done with, for Quilatalap had given the signal. Not the major signal, which was to call him ‘Erick’, and throw full caution to the wind, but the lesser one, ‘Benevolence’, spoken with conviction. The only reason Erick did not reverse time instantly was that he had needed to see Aroido’s reaction to getting some information out of Vanya, to better gauge how to handle the man for what came next.

And then he reversed time.

Aroido sighed. “This interrogation never works out the first time. A few deaths should loosen—”

“Death,” Soltic said, giving Vanya her code word as he flooded the monster-capture bubble with his [Force Domain].

In a rapid followup, Vanya reinforced his Domain with her own, and then she dispersed all of Aroido’s [Bubble] magic, while simultaneously holding back the ocean with her own [Bubble] like spell. It had taken the two of them less than a second to get to this point of absolute power over Aroido, but Aroido didn’t seem to care. They had broken his Domain in the process, but he wasn’t really wielding it against them, not yet. He was desperately trying to re-establish his [Force Domain], though.

Aroido never lost his composure, and now they were here, inside Vanya’s bubble. “I knew it.” He smiled, and it was a hateful look. “I suppose you think you are close to winning, then?”

“Absolutely not, I do not believe that at all,” Vanya said, “But I will not be tortured by you. This doesn’t have to go past this incident right here.”

“Oh but I think it must!” Aroido said to Soltic, “Because you already know about Everbless, and I know that your little [Personal Ward] can’t stop that divine anti-meme!” He told both of them. “Go ahead and kill me! My brothers are going to spear me through anyway in the process of breaking this bubble of yours. They will kill us all, and then we will stuff you in small boxes so we can ask you all the questions we desire.”

All the fish in the deeper waters all around had already been vanishing into the depths, as something moved out there, filling the sky with shadows.

“We’re not killing you, even temporarily,” Vanya said, “We want to work with you. I am giving you one last chance to call off your assault, and to pull back your interrogation.”

“ ‘Work with me’! Ha! As if that was ever going to happen with the amount of lies coming from your mouth. As if we could ever work with someone who talks about letting us live, but then lies about everything that they are! We’ve trusted liars before, but never again!” Red-faced, Aroido spat, “That’s how the original Aroido was killed! That’s how a hundred of my brothers have perma-died!”

Vanya calmly said, “Then when this is over, and when we don’t kill any of you, I hope you can change your mind about your hard stances, and I hope I can tell you more about myself, too, for I want this Grand Dungeon to work, Aroido. I need it to work. I need this more than I will ever allow you to know.”

“That’s the first honest thing you’ve said so far. I hope to hear more in the future. Now die.”

The light left. All was jaws, above and below and everywhere all at once, a thousand teeth closing in from each side.

Erick recognized the attack long before he saw the monster that made it. Those thousand snapping jaws of Force belonged to one of the most dangerous monsters of the deep, and this one had to be big. It had to be an ancient rivergrieve; an eel as long as a wyrm, so old and steeped in Ethereal Force that it was nothing but Ethereal Force. It used that power to attack with maw-filled Force projections from every part of its body. Erick had only ever seen them in books, but there was one here, in Dungeon 6.

First things first.

Erick flashed his [Force Domain] through Aroido, breaking the even-more-surprised Aroido’s Domain, and then, with a suddenly-there sword, Erick bisected the man from crown to crotch. Aroido ‘died’. The dungeon master wouldn’t really die though, and it was the cleanest kill Erick could manage with as little time as they had; they couldn’t afford to have complications here, inside a dungeon, and a kill would prevent the man from reappearing for at least a few minutes. Maybe longer.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Erick didn’t leave enemies at his back anymore. Not in a situation like this.

Meanwhile, Vanya focused on the ancient rivergrieve attacking from all sides.

It had finally shown itself, as it pulled closer from every direction at once, its long, barely-visible body, fully encircling Vanya’s Bubble, but maintaining a good 20 meters distance. It didn’t need to get closer than that. Its Forceful Aura would do the killing for it, and then it would eat the remains, for that was how it usually hunted.

Vanya attempted to stop that hunting method. She flooded her [Force Domain] outward, her aura control forming Ethereal mono-wire Force, right in front of a thousand advancing, near-invisible jaws. The jaws caught on those wires and ripped them apart, but the actual monster was too far away for her to reach. ‘Vanya’s’ natural aura control only reached fifteen meters away, and that was with stretching it in one direction. If she did that, then the eel would just attack from the other side.

But she did just that, because Soltic had her back.

As Soltic solidified his Domain against the rivergrieve’s jaws—

Vanya reached out toward the monster’s real head, sending [Force Bolt]s that created mono-wire as the spell burrowed through the water, leaving traces of Ethereal Force like unbreakable fishing lines. The Bolts abruptly ended the moment they encountered the Forceful Aura of the rivergrieve, but some of them got far before that happened. Far enough to leave mono-wire near the beast’s true body.

Where ethereal wire cut, the water stained red.

The rivergrieve was ancient, though. It was smart. It might have even been another Familiar Form of Aroido. But if that was Aroido, then it would have had a [Force Domain], and it did not; all it had was its aura. A rivergrieve’s aura was one of the most powerful auras in the world, though. It used that aura to tear at the wire that encircled it, pushing it away from its body, preventing a full encirclement, but Vanya simply cast more and more lines out into the water while Soltic defended her with a solid Domain of Force.

The water filled with blood.

That was too much for the monster.

The rivergrieve roared and made its escape, unwinding from the mono-wire force. It left behind bits of its ethereal body that turned back into black-green skin and fins. Those bits fell down upon mono-wire and cut into even smaller pieces. The rivergrieve had not killed them, but the rivergrieve had done its job; it had delayed them long enough.

Five Aroidos swam through the waters all around, each of them wielding their Force Domain in the waters like spears of solid power. To anyone else, this sort of fight, in this sort of area, was a death sentence and then a long time in a holding cell. From there, Aroido would kill them over and over again until he got the answers he wanted.

Maybe the other prospective dungeon masters had had the right of it, when they tried to purge Aroido.

But then again, they probably didn’t start off this way.

Erick didn’t truly blame any of the men out there for their actions right now. From what he had gathered, the collective of them had been burned too many times by others who claimed to want to be a part of the dungeon, and who then tried to get rid of them, or whatever. All of that could have been a lie, but Erick didn’t think it was. The world over, dungeons had been murdered by civilization, over and over again, until those dungeons were remade for the benefit of civilization. It was one of the reasons that Erick didn’t want a False Society inside any dungeon near Candlepoint, or in the Crystal Forest. That was an ethical problem that he didn’t want to deal with.

Maybe Quilatalap could do a proper False Society here, though. He had done some wonderful work with the False Society over at the Freelands.

These people, these Aroido, needed help; not what civilization usually gave them.