Worthy Core

After congratulating Lollyp on her latest kill and boss upgrade, Xenia returned to her core chamber and fell into her favorite chair with a sigh. Turning first to her original core guardian Sir Flopsy, the dungeon master scoops him up and begins to stroke his back before turning next to the current holder of the title. At the wall closest to the dead dungeon stood Sincere, not far from a small writing desk where the man had been leaving scraps of dungeon-summoned paper covered in notes. "Well, I got good news and bad news, Sin-man."

The demon smirks as he sets aside the scrap of parchment currently in his hand. "Let me guess. The good news is that the intrusion has been defeated, and so I will not need to go 'hide under the bed' as you suggested I do earlier?"

"Hey, you are smart. The bad news is I don't think I can let you take notes, or at least not down here. I get the serious impression the folks out there are starting to catch on to our tricks, and I don't want anyone snatching up any more secrets as dungeon loot or something."

Smiling still, Sincere picks the parchment back up and brings it over to Xenia. "A wise and cautious move, but unnecessary. For one, as you did not sufficiently empower these writing materials, they would dissolve were anyone to try and remove them from the dungeon. And secondly, well, take a look." Xenia does so, peering at the man's handwriting with a frown.

"What language is this? I ought to know all the ones you knew, now."

"None. It is a personal code I alone know. In any case these are only partial notes, even were the cipher to be cracked, it would likely be meaningless to anyone who read it."

Xenia shrugs and leans back into her sheet as she tosses the parchment on the nearby table. "Fine, fine. So, that theory you were hinting at before, you get anywhere on that?"

Taking the seat opposite her, Sincere nods. "It is as I suspected. Before I explain, how much do you understand of the workings of your floor cores? The ones you cannot see, not the one you hide away in that...tasteful statuary there."

"Uh, let's see...they exist in a metaphysical dimension, and they manage the mana flows of each individual floor, something like that?"

Sincere raises a finger. "That is one of their two functions. Yes, they act as, well, let's call them mana distribution nodes. Rather than every construct in your dungeon having a direct link to your primary core, only the floor cores do so, and the constructs of each floor then receive their mana from there. That is where your 'floor capacity' comes in, how much mana you can push through one without risking an overload. The second function of a floor core however is to make use of a record of its floor, how it is supposed to exist in an ideal state. Every trap, monster, door, and so on is recorded by a floor, and when an intrusion is reset, the floor is restored according to that record."

Xenia nods along. "Like a data backup, sure. Store your shit in the cloud in case of corruption and all that."

Sincere raises an eyebrow at that. "You know of spells to store things in clouds? That seems like a very unreliable sort of vault."

"It's metaphysical clouds, you know? Anyhow, carry on, how's this relate to taking over dead dungeon floors?"

"Right, well. When a dungeon dies, the floor cores lose most of this functionality. They still have some use as mana nodes, but of course there's no longer any mana flowing through them. More notably, while the cores still have the ability to restore things to their original state, not only does it no longer have the mana to do it with, but the actual records themselves are lost. It's possible the records are actually stored in the primary dungeon core and only sent to the floors at the time of reset, I have not ruled that out, but either way I am certain that dead floor cores no longer have that information. It's why I was able to feed mana into one to produce elemental cores - it still had the capacity to produce them, as that floor had once done so, but it no longer had the instructions telling it when or exactly how it ought to do so until I forced it to, in a rather direct manner."

Xenia again nods along, though she can already feel this was threatening to turn into another Intro to Dungeon Theory 101 lecture. Having already sat through several of those in the short time she's known the man, she attempts to hurry him along. "So how can we actually get any use out of them, then?"

Sincere grows excited at the question. "Because your little 'curse' has several components to it, including the ability to open a window through time, and the ability to create pocket dimensions. It's quite frankly an absolutely absurd level of power for such a curse, and I tremble to imagine who in the world would conceive of wasting it on a vehicle like you described. Almost certainly a deity, perhaps a whole group of them...but that's getting off track. Sadly, we cannot control this window through time, but I believe that when used it will be directed onto a dead floor core at which point it will retrieve the records of the dead floor from the last time such a thing existed. It will then use that record to recreate the floor within a pocket dimension."

The dungeon master groans as she sinks further into her seat. "And let me guess, 'subduing and harnessing' the energies of the Great Dungeon means someone's gotta go in there and beat the floor."

"That would be the obvious assessment, yes."

"Wonderful. Well, guess I'll go tell Beatrice to scrounge up another group of mercs sometime this week, then."

Xenia begins to stir from her seat, but before she can finish Sincere quickly motions for her to sit back down. "I'm afraid this time that won't be an option. The pocket dimension would only be accessible to those bound to the curse. That means you, your dungeon monsters, and possibly elementals bound to you in the manner we discussed yesterday, although I am uncertain on that last part."

Xenia stares at the man. "You're telling me we've gotta make an adventuring party out of friggin' boss monsters?"

"It wouldn't necessarily have to be floor bosses, however I suspect the pocket would only be able to support a certain amount of magical energies, and bosses would be more effective in most cases than a horde of hopping slimes."

Xenia sighs as she resumes her focus on petting Sir Flopsy. "Right. Well. Can't just rush off and do that, cause I really do not wanna leave the place empty in case someone comes knocking. Midnight raid then, sometime. We'll do a group meet about it tonight I think, see what Lollyp and Trish think. Good work, though."

"No problem at all. I'm sure you would have figured it out yourself eventually, through brute force if nothing else. I believe actually triggering the curse will simply be a matter of you deciding you want to do it hard enough."

"Brute force is our usual MO, but I'm glad we've got a geek like you on the team now to help give us a heads up before we dive in, Sin-man."

Sincere pauses before answering. "...Always happy to be of service, dungeon master."

Later that evening the Dungeon Council, plus Slooshy, once again met in Beatrice's apartment. Sincere explained his findings to the group with Xenia helpfully contributing the dumbed-down version for Beatrice, who then passed along an even dumber version for Slooshy. As the lecture reached its end with the demon only slightly irritated from constant interruptions and re-phrasings, Xenia clapped once to open the 'discussion' phase of the meeting. "So, we're gonna need an adventuring party if we wanna do this. Beatrice, you can't come, but you are our resident expert adventurer, so advice would be handy. First question I wanna put out there: do we even give a shit about any of this?"

The confusion on Lollyp's face is apparent. "Why wouldn't we? If it's a chance to unlock floors for, well, not for free, but almost for free, what's the downside?"

Xenia grimaces. "Well, for one, even if they do work to our advantage sometimes, these are friggin' curses, remember. I don't like leaning into the things so much if we don't have to, and we don't have to. Dungeons expand without a cheat option like this through achievements, and it's not like we need more floors right now. If we do end up expanding into a bunch of the old dungeon, I don't know that it'll necessarily be a good thing for us."

Beatrice shakes her head. "You've seen the maps we made, I'm pretty sure the place had dozens of floors at least. Just because you grab one floor of the place doesn't mean you gotta do the whole thing, so why not see how it works then go from there?"

The dungeon master raises a finger and an objection. "You're forgetting an important part, Trish. Dungeons are designed for killing people. This isn't exactly risk free...probably? Actually, I don't know. Sincere? Are these floor recreations gonna kill us? Like, if we die in the dungeon we die in real life, sort of thing?"

As befitting a man of his wisdom and experience, the researcher thinks over the question for nearly a solid minute before giving a well-reasoned response. "Probably not."

"...Probably?" Xenia narrows her eyes. "I ain't liking the sound of 'probably'."

Sincere sighs. "Well, this is only a hypothesis. But I believe that the pocket dimension will be considered a part of your dungeon, and not part of the Great Dungeon, which means your souls will still be within the collection net of the dungeon's individual Well of Souls. However, pocket dimensions are fragile things at the best of times, and I suspect you will not be able to just re-attack a floor endlessly if you fail. It may depend on the stability of the floor core in question: more damaged ones may break entirely if you attempt them too many times, while even stronger ones will probably still require a recovery period before another attempt."

"Well, that helps. Guess it's worth at least one try, then." Xenia eyes the folks at the table. "Second point of order: who's going? I can, apparently, but Beatrice and Slooshy are out. That leaves Lolly Pop and Sincere here, BB, and the stabby ghosts."

Beatrice shrugs. "Why not the whole gang, then? And however many more monsters you can take, if you can?"

Lollyp frowns at the suggestion. "I think we need to leave BB behind. Even if we do this in the middle of the night, we can't rule out that a party might swing by anyways. And if BB's gone folks are gonna notice that right away. A dungeon with no bosses is super vulnerable, and we have to assume that Guy's not gonna be able to pull people out in time if we need them. Maybe if we try the floor and it turns out to be super-suited for BB's skills or something, but otherwise I think we need him to hold the fort while we're gone."

Xenia nods. "Makes sense. Hmm, hey Trish, you thinking of heading down the mountain anytime soon? Maybe you could let us know when a party might be swinging by again."

Beatrice hesitates for a moment before answering. "Actually...I did want to bring this up tonight. It's not gonna be tomorrow, maybe after another week or so, but I was thinking of striking out. Long-term, like."

That catches Xenia's attention quickly, and the woman leans forward. "Wait, what? But you just got here!"

Beatrice chuckles a little uneasily as she tries to calm her friend. "I'm not talking about going all the way back home or anything. I just - I wanna see what this world has to offer, right? The dungeon is fun, the apartment is great, but I want to see more than this. I was thinking of heading down at some point to find Alizz, and seeing what it takes to sign up as a real Challenger. Then, y'know, go around and do Challenger shit, try out the other dungeons, see the local cities, that sort of thing. I'll come back to visit, obviously!"

Though Xenia still seems uncertain, Guy hovers forward and adds their support. "Having a scout to visit other dungeons could be quite useful! My knowledge of dungeons is only in the general sense, not the specific, so seeing how other dungeon masters ply their trade could be valuable information. Not to mention, learning more about how Challengers work when they're not in the middle of an intrusion. Learn the enemy's weaknesses, and whatnot."

Thinking it through a little, Xenia eventually sighs and nods. "Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. But Trish, promise me something, yeah? Find yourself a team. And I don't mean so that you can find their secrets so we can kill em easier, that might be a little messed up even for me. But no one can do shit like this alone, even you, so...I wanna be sure you're doing it right, you know?"

The warrior nods. "I suppose you're right. I guess I have missed working with other people, but after our last band broke up, well...trying to form a new one just always felt wrong, somehow. Working with the Challengers the past week or so, though, it did feel more right than it ever did back home...is it just cause I'm out of the old rut? New place, new faces? I dunno, but yeah, I'll see about making some new friends before getting in over my head, no worries."

"Cool, cool. Well, for what we do know, I don't think those Valleylanders are coming back for at least a few more days, if nothing else they need a new healer. So we'll let Sincere poke around at the dungeon a little more, Lolly Pop and Trish, you can help make sure the dead elves are in fighting condition, and maybe in two nights we'll give it a run?"

The group, minus Slooshy who was having something of a hard time following half a conversation, looks around the table at each other and nods. Speaking for the Council, Lollyp grins. "Watch out, Great Dungeon! Worthy Dungeon's coming for ya!"