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Dungeons changed every day. A path that might lead somewhere one day might become a dead end, or a loop. While there was always a path down, the monsters met on the way might be different- in number, type, and strength. Generally, that matched the level of the dungeons. However, it was possible to have an unlucky day.
“Oof,” Larr sat down after the group finished a battle- and confirmed no other enemies were nearby. “How many groups is that so far? Six? After we made it all the way in last week…” he shook his head.
“This would be easier if we kept the equipment…” Yuri shrugged, “But historical artifacts and all that.”
“It wouldn’t have felt right,” Arara agreed. “That said, I do hope we receive sufficient compensation.”
Luth leaned on his staff slightly as he talked, “It’s not like they exactly had tons of extra magic items on hand here. It’s still mostly a historical dig site, not a city. Or even a decent sized town.”
“I really wanted that sword,” Larr hung his head. “I could be slicing through these rocks like a hot knife through butter. Mmm, butter.” Larr started drooling some.
“Didn’t you just have buttered toast this morning?” Arara asked. “You act like you haven’t had any in months.”
“I need to eat to keep up my energy!” Larr said. “Keeping up with you big folk is hard.”
“I did not intend to indicate you ate excessive amounts of food,” Arara said. He held his fingers in a square and looked around, focusing magic. “Shall we continue on or return to the surface?”
“Return,” Luth said. “We’re just down here to keep it from spawning too many monsters anyway, right? We already did enough fighting today.”
“I agree,” Yuri nodded. “Let’s head back.”
—–
It was after another few days of diving into a dungeon without reaching the deepest level again that they sensed a problem. Upon comparing with other parties they noticed that the number of encounters every group was having increased- which meant the overall number of monsters in the dungeon was higher.
Nobody else had done anything to change the dungeon… but nobody could say why killing a boss would change the dungeon either. It was one thing if the dungeon felt threatened- like someone was looking around for things to destroy it- but that hadn’t been the case. The dungeon was already strange for having equipment from long before being worn by monsters… the new changes weren’t encouraging.
There weren’t any good choices. Stop entering the dungeon, and let the stone monsters continue to grow in number until they exploded out of the dungeon and took over the region… again. Except maybe things would be different. That wouldn’t necessarily be better, but different was something.
—–
Kantrilla asked the important questions when we heard the news. “Does it count as another dungeon doing something weird if it didn’t happen while we were there? Or we didn’t notice it happening anyway.”
“It’s hard to say,” I shook my head. “Sometimes, coincidences must happen. There’s definitely Luck involved somewhere though.”
The threat level for the dungeon under Namoth had been reassessed after the changes. It was determined to be F-rank at minimum, and a high priority. The priority was partly because Sage Norwood had a personal interest, but the assessment of danger wouldn’t be something he wanted to alter. He wished people to succeed, instead of drawing unprepared people to temporarily plug a gap.
“How did we become one of the parties with the most dungeons destroyed?” Kasner asked.
Alhorn knew it wasn’t necessarily a serious question, but he explained anyway. “It’s actually pretty easy. When most people haven’t destroyed a dungeon at all, over the whole of the surrounding countries having destroyed two puts you within the top fifty parties easily. Destroying three puts you in the top ten. If you just count Othya, we might be top five.”
“Dungeons acting strangely has recently become a big problem,” Halette commented, “This is just the latest one. Or from a different perspective… maybe it was the first?” Halette shook her head, “After all, it kept all of that magic equipment for so long. Usually it’s made by the dungeon.”
Dungeons making them was why the way some things worked were so… untidy. A ring that gave two or three points to an attribute wasn’t really worth spending money on. If it was made by people, it would usually be five or ten. Apprentices might make things with odd numbers, but that was just not being able to draw out the full power of what they were using in most cases. People liked neat numbers, so masters usually used just enough to draw out something nice. Though, there was also something to be said for having something just one point bigger as well. A little extra wasn’t bad.
Then again, it wasn’t like all magic crystals came in the same sizes, and sometimes it was better to just use everything available. But my point still stood that dungeon made equipment was noticeably different from that made by people, magic or not… even if it functioned just fine, it was always a bit strange.
“We might get to add one more to the list,” I finally said. “Unless someone else beats us to it.”
Though the collapse of the dungeon could cause problems for Namoth… Sage Norwood said he would rather unearth the whole city again than let swarms of monsters overrun the countryside. Guildmaster Timmy agreed with him, of course, and it was best for the sake of Othya, even if some history got destroyed along the way.
It wasn’t to the point where we had to panic, but the word had gone out to those in the know that the dungeon needed to be destroyed. Since we’d already been involved and had experience with the dungeon in question, we were on the top of the list. We also happened to be conveniently in the capital where the decision was made.
There were higher level parties that could do it, but not only were they busy… dungeons still had the ability to sense levels, more or less. A dungeon that felt threatened was one thing, a panicking dungeon was something else entirely. We’d run into just a bit of that before, but there were stories of a group of high level adventurers entering an easy dungeon… and while they did destroy it, they never made it out before it collapsed. Maybe they hadn’t planned a good way out… but other experience told similar stories, where there were actually survivors to talk.
The important thing was balancing the level of the party to the reaction of the dungeon… and in the case of our party, our competence level was high for our… level level. The dungeon couldn’t necessarily sense that in the same way, and was less likely to panic. Maybe there was something to why they had acted strange around us, but that could have just been us being drawn to the dungeons through Luck. Or… maybe it was my bonus points? That was kind of like a level, enough that something not even really thinking might be sensing bonus points instead.. If that was the case, I would have felt overleveled for some dungeons. Well, it was too late to consider that anyway, if I had been the cause. Sage Norwood hadn’t told me about anything like that for himself, either.
—–
Sending an army down into a dungeon could cause the same sort of overreaction as too high of level- though large numbers of weak people weren’t necessarily a good match for the tight confines of dungeons. That said, a reasonable number of small groups was fine… and sometimes it was best to be cautious and take a larger group.
Ten people was a bit much, but it still seemed reasonable if it was two groups alternating combats- or splitting attacks from different directions. Because of that, we joined up with Yuri, Larr, Arara and Luth. Socks was counted among that number, and if I included Carlos we would be eleven. A bit too many, but we didn’t want to delay the work.
Since they had gone to our academy, we were all quite familiar with the group. We didn’t have to spend much time learning to work together, and they were experienced with the dungeon too.
“You always were good students,” Alhorn commented, “Learning things we didn’t even teach. Too bad you picked up this particular thing.”
Yuri shrugged. “It’s just how things turned out. I don’t think we meant to learn how to make dungeons weird.”
With two groups, we were able to push deeper into the dungeon quickly. Arara was particularly helpful, able to scout out paths without needing to walk down them. Halette was still an excellent scout, capable of picking up traces of an ambush coming even in directions we didn’t expect… but there was also something to be said for just being able to pick a direction and actually see if there was trouble. Since it was a good part light manipulation, Alhorn was considering trying to learn it… but that would take some time.
We were able to reach the depths of the dungeon as a pair of groups by sharing the load, but we still had to find the core… and that could be difficult. Fortunately, with Halette’s experience and Arara’s ability to look at places we weren’t at, we might be able to speed up the process. Though we wouldn’t be destroying the dungeon today in any case- there were preparations that needed to be made with the other parties before we tried that.