Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 42: Turning The Heat Up Before Cooling Down

I suppose I met my goal… Lieutenant Tanithil Alnus thought as he led what remained of the company through what appeared to be a swamp, constantly on fire. Captain Gleditsia is dead just like we had planned.

But at much too high a cost.

The 7th Floor appeared to be one long burning swamp. As the company had gotten an hour-long break, and with the Boss still trapped, the monsters no longer caused them any problems.

Except for the 'mimics'. Their species could only be seen once they had revealed themselves, and as they seemed to possess extra Strength during surprise attacks, they were naturally hard to deal with. Mistress Acacia appeared to be the only one able to detect camouflaged mimics. The elf threw her spells - which sometimes did odd things, though never anything truly harmful.

But with only one person able to notice the mimics, naturally the things would sometimes get through their defenses.

Sergeant Castanea had been their most recent victim. And while Tanithil hadn't really liked the man, he had known him for years and couldn't help but feel sad for his death.

Out of the original 6 sergeants, only two were left. Sergeant Luvon Tilia of his own platoon and one Tanithil didn't yet know the name of.

He would learn it, should the guy survive.

The Dungeon has already taken the lives of so many. Who knows what other dangers lurk in here?

A golem made of magma had left behind a blue token. As the Dungeon didn't give out loot at the moment, the token had to be for a puzzle. Hopefully simply one they hadn't seen yet. I really don't want to spend any more time in here than I need to.

They were about 70 meters inside the burning swamp when Tanithil noticed the massive increase in water intake.

At first he simply thought it a bit odd how everyone had decided the 7th Floor was the right time to hydrate themselves. Then he remembered they had just had a break. Surely people had taken the time to drink then…?

They were in a burning swamp of course. It would make sense for it to be a bit hotter here.

Except… That's not how Dungeons work. The fire would burn you if you touched it, yes. But it would not heat the surrounding area up, nor would it actually burn the wood it was on, nor create any smoke.

But why have we been coughing then?

Not knowing the answer, he instead conveyed his observations to their Dungeon expert.

"The effect must be caused by either a puzzle or one or more traps." Sarzina Acacia began. "We haven't seen any traps on this Floor yet, so I suspect the heat and the bad air to be the traps of this Floor."

Mistress Acacia started to look… Excited? "Which would mean staying on this Floor for too long can be deadly. Probably even regardless of one's tier!"

She mumbled a bit to herself, while looking around wide eyed.

"So, we best hurry up then." Tanithil interrupted her mumblings. "Right, ma'am?"

She shook her head and blinked rapidly before answering. "Yes, of course lieutenant! That would be the best cause of action."

With a quick nod, he ordered the company to move faster. And while his Morale Boost Skill had been activatived since the captain went down, it was only now his Aura of Speed was activated. Tanithil didn't have enough mana or mana regeneration to be able to keep them both active for long. If they didn't find somewhere colder soon, he would have to let go of his Morale Boost, so they could focus on speed.

"Let's make a sharp right here, lieutenant." Mistress Acacia suggested, all of a sudden. "I don't like how the ground looks around here. I suspect it might be a trap of some sort."

With their best Awa dead, the dungeon mistress-to-be had become the new trap-detector. Her main Score might be Intelligence but her Awareness was quite high as well.

Tanithil looked around confused, but could only see more swamp floor where the noblewoman indicated there was a trap. He didn't doubt her though and simply ordered the company to walk right around the area.

But when he wanted them to move forward again, Mistress Acacia again asked to avoid the area.

Several meters further right and they were now right up against the wall.

"I believe holes like this-" Mistress Acacia pointed to a small hole in the ground some meters in front of them. Said hole was partly covered behind charred sticks and foliage. Tanithil would have had no chance of noticing it, had it not been pointed out to him. "-are the air traps making us cough. Most likely by releasing some invisible gas of some sort. I suggest we hold our breath and run through it. Much faster than going around."

So, that's what they did.

Finally, the end of the long room was in sight. The door at the end had a circular indent clearly meant for the blue token.

But when the token was inserted, the door simply revealed another door. This time of the talking variety.

We are never getting out of this heat, are we?

Or this Dungeon for that matter…

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Huh… That's… an odd reaction to my quicksand traps… She could clearly see my trap, so why didn't she just call it by name?

Maybe they've just never heard of quicksand? And the Lightning Mage has enough Awareness to notice regardless?

I had gotten the Boss freed with the help of several nearby creatures and had gotten it fully healed up again.

With three unicorn bunnies it hadn't taken long.

Maybe I should have made all three Boss assistants unicorn bunnies, after all.

Ah… No. It would be a bit too over the top - not to mention expensive - if I had three of them just to heal one Boss.

I had refrained from having the Boss come after them again, just yet, as I wanted them to think it was still trapped.

Though… It was a bit hard to free it. The plants appeared to have become stronger after she used her magic on them.

Now they had reached the end of The Swampfire Forest. While their guard wasn't completely down due to the massive amount of creatures still attacking them - or rather attacking in self defense or defense of their flock -, I doubt they expected the Boss to become a problem again.

My kirin stood ready, though I made sure it was far enough away and behind a lot of trees, so not even the dawon could sense it.

The small mimic of the room had gone unnoticed as well, pretending to be a rock and being somewhat off to the side but still near the exit.

After having inserted the blue coin and solved the first puzzle, they had the dawon try to ram open The Riddleless Riddle Door. As I had assumed, the feline wasn't strong enough to do any actual damage to the door, so they had to actually solve the puzzle.

Right now the army was busy, most of them with protecting the remaining dozen from my creatures, while said dozen were trying to figure out my Riddleless Riddle Door. As such, this was the perfect time to spring an attack on them.

On my order, my Boss charged the army. And once it was noticed, I had it let out a loud roar. Its long neck gave it an unmistakable sound, which the army recognized, causing them to focus on the new, yet old, threat.

This gave my mimic the opportunity to ambush the nearest soldier with a karma level of under 25%. Said soldier had been about to backstep into the bush-shaped mimic, making it feel threatened and attack him. First it ate his leg in one big chomp. Then, once the soldier had hit the ground, it took his head.

My mimic was then killed, before it could attack another.

The kirin, on the other hand, didn't succeed in killing anyone else, as it had quickly been trapped in plants again. Still, the distraction it had caused had helped.

33 down, 42 left.

While I've decided it's pointless to try and kill them all, I do want to kill another two bad ones, so I can tier up afterwards.

It took the Lightning Mage 9 minutes after that to solve the riddle of The Riddleless Riddle Door, which I thought was slower than expected.

Maybe I had a bit too high of an expectation of her.

But then she proved my thought wrong by quickly solving the 'Show me only violence' puzzle.

The Mirror puzzle took them quite a bit of time, however, as the many elves in the room had blocked the sight of the door's reflection.

It took them enough time that the remaining two 2nd tiers and even a level 27 Leader passed out from the heat of the room. The two 2nd tiers had been fighting my creatures at the time and were killed once they fainted. Both had a normal gray aura, which was why the two had survived this long, so I felt a bit bad for their deaths. But it had happened so quickly in both cases that I hadn't been able to call my creatures back before they had died.

The Leader Class had been sitting down far away from the fighting when he fainted, so he simply passed out.

Solving my Mirror puzzle ended up being a group effort. A Scout finally noticed the sight of the door's reflection and pointed it out. Another soldier then went to touch the mirror, to see if that was the mirror, and a third tested the wall where the door seemed to be placed. Then finally someone had the bright idea to walk backwards while looking at the door's reflection.

They were naturally quite relieved to finally be out of the heat.

Until they realized they had entered another Safezone…

I naturally did a mental evil cackle.

Muhahahahaa!

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While taking a much needed break to cool down and catch their breath in the Safezone between the 7th and 8th Floors, the company began discussing whether or not they should continue on their mission.

Sarzina Acacia had long since fallen in love with the Dungeon and was determined to claim it as her own or die trying. The incredible fast growth, the unique monsters, puzzles, traps, the label floating over everyones head stating their name, species, Class and level, the slightly mixed environment - lava dripping from the ceiling of a forest themed room?! - the unnaturally powerful Boss, multiple monsters in the Boss Room and all the monsters being able to leave their rooms.

All of this screamed of mysteries needing to be solved and challenges to overcome. And Zina had always loved solving mysteries and overcoming challenges. So, getting to tame a Dungeon like this would surpass even her wildest fantasies.

And that was before mentioning how certain it was that a Dungeon like this would be known worldwide for all eternity!

Zina had to have her name associated with this Dungeon!

It has to be mine! We can't stop trying!

The rest of the company wasn't so determined. Their primary goal was to survive.

Something that no longer looked certain.

On one hand, they could do as Zina wanted and try to get to the Core. The monsters would slowly get stronger as they went further down, and as they weren't trapped in their rooms their numbers would only increase as the company progressed through the Dungeon.

And of course - most terrifyingly of all - they had no clue which Floor the Core Room was on.

On the other hand, they could retreat. They would know what challenges were where, and the monster horde would decrease as the company progressed. As the 'allow all'-tool had disabled the teleport function from the Safezone stairs, they would have to pass through everything again, with every trap and puzzle having reset after a Floor had been left behind.

Though, most puzzles were automatically considered solved - though without any EXP given - if you came from behind, as they were otherwise unsolvable. But puzzles like the talking doors would have to be solved all over again!

The company decided it would be safest to leave through the Core Room, if it was on this next Floor, but that it wouldn't be worth it, if there somehow was a 9th or 10th Floor.

This conclusion was largely motivated by the fact that the Boss couldn't harm everyone, and the desperate want to stay out of the heat they had just left.

Then the company voted on it. 12 believed there was a 9th Floor, while 27 thought the 8th was the last.

As such, the company once again began moving towards the Core Room.

The first room of the 8th Floor had a tree in each corner and grass at each end of the elongated room. Next to the two trees on the other side of the room sat two 3 meters tall dragonet statues. In between the two patches of grass the ground was covered with large square tiles. Each tile had one of 8 images on it: Grass - green in color -, blueberries, apple, plum, fish, pig, chicken, or dragonet.

Zina noticed that, interestingly enough, every tile was a pressure plate. Hmmm… To make it harder to figure out which tiles are safe perhaps? Dungeons rarely have that much forethought!

Naturally, this pleased the future dungeon mistress greatly.

The walls pictured various creatures eating: horses, cows and sheep grazing, a wolf pack feasting on a slain cow, humans roasting and eating a suckling pig around a fireplace, dragonets eating different fruits and berries, a bear eating a fish, a sea dragon of some sort about to eat multiple fish at once, chickens eating worms and several others.

At many points along the walls, there were circular lids blending in with the images. Must be where the punishment for failing to solve this puzzle will be coming from.

And with the company having exited the Safezone, the monsters were once again attacking. Zina could even hear people fighting in the Safezone itself.

The monsters were likely trying to get to the elves on the 8th Floor. It made some form of sense that they could enter a Safezone if they were only passing through.

Of course, not all elves had exited the Safezone yet, so the two groups naturally ended up fighting while there.

This tiled puzzle room had several dragonets in it, though none had moved from their trees yet.

Must be a part of the puzzle. Zina thought before ordering that the dragonets of the room be unharmed, unless they attacked first.

With all the fighting happening behind her, Zina began solving the puzzle.

It didn't take her long. She was a smart girl after all.