Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 49: Noted Oddities

After having closely examined her notes, consulted her books on Dungeons and even contacted her old dungeon professor through her emco, Sarzina Acacia had come to a conclusion:

Her Dungeon was anything but normal.

Some of the oddities were simply rare, but seen before in other Dungeons. But for one Dungeon to have more than two of these rare variations had never been seen before.

On top of that, several oddities were completely unique and never seen before.

Zina and her old professor had ended up concluding that no good action could be taken before they had more information, so simply learning more about the Dungeon would be the best thing to do for the moment.

After looking over her notes the night before, Zina had realized that the levels of the monsters of each Floor didn't follow either of the two only known standards. Normally the levels of the monsters of a Floor would either be completely random, or every monster would have the highest level possible for the Floor with the exception of one weaker monster. A rare variation of the first standard was completely random levels except for Boss's which would have the highest level instead.

But Zina's Dungeon didn't follow either of the two standards, nor the rare variation. Roughly 50% of the Dungeon's monsters of the first three Floors - which were all Zina had information on at the moment - had the highest level possible for the Floor and were placed at the latter half of a Floor, about another 40% were one level under the Floor limit and placed at the first half of a Floor, while the remaining 10% were level 1 monsters, that also didn't fit into the other two categories.

With numbers like that, it didn't appear random at all, yet many monsters weren't at the Floor limit!

And adding that to all the other oddities Zina had taken note of…

…Well… Neither Zina or her old professor had known what to make of it… Other than documenting all the differences, that is.

After all, one of the oddities of the Dungeon was how its monsters didn't always attack, while another gave extra EXP and loot for not attacking.

Zina loved the mystery and challenge of figuring out why the Dungeon acted as it did - its traps acted weird too, after all -, but she wasn't really sure what to think about the lack of actual fighting in there. The holy System rewarded people for hard work and normally nothing was harder than Dungeon mining.

But, while Zina's Dungeon gave good rewards, it wasn't a hard one to mine. Which went against what most people believed was the will of the System.

Dungeons are a crucial part of the holy System, right? So, a priest might have an idea of what's going on and what to do about it.

Isn't one supposed to arrive with the sheriff? When will that be again? Three weeks or so I believe…

Guess I'll just have to keep documenting everything till then!

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Which was something Zina was all too happy to do.

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This was clearly a good news, bad news situation. Bad news: I had been declared as unusually abnormal. Good news: They didn't intend to do anything about it till they knew more.

Neutral news: Their next course of action seemed to hang on the advice of an unknown priest with just as unknown morals and motives. The only things I knew about their religion was that they worshiped the System and had the number 6 as a holy number. Which won't help me learn anything about the priest.

There is no point in trying to fix the oddities they have already noted. It will likely just make me seem even weirder.

At least three weeks will give me enough time to finish the 9th Floor and likely the 10th as well. More defenses are always good!

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New Dungeon Rule: More Than Allowed: When the allowed number of sapients in each Floor has been disabled, Dungeon creatures and the Core’s “family” get a 5% increase in Dexterity for each additional sapient to enter the Dungeon after the first 4. The increase in Dexterity through this Rule cannot be higher than a 100% increase.

I love it, but I doubt I’ll end up using it much. The loss of loot is undesirable after all, and I am supposedly already tamed. It might not end up used at all.

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The next dive, the first of the new day, the Lightning Mage was only accompanied by her dawon. And clearly having interacted with my kobolds had made her change her strategy, 'cause now she was politely asking for every key before relieving my key-carrying creatures of them. This new habit meant she solved the only puzzle she had had trouble with. Which was… both a bad and a good thing.

It was bad in the event she decided I wasn't worth keeping around or if - or rather when - she realized I wasn't actually Caged. But her attitude also indicated that she wasn't a bad person.

She just seemed to have tunnel vision aimed at becoming famous as a dungeon master. Which… could both end up being to my advantage or my disadvantage, depending on whether her priority was to dominate me or if gaining fame by being associated with me was more important.

'Cause if it was the latter, then I might be able to strike up some form of deal with her!

Though I wasn't completely sure what kind of deal that would be. I would want to include a truce of some sort for the Tribe, and even if the Lightning Mage wanted to agree to that, I was sure her Queendom wouldn't.

I'll consider it more at a later date. I don't want to take any risks before I've finished my 10th Floor, so it really isn't relevant at the moment.

The Lightning Mage and her dawon quickly passed the first three Floors before slowing down so the elf could take a massive amount of notes for the 4th.

The hate shown from The Door of Speciesism confused and annoyed her for quite a while before she realized what was happening. After which she was quick to convince The Door that not all elves were bad people, and it let them through.

She still failed the puzzle of course, which naturally confused her.

And made her write more notes…

Then The Kobold Training Camp and its many traps were explored and noted, after which it was The Geyser Path's turn. The Creature Picture puzzle was quickly solved and seeing how little time had passed since she entered my Dungeon, the Lightning Mage decided to explore the 5th Floor right away.

Plenty of notes were written for the three Memory Lanes, and like Begdar the Lightning Mage also realized that the three rooms contained invisible creatures through the extra loot and EXP given after each room.

The Humble Door only took her a couple of tries before she understood the hint it was giving her.

Before answering the puzzle found in the next room, she began exploring the place. Quickly realizing the disaster about to happen I ordered the ring handle shaped mini mimic to jump into the nearby olive tree, while the two visitors were looking at the weapon stands, and take the form of a small olive branch.

I really didn't want her to write down that it normally looked like the door's ring handle and spoil the surprise.

While the Lightning Mage made sure to look up in every tree, she didn't use any spells when doing so nor did she climb them, so the mimic's epic shapeshifting kept it from being found.

Then she shook the statue's hand and entered The Field of Fallen Heroes.

Only for Experiencing Peace to reveal that she had missed a creature in the previous room… Luckily, she simply assumed it was another invisible longma.

Then she realized that even during normal Dungeon runs I have multiple creatures in my Boss Room. And unlike dragonets, unicorn bunnies wouldn't attack when people got too close to their burrows but instead flee, so its presence in the Boss Room was noted as well.

I'm getting more and more annoyed at her finding so many of my tricks! Especially since I know she intends to sell the information to people for profit! She has earned that knowledge! But newcomers aren't meant to have it from the start!

The Lightning Mage left my Dungeon, and if I had a mouth it would be making an evil grin, while letting a few evil-sounding chuckles escape.

So, I'll have to force them to earn it for themselves!

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New Dungeon Rule:

Earning One's Own Paycheck: All knowledge of this Dungeon must be earned individually by exploring the Dungeon or having one of the Dungeon Core's creatures share the knowledge. Unearned knowledge will be distorted until it has been confirmed by Dungeon exploration or by a Dungeon creature.

All EXP gained to sapients or semi-sapients from killing Dungeon creatures must be earned individually by participating in the fight. No unearned EXP is gained in this Dungeon.

The Dungeon Core gains nothing from one sapient killing another, if nothing Dungeon-aligned did anything to make this happen. Dungeon-aligned includes Dungeon walls, doors, puzzles, traps, creatures, "family" and so on.

The Rule ended up being broader than I had originally intended, but I was still pleased with it. The last bit was definitely unintended and seemed to be the System's way of saying 'if you ask for things to be earned, then it must include your own rewards'.

As I doubted the situation would happen all that often, I decided to gracefully accept what I was given.

Or rather: What I had earned.

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Zina may have finished exploring the first tier of her Dungeon but there were still several questions she wanted answered before she opened it up for the public. Biggest of which was why the traps didn't always activate.

Based on all her gathered information, it seemed like the traps of this Dungeon each had two or more conditions which all had to be fulfilled before the trap activated. While rare, there still existed two varieties of this phenomenon:

1) Where most of a Dungeon's traps function like normal traps with only one trigger, while a select few have a secondary trigger. This secondary trigger could be a timer causing a delayed reaction, or having a certain weight or number of people stand on the pressor plate and so on.

2) Every trap of a Dungeon has the same secondary trigger.

A couple of Dungeons were even known for having both varieties at the same time, giving some traps three conditions to fulfill before triggering. This would lead to some nasty surprises to people who believe the Dungeon in question has been fully explored, but make the trap completely useless once all its trigger conditions have been made known.

Zina wouldn't be surprised if she were to discover that her Dungeon was one of the few with traps with three trigger conditions. Clearly every trap had a secondary condition and with how unusual her Dungeon already was, she would actually be more surprised if she didn't find a trap with three trigger conditions.

To find these trigger conditions the elven noblewoman would need some help. Clearly the Dungeon-wide trigger condition wasn't a time delay, and they had somehow triggered some of the traps of the first two Floors while mister Betula and private Ilex were with her.

More tests were definitely required before any conclusion could be drawn.

Luckily, mister Betula had convinced a couple of his coworkers to 'risk' exploring the seemingly harmless Dungeon. While a secondary trigger condition never depended on who fulfilled the primary condition, the presences of certain materials sometimes were. Different people had different things with them into Dungeons, so this was an easy way of narrowing it down.

Though it could still take a long time, which Zina was okay with. As soon as the most common materials and other triggers had been tested, she would start allowing people in without her for a fee.

Hmm… What should the fee be? Standard or maybe higher due to double loot and EXP? Yeah, it probably needs to be higher than normal. Or maybe it would be better to have a high exit tax on gathered loot?