Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 70: Still Like Living Stone

New Dungeon Rule: Sleeping Safe and Sound: All rest and sleep is double as effective as in the Surface World. While visitors are resting, sleeping, or unconscious no Dungeon creature can attack them. This makes resting and sleeping more appealing to the subconscious of visitors with 25% karma or lower and makes sleep effects from traps more likely to affect them and last longer.

While I didn't actually have any sleep based traps for the cultists to trigger before the 10th Floor, the Axe Master was currently unconscious. The new Rule would make the giant stay that way for longer and stop him from reaching his Party any time soon, leaving them that much more vulnerable for longer.

The 'Dungeon creatures don't attack while visitors are sleeping' thing was mostly for my sake. I didn't want to kill people if I didn't need to, and I would be delaying the Party simply by making them sleep and rest more often and for longer through this Rule.

And, at least for now, delaying them was the game I was playing.

With the 7th Floor completed the Party of cultists entered my 8th Floor and The Hall of Diet.

Not diet as in 'you need to go on a diet' but as in 'a dragonet's main diet consists of fruits'. Seeing as knowing or correctly guessing the latter let one know which tiles were safe to walk on without triggering any traps.

Something the cultists didn't want to waste any time on figuring out. Instead they had their Paladin go first, tank all now activated traps till the next safe tile was reached, before repeating.

And as 'Cheaters Only Cheat Themselves' affected all things Dungeon, my traps were quite Tough as this point.

… Though technically… All the 'traps' triggered by the puzzle were simply a part of the puzzle punishing people for not yet understanding it. None of the flying arrows actually counted as 'traps' to my maximum allowed number of traps on the 8th Floor.

Still. The arrows shooting out of the walls every time the wrong tile got stepped on hit with enough Toughness to make even a 6th tiered, armored Paladin flinch and groan.

Despite the fact that this floor was meant to be difficult, but possible, for a 4 person Party of 2nd tiers to beat…

It took them 6 safe tiles before the Battle Commander noticed and pointed out that every safe tile contained an image of a fruit. The rest of the puzzle went smoothly after that.

At the end of The Hall of Diet were my two giant dragonet statues, ready to come to life the moment the Wheel of Fortune next to the exit either landed on a red slice or was broken in frustration. And as all my Wheels of Fortune amplified fivefold the slight change in bad luck the cultists had while in my Dungeon from having low karma levels, well…

Having been spun the Wheel slowed down and appeared like it should have landed on a green slice, which would have made it eject a key needed at the end of the Floor. But, as luck would have it, it slowly passed the green slice and landed on the nearby red one, animating my dragonet statues.

It's been a while since bad luck has mattered against power and experience!

And their Toughness was just as amplified as my traps and puzzles!

Their Strength wasn't, but at least they survived longer, delaying the Party further.

With a key in hand as a reward for defeating the animated statues, the group entered The Waiting Room.

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And was immediately attacked by a pair of bìxiés they couldn't look at.

Only for two newly respawned, level 15, winged, dragon-headed, deer-horned lionesses to attack them a minute later.

For that was the true master plan behind the puzzle known as The Waiting Room. One simply needed to refrain from fighting or arguing for 5 minutes and the puzzle would be solved. But that was quite difficult to do if your enemy kept respawning in the room every minute.

And since the entire wall was blocked off and not just the exit, it was difficult to locate.

They know perfectly well what happens when the outside wall of a Dungeon is breached. They don't want to risk it happening again.

But with my bìxiés actively seeking to attack them due to their 0% karma level, there will never be 5 minutes of peace. Eventually they'll have to risk picking the wrong wall and break through one anyway.

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Their fear of picking the wrong wall kept them from doing anything productive - other than killing the constantly respawning bìxiés - for 24 minutes. Way longer than they would normally use on a single puzzle. But getting interrupted once a minute meant that even their closest attempts quickly failed.

Eventually the Hypnotist snapped and ordered the others to simply pick a wall and break it.

The Battle Commander, having a better sense of their environment, suggested they move away from the chosen wall before having the Light Hunter shoot the wall with her bow and arrows from a safe distance.

Wait a minute! How does she still have any arrows left? She hasn't been all that selective in which of my creatures to shoot and she even 'hit' several of my Fata Morganas! She hasn't been picking any of her arrows back up either!

Her quiver can't possibly hold any more than- My Dungeon mind immediately counted the number of arrows currently in her quiver without me truly thinking about it. -25 arrows at a time!

…

Wait! Why is it still full?!

… That's a magic quiver aren't it…

The Party walked back to The Hall of Diet and stood in the grass covered end between the broken pieces of my previously animated dragonet statues. As the statues were a result of a puzzle and not actual Dungeon creatures, they didn't dissolve and didn't leave behind loot.

The Light Hunter drew an arrow from her quiver and got ready to shoot it.

The quiver still had 25 arrows in it.

Yep! Magic quiver!

As they had retreated back to the previous room, the wall opposite the opening between the two rooms was naturally the easiest one to hit - even if there was a statue of a dude meditating in the way -, and thus the one the Light Hunter chose to shoot with a Skill-powered arrow.

Which just so happened to be the right wall…

At least they've 'skipped' yet another puzzle for 'Cheaters Only Cheat Themselves' to take advantage of…

The next room was The Volcanic Mountain Range, which had an uneven line of Lava Geyser traps throughout the middle of it.

Said Lava Geyser trap was styled after geysers and triggered when a person with low karma stepped on them.

Only instead of spewing out boiling water it threw lava in the air.

As a 2nd tier trap it was quite cold lava which turned to stone as it hit the ground. But it still spewed lava!

And as it triggered on contact it was near impossible to dodge!

Or at least so I had thought when I made them. During the 'elven invasion' I - and the elves - had learned that the traps took a full second to activate and made quite the sound as they do.

A single second might not sound like a lot, but unless you were walking slower than normal you would have already left the blast zone of the lava by the time it arrived.

I left the traps as they were for three reasons: 1) Whenever a Party would explore a room for the first time, they tend to walk slowly and cautiously. 2) Unless they were running, they would still be hit by the quickly cooling lava rocks as they fell down. 3) My Fake Core had just been caged and I was pretending I couldn't do anything without permission.

The first of these Lava Geysers was right in front of the newly formed entrance, where it was meant to catch people off guard.

It succeeded, but the Paladin walking first had just enough reaction time to get most of his body away from the lava blast zone, as well as enough Awareness to block the falling rocks with his shield.

The Light Hunter right behind him simply dodged everything with ease…

The rest were safe in The Waiting Room.

And with that loud announcement all the Dungeon creatures in the room began storming towards the groups of invading 0%'s.

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Huh… I really thought my Giant Rolling Boulder traps would get at least one of the slower of them..

I should have realized the Earthquake Mage would simply have changed the boulders' gravity. With Earthquake being the stronger version of the Gravity element and all that…

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The Gargoyle Garden of the 9th Floor was filled with roughly half Dragon Gargoyle traps and actual dragon gargoyles. Both would stand completely still, except for keeping the closest person in their sight. Both would stay on their given pedestals till an enemy came within reach.

The difference was that a trap couldn't leave said pedestal to commit to their attack, which an actual gargoyle both could and would.

And of course, traps didn't dissolve and leave loot behind.

Like my mimics, gargoyles - the creature, not the trap - were ambush predators and, unlike the rest of my creatures, didn't attack the cultists as soon as they entered the room.

They would, however, attack as soon as their enemies' backs were turned.

It created quite the frightening atmosphere, as the room was filled with dozens of gargoyles all silently staring, knowing any one of them might attack once everyone's back was turned.

Though… They didn't actually reveal this atmosphere until after the room's 22 Fire wyrms and 22 Earthquake drakes had been disposed of.

And by then they didn't have the luxury of checking each gargoyle and destroying the real ones, as magma had begun pouring out three of the room's four corners the moment they entered.

Slowly, of course. Magma's quite thick.

As a solution the Light Hunter used some of her seemingly infinite arrows to attack any gargoyles on pedestals now surrounded by burning magma. But with 'Cheaters Only Cheat Themselves' adding massive amounts of points to both my fake and real gargoyles to their already impressive - for their tier - Toughness Score, it took the archer either 5 normal arrow shots or two Skill-powered ones.

It seems I've forced her to start conserving her energy. Nice!

But even with their impressive defense, my gargoyles simply didn't have the ability to do all that much damage to the much higher tiered cultists and eventually lost their battle.

How much more do I need to stall them for?!

As I could see everything in my Dungeon at once, that thought was mostly due to frustration over my creatures inability to truly harm these guys.

Marthox [Brainwashed] [Dungeon Weakness] [36 minutes, 57 seconds] Beastkin - Muskin Hypnotist Level 60

Almost there!

And now they've arrived at The Werewolf Wood!

Let's see how they deal with a puzzle this complicated while having their best and worse Ability Scores switched!