Third Floor: Complete
Even if Taylor didn't know where the Fire Crabs came from, it was apparent to her that they could be useful, depending on how they worked as monsters.
There was only one real way to find that out.
Place some in the Dungeon.
As such she put a couple into the room she'd been examining, along with a Toxin Crab, a cheaper act than it would have been previously thanks to the Crab Floor discount, which ensured that Adventurers couldn't get past the floor without exploring every room.
Fire Crabs, as it turned out, were similar to Ice Crabs, in that they were both magical.
Aside from the obvious difference of their respective elements, Fire Crabs had noticeably lower magic capacity, but made up for it with much greater magic regeneration.
Ice Crabs might, if they were lucky, get off a handful of spells in a fight given how slowly their magic recovered.
On the other hand a Fire Crab would only get a single spell before needing to restore their magic, but had a good chance of surviving that long.
Another difference was that Fire Crab spells were much more focused on just dealing damage, rather than debuffing enemies.
Their upgrades had a similar focus, one increasing magic recovery rate, a second the intensity of their fire and a third that made them dangerous to approach.
Taylor decided not to use any of the upgrades or evolutions just yet, as she had yet to see how they did in battle.
After all, she'd probably have to add some to the other rooms at some point, and needed to know how they would work with the other types of monster.
Or perhaps not, as the floor had a pretty good chance of halting Adventurers from passing without needing to kill them.
In any case, that was the second floor ready to be tested against Adventurers.
It was time to turn her attention to the third and fourth floors.
Well, third at least. Rachel was currently on the fourth and she didn't know what the result would be if she modified a floor someone was currently on.
So, third floor.
Should she try the same trick here?
No, anybody who made it past the Crab Floor would be aware of the potential for hidden rooms.
She could try faking the Adventurers out, placing dead end corridors that seemed like they could hold a hidden room.
After all, each floor gave a lot more corridors than rooms.
Combine the lures with traps and she could trick the Adventurers into getting themselves killed!
She coughed.
… She could use a different Boss Room lock and trick the Adventurers into looking for non-existent rooms rather than the actual way to unlock it.
It wasn't a good sign than she had to remind hersrlf than she had never wanted to be a villain was it?
"So, I'll need to know what requirements the Boss Room can have to build a floor around the concept of tricking the adventurers into thinking they need to clear non-existent rooms rather than… whatever the actual requirements are," Taylor planned out loud.
She paused.
"Except that I need to place some rooms and their monsters first, then I can place the Boss and by that point I have a bunch of rooms locked in."
Well, the floor was supposed to be a mine, wasn't it?
She started by placing a corridor along most of the possible length of the floor, placing four more at right angles at various points along its length.
These corridors weren't the same length, and intersected at different points along their length, giving a somewhat messy look from her perspective.
For people who were exploring, on the other hand, it would hopefully be rather confusing and disorientating.
She placed another couple of corridors in parallel to the original, one intersecting with two of the other corridors and the other with three.
The empty room she was planning to save for the boss she placed at the end of one of the corridors, next to the stairs.
There was the question of what the Boss should be, but Taylor decided to set that matter aside for the moment.
The next step had to be building a room for the monsters that would unlock the Boss upgrade.
The question was where to put it…
Would placing a room at the end of a corridor encourage the idea of there being a hidden room at the end of another or discourage it?
Was it better to place one at the end of a corridor or leave them clear?
There wasn't a clear answer, so she placed the first (or second if you counted the Boss Room) at one of the corridor intersections.
The room, a basic square, placed, it was time to start with the monsters.
First up was an Ice Crab, given their fire resistance upgrade, followed closely by a Shell Crab and Small Venomous Spider.
If battles in the room went as she hoped, Adventurers would focus on the obvious crab monsters, letting the spider blindside them, as fit the ambush predator nature of spiders.
As the third monster spawned the floors reward chest appeared.
The rewards this time included an iron lock, a bamboo spear, a lump of magnetite, some chalk and a book on enchanting.
As the contents were reabsorbed, she felt a few new types of enchantment settle into her head.
Adding to her maintenance prevention and force empowering enchantments were an enchantment to prevent a weapon being taken by force and enchantments to set the weapon aflame or freeze.
A further benefit from the items was the ability to upgrade trap materials, and a new type of door that would allow rooms to be placed next to corridors while still being accessible, or even seal off areas of corridors from each other.
The coral sculpture she could also purchase was of less interest.
The new traps she'd unlocked weren't important right now, as she needed to know how she could trick Adventurers into exploring an empty floor rather than continue through the Dungeon before she could place them somewhere useful, so she turned her attention back to the monsters.
She needed about four more to unlock the Boss, from past experience, so she added a second shell crab and venomous spider.
As soon as the monsters were placed the interface 'grayed out' the option to place more.
It took a moment of her frowning at the interface before she realised what was happening.
There was a limit to how many monsters could be placed in one room.
And she couldn't just use the Boss room to fill out the numbers…
It wasn't as though she could just have two rooms for tge floor anyway, so the only problem was where to put the next room…
In the end she dropped it into one of the rectangles formed by the intersecting corridors, placing one of the new doors to grant access from the corridor furthest from the stairs when it wasn't possible to complete the construction otherwise.
A couple of spinner spiders and an ice crab and she was ready to consider the matter of the Boss.
The previous two were very much physical fighters, so maybe switching things up with a magical Boss could be effective.
But then, the only magic-using monsters she had access to at the moment were crabs, and the previous floor already used one as a Boss. Would the difference between physical and magical crab be enough of a change to throw off the Adventurers..?
Well, it wasn't as though it was the only new Boss she was going to add, she decided, and went for it.
The crabs evolution into her latest Boss monster went without a hitch, giving Taylor a chance to examine the lock options.
"Defeat all monsters… explore entire floor… find floors key… assemble floors key… hidden lever… solve puzzle… kill miniboss…"
She made a mental note to memorise each option, to bear them in mind for future floors.
Defeating the monsters and exploring the floor seemed pretty much equivalent, and very much the 'default' as far as she was concerned.
The miniboss, hidden lever and finding the key were similarly equivalent, reducing the floor to two guaranteed encounters.
Of course, a floor with a split in the path with one leading to the boss and the other to the miniboss (both filled with traps of course) could work.
Assuming a miniboss encounter was strong enough to more than replace a regular room of monsters.
The puzzle was significantly less secure, assuming it was on the door to the Boss room itself. Otherwise it was just a second guaranteed room for the party to visit.
Leaving assembling a key.
Taylor selected the option, waiting to see how the interface would respond.
An icon of a key appeared in her Dungeonsight for the floor, with a counter stating 0/7.
And the door to the Boss room swung open.
After a moments panic she realised what was happening.
Until all the pieces of the key were placed it would be impossible for any Adventurers to open the door, and whatever was behind the Dungeon system wasn't going to let her prevent Adventurers from progressing by 'cheating' the conditions.
"So much for making a floor completely impossible."
A quick check of the rooms already in place confirmed that she could drop key pieces in them alongside the monsters and any decorations she built.
In the interests of security, as she couldn't work on the Dungeon while a party was inside and the Boss room wouldn't lock otherwise, she quickly placed seven more rooms around the floor, trying to avoid any patterns with their positioning, dropping a key fragment and spinner spider in each, alongside an ice crab in most and other monsters in each, bringing the total monsters in each key room to five.
The way this brought her Mana down to nothing was a side benefit, giving her far longer before she'd need to worry about Mana poisoning, even if it did leave the next floor empty until her Mana could regenerate.
As an afterthought she finished adding the new doors to each of the seven rooms.
"And that's another days work finished with," she announced, standing up to stretch.
Not that she had much else to do with her day.
With a mental shrug she grabbed her sword, preparing to add her new Enchantments to it, to help ensure she was as ready as possible for her next fight.
As long as she remembered to pick it up beforehand.
She ran into a problem almost immediately.
It seemed the force enhancement she had already placed on the sword blocked the frost and flame Enchantments, leaving only the theft prevention Enchantment.
Once again wondering why the Enchantment process was so much like a minigame from a videogame, she got to work guiding the orb through the symbol that appeared over the sword.
The symbol this time was a lot more complex than the previous Enchantments had required, needing multiple tries to get right, but in the end she had a fully Enchanted (as she was now at least) weapon.
The EXP earned also pushed her towards her next level, but that was less important.
Taylor considered for a moment if she should prepare more weapons, to make use of her other Enchantments, but before she could decide one way or the other Rachel returned.
The dogs she'd taken with her looked, as far as Taylor could tell, much happier, if more worn out, than earlier, and let themselves collapse to the floor by the wall.
Rachel soon joined them, sitting in their midst with warm bodies on each side.
It actually looked pretty comfortable, if you coukd ignore the stone floor.
"What's next?"
Taylor blinked. "Sorry, next how?"
Rachel shrugged as she ran her hands through the dogs fur. "Your plan, what are we up to next?"
"There isn't much of a plan. I mean, Dungeons act to protect the worlds 'Undersiders', while Adventurers try to get through to destroy them. My plan is mostly to survive."
"You don't have a plan for the captives? Seems risky to keep them."
"They can't escape," Taylor defended. "Besides, maybe I can talk them round. I mean, if we could convince the Adventurers not to keep trying to destroy Dungeons, like what happened with the Protectorate and Bay…"
"And if that doesn't work?"
"They boost the Dungeons Mana production."
It took Taylor a moment to interpret the look Rachel was shooting her.
"The Dungeon can't precisely create things out of nothing, it needs Mana to form rooms, monsters and traps. Each room increases Mana production as does any living thing within the Dungeon other than me and the monsters. And the dogs I suppose. Problem is that the 'natural' production caps at the Mana storage limit while any other sources of Mana can exceed that, putting me at risk of Mana poisoning, whatever that does."
"So get rid of the Adventurers and you don't need to worry."
"There's still you, and besides, I ran out of Mana finishing the third floor. Gathering more prisoners, so long as I use up the Mana each day, helps expand faster. And the more floors there are the safer we are. After all, the monsters are all replaceable, they're just as expensable as any other swarm. We don't actually need to do anything unless they pass the last Boss."
"And if you forget to use up the Mana?"
Taylor just shrugged. "There isn't much else to do all day. Just work on the Dungeon, visit the Adventurers and talk with you."
"If there's so little for you to do, you're taking shifts walking the dogs."
Taylor couldn't help but feel touched at the reminder of how much Rachel trusted.
"Sounds fair," she replied.
After all, if Rachel was going to act as though it was an imposition she was going to play along.
AN: Can I request that people stop leaving guest reviews? Signing up or logging in really isn't difficult and it's annoying when somebody leaves a guest review talking about problems that don't exist, like questioning why a character who canonically wanted to be a hero and who would have made different decisions if they lived their life over is trying to be a hero, or completely missing the 'prison is inescapable and prisoner provide the Dungeon with MP' thing from chapter 2.
Granted, the use of MP may not have been clear, but hopefully this chapter deals with that.
I apologize if I seem to cover things more briefly or in less depth than you'd prefer, but if you have a problem following what I'm trying to do, login and leave a review or PM me and I'll try to explain.
Having a guest simply say there are problems (when there are logical reasons behind what they are questioning) simply acts to reduce my motivation.
I'm already thinking of taking a break after starting floor 5 to start on one of my (way too numerous) other ideas.