2.4.3 The Core plans for the next stage (Core PoV)

  "Hey General," Gunny smirks "Looks like the Sky Arrows finally found the node of floor fifteen. Took them long enough."

  "Yes, this time my ideas for an underwater floor really paid off" I had the current duty-speaker answer for me.

  Together we watch as the adventurers quickly finish the immobile boss, check the node and collect the token from the remaining mess of algae. Then they proceed for the way up to floor 12 again.

  "I would really like to see their faces when they realise that you can go deeper than the 100-floor-limit of a [Heroic] dungeon core, General."

  "Of course someone with your perverse sense of humor would like to see that." Lia answers before the speaker can relay an answer from the core. "But I would like to know why you expanded this section of the [safe] floor, Core? I thought you wanted to preserve all Mana until you can build the floors twenty-two to twenty-four..."

  "Ah, but I almost have that Mana. I'm only waiting for Orwen to be inside to watch him while I place those floors as I can finish their contents later. And in the mean time I had another idea for a new type of treasure to be won on floor 19 above, one that would also allow me to better hide that planned temple if the Sky Arrows get here before Briar can bring in Rolandro's Priest." the core answers that question.

  "That new treasure will be unique key tokens to the side rooms here, and I made the hall longer and added more side rooms to have some more of those keys before running out of rooms. And since I still want the stairs down at the other end of this hall I had to add that before placing the next floor down.

  It's not yet finished - most of the doors just lead to a one meter dead end where I still have to excavate the room that should be there. I'll do that slowly when I get more Mana. But there will be only one key to each room and some furniture like for shops inside. That should convince some merchants to purchase one of those keys and setup a shop there as they don't have to carry their wares in and out then - or perhaps some adventurer parties might decide to use those rooms as store room for their equipment and similar options.

  And if I'm careful they won't even realise that as soon as they lock the room and leave the floor, the room content will count as "dungeon-owned" for the system, allowing me to absorb and recreate anything I don't have yet.

  And having my own dungeon economy with my own coins to distribute - like I already have done with some treasure chests and token riddles - will aid some long-term plans as well. So I hope that those merchants will adopt my coins as one possible way of payment. I'll even aid that by placing token riddles as exchange stations in those rooms."

  "I hope this works out, General" Gunny comments "But I agree that having our own coins and shops will probably be helpfull in the long term. What about mid and short terms? Anything planned to surprise the adventurers there?"

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  "Well, short term the Sky Arrows will enter floors 16, 14 and 18 in that order - a swamp, a snow forest and a desert. Those will be the last of the nature floors and then the big surprise of floor 19 and the [safe] floor 20 above.

  I hope that they'll have to spent a lot of time in the swamp, because I tried something new there. Unfortunately the System forced me to place a small hint as the loot on the two bosses, but the tokens themselves aren't loot. They simply lie somewhere around on the floor - somewhere on the bottom of the swamp..."

  "So you hope that they spent extra time fishing through the swamp?" Gunny answers "That should add to the time they need. Most of the nature floors so far they took in a single day, only the underwater floor added two extra days to that. Briar estimated he needs eight days to get to Rivansea overland, and that means it will be a head-to-head race who gets to this floor first, the Sky Arrows through the floors or Briar with using the teleporter platform."

  "Unfortunately he will need to find that Tricksters priest first" Aria, chief of the naga, objects. "So it is unlikely for Briar to get here first, unless the Core can really pull off another stunt to delay the Arrows."

  "We'll see that tomorrow" the Lizardman currently relaying the messages of the core for all to hear sounds a bit tired. "Luckily the Sky Arrows have not yet realised that another advantage of the dead-end-caverns is that they can't feel the Lifeforce release of changes to other caverns - the wave only goes up, never down another stair after all. But I don't want to invest too much Mana into changes there because it is more important to place the next three floors. While that floor effect was a nice surprice to gain, the requirement to place the three floors at once is a problem at the moment.

  Let's see how the Sky Arrows handle the swamp floor tomorrow."

  "Ah, finally Orven makes an appearance. The Sky Arrows are already down in another dead-end floor, so any LifeForce wave from deeper will pass them undetected. Let's make the next floors."

  "Nope, Park is currently hunting snakes in a swamp and doesn't even know there are new floors..."

  "Shit, another point for the Sky Arrows. I really hoped that they would start searching the entire floor, but with that kind of filtering on the map they'll find the tokens after a quick search." The core is anything but pleased.

  "No plan survives meeting the enemy, General. And we know that the Sky Arrows are good. But they're still too late, the new floors will stop them when they try to go beyond the next [safe] floors. Do you think they will be delayed by the other floors?"

  "Not by the snow forest that comes next - that leaves that so-called desert floor as floor 19 was always a hit-or-miss type of blockade, and the Sky Arrows are too good to fail there."

  "Agree - but how could that environment be called a desert? It is nothing like anything of a desert from earth..."

  "Most likely another one of those xenotic translation messes. If we had any idea what the sphere is we might even be able to get how that was named..."