Corvin steps from the stairs onto the ground of a corridor. "And another painted wall - this one painted to look like a ten meter room despite this being only a two-meter wide corridor to the right. Park, have you ever heard of stairs to a new floor ending in a corridor instead of a room?"
"No, I never heard of such a case - but I don't think there is a system rule about this either. It's just that normal dungeons don't do this."
"I think we have pretty sure determined that this is not a normal dungeon" Tom interjects. "But a regular party expecting a room would probably have stormed into that wall."
"Even a regular party that makes it to floor 12 will have learned to be cautious given the surprises on the floors until now" Gladia adds. "But on the other side some paint doesn't cost the dungeon much, and there are always impulsive idiots."
"The dungeon wins in all cases - if the adventurers don't storm the rooms, they won't get a surprise attack on the spawns in cases when there is a normal room."
While this discussion was going on, Cleev had been checking her back- and torso-packs. "We used up about a qarter of the extra potions from Orwen to storm through the first ten floors. Do you want to continue at this speed, Tom?"
"No - we had maps until about half of floor eleven and could assume that the traps continue in the other half, but floor twelve is completely new. We have to be more careful now as no one knows what surprises the dungeon may have for us from now on."
"The corridor looks as if it goes a few dozen meters straight to the right." Gladia reports "I don't see any kind of trap or spawn in it, so I suggest we proceed. Even with all maps and storming through that trapped floor we needed more than half a day to get here, so we might also look for a safe room to stay in."
"The dungeon had only one safe room several floors back. We can't expect it to have one repulsor formation on every floor like some other dungeons. That would mean no roaming spawn but also no safe room, only the System-mandated [safe] floors. And has anyone a guess when the core will create the next [safe] floor? It needs one per rank of ten floors after all."
"Doesn't matter for now, let's see what surprises this floor has for us." Tom cuts the discussion short "It looks like a regular cavern environment again, and the floor effect gives bonus health and damage to every living being. So we can expect a lot of fights."
The Sky Arrows line up to move along the corridor. A short time later and after a turn north they arrive at the first room of floor 12. It is quite bit larger than usual (sixteen by sixteen meters instead of the more common six by six) and there are a number of stone walls and partial columns scattered through it. There are no spawns directly visible, and the Sky Arrows carefully make their way around the obstacles.
The Silver Foxes attack suddenly from several direction including holes in the obstacles, but the Sky Arrows were on guard and quickly countered them. Due to the higher levels of these foxes the fight takes a bit longer but none of the foxes can survive more than two or three hits from the high-leveled adventurers.
"Those foxes got the [Stair Guard] +3 level bonus, and there is a token door to the east wall." Gladia mentions "Good to already know where the stairs down are, but most likely we have to go through the entire level to find that token to open the door."
"You're probably right, and I can detect more stoned foxes hidden inside those obstacles." Park adds "By the time we find the token, those silver foxes will have destoned and be ready to fight us on our return."
"Well, that tactic has been proven to make the floors more difficult by allowing more spawns per run - the only reason why it didn't create much uproar is that it also gave the people more loot to take out from the first two floors." Gladia answers. "Let's go on."
The corridor behind the first room snakes and winds to the left and right for a short while, before the Sky Arrows arrive at the next room. Again it has a size of sixteen meters, but this time it is partially flooded with steps going down into the water and coming back up for the next corridor on the other side.
"Hey Corvin, wanna bet that there are spearcrabs and bladed obstacles below the water?" asks Holgun.
"No bets this obvious" comes the answer, and the Sky arrows proceed to wade through the room, detecting the spearcrabs with their advanced skills. Again there are a few stoned spearcrabs just out of reach so that they can't prevent the respawn by destroying them. After that it goes through another snaking corridor until the third room shows something new: A lot of the floor is covered with moss and large mushrooms. On the other side of the room they can easily see a closed door, but the rest of the room is partially hidden through stalagmites and stalactites.
"Careful" warns Tom. "We don't know if the different room means different spawns, neither the crabs nor the foxes would do well here. Perhaps there are Snow Owls again?"
The six adventurers slowly move into the room and around the stalactites. They can now see that the door at the north wall is a token door again, and that the corridor continues on the west wall.
With a hiss six snakes strike to bite them, but only in two cases they succeed. In most cases the armored boots are enough to prevent the bites from penetrating, but Gladia and Cleev both feel a burning where they were bitten.
With the surprise spent, the snakes are quickly cut down, although it takes a bit until the last one is finished.
"Ouch" comes from Cleev "there go two of our basic antidote potions. Park, Tom, anything special about those snakes? Should we use a stronger antidote?"
"Regular Swamp Snakes from the look of it." answers Tom "They're common in the Blackshale Swamp, so we can probably take this as proof that the fifth exit is there. Dungeons have other ways of gaining new spawn templates, but that is the most likely explanation. But the snakes were a bit stronger than I would have expected, even with the bonus of the floor effect."
Park has a strange look on his face when he answers: "That is because they were stronger. All snakes have the stair guard bonus levels, although I have no idea how several rooms on a floor could get stairs down to trigger that bonus."
"Please don't tell us that we got gated to another floor again, Park" Gladia groans "Mapping Hell was bad enough, and I haven't seen any illusion or magic on this entire floor until now."
"No, we are still on floor twelve - which is why I don't understand this. What do you have of the map yet, Gladia?"
"The three rooms are actually in a straight line south to north, and the distance is only 32 meters between each room. It just took a lot longer because the snaking right and left makes the corridors go about double that distance in length."
"The door has a different token symbol, a line instead of a circle. But there is nothing we can do about this, we'll have to follow the corridor. The System hasn't classified this dungeon as
yet, and in every other case until now we found out how the dungeon tricked us. This one will probably also have an explanation, I just hate the extra work this causes us."
"Park, at least that means that we got a job guarantee - Siirm told me of a rumor that the elven [Above Average] team that usually handles early dungeon evaluation is very glad for someone else taking unknown floors of this dungeon on." Gladia smirks at this.
The Sky Arrows continue onward after this. There are no branching corridors and they go through a regular cave room with a single big crab to the fifth room, which looks a lot like the first room again. Obstacles with holes and one-meter-high walls would give any foxes or similar creatures an advantage, but no Silver Fox can be seen at the moment. A third token door is visible on the west wall to their right.
Carefully and expecting an assault by Silver Foxes the Sky Arrows approach the door - which didn't help them much with what really happens.
Suddenly dozens or hundreds of Sewer Rats jump at them from all directions. The rats are weak and don't do much damage, but a dozen tiny bites are a pain to deal with, especially if you have too many targets to know where to strike next.
As a result it takes the Sky Arrows quite a number of battleturns and a lot of cursing (and two flamewalls from elementalist Cleev) before they get rid of the last of the Sewer Rats.
"What the hell?? Tom, the Dungeon has the Party System active, that should limit it to groups of six spawn per room. Hordes of hundreds of Spawns should not be possible here..." Holgun shouts red-faced.
"Park? Any idea what this could be? Because Holgun is right about this." Tom redirects the question to the [Dark Sage] who is already checking on the corpses of the Sewer Rats.
It takes a few minutes before Park is finished and answers "The Sewer Rats have a new modification, one that I haven't seen before:
"If we had known that, the rats would have been completely harmless to us." Corvin adds his part "It was the chaos and the surprise that caused most problems and a few friendly fire effects - a bit more warning before the firewalls would have been nice, Cleev. But this will cause problems for several of the parties that are ... more set in their ways to call it nicely?"
"I agree - this dungeon is not for those who can't improvise or change their plans on the fly" Tom answers. "This door needs a token with a triangle symbol - obviously every token only fits one door and they can't be mixed. Let's continue and see where those tokens are."
The Sky Arrows continue the long and winding corridors through a room that just contained a group of Silver Foxes to fight, until Gladia calls out to Holgun who currently moves in front. "Holgun, the rooms and corridors seem to spiral on this floor, and that would mean that the next room is the center room of this floor."
"Yes, I think I see the node of this floor - half submerged because this is again a floor half under water with stairs going down, so expect some spearcrabs or other fishes to ambush us."
Holgun watches the black surface of the water in the room for a moment before he begins to go down the stairs.
SPLASH
The three spearcrabs quickly released their pressure spears on the dwarf lying on the bottom of the floor before moving away again.
"AAARRGH" Holguns head comes above the water again. "There are no stairs here, it only looks that way with two steps above the water surface. As soon as it's out of sight there is a drop of one meter to the bottom. And we're lucky that I went first, one of you long beanpoles would probably have stumbled on the metal blade hidden in the water one meter away.
Now please excuse me, I have to make my displeasure about this known to the spearcrabs who ambushed me."
The Sky Arrows spread out to check the room and the node while Holgun wades through the water to hunt the spearcrabs. Gladia checks the door on the west side. "Tom, this token door is different from the first three - it needs six tokens, not one, and those tokens are marked with dots in different numbers - one token with one dot, one with two dots and so on. Looks like this floor requires a lot of tokens, but we haven't found a single one yet."
"Nothing we can do but to move on, somewhere we'll find the tokens because the System requires a path to the core."
Three hours later - after another six rooms with three closed doors - Gladia warns the rest of the party. "The rooms were symmetric so far in a double spiral, but now it is complete and we are on the opposite side from where we entered this grid of thirteen rooms. That corridor to the north leaves this section, and we don't know what to expect."
"Thanks for the warning, but nothing to go but on. We have found seven doors that require a total of twelve different tokens, but haven't seen a single token yet. I hope the change means that we'll find the tokens now."
The corridor also stops winding, it only takes a turn to east before continuing for almost fifty meters, then another turn north and a final caveroom with a sanded floor. A single big crab patrols around a pedestal here, but it cannot stand against the high-ranked adventurers. And as expected on the podest lies a single token stone.
Gladia approaches it and groans "The circle token, the one for the very first door at the other end of the floor. We'll have to go back through every room and every spawn again to get there."
"Not today - we camp here" Tom shakes his head. "This room has only one corridor and is easy to guard, and it has been almost thirteen hours since we entered Mapping Hell ten floors above. We rest now and go back through the floor tomorrow."