Worthy Core

DAY 245

"Alright, then, boys and girls...time to see what fresh new hell awaits us, and pray that I'm not being literal." Hammon Hardhead lifts his axe in one hand as he steps out into the entry chamber of Floor Eight, and does his best to give off a confident appearance to his party. The dwarf is still a little confused at how he ended up as the team leader of this new consolidated group, the 'Union of Blades' they had taken to calling themselves, given that he was one of the lowest-ranked members of it. The Mountaineers were over, Tainz had refused to go any deeper than Floor Four after their last ill-fated expedition, and he and Petal Digwell, the Siege Sniper, were hardly about to try floors this deep as only a duo.

Even worse, this new five-member group wasn't even the simple creation of two teams working together. No, it had taken three teams who had faced the new Valkyrie of Floor Seven to scrape together enough survivors to put together this group. The two dwarves had joined together with a four-person squad, The Red Blades, to finally take that flying monstrosity down and of those four only Tandy of Longsands Harbor, a human Rogue, had survived and kept enough of her limbs to keep going on to Floor Eight. The last two, the survivors of a party named Rain of Death, were the ones who really intimidated the dwarf though. Both of them were Master-level challengers, one of them an orc woman named Nashta, a Bishop of Battle who followed the ways of Erashi, the God of Strategy. The last, Lobald the Kobold, was a Sorcerer of Sky and the highest-ranked member of the new party at an impressive thirty-seven, a full ten levels above Hammon himself.

The orc and kobold both said Hammon seemed to have 'a good head on his shoulders' though and voted for him as party leader, and that had been that. As he looks around him, at least the man can say that the environment he finds seems much more homey than the crystal caverns making up the floor above.

Though of course, that alone also serves to set the man on edge. Unlike the raw stone and bare caves that made up the vast majority of the dungeon up to this point, this first room appeared to have the look of a windowless castle, or perhaps an underground dwarven keep. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of carved stone blocks, held together by wooden supports, and there was even some furniture and a fireplace making the space feel almost lived-in. Certainly, the dwarf knew dungeons better than that. "Seems the dungeon's playing around more with making a place that looks like a proper dwelling. I doubt that fireplace has a chimney that actually goes anywhere, though."

Tandy chuckles. "If we were further in I'd poke my head in to see if there was hidden treasure up there, but no one ever puts anything good in the first room. No monsters?"

The orc taps her metal staff on the floor as she steps into the center of the group. "It seems not - but the dungeon's hardly shied away from attacking Challengers in the first room of a floor before. Keep your eyes open for traps."

"On it!" Tandy lightly steps around the room, prodding at various stones before turning her attention towards the table sitting near the fireplace. There's plates and cups on it, containing the remains of a half-eaten meal, the food appearing fresh despite the fact that it could have been sitting there for weeks. "Definitely don't eat anything - even if you're into leftovers. Hrmm, what's this, though?" A small metal box sits on one end of the table, held closed by only the simplest of latches, and as the Rogue carefully opens it she finds a tiny pile of coins sitting inside.

Petal edges closer, taking a look for herself. "Not a huge haul, but weird to find a reward so early, and without even a fight to be had for it." Tandy shakes her head as she plucks out only a single silver coin.

"Not a haul at all. I got a spell, Sense Value, and this is the only real coin in the bunch. The rest are decoys, they'll poof if we take em outside the dungeon."

Lobald furrows his brown-scaled brow ridges. "What's the point in giving us a single coin? Trying to weigh us down with fake loot? Even if we didn't have your Rogue skills, I'd be able to detect the magical difference between real and fake coins."

Nashta nods. "The dungeon is attempting to set the stage...and we're still determining the sort of play we're in. Shall we continue?"

"Aye." Hammon points towards the heavy wooden door at the other side of the room. "Tandy, check the door and we'll move on." The Rogue does so, and finding it untrapped, Hammon swings it open himself. He keeps his shield held high as he marches in, but the new chamber is as quiet as the first. Larger, certainly, and with a much more obvious theme - this chamber is clearly meant to be an armory. Racks of polearms and large axes sit against both side walls, swords and shields are mounted at numerous points, and there's even two complete sets of human-sized armor sitting upon bare-bones wooden mannequins in different corners. The dwarf, of course, eyes it all suspiciously. "Keep an eye on those armors - could be minion versions of the bosses on Floor Three."

Petal scans her heavy crossbow across the room, seeking out targets. "So many weapons...nothin' exactly legendary-looking or nothin', but none of em look like trash, either. Are any of these real, Tandy?"

"Most of em gotta be fakes, but lemme do a check..." The woman begins to walk down one side of the room, her leather glove-covered hand brushing against weapon shafts as she goes, and it's as she's starting on the second rack that she finds something.

Or rather, that something finds her.

As her hand brushes one large, double-sided axe, the metal head of the weapon suddenly splits apart and reveals long rows of monstrous teeth. The apparently-wooden shaft flexes as if it were an organic neck, allowing the weapon to bend in her direction, and before the Rogue knows what's happened those sharp teeth are digging into her shoulder pad. "Gah! Get it off!" A dagger's already in her left hand and beginning to stab at the beast, but her companions find themselves distracted before they can come to her aid. As Hammon had suspected, both sets of armor reveal themselves as monsters, the wooden sticks of the display mannequins flexing like skeletons beneath the metal plates. To make matters worse a trio of shields suddenly fall off the wall and crash to the floor, their structure breaking apart into sharpened triangles of metal that they use to start skittering across the floor like insects.

Even as he charges against the nearest armored foe, Hammon begins shouting out orders to his team. "I'll take the big ones, Petal, try and snipe the skitterers! Nashta, help Tandy, Lobald, you blast what you can!" With that said the Shield Smasher raises his dwarf-steel shield and rams into the first walking suit of armor, and finds to his relief that it's not as heavy as a normal opponent of that size might be. In fact, as it crashes to the ground the metal of its armor bends and bounces back as if it were mere rubber. Seeing that, Hammon lifts his axe and gets to hacking before it can rise back to its feet.

For her part Tandy finally manages to sever the 'head' of the bitey axe, thanks to Nashta casting a spell on the creature to slow its movements. A moment later another polearm starts swinging itself in her direction, but as the Bishop swaps to speeding the Rogue up instead, Tandy finds herself easily able to dodge the creature. In fact, she finds herself at such an advantage that she actually decides to grab hold of it by the shaft, and uses it to smash a walking shield out of the air when it tries to leap for her. It turns out to be far less effective than an actual weapon, given how much it flexes in her hand at the impact, but it does at least seem to stun the creature.

Likewise, Petal and Lobald find their ranged attacks to be rather more impactful against the mobile shields than they might have expected. Rather than clanging off of metal shards, the Sniper's crossbow bolts dig deep into the monsters, spurts of dark blood pulsing out at they howl at her. Meanwhile the lightning bolts from Lobald's staff are no less effective for them being flesh rather than metal, as the room is soon filled with the stench of burning and smoking monster flesh.

In the end Hammon and Tandy are able to team up as they take on the last opponent, the second of the walking armors, and the pair do find that the sword it wields seems to be real. Fortunately it never comes close to hitting the sped-up Rogue, and the Shield Smasher has little trouble blocking what blows it attempts to send his way. As Tandy slips behind it and digs her dagger into the wooden stick making up its neck, the monster collapses to the ground in a heap, and all of the members of the party quickly turn left and right to scan for any more random items that might be attempting to murder them.

Once it's clear that the room is quiet for the moment, Petal begins to curse. "Gods-damned mimics! That's what this is! Those gemstones up on the last floor were a warning - the dungeon's gone and invested in the damn lil buggers now, it seems!"

Tandy grimaces at the thought. "Dammit! A Rogue's worst enemy, they say." That statement confuses her team leader slightly.

"Really? Don't you have skills to detect that? What's that 'value' spell of yours have to say about a mimic, I wager they can't really be 'worth' anything, aye?"

The green-eyed woman shakes her head. "It depends on their tier. Bottom-tier mimics? Sure, almost any sort of spell will give away that they aren't what they seem. These gotta be at least mid-tier though...I could push more mana into the spell to give them away, but..." Tandy looks around and gestures at the numerous weapon racks. "Pressing it that hard on all of this? I'd need to be downing a mana potion every room or two."

Lobald frowns as he looks over the remaining weapons, many of which have now fallen to the floor in all of the confusion. "Dammit. I see what the dungeon's doing now...this is a test."

Petal returns his frown. "A test of what? Mimic detection?"

"Well, that too, but also one of greed. There's gotta be like, thirty weapons in here, yeah? Even after the mimics popped out. There was one prize for us in the first room, a single coin. I bet you one of these weapons is real, too. And a coin ain't much but a weapon is damn good for a second room."

Tandy sighs as she looks them over. "But I'd have to exhaust myself checking them over right. So our options are: to spend an age checking everything and then resting, to just say 'fuck it' and leave them behind, to try and carry everything and see what goes poof after we leave...or to try and carry everything and then find out later that some of it's still live mimics, waiting for a chance to eat our heads."

Hammon gives them a look himself before sighing. "Well, we're the first team to try this floor, and that means loot ain't our primary goal for today. Our three main objectives, as I see em, are as follows. One, scout out the floor and see what it's got. Two, get the glory and Association credit for being here first, and even being the first to clear it if we can manage the job. And third - not die. Way I see it is, we check anything that looks too good to pass up, otherwise, we don't take the risk and we just leave it for another day. The final floor rewards ought to be obvious, at least."

The orc shakes her head as she surveys the weaponry. "None of these appears to be anything more special than the others. All serviceable but nothing that would serve as personal upgrades for any of us, or make us our fortune."

"Agreed. So, right then - Tandy, same routine, check that door ahead, and make sure the knob ain't gonna bite off my fingers when I open it. Let's see how many more surprises Worthy Dungeon's got in store for us today..."