Trash Mountain Dungeon

Choice acknowledged.

Unlocking AST4R10N's room.

A saying, if you would.

"What makes something a monster, their form or their actions, to know the answer is to behold a beast and see a man and observe a man and know the monster inside."

So, we're doing poetry now then?

...

I guess that's it then, might as well look at this new room.

The Cr3t0n Labyrinthian Mk.1

A winding maze of metal and smoke, this structure is more machine than building, capable of changing its layout without the input of the dungeon even mid-intrusion. Useful for any that can navigate its uncertain pathways and hell for those that can't. Some say that a treasure unlike any other appears deep within.

Produces nothing

+75 mana storage

+3 trap limit for this room alone.

Requires a minimum of 20 combined rooms to use effectively.

If constructed with fewer than 20 rooms then the structure will operate at reduced ability.

Non-mechanical monsters and intruders will suffer the [Lost] effect while present in this room.

Only one can exist.

Creation Cost: 1000 mana

Well, shit, that's pretty good, still not sure if it's better than the other two but there's no going back now. But with that last choice out of the way, all I needed to do now was start setting up my third level and then I could start discussing the price with those outside.

Working on the third-level layout, I came to a somewhat similar design to that of the second floor. After they descend the stairs, they'll have two doors, one straight and the other to their right, the correct choice would be to take the right but thanks to the doors they won't be able to tell. The forward path just leads to two rooms with nothing going on, just a dead-end, while the right path leads to several more rooms that may or may not be the correct one. The first room splits two rooms, the left one a dead end, the forward one is the correct one, while the next room only has one pathway to a large room I built using five room slots, I had a big idea for it, well, a couple of ideas anyway.

But first came the other rooms, in the first two rooms that splintered off of the stairway was a [rust trapper] node followed by another wormhole, now occupied by a very happy worm and rat colony. From there, we go to the next two rooms, the first correct room and its splinter. In the correct room, there was another assembly room, occupied by more refined-looking clockworkers producing more impressive-looking parts, the splinter room was occupied by a canid with a wall spike trap to keep people bunch up together. Going down I had the next two rooms, the one immediately after the assembly room was a heat mine while the one right after it was a stand-alone ogre bull room, a new structure called a [Ogre Bull Cave] an open space room with large den areas for the creatures to rest. Skipping over the big room I made, the remaining three rooms were all that was left, the two dead-end rooms I made into more resource rooms, the bottom room being a formation room while the one next to the correct path I put a node of hobgoblins in. The hobgoblins weren't especially high on my list of potential defenders but I was more curious than anything to see what their deal was, and the results were... meh?

The hobgobs themselves weren't the ugliest things in the world but they certainly lacked a kind of appeal that I usually see in my other creations, they were pretty tall at around 5''6 or so, gangly, and had no body hair whatsoever, but what they did have was a rusty kind of skin that looked like it was made from actual rusting metal. A quick look at the system told me that this was actually a result of their adaptive trait giving them a metallic skin layer that would help in defending against blows, even their claws were pointed with rusty nails. As for their unlocked structure, it wasn't too much better though, a [hobgoblin cave] that boosted their adaptive ability slightly, but mana was mana I say and I know now that as it currently stands these creatures don't have much of a purpose in my dungeon. In the last room just before the core was a final canid, looking a bit bulkier than usual.

But the final piece to this floor was my big room, made with five rooms, it was a massive expanse that would not have been possible with how little ceiling support it has. In that room, I made another ratkin room, but unlike the three times rooms I made on floor two, this one was five times. It was massive compared to the others and it felt like it was far more than just five rooms in one, I'd almost say it was a small mountain from bottom to top, or at least a really big hill. Summoning five ratkin nodes and constructing a five times ratkin room, I was excited to see what I had unlocked.

Small Ratkin Fort

A small hill fort manned by ratkin, it comes with all the essentials of a fort, however, it does not come equipped with any mounted weaponry such as ballista or catapults. The fort itself will come with floor-appropriate gear and essential supplies.

A small number of plains resources will grow in the fields surrounding the fort.

The door to the next attached room is located in the fort commander's throne room.

A random ratkin will be selected for the position of fort commander.

Provides a minor status buff to ratkin and machine monsters.

A skill crystal of ratkin origin will be granted to any that defeats the lord commander.

Creation Cost: 500 mana

Yup, it was official, I was going to have to play around with this whole combining rooms thing. I expected something big but a whole ass fort, that was not on the checklist today. The fort itself was big, a hexagonal shape with six towers and a two-door gate set up, the outer door was made from thick iron banded wood while the inner one was thinner looking, tough enough to take a few blows but more of an annoyance than a true roadblock. From the gate, there was a small but clean and empty courtyard with another thick door to the fort interior, arrow holes lined the walls facing into the courtyard. Inside the fortress itself was rather simple, from the entrance was a throne room with a final set of doors leading to the canid den just before the core. To the right and left of the throne room were four different paths, two of them were stairways to the walls while the other two entered into two separate rooms. On the left were the barracks for the soldiers while on the right was an armory/supplies stockpile with various ambiguously shaped foods packed into boxes and barrels with wrapped tools and armors lining the wall.

But for how cool it was it wouldn't be complete without the people, and so out of light were formed 25 ratkin, tall and muscled, wearing more unified and well-made armor. One of them, a female ratkin, then began to glow a green color, growing a head taller and stronger, sporting a helmet with simple ornamentation of cogs and gears, she wielded a longsword with three short javelins tied to her back. Truly she fit the title, although wouldn't it be lady commander, or would the title still be lord commander? Either way, it didn't matter too much, and once the light show was over the commander began to bark orders to her new subordinates, the other 24 moving this and that way, each taking a role in the fort with some becoming regular guards while other took on the logistical posts such as a hunched over ratkin becoming something akin to a quartermaster while another began to organize a small group of others to start carrying equipment around, as per the commander's orders.

As the organized chaos continued a thought came to mind, well two actually but the second was unrelated to the first, I still had that mechanical conversion so I could still turn something into a machine if I wanted, perhaps it would make the ratkin or one of my other monsters better? Selecting the conversion I looked over the processes.

Conversion

Converting a non-mechanical blueprint is an irreversible process, to do so would be to lose the benefits of the original blueprint in favor of a mechanical version.

All existing monsters of the original blueprint will remain but will be impossible to recreate.

Intelligent monsters will lose their intelligence.

Magical blueprints will be replaced with a mechanism to emulate the original effect.

Associated rooms will be replaced with mechanical versions.

Frowning

That raised a few problems, mainly that part of the big draw of the ratkin was that they were intelligent, at least relatively. Sure it would be simple to use it on another creature or trap but was I willing to risk trading out one of my monsters or traps for something that may or may not be worth the loss? Sure I could live without hobgoblins or Greebles and perhaps a few others, but it felt like it would be a waste of a rare opportunity just to satisfy my curiosity, would the loss be worth it?