Chương 164

-0-0-0-0-0- The Third Floor, The Dungeon, Occupied Atlantis -0-0-0-0-0- David traced the rune in the rock, one glyph among the thousands that covered the dome-like interior of this cave. The full sentence was something he once dreaded in his teenage years.' The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues.' He shuddered just reading it. And that was just one part of a larger mural, among dozens of other such lines and images.

To make matters worse, they were all memes, sayings, and quotes from Earth. Some of which didn't exist until after the internet was made, and some that did. Over there were two-thirds of a Sun Tzu quote about knowing your enemy, and two ' I can haz cheezburger?'

memes over from that. The Gettysburg Address was over there. It was cherry-picked and modified, though enough of the original speech existed that he could recognise it. David saw Loss reduced in complexity a dozen times, and hidden thrice amongst the rest of a wall. Soyjacks abounded. There was even a Kilroy was here " image. And then, if you stepped back to look at the mural as a whole... It was Rick Astley.

Disregarding most of the memes as noise, only someone with the necessary context would grasp the larger message. ᛁᚠ ᛁᛟᚢ ᚲᚾᛟᚹ ᛁᛟᚢᚱᛊᛖᛚᚠ ᛒᚢᛏ ᚾᛟᛏ ᚦᛖ ᛖᚾᛖᛗᛁ ᚠᛟᚱ ᛖᚢᛖᚱᛁ ᚢᛁᚲᛏᛟᚱᛁ ᚷᚨᛁᚾᛖᛞ ᛁᛟᚢ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᚨᛚᛊᛟ ᛊᚢᚠᚠᛖᚱ ᚨ ᛞᛖᚠᛖᛏ × ᛁᚠ ᛁᛟᚢ ᚲᚾᛟᚹ ᚾᛖᛁᚦᛖᚱ ᚦᛖ ᛖᚾᛖᛗᛁ ᚾᛟᚱ ᛁᛟᚢᚱᛊᛖᛚᚠ ᛁᛟᚢ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛊᚢᚲᚲᚢᛗᛒ ᛁᚾ ᛖᚢᛖᚱᛁ ᛒᚨᛏᛏᛚᛖ'If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.'

To David's eyes, it was a subtle message; every success will come with a failure, and if you push too far, you will fail. That it neglected to add the first line about knowing your enemy and yourself... perhaps it was implying that the crusaders had no idea what they were getting into.

ᛁ ᛒᚱᛟᚢᚷᚺᛏ ᚠᛟᚱᚦ ᚨ ᚾᛖᚹ ᚾᚨᛏᛟᚾ ᛞᛖᛞᛁᚲᚨᛏᛖᛞ ᛏᛟ ᚦᛖ ᛈᚱᛟᛈᛟᛊᛁᛏᛟᚾ ᚦᚨᛏ ᚨᛚᛚ ᚨᚱᛖ ᚲᚱᛖᛏᛖᛞ ᛖᚲᚢᚨᛚ × ᚹᛖ ᚨᚱᛖ ᛗᛖᛏ ᛟᚾ ᚨ ᚷᚱᛖᛏ ᛒᚨᛏᛏᛚᛖ-ᚠᛁᛖᛚᛞ ᛟᚠ ᚹᚨᚱ ᛏᛖᛊᛏᛁᛜ ᚹᚺᛖᚦᛖᚱ ᚹᚺᛟ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛖᚾᛞᚢᚱᛖ × ᛏᚺᛖ ᚹᛟᚱᛚᛞ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛚᛁᛏᛏᛚᛖ ᚾᛟᛏᛖ ᚾᛟᚱ ᛚᛟᛜ ᚱᛖᛗᛖᛗᛒᛖᚱ ᚹᚺᚨᛏ ᚹᛖ ᛊᚨᛁ ᚺᛖᚱᛖ × ᛒᚢᛏ ᛁᛏ ᚲᚨᚾ ᚾᛖᚢᛖᚱ ᚠᛟᚱᚷᛖᛏ ᚹᚺᚨᛏ ᛁᛟᚢ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛞᛟ ᚺᛖᚱᛖ × ᛁᛟᚢᚱ ᛞᛖᛞ ᛊᚺᚨᛚᛚ ᛞᛁᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚢᚨᛁᚾ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛗᛁ ᛈᛖᛟᛈᛚᛖ ᛊᚺᚨᛚᛚ ᚺᚨᚢᛖ ᚨ ᚾᛖᚹ ᛒᛁᚱᚦ ᛟᚠ ᚠᚱᛖᛖᛞᛟᛗ ᛟᚱ ᚨᛚᛚ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛈᛖᚱᛁᛊᚺ ᚠᚱᛟᛗ ᚦᛁᛊ ᛖᚱᚦ'I brought forth a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.

We are met on a great battlefield of war, testing who will endure. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what you will do here. Your dead shall die in vain, and my people shall have a new birth of freedom, or all will perish from this Earth.' The Gettysburg Address was famous, but here... It'd picked lines, modified them, twisted their meanings into something entirely new. The dungeon considered this a war for its existence and its people.

The Templar and heroes will die in vain, whether or not the dungeon survives. The world will never forget what you will do. The dungeon has already established its capability for mutual destruction. If the Crusade succeeds... everyone here dies, monster and human alike, and the rest of the world will never forget what we do here. Loss. Repeated over and over again in dozens of different styles, all to reinforce the point. You will lose. Kilroy reminds the viewer of war and that the dungeon is always watching.

Rick... Apart from the blatant Rick roll... The dungeon would never give up. Of course, David could also be looking into random memes way too much. He was pretty sure about the Gettysburg Address, though; that was pretty obvious.

"So, it definitely knows about the internet, right?" Bobby chimed in, an amused smile on his face.

"There's no doubt about that anymore," David agreed, eying where their Templar 'babysitter' was examining his own piece of wall.

"Whether that's because it ate people who did, or if it learned them from someone else... or even if someone other than the dungeon carved this. It's supposedly ancient, who even knows when it learned about it." They'd only been left to their own devices for ten or so minutes before Sir Gregg Zediker turned from the wall of glyphs to one of the guilder mages that had joined them.

"Well?" The Templar spoke, his glowing white eyes pointed at a brown-robed mage. This was one of the ordinary guilders that'd been added to each group, to pad out their numbers. An Earth mage, if David understood correctly, was not something that the dungeon had apparently needed to deal with, if the records of the gilders that had delved it were true.

"There is an extra space behind this wall," The guilder noted before making a few sharp movements. Then David's eyes were drawn to the section of wall the guild mage stood before, one conspicuously absent of any carvings that he'd somehow not noticed until now. The mage collapsed, sweating and shuddering. A couple of other Guilders stepped forward to aid him, just as he was about to collapse.

"Excellent," Gregg Zediker nodded before stepping forward. The Templar held out a hand and unleashed what David could only describe as a shockwave at the wall. Energy mana is directed in a cone, containing more force than energy or piercing ability. And with that, a door-shaped section of the wall was launched inwards. Gregg entered the room without a second thought, and David was quick to follow him, with Bobby and the others not far behind.

The room was barren, though its style was completely different from that of the cave just a step away. Where the cave was rough, looking like something natural that was turned to other uses, this room was explicitly carved. A curved alcove held a table and a bench. A stone mannequin stood, bare. An empty doorframe. In the final alcove lay an empty pedestal, and even David could feel the remnants of mana that saturated that alcove. Gregg beelined for the pedestal while the others scattered about the room.

There were cupboards and benches left empty. A closet. And despite it all being made of stone, it wasn't rough. It was like polished granite, completely smooth. Through the doorframe was another room, this one obviously a bedroom, with two alcoves holding the remnants of bedding: loose pieces of wool, fur, and bright orange-yellow feathers, and stone chests that looked as if they were carved from the floor itself. Empty, just like everything else.

-0-0-0-0-0- The Creator, Occupied Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea -0-0-0-0-0- I watched, annoyed, as the Templar in each of the Trial Chambers located the Kobold warrior's rooms. I was more glad than ever that I'd evacuated all the children from these upper floors. If they'd had to fight the Kobold Warriors that had once lived in those rooms... the Templars would have quickly found their private chambers and either destroyed or suborned the respawn crystals. Said Kobolds were....

Drake-kin now, apparently, and they were all guards of some kind at the town settled back when my children were first allowed into the Twelvfth, Drakeridge. One was even the 'Master of Arms', despite only having become a drake-kin relatively recently. To be fair to him, his combat experience was overwhelmingly more than most Children had the chance to reach. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Either way, the Templar knew I had extra spaces where my Children and Monsters could live, breed and spend their time outside of defending the dungeon, and used an Earth Mage's senses and mana to temporarily overpower the mana-saturated wall where the SEP field lay over the door and erase the enchantment by flattening it out all at once. The backlash didn't seem pretty, but the mage was still alive, unfortunately. But... This also gave me a new idea.

If they were going to find my Children's hidden towns, cities and other living spaces, I might as well fill them with monsters and trap them to hell and back. All the tunnels connecting the different floors had long since been completely backfilled, and they shouldn't register as any different from the rock around them. That meant there was absolutely no reason to explore these places. The Drake-kin's old village? Empty space.

Even the old experiment chambers were empty of absolutely everything, the ones on the Fifth and Seventh, both. Though there was still a prison complex on the Fifth where I'd kept my prisoners... Those cells could make pretty decent traps... Three perspectives immediately set to work trapping the Children's old villages and filling them with monsters. My fourth point of view kept an eye on the Crusaders and their camp on the Third.

They'd dug in remarkably quickly, throwing up an improvised fort in what felt like no time at all as dozens and dozens of soldiers filed in through the portal. I was also experiencing one of the most severe cases of mana impotence ever on that floor. I was normally unable to manipulate mana around humans anyway because of that divine protection they enjoyed, but when they were out in excessive numbers, that restriction compounded on itself. The more humans, the larger the area around them I couldn't touch.

It wasn't exponential, thankfully. A single human, as Hallmark had been, wasn't much of a problem. A dozen meters or so of restriction. A party? Basically, it locked me out of any room they walked into. The Crusaders' camp? I couldn't manipulate mana anywhere on the floor. Manually triggering traps as I'd done in the early days? Forget about it, out of the question. I was already trapping the fuck out of the whole dungeon, but not being able to make stuff up on the fly was... limiting in a way I wasn't used to.

It pissed me off, to be honest. My final two points of focus were the Atlantis Guilders exploring the Eleventh in three different ships and my Avatar. The Teens took to having background music extremely well, even with minders like Haythem and Bertram. The rest of the CHI group was on the second ship, and the third had a motley group of three smaller gold-ranked parties that banded together. They were close to making platinum, though.

All the groups had promised Layla they'd return to Atlantis often, though I kept her up to speed with their movements. Although they'd all gone in different directions, they'd all gone vaguely northward, into the Elemental Isles. The captains of the ships had, wisely, decided to avoid the permanent storm that lingered over part of the isles. However, that left more than half of them free for exploration.

Lumiere Ile, Fons Vitae, Paragon Point, the Northern Iceberg, Insula Terrae, Vannig Lagune, Isla Fuego and Zepher Peak were all either completely out of the storm or on its edges—light, Life, Metal, Ice, Earth, Water, Fire and Air. There was still, of course, my old Core Island and the Island off the coast of Dawn Beach and Wyvern's Rest. I wasn't sure if that one had a name yet.

While two of the ships made wide arcs around the storm, trying to reach the northern islands, the Teens made for the first available island... the Water island, Vannig Lagune. -0-0-0-0-0- Vannig Lagune, The Eleventh Floor, The Dungeon -0-0-0-0-0-" Now I feel like a real pirate!" Tamesou Akio declared, digging his toes into the sand of the atoll they'd found. The lagoon itself was a deep blue, while the sandbar that encircled it was an almost perfect crescent moon.

The Adventurer easily cleared the deeper, reef-crusted section and anchored in the still lagoon. Seagulls cried as they circled overhead, while tiny crabs and other beach-dwelling animals scattered at their passing.

"All we need now is a smuggler's cache and some rum."

"The Children don't have pirates, Akio," Sophie reminded him.

"Or smugglers. They wouldn't need to."

"Ah, but The Creator knows the tropes just as well as we do!" Akio shot back, still excited as he moved into the stand of palm trees.

"No way he'd let this opportunity pass. We just gotta find the X." Akio focused up as he entered the group of trees, pushing through the long sand-grass and between the thatch palms and the taller palm trees. Coconut Palms, if all the coconuts on the ground were any clue. A few looked like they'd been cracked open, though, so Akio slowed and kept his eyes open. He was only two or three trees deep when he emerged into the sandy circle in the middle of the trees.

As Akio started examining the sand in the middle, he heard his friends pushing through the trees behind him.

"Okay, I'll admit, this looks suspicious," Bruce said, which Akio took as tacit agreement with his theory.

"What, you expect there to be something here?" Akio heard Haythem ask as the group approached him.

"It's a well-known trope that pirates bury the treasure they steal on isolated, uncharted islands so that other people can't find it," Sophie explained, sounding a little exasperated.

"Some way or another, they died before they could retrieve it, or lose their charts, and can't find it again. The other option is a smuggler's cache, where smugglers can store prohibited items in case their ships get searched."

"Makes sense," Bertram agreed, looking around the small clearing.

"This doesn't exactly look natural, after all."

"That's what I'm saying," Akio said emphatically as he dug in the sand at the exact centre of the circle.

"The Creator likes to put chests in random places, places you can only find by exploring beyond the direct path. Just like video games do. If I'm right... AHA!" His fingers had touched wood. A bit more excavation revealed the wooden boards. The rest of the group joined in, and together they hauled the small chest out of the sand. It was only a foot or so long, and half as tall and wide, but smaller chests didn't mean less treasure! With only a little tug, the lock sheared, and the lid flopped open. inside...

A small pouch of coins, stamped with the dungeon core on one side.

"Arrgh! We've found the booty!"

"Please don't say that again," Sophie said, sounding as if she were barely holding back laughter.

"With the Japanese accent... It's not a good look." Bruce wasn't as diplomatic and was already giggling and mimicking Akio's attempt at Engrish. Akio flushed, embarrassed, but handed the pouch over for the others to look at as he pulled the other item in the chest out. It was a thin chain necklace with a pendant shaped like a long screw shell, made of a shimmering deep blue-teal material. It was only when he tried to push mana into it, and it absorbed it easily, that he realised what it was.

"This is made from a manacore!" Akio exclaimed, drawing the other's attention. Akio saw Sophie's eyes widen when she saw the pendant.

"Is that... a mermaid pendant?" She asked, reaching out to touch the crystalline material. Bruce snorted after frowning for a moment, then looked amused.

"Of course you played Stardew Valley," Bruce teased.

"Hey, you know what it is, too!" Sophie shot back.

"Yeah, but not on sight," Bruce smirked.

"Let me guess. Sebastian?" Sophie blushed and glared, but Akio just blinked. He'd never heard of 'Stardew Valley'.

"May I see that?" Haythem asked, and Akio handed it over, pooling the chain in the man's palm. Haythem hummed as he inspected the pendant and chain, then nodded.

"This is indeed made from a manacore. Or, more precisely, grown from a manacore. There aren't any chips or signs of work, and no core cutter could make something this flawless. The chain is made of a metal the dungeon calls Potentium, which is very mana-conductive. It's probably enchanted in some way, but we'd have to activate it to find out."

"Well, it's a necklace, right?" Akio said with a shrug.

"Someone just needs to wear it. Any volunteers?" There was a moment of hesitation which Bruce took advantage of as he took it and slipped it over his shoulders without a second thought, to shocked looks.

"What? It's a shell, and I can feel the water mana in this thing." After a moment, nothing happened.

"Maybe feed it some mana?" Eliza suggested. Bruce nodded and took a deep breath. In the next moment, the pendant pulsed with a deep blue light, then began to levitate slightly. It hovered off of Bruce's chest for a moment, still, then drifted right, pointing towards the ship.

"Cool!" Akio exclaimed.

"It's leading us somewhere!" They followed the pendant's direction and emerged near the lagoon. It was only when an enormous head emerged from the ocean, looking at the ship with curiosity, that they remembered that activating random enchanted items was generally discouraged. -0-0-0-0-0-