Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 23: Loot and Merchants

I had gotten a lot of EXP both from having the whole Tribe pass through my Dungeon to get healed and from several Tribesmen getting their karma level raised.

The three ladies, who were furthest in their pregnancies, expressed their joy at moving around again. Something their mates didn't like them doing, this late in their pregnancies.

All the extra EXP naturally led to a couple of level ups.

Status, please.

Personal Status Level: 18 EXP needed for level up: 14,230/16,900 Mana payment needed for level up: 0/2,800 Mana: 428.25/1,400 Mana regeneration: 490 per hour Floors: 4/9 Allowed number of sapients in each Floor: 6 Floor Details Achievements Mission Dungeon Rules

I'm really not that far away from getting another tier up. EXP-wise that is. Which I believe is largely due to Dungeons needing less EXP to level up in the beginning of their… lives…? Existences? But also partly due to my EXP multipliers.

I'll have to kill more bad people before I can actually tier up, of course, and I don't think that is likely to happen any time soon. Probably when the elves return sometime next month.

It was now dawn again and in addition to having leveled up several times I had also made good progress on my 5th Floor.

5th Floor Details, please.

Floor Details for the 5th Floor

352/570 levels worth of creatures

0/2 puzzles

0/30 traps

Not by any means done quite yet, but good progress, nonetheless.

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The Tribe and I settled back into our routine after the mass healing. Emerald's Party - often joined by Vanek - visited twice a day and every second or third day the second visit of the day was joined by some of or most of the Tribe's children. That one mousegirl… pup…?- I was pretty sure the child of a mouse was called a pup. -never comes. I think she might have done something bad and gotten grounded. Sometimes, when the kids come to visit some of the other adults will come as well, but otherwise Emerald's Party and Vanek are the only adults that regularly visits me.

Vanek, when he came by, would join Emerald's Party for the first two Floors at the end of which he would talk to the mimic. Okay. It's pretty clear by now, that he does intend to befriend this specific mimic. But I have yet to figure out why! Why this one?!

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The 3rd and 4th Floor had a couple of new rare loot drops all of which the Tribe loved. That the yaks had a 20% chance of dropping yak wool was already known to the Tribe, but surprisingly neither the small dumb mimic the griffins were guarding nor the one pretending to be a Wheel of Fortune had dropped their rare loot before the elves had left. Said rare drop was a wand with the ability to change the color of anything non-living and non-magical you pointed it at in exchange for some of one's mana. How much mana depended on the size of the object and the wand couldn't make patterns.

The Tribe didn't yet have any 3rd tiers - and as such, no one had access to mana - so they couldn't actually use it yet. But the idea of being able to change the color of stuff, without having to know how to dye clothes or make paint, was something that made the Tribe excited for the future.

The 4th Floor had new loot drops from 7 different creatures. Leopard, tiger, and bear meat gave the Tribe some variation in meat but wasn't overly exciting. The obsidian bear did have a chance of dropping an obsidian knife, though, and those were supposedly really sharp.

A feather of Intelligence would give its carrier 1+ in Intelligence. Not a lot, but every feather could be bundled together and worn with each feather giving 1+ in Intelligence. With only a 5% chance per feathered serpent it didn't drop too often, though. Only about one every run or two. Of course when it dropped it was then doubled due to Experiencing Peace!

Feathers of Intelligence were rainbow colored just like the feathers on the feathered serpents. The rainbow feathers look surprisingly cool on the otherwise green serpents! Feathered serpents were roughly 60 cm long and could fly without wings.

My fledgling neurotoxic dragons' rare loot drops had the same odds of getting dropped as that of my feathered serpents. But with there being more neurotoxic dragons than feathered serpents, people were more likely to get a vial of numbing poison than a feather of Intelligence. The numbing poison could be used as a painkiller if applied to wounds but was lethal in high doses or if ingested.

The 4th Floor had a single ‘elemental pixie - mist’ which would create a mist around people they didn't like and lure them off the Cliff trap covering the entire right side of the first room. The Cliff trap had cost me very little mana for its size due to how obvious it was. The pixie's job was to negate that.

The Floor also had a pair of púcas. Púcas are shapeshifting fey, who can only turn into mammals and will always have the same color of fur. Which color depends on the púca but is always either white or black. Should they try to take a sapient form they will additionally have some features from the animal whose form they last took. Their interpretation of a beastkin could end up looking pretty weird!

As both púcas and pixies were fey, they left fey gold as a common loot. Fey gold took the appearance of an unnaturally hard, small gold coin. Any attempt to smelt or form the gold would completely fail. But should you try to push a bit of mana into it, it would transform into an item. Never anything big or super rare, but what exactly it would become was as unreliable as the actions of fey. Which to most seem completely random but actually depend on whether or not they like you.

Fey gold, however, was actually mostly random. Every point one had above a karma level of 50% would give one a 1% higher chance of getting something useful - with 'useful' being very broad. Likewise, every point below 50% would give you a 1% higher chance of getting something worthless - like common leaves or rocks - or something outright harmful to the touch - like acid. One had to be pretty high tier to be able to charge something with mana without touching it after all.

The Tribe didn't have access to their mana yet, though, so for a while the fey gold would simply be collected.

Lastly, púcas also had a 10% chance of dropping a 1×1-meter black furred skin. Said skin was special as when made into clothing it would become form fitting. It couldn't become bigger than it originally was, but it would shrink itself to better fit its wearer.

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A metal loot drop cannot be lowered to more than the same amount of the corresponding metal of half the Dungeon metal numeral order, rounded down.

Oh? What's the 'Dungeon metal numeral order'?

The Dungeon metal numeral order is the numeral order of which metals appear in Dungeons.

As in '1 is aluminum, 2 is copper' and so on?

The Dungeon metal numeral order has aluminum as number 1, copper as number 2, tin as number 3, iron as number 4 and so on.

Which number is gold then?

Gold is number 7 in the Dungeon metal numeral order.

So, half rounded down is tin then. Still higher than expected from a 1st tier Floor, but only a little and it is the 5th Floor, so it should be okay.

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I completed the 5th Floor 1 hour and 47 minutes before sundown 3 days after I had healed the Tribe.

Status, please!

Personal Status Level: 19 EXP needed for level up: 15,162/19,400 Mana payment needed for level up: 0/3,000 Mana: 0/1,500 Mana regeneration: 525 per hour Floors: 5/10 Allowed number of sapients in each Floor: 6 Floor Details Achievements Mission Dungeon Rules

I didn't really like that it said 5/10 Floors. It made me feel like I was slow. I could finish all 10 Floors really quickly if I made every creature be dragonets - the cheapest dragon I could make - but I wanted to do it properly. And having only dragonets would make my Dungeon quite boring.

Show me the details for the 6th Floor.

Floor Details for the 6th Floor

0/828 levels worth of creatures

0/4 puzzles

0/40 traps

Uh? That's less creatures than I had expected. And the puzzles doubled! Must be because I'm starting on my 2nd tier Floors now. The volume for each Floor doubled from 1st to second tier after all! Makes sense the other aspects would change too.

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"Chief! Nerok!" Riska came running towards Nerok's tent. "Merchants! There’re merchants in the forest! On giant millipedes!"

"They are called arthropleura, young one." The Chief said with a smile. "I take it your brother is leading them to us."

The young lupinekin nodded eagerly. "They are so big!" She added.

"The arthropleura? They have been bred to be big so they can carry more stuff around for merchants. Their long bodies make it easy for them to navigate forests unlike something big and bulky like an elephant." Nerok lifted his hand in the direction Riska had come from. "Why don't I go greet them, while you inform the rest of the Tribe. Tell them to prepare anything they want to trade."

"On it!" And off she went.

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Nerok had only just left the 'village' - a.k.a. the area of the forest the Tribe had felled the trees from and put-up tents in - when the sounds of thousands of insect feet hitting the forest floor hit his ears. Soon thereafter he spotted Tuzzik running alongside a 5-meter long arthropleura with another two arthropleura following behind them. Each arthropleura had two merchants sitting on them, one on each end of the creature's body. All the valuables had been placed in between the merchants tied to the arthropods' bodies.

Of the 6 merchants two were beastkin - vulpinekin and felinekin -, two were giants, one was a human and one was a gnome.

"Welcome!" The Chief greeted.

"Praise be the System!" The gnome greeted in return. Gnomes were known as being brilliant tinkers and craftsmen due to their naturally higher Dexterity Score. Their roughly 1-meter-tall bodies were always topped with bright colorful hair and possessed an equally colorful set of, larger than expected eyes. The color of the hair and eyes had the curious quality of always being the same.

The ears of gnomes ended in a point. Just like an elf's.

This particular gnome was past his prime but not yet elderly. As the base expected lifespan of a gnome was 120 years it meant he was around his 70's or 80's. Maybe even in his 90's if he was a higher tier. His hair and eyes were a bright blue-green color. The hair was long enough to cover half of his ears.

Good. Nerok thought. No reason to unnerve the Tribe.

Tuzzik gave his Chief a big smile before running off. Not only did he want to find his younger sister again - slavery had made his protective instincts unnaturally strong - but he also didn't want the Chief to find out, just how far out the two of them had gone while playing.

The two lupine siblings had definitely broken a rule on that front and would be grounded should anyone find out.

"Whad are ye folks doing this deep in the foresd?" The gnome asked as he got down from his arthropleura.

"We found a Dungeon and decided to settle down around it." The Tribe had agreed to never mention their lives as slaves to any outsiders. They wanted to get on with their lives without their past dragging them down.

All 6 merchants looked at Nerok with wide eyes for a moment, clearly not expecting that answer. Then the other 5 went back to taking care of the giant arthropods.

The gnome - clearly their leader - presented himself to the Chief with sparkling eyes. To a merchant a Dungeon meant money. "I am Podon Peddlepitch, leader of this here caravan. Bud please. Jusd call me Pod."

"Greetings Pod. My name is Nerok. I am the System-approved Chief of this Tribe." The gnome straightened his back hearing this. Being a System-approved leader was harder to achieve than simply becoming a leader. First off, the size of the group you were the leader over needed to have a certain size. For a Merchant Caravan the smallest size was 10 people. For a Tribe it was 50 people. Secondly… the System wouldn't always approve of a leader and grant them the Achievement and its rewards, and the System could take the Achievement away again should you displease it. Some said the System only approved of good people becoming leaders. And while the System typically took away the leader Achievement after said leader did something bad, not everyone believed this to be the actual second criteria.

Podon did believe this, though, and tried to do good whenever possible in the hopes that, should he ever get a merchant caravan of 10 people, he would then get the 'Small Merchant Leader' Achievement.

In short: Having the actual Achievement was something for others to respect and strive after. And when talking to a chief one could refer to them simply by their name with no social consequence. But when talking to a Chief it would be impolite to not call them by their title as well.

After all, they had earned that respect from the System. Mere mortals could do nothing less.

"Chief Nerok! A pleasure to meed ye!" Of course, Podon was still a merchant and continued. "Tell me aboud thad there Dungion! Whad kind is id? How big? Any interesting lood? Ye know! Alllllll the good stuff!" His excitement had made his dialect more pronounced.

Nerok told Podon about the local Dungeon, while the rest of the merchants unloaded the 3 beasts of burden. There was no reason for them to carry all the goods when they would be staying for a while anyway after all.

Neither Nerok nor the Tribe would say a word about the peaceful nature of the creatures of the Dungeon unless the outsiders intended to enter the Dungeon. The Dungeon was still too young to get that sort of attention if unnecessary.

No one would tell the merchants that the Dungeon could talk through its creatures either. That would be for the Dungeon to share should it chose to.

Just like the miracle of the Healing unicorn bunny would only be revealed to those the Dungeon found worthy.