Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 5: Exploring a Peaceful Dungeon

It took barely half an hour from making an opening to the Surface World till a Party of 6 stepped into my Dungeon. That's much faster than I expected. Good thing I took the time to prepare. Especially Experiencing Peace would have been hard to have people discover if it wasn't already combined with Karma Creatures.

The Party was made up of what could only be beastkin. Though maybe they called themselves something different. The 6 looked mostly human but had features from animals. Mouse, cat, bear, wolf, rhinoceros, and fox. Rhino beastkin? That's a thing? Didn't know that… The Party had their weapons raised, not seeing my dragonets at first. Then the rhinogirl pointed to The Great Tree - I was bored, and I named every room too, that's how bored I was! - and… said some gibberish.

Of course I don't understand them! I mentally scolded myself. I'm just a Dungeon Core! They have no need to understand people!

By now the Party had clearly noticed that my creatures weren't attacking them unprovoked and had started discussing what to do about it. But what options they were considering I didn't know…

I have to make a universal translation Rule when I have enough mana. Wish I already had a Rule like that in fact. Ahhh! Why didn't I think of that?!

System, how much mana would a universal translation Rule cost me?

A ‘Universal Translation’ Rule has a mana cost of 100 mana per Floor the Dungeon has or wants to cover. With a mana discount of 5% on all creations the price falls to 95 mana per Floor. If all current Floors are covered by a Rule it becomes a Dungeon-wide Rule unless stated otherwise.

95 mana. Got it!

The 6 beastkin had very light Karma Auras and when I focused on a single Aura, I would get the actual karma level. The mouse had the lowest level, which was still the really high level of 73%. As such she almost qualified for slightly more good luck but not quite. The other 5 did though as they had karma levels of between 78% and 87%. Good people! That's good! They're unlikely to want me harmed!

The Party had decided to go to The Rainbow Forest but the magical appearance of double the loot they would have gotten seemed to stop them in their tracks. Maybe they even got an EXP message like me.

Experiencing Peace rewards you 10 EXP.

First of Your Kind rewards you 2 EXP.

Creature Designer rewards you 1 EXP.

Awesome! Status!

Personal Status Level: 1 EXP needed for level up: 13/200 Mana payment needed for level up: 0/100 Mana: 12.5/100 Mana regeneration: 15 per hour Floors: 1/1 Allowed number of sapients in each Floor: 6 Floor Details Achievements Mission Dungeon Rules

That means I'll go level up when two Parties finish my Dungeon. Before even! EXP-wise that is. That can't be normal!

Uh, right… A normal Dungeon would have gotten 5 EXP for that room while I got 13 due to the Rule and Achievements.

… I think the System only allowed me to have Experiencing Peace give double EXP 'cause it follows my mission so closely… It does kind of … break the system… after all. I had to mentally laugh at the unintentional pun. On the other hand, the info windows have informed me multiple times that killing people gives a lot more EXP than anything else so it might not be all that groundbreaking after all…

Then a bright light came from the wolfgirl. What happened? Then I remembered she had crushed an Orb they got as loot which had then turned into mana and flowed into her. Uh, right! That was a Breakthrough Orb. She must have just become a 2nd tier then. While waiting for people to arrive I had given myself a crash course in my own loot, as I had realized I hadn't actually looked at it. I only changed the loot chance of the mimicking dragonet as I wanted there to be an almost certainty that its unique loot drop would drop. It wasn't that special anyway. Just fun. And as I only had one mimicking dragonet the change wouldn't have a big consequence anyway.

The wolfgirl got a kiss from the catboy which clearly made her happy as she smiled and wagged her tail.

Cute.

Hmm... Tier 2 people are supposed to get a Class based on the 6 Ability Scores. I wonder what she got… I likely would know if I could understand them!

Frustrated, I simply watched the rhinogirl glow as the other loot got gathered after which the Party continued to explore my Dungeon.

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After some more congratulations the Party entered the Dungeon's 2nd room. This one also had a fast-running stream but instead of just cutting one corner off, this one went from the closest right corner to the one diagonally across from it cutting off half the room. The right corner part of the stream was more pondlike and surrounded by reeds. Where the previous room had one big tree, this one was a more standard forest room with plenty of trees. But the big difference from normal forest rooms lay not in the number of trees this time.

"Rainbow trees?" Zaktak exclaimed. The bark of the trees was a green-reddish rainbow color but otherwise looked like normal trees.

Taozcec replied "Apparently so" but he was just as confused as the muskin. "It's really pretty though." The vulpinekin added to which the others agreed.

"Where are they, Thenac?" Nalir asked. The felinekin hadn't been able to spot the dragons in the trees this time due to the thicker tree cover.

Luckily Thenac had an eye on them. "In the trees again. Surrounding us but only watching."

Morghar gave a bright smile and clapped Thenac's back. "The tier up is already helping I see!" Thenac simply shrugged and nodded not knowing what to say to that.

"Let's keep going then. Before they change their mind about not attacking us." The Party did as Nalir suggested and left the room. The double message popped up again with Begdar and Thenac still getting only 5 EXP like the others but this time not due to being capped but due to them being a tier too high.

This time the loot again consisted of 4 pieces of meat and 6 fruits. There were 20 small aluminum cubes this time though but no BO's.

Knowing the randomness of loot drops they simply gathered the loot and kept going.

In the third room, the stream cut them off from the left side but there was nothing but grass on that side of it. Looking straight ahead the Party could see into the next room where a pond appeared to be. Forward and to the right there was a cluster of three - normal looking - trees with what appeared to be 5 burrows in between.

Taozcec, the most curious of the bunch, only got to take a couple of steps forward in the direction of the three trees before hearing Thenac shout: "Trap!" The vulpinekin quickly backtracked as he didn't yet know what kind of trap she had seen. "It's a pressure trap. If we ignore the burrows and walk straight to the next room nothing will happen. But heading for the trees will. If you really want to investigate you should walk straight ahead until you're right next to the trees before turning right. But be careful. The dragons are in those trees watching."

Now knowing that the trap gets triggered when you step on its pressure platform and roughly where it is, let Taozcec walk around the trap to investigate the burrows. The rest of the Party followed him. As the vulpinekin in front got about 2 meters away from the burrows the dragons overhead started to hiss at him. Otherwise freezing his movements he slowly looked up at them. Their wings were slightly spread as if preparing to take flight and they were showing teeth. They weren't moving though, which showed the Party that it was just a warning.

While watching the dragons Taozcec walked a couple of steps backwards. The dragons in turn stopped their hissing and folded their wings back against their bodies. Beastkins and dragons stared at each other for a long minute before Begdar chose to speak. "I'm pretty confident in saying the burrows are dragon burrows and that they won't attack us if we leave their homes alone." No one spoke for another moment before Begdar added: "Let's just move to the next room."

The Party walked slowly at first, making sure they didn't spook the dragons, but slowly got up to normal speed. Zaktak gave the dragons a hard look before leaving with her party.

This loot drop gave them another two 1st tier Breakthrough Orbs, two meat chunks, 8 blue-purple fruits and 20 small aluminum cubes.

Cutting in before the others, Nalir ordered: "Morghar, Taozcec, take the BO's so we can keep going." The rest of the Party looked at each other before shrugging. Morghar and Taozcec got the Strength and Charisma Classes that were expected of their race. With those came Extra Muscle and Persuading Voice.

As they had noticed earlier, the 4th room was mostly one big pond with water lilies in it. There were three trees in each corner with dragons in some of them. Additionally there was a dirt route going all the way around the perfectly circular pond and connecting both openings in the room.

"Well this is mighty cozy! It is truly a Dungeon like no other!" Taozcec said with a smile, the tier up helping him getting over the scare from earlier.

Before anything else could be said, a dragon flew down to land just in front of the Party by the pond edge. With just over a meter between them it was closer than any of the other dragons had gotten to the Party.

Suddenly Zaktak had an outburst. "You've gotta be kidding me! That dragon has a necklace with a key in it!"

"I think we're supposed to get the key without harming the dragon…" Begdar suggested.

"Hmm… Let me try something. Step back a bit." Taozcec sat down on his knees while his Party backed a couple of steps away. "Come here little dragon, I won't hurt you." The vulpinekin showed the dragon that his hands were empty. The dragon's attention was fully on Taozcec, but it didn't yet move. "Can I pet you? You're so cute!"

The beastkins behind him tried to stifle a laugh.

The dragon though decided it liked the words - or more likely the tone - and body language of the vulpinekin and so calmly walked up to him. When there Taozcec did as he said he would and petted the tiny green dragon. This close he could clearly see just how small it was for a dragon. It was barely the size of a cat! The petting had made the dragon purr. The purr was both deeper and faster than a cat purr though. Still petting the dragon with one hand Taozcec pulled the thread necklace off of the dragon without meeting any resistance from it. "I got the key. Sorry little one, we must get going." With a last pet the vulpinekin pushed himself to his feet.

The dragon stopped its purring, jumped into the air, and flew to a tree where it landed.

"So… anyone see the keyhole?" Taozcec asked. No one had, so they started looking around. After 15 minutes searching while dodging dragon burrows, they decided to give up and just keep going.

Exiting the pond room 8 meat, two fruits and 18 small aluminum cubes appeared as loot. No BO's but finally a rare loot drop had appeared. Or rather two did as it had been doubled like everything else. Two 1×1-meter green scaled leather appeared as loot.

"That kinda looks like dragon leather, so it might be fire resistant." Begdar suggested. Unfortunately, the simplest identify Skill appeared in 3rd tier so they couldn't know this for sure any time soon.