“Wake up sleepy head.” Kazue stirred relutly at the words, the redhead blinking her way into full sciousness. She still felt sluggish, but far better than when she had colpsed st night. The voice that was teasing her beloo Moriko, though both her spouses were cuddled onto the bed with her.
She yawned and stretched, then lightly swatted Moriko with a tail. “Evil woman, waking such a sleepiy as I.” She giggled then sat up. “Good m? Yes, m!” She had a much better sense of time as a duhan she had as just a kitsune, but it took a moment of thinking to make sure she knew what time it was. “Wow, I was out for 12 hours?”
“Yep!” Moriko replied, then poked the ticklish kitsune in the side. “Mordecai said you were mostly recovered, and sleeping wasn’t going to be a lot faster at this point, so I want you to have breakfast with us.”
Kazue turo Mordecai quizzically, but then got distracted by bei with a kiss, and she melted into it for a moment. “Oh, that was nice.“ She sighed. “Wait, I had a question, ht! How did you know?”
“My own experience, and sharing a core. We both have our owions, but there is information and process sharing at the borders. I spent some time experimenting with how muformation I send and receive across the boundary. Anythiing to the dungeon and general status be shared directly. bihat with just the feel of your mind across the bond, and I had a good sense of how you were doing.”
Moriko sighed and pouted a little. “You know, it’s a toufair that you two get to share another bond like that. I mean, it’s not like you do anything to fix that, but it is the ohing slightly unequal in our retionship. Eh, don’t worry about it, our other bond does most of the same thing, and I don’t really o know the dungeon stuff that way. Alright, enough of that, let’s get dressed and have some breakfast!”
Ohey were settled at the table aing, Kazue asked, “Have you guys had a ce to chey library yet? What do you think?” She felt a little nervous, which robably silly, but she put a lot of work into this and it was important to her.
“It looks like a grand bit of fun, and when we’ve collected enough knowledge we’ll probably get various sages and historians visiting just to do research. It’s a shame so many of the books are duplicates or bnk right now. Oh, I did take the liberty of scattering some beginner spell books in there, each with a random sele of trips and novice spells. Even if someone ’t make use of it, they should be able to sell them, so it’s a random reward if they stumble onto them.”
Kazue bounced in her seat at that idea. “Oh, I like it!” She eagerly turowards Moriko. “What about you?”
“Er,” The half-elf looked a touch embarrassed. “Well, I saw what Mordecai showed in an illusion, and it looks very pretty and the maze part is iing, but I have to admit I am not much of a book person, so it doesn’t have a lot of appeal for me.”
“Hmm.” Kazue pondered a moment while sav another bite of her breakfast. “I’ve got an idea. When Mordecai runs off to do his half, why don’t we gh it together? I ’t make myself not know the puzzles and stuff, but I set it to easy mode and just follow you around. It’ll give me an idea if I’ve got it tuned in for people who don’t read a lot.”
She knew Moriko was not stupid, but she was the sort of person who usually only sought out knowledge that directly affected her, so she’d make a great data point to evaluate her settings. Kazue blinked. Data point? Settings? They weren’t new cepts to her, but she didn’t usually sider things that way. “Um, I think being a dungeon is ging how I think,” she announced with a nervous twitch of her ears. “Mordecai, do you often think in stuff like ‘data points’ and ‘settings’?”
Her husband chuckled at her. “Oh, that makes sense. I had to adapt the other way when I was first able to send an avatar outside of the dungeon. People who talked to me in my home expected dungeon ‘weirdness’, as my first traveling panions called it, but to blend in with normal society I had to learn how to not talk like that. I think it won’t be a big issue for you, since your personality was established as a flesh and blood person, but our cores do have some distinct biases in hoart of ourselves think, and after your little project I think you are syng between your avatar and ore.”
“Huh. I guess that makes se’s still kind of weird though. Anyway, Moriko, what do you think of my idea? We make a date of it too, my treat at all the shops. Those I’ll bring you to, you won’t have to go looking for them.” She grinned slightly, her tails swishing arouool. She might use a chair to look impressive when she o, but goddess stools were more fortable, especially now that she had more tails. Hmm, maybe she could get them to switch to low tables and cushions, but they could talk about that ter.
Moriko smiled as she thought about the idea. “Alright, could be fun hanging out at least. Not sure how well I’ll do at the puzzles, but pany you enjoy makes everythier.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as her smile turned wicked. “Just be careful, you never know when you might find yourself getting pinned in a dark er somewhere.”
Kazue blushed and shifted in her seat, but she had to admit to herself that she didn’t hate the idea…
When the wome off to py in the happy library, Mordecai made his way to the fourth-floor entrance. He already knew what he was going to do, he’d had days to think about it after all, but he o tweak a few things first. The two paths exiting from the stairway were 120 degrees off from each other, which was normally enough, but things were too crowded with the curreup. He didn’t ge the doors, but he did ge the paths, causing them to bend outwards fairly sharply. He moved the rest area and rearranged a little bit of the corridor beyond, but in the end, the setup was funally identical to what Kazue had set up before, and looked nearly the same. Kazue and Moriko were already in the library proper before he started anything, so he made sure to set speed, acceleration, and jerk very low for that chamber, to keep from disturbing anyone, but both paths o spread out more than normal. Kazue still noticed of course, and he sent back a reassurah a visual of the tweaked floor pn.
Now, the first part of his pn was simple. He mirrored Kazue’s yout of the rest area, ging only ohing. Instead of a pque beside the archway, he put a big sign above it:
Silence is Golden.
That was a clue on how to make this floor a bit easier. His corridor past the sign was simpler, as he was only going to allow one party at a time in. Now he copied the entire yout and capabilities of Kazue’s library, minus the puzzles. This was a lot less costly and quicker thaing it the first time ahings up for a bit of fun. Ohe room was grown and fully implemented, he ged the nature of the zones, giving them a set of life-like rules and making them hostile to each other, with a potential to grow into a’ each other’s territory, ging the yout and style of quered territories to match their own. Chaos promptly ensued.
For the few hours, Mordecai simply sat in the rest area and watched everything unfold. He kept track of how well each was doing, and occasionally pruned a tiny bit to help sculpt the final results. He wahem mixed, and didn’t want any giveo be only a siype of zone for te a distance. He also eained himself by switg his focus to the other library, and see how his wives were getting along. They were hanging out as much as they were w on the puzzles, so Moriko’s progress was slow, but she was learning to see how research could be seen as a type of hunt where you had to narrohere your prey was. Though she seemed to be having even more fun teasing Kazue.
Also, they came up with a couple of other puzzle ideas, though implementing one of them would wait until Moriko could get some spare training manuals and bring them back. Though she remembered the lessons, she was no artist and couldn’t remember the exact pictures. The idea was going to be a ‘one of these things doesn’t belong’ puzzle involving the pose sequences for various moves and fighting styles, ranging from unarmed katas to formal feng duels.
The other idea was copied from a toy she remembered from the temple, though Kazue’s version would be a touch bigger: Take a square picture, cut it up into even tiles that are fio a ft box, aher remove one of the tiles or make 1 to 2 spaces outside of the main square, then scramble them.
Mordecai was switg his attentioween them and his project, as it was mostly growing by his 'program', so he almost missed what happened closer to the end of their outing. That was very iing, enough so that he slowed the zone war for a little while so he could pay more attention to the other library. Kazue was definitely being more fident. And had spotted him 'spying'. Well, he had an invitation now, and it was nice seeing this part of Kazue.
Ohe three zones were thhly intermixed from their warfare, Mordecai ‘killed’ them, freezing the war in pce, and promptly deactivated all the wall-shifting abilities. Now he focused on the cept of age and decay and used it to fvor the mareamed into the broken library. Ohe eting was suffitly decayed he stopped that, then gave the entire library a new sort of life, ohat he inteo keep, so this was going to move beyond simple behavior instrus. Mordecai gave it the personality of a haunted house, though he was not going to use any undead or spirits. With that personality he gave a few abilities and limitations. While visitors were present, a more restricted ability to ge its yout was enabled, giving the library ruins only so muergy to work with, slowing down how fast it move a wall, and a trickle of energy to slowly refill that capacity. The exit was modified too, it was hidden and could be moved, but only so often, and then there was a total number of uses that slowly regeed. Also, it couldn’t be moved if any visitor was within 30 feet of it, and the library couldn’t select exactly where it would reappear.
All of this was of course set dressing. The real challenge was going to be the monsters, or avoiding them. The first thing he created were little bookwyrms, ami-like structs in the shape of tiny dragons. They were fairly fragile, but they could fly and eaew one trip it was fairly profit with. And naturally, they were vulnerable to fire.
up was to ent some of the ‘ruined’ books and turn them into mooo. They would look like normal books until disturbed, then animate with eyes opening on the front cover and the pages opening up to reveal a toothy maw. They could fling themselves at people, and if they got a good bite in they would grab on and chew. Naturally, he hem Biting Words.
Mordecai looked around and decided to focus on the vines. While Kazue’s library had these soft green blooms of pnt life in open, airy spaces, his had twisted dark tendrils woven throughout, with random shafts of dim light illuminating the pce. Most of the vines and roots one passed were perfectly safe, others would reach out and try tle you, or burst from the ground to try and pull a person into a pit of digestive juice.
Now he littered the pce with lots of minor book stacks and bookshelf traps, along with creaky floors and steps that could break when you stepped ohese weren’t meant to really be much of a hazard in and of themselves. They mostly made noise and might give someone a few bruises. But he had put up that warning at the entrance for a reason.
He didn’t create an actual creature for this st enter, so much as a tempte. Any ganthro who so chose could e and py the role of a raging bunbrarian. Dressed in the rags of once fine, schorly clothes, these fierce, sharp-eared guardians roamed the ruined library, ready to punish any intruders with their giant, book-shaped hammers. Ony enemies were within sight, the bunbrarian automatically cast a silence aura upon itself and charged into battle, eyes practically glowing red with berserk rage, making an eerie spectacle as they moved utterly noiselessly. The silence aura shattered when they were defeated, as they let out an amplified death scream backed with fear magic, the bination enough to potentially stun their killers. Naturally, Mordecai made sure the shriek would happen no matter how they died.
When he was done, he took a little while to examihe results of his crafting, and though he was overall happy with it, he wasn’t quite satisfied. Oh, overall he was rather pleased, but they were als to create a challenge course, not a murder pit. Any group who got past Betty and took the time to rest up should be able to ha, but acts could happen. So he slightly weakehe strangling vines and the digestive juices of the pitcher pnts then ran a set of tuhrough the floors and walls with emergency hatches. Any time a standard group was running through here, there would be ganthros skilled in both magical healing and mundane medie on standby. He was worried that simply stopping aggression wouldn’t be enough if someo themselves into a tight spot. It still wasn’t perfectly safe, no bat trial like this could be without some higher-tier magic avaible, but it was a reasonable bance.
It was now time for the final piece. The ‘exit gate’ for the ruined library did not take you out entirely, no, it took you to the special library annex, aka the Boss Room. Though he did make sure that it specifically led to an antechamber where a group could gather themselves and prepare.
The boss room itself was a round, 5-story affair, with stuffed bookshelves filling every inch of the wall. And guarding this precious trove was of course a dragon. A winged, fged dragon made of books and paper, and smallish for a dragon at a mere 20 feet ih, whom Mordecai dubbed ‘Biblios’. His cws ah could cut as sharply as any thin, stiff paper material, but they had the strength and resilience of steel. Whenever he took flight, there would be a flurry of dust and paper that made it difficult to see, and his breath on alternated betweeher a flurry of small, cutting pieces of paper, or a flood of dangerously fast, bound reams of bnk paper. Additionally, he could tto any bookshelf and pull out a scroll to cast a random novice spell.
Unlike most of his bosses, Biblios would not get support from ued mobs. After all, avoiding fights art of the challenge on this floor. Instead, bookwyrms and biting words would spawn randomly amongst the shelving and throw themselves into the fray.
Fire was the easy way to win this fight of course, but it could be costly. It would easily spread amongst the bookshelves, and force people to flee when the exit opened up. And most of the treasure was in that room, for the very same scrolls that Biblios used were avaible for others to grab as well. Yes, he was happy with this.
A quick check showed that Kazue and Moriko were already back at the suite, and he’d apparently missed dinner. Well, he could still enjoy dessert.
Zagaroth