Chapter 8 - Building is Fun, Fun is Building - The Traveling Dungeon (Patreon)

It was easier to be a dungeon fragment of Dale than it was to be Divine Dale.

The difference was the same as between a bomb versus a demolition expert. Both can cause or solve many problems, but only one of them will still be there after they do their work. As a dungeon fragment, one of Dale's so-called 'other me's,' I had all of Dale's problems, but I could just focus on my assigned task and then pass my memories for him to deal with. Having a bit of distance as I did, I had more perspective on my issues. Divine Dale was doing more than ignoring things that were a problem. His new divine nature allowed him a more human-like viewpoint. Dungeon Dale, me, was forced to see all of the dungeon at once. His - my - world was sharp and all-encompassing. I couldn't ignore any part. Not the teenage Orc in my entrance being berated by his older sister. Nor that even with the constant deaths, the Orcs moved through my challenges in an unending wave. Divine Dale could ignore the issue, along with many others, but not me.

My job was the maze challenge. There were only two unconquered challenges left in the maze category. With the way the Orcs were powering past each challenge, I would need a new one soon enough. The last uncompleted challenge was a three-dimensional overlapping rigidly contained water maze. I used [Will of the World] to form the water into tubes that floated in space. The entrance was on the cavern's ground floor and the exit at the top of the hundred-foot high stone cube chamber. The real difficulty was that as you moved through checkpoints in the tubes of water, they would lose cohesion and collapse below. As long as you took the correct path through the maze, swimming through the challenge was relatively easy. Lose your way or try and backtrack, and the maze would fall apart around you and drop you to the ground beneath. This wasn't inherently dangerous at the start, but eventually, the falls would become far deadlier. Touching the ground would reset the challenge, but that was poor comfort for anyone who fell hundreds of feet onto the stone.

That was if they weren't an Orc with super regeneration from their symbiote partner. Oh, I'm sure some would die from landing in the wrong way or falling so many times that their bodies couldn't recover without starving, but Orcs were still blatantly overpowered.

The challenge had a lot of fiddly bits to ensure it worked the way I wanted. I had to add a pattern of deep thumb-wide holes at the ground floor to allow any falling water to drain away so that the fall would be on to stone instead of into the water. Each checkpoint required using [Will of the World] for a trigger and was further bound with [Will of the World] to hold the liquid into position. That didn't even consider the need to set up [Will of the World] triggers tied to [Conjuration] to make sure that water would be added when it was removed. We wouldn't want a challenger drinking enough water to ruin it for the next contestant. That sounded ridiculous, but I would have thought a hundred-foot fall would be a deadly failure that would end almost any challenger, but then…well…Orcs.

I would have preferred to avoid the many intricate uses of [Will of the World]. But continuing along the same theme as the last challenge - only with a further difficulty - required even more combinations of the skill. 

The previous maze had a weakness that a challenger had the freedom to stick their head through the 'wall' of the water tube and take a breath of air. I could have changed that, but I liked that the maze required diving from one suspended water tube into another. There was no continuous pathway through the maze. To make it to the exit, you had to fall through the air into other parts of the maze. I could have changed it, but I had a better solution.

After stretching more space to create a large open cube of stone to match the previous challenge, I stared at the large area and tried to visualize the new solution. My process was to first create the interconnected tubes of water for the answer. Create the solution first, then form the failed paths around it. Someone could fall from an incorrect path into the proper way on the previous challenge, but that was fine—this time, hazards would make it more perilous.

In the same way that I formed tubes of restricted water, I created pipes of super-heated water. [Will of the World] worked overtime to keep the water in the air. That, and to keep it at a high temperature and to contain the boiling liquid. Stopping the escaping gaseous water had taken some fiddling, but it worked well enough. The safe passages were calm tubes of water, but the dangerous ones were roiling violent liquid columns. Not that I thought that would stop the more foolhardy Orcs from simply powering through the scalding passages. Some of them definitely would avoid them, but not all. They were that kind of people. Most of them would definitely work to find the right way. Like anyone else, they didn't like pain, but some just wouldn't care and would power through. 

Again, Orcs.

It took me roughly two hours to form all the different pathways of overlapping and intertwining dangers and false tubes. That was quick when I considered that almost no one else would be able to create such a magical masterpiece. Still, it was only fast enough to keep a buffer of two unfinished challenges in front of the wave of Orc challengers. The tide was slowing, but even my success was starting to feel phyric. The Orc nation had lost something like one in ten adults from throwing themselves into the meat grinder of my dungeon. I had only a couple more days left here, but I honestly considered ending my stay early. I didn't think the Orcs would all die from my dungeon. Plenty of them dropped out after reaching moderate difficulties and barely overcoming them. But that still left plenty more diving headfirst into death even after a near-death experience!

They weren't dumb. The Orcs clearly knew what was happening and the cost of failure. I could see scenes of grief being played out over and over again, often while they waited in line for their own challenge. They just didn't care. My dungeon was a gauntlet of challenges, something their culture apparently relished, and they were going to indulge. I could see more than one Orc bowing their head at the mural of Coldona as they passed. Her new divine title and popularity must have been earning her converts from the Orcs left and right. It was a perfect storm for mass conversion. A new national pass time combined with religious revivalism!

Meanwhile, I was a nervous wreck trying to keep pace with challenges I doubted anyone else would ever see. I questioned the ethics of my wanton but unwanted slaughter while contemplating the frightening fact that I was the death of near on ten percent of a race. Yet, I had only gained a single level since my race change! How many deaths would leveling up require? What did that level mean? It obviously mattered to the system somehow, but how important was it to escaping this universe? Irrelevant? Vital? I had no clue, and I dreaded that I might need to create a river of blood for us to break free.

Not that I was the one that had to deal with those problems. That was Divine Dale's problem. I was just thinking and remembering my concerns for Divine Dale to notice and deal with later. Hey Divine Dale, stop being so myopic and see the problems that you need to deal with. You have plenty of them, and while they might be emotionally draining and profoundly disturbing, you still needed to deal with them! Hint, Hint.

Of course, I remember being Divine Dale and sending myself out to create maze challenges. I knew why I was avoiding those thoughts. I just didn't have to worry about what would happen when Divine Dale got these memories. That was his problem, not mine. I was just doing my other self a solid and making sure he couldn't stick his head in the sand forever. You're welcome, me.

Turning back to the maze, I started on the next challenge. This time, with fire! Being able to just stick your head through the tubes of water and breathe, maybe check your location and where to go? That was too easy. No, now we need to sheath some of the water pathways with flames! The low-temperature flames burned away the surrounding oxygen and kept challengers from taking a breath. High-temperature fires would roast someone quickly and even created constantly [Conjuring] aerosolized flaming oil that would crisp skin on contact. I doubted it would give most Orcs even a moment of pause, fire being only slightly more difficult to heal than a burn from boiling water. Still, it was at least another step in the right direction.

The actual increase in difficulty came from the flame, smoke, and fire blocked sightlines. I was sure that this wouldn't be enough to stop them, they were a relentless people, but it was yet one more difficulty. Later stages would have moving tunnels, floating stone platforms, and spikes. Other fragments of me were duplicating my work as alternate versions of this 'level' of the challenge to keep people from simply selling solutions. I doubted the Orcs would do that, but the grunt work of reproducing a stage in the same style was easy enough to do and kept it from being an issue. Two or three alternates were all that would really be needed. The sameness of my hallways and the strange dimensional twists was more than enough to disorient and confuse most mortals into thinking the rooms were the same. I couldn't experience the same disorientation as any of my challengers. My nature as both a God of Space and as a dungeon precluded it; yet, I could easily imagine it from my human memories.

Another three hours had me finally finished with the puzzle, and surprise, surprise! I was actually making progress versus the green horde. Three unconquered challenges! Still, it was only a matter of time before the Orcs pushed forward, and another fragment of me would need to be down in the dark, creating new problems to solve.

You might want to give further thought to moving on early Divine Dale! You make the rules, Dale. You can arbitrarily decide to change them! Just because you made a decision before doesn't mean you can't change your mind! I shook my viewpoint in an entirely unnecessary affectation just so that the memory would contain it when conveyed to Divine Dale. I considered the possibility that I should end my challenges. I could block off those entrances and only leave the crossroad structures open to the rest of the world. I was confident enough now in my spatial shenanigans. That I could create dimensional games that would almost certainly block anyone from ever reaching my core again. I had started the pathways as a transport nexus that crisscrossed the world. It was my financial and political hedge against anyone ever trying to destroy my dungeon. Now it looked like a possible first step in an escape plan. My little world inside the crossroads was still a part of the outer world, but it was far more disconnected than anywhere else. It might be only one step away from making my own little bubble world. Escaping to it would certainly count as not being in the Goddess of Creation's world.

With that memory landmine and my assigned challenge building job done, I returned to Divine Dale to reintegrate my memories.