Fauna: Fern_Temperate_A
HP: 1
Hard: 0
Tough: 0
Flammable: Yes / 2.00
Conductivity: Yes / 0.50
M.Conductivity: Yes 0.10
Item: Fern_Temperate_A
HP: 1
Hard: 0
Tough: 0
Flammable: Yes / 2.00
Conductivity: Yes / 0.50
M.Conductivity: Yes 0.10
The only difference between the fern he cut and a different living one he found is whether it is listed as Fauna or as an Item, but it does answer a question. Living ferns are simple enough to analyze even with an Analyze of 1, and ‘killing’ the fauna’s 1 HP ‘drops’ an item of the same stats and 1 HP. This means that in mechanical terms, the damage his sword did to the fern didn’t matter, all that mattered was that the fern was intact enough to be considered an Item but not intact enough to be considered alive.
The only way he can think to test further would be to find something to use his sword against that wouldn’t get OHKO’d, which turns his eyes back to the dungeon.
He’s wasted so much daylight, too, that the dungeon is the only shelter he’s likely to find for nightfall. Plus, it’s not like he’s got much left to live for right now, even if a monster in there does kill him. It wouldn’t be such a risk to go in there guns blazing. It’d be wasteful not to, even, for Leuen to throw away such juicy, potentially valuable information. Plus, think of the Exp! He’d be a fool not to go in there and explore a little bit.
Before he can even throw out the ‘it’d be fun’ justification, he’s managed to walk his way up to the fork in the dungeon he saw previously. Sword in hand, he looks down the left fork. A few dozen feet in that direction, the blue light in the ceiling dims as the hallway seems to open up into a full room. Checking the other side, the hallway seems to continue straight but dim nonetheless, in addition to narrowing out.
“Ok, so fullbright dungeon no longer, regardless of where I go. Got it.” Leuen says to himself, before deciding he’d take his chances on a potentially dangerous big enemy encounter room over being in a narrower space with potential traps.
Keeping the sword ahead of him at all times, Leuen gets into the bigger chamber and looks around. There isn’t much to it, in the dimmer light. The room is roundish, but still obviously more of a rectangle filled inwards to create that roundness as opposed to anything realistic. It’s almost refreshing, knowing that the place Leuen is standing in was clearly designed by someone to look the way a dungeon is supposed to look, even if it’s empty.
It’s like an unfinished D&D map brought to life, which is comforting in its own sort of way.
Comforting until he realizes that this means the entire place is probably just as empty. Unfinished is the only vibe he’s getting now. The thrill of exploration, the danger of the unknown, even the mental preparations he’d made for having to kill something… All replaced with the overwhelming melancholy of something unfinished.
“Whoever made this place… I feel you.” Leuen says after realizing he can’t even analyze the walls, likely because the designer never got around to even deciding what they should be made of.
Leuen spends several hours wandering around the unfinished dungeon, finding several more rooms and unfinished things. One room was clearly meant to be a place where monsters could spawn and distribute throughout the dungeon, one has a table made out of that same faux stone as everything else, just sculpted into flawless gray shapes.
The only room he hasn’t touched yet is clearly meant to be a boss room. The ‘devs’ as he’s now begun calling them in his head, never put a proper door on. Just two slabs of that gray plastic-like stone set on hinges. If there’s anything in there, Leuen would be extremely surprised, but he’d also likely be extremely dead, considering he has no idea what level the dungeon was designed to be encountered at.
Still, after spending so much time getting familiar with the dev’s unfinished creation, he feels like he kind of owes it to them, to at least check what the final room was envisioned to be, since he looked at everything else. Call it morbid curiosity or whatever, but he feels like it’s the same as discovering your high-school crush’s diary ten years after college. You can’t read most of it, you either put it down after realizing what it is, or resolve to read every page.
He isn’t disappointed when the boss room is empty. It is a boss room, but he can only tell that because of the massive, obvious ‘I’m important’ altar in the center of the room and the fact that there’s plenty of floorspace for… an entire adventuring party plus whatever big monster, he supposes. There’s even some ‘destroyed chapel’ models, pews ‘smashed’ in half, even though Leuen knows they were just designed to look like that.
If he had to guess, this place was probably going to be a classic ‘Goblin/creature demon cult’ dungeon, with the final boss being a summoned demon or abomination or something. Fits the vibe, even if there aren’t any colors and the lighting is fucked.
The one thing he does find that isn’t the same monotonous gray color is a treasure chest. A plain, simple treasure chest, brown wood, rusty iron trim, a padlock already unlocked, with cobwebs and dust accumulated across the whole thing. A generic ‘treasure chest’ asset, probably stuffed here to serve as a placeholder for whatever loot the devs actually wanted to be here.
“I’m sorry, unknown devs, but I’ll be taking advantage of this oversight.” Leuen puts his hands together in prayer for a moment before pushing the top of the chest over with his boot.
Inside is what he expected, a small pile of golden coins and a few gems. It really puts things into perspective for him, how much more the loot in games and stuff matters when you actually had to work for it and when it actually fits the location you found it in, because even though it is objectively a modest (or perhaps more than that) amount of wealth, Leuen doesn’t feel anything other than a little bit sad at this being the end of what the dungeon has to offer. Welp. Let’s see what all this is.
Item: Coin_A (Material_Gold)
HP: 5
Hard: 1
Tough: 1
Flammable: No
Conductivity: Yes / 5.00
M.Conductivity: Yes 1.00
Material: Gold
HP: As item base times 5, as terrain base times 2
Hard: 1
Tough: 1
Conductivity: Yes / 5.00
M.Conductivity: Yes 1.00
Item: Gem_Blue
HP: 10
Hard: 10
Tough: 5
Flammable: No
Conductivity: No
M.Conductivity: Yes 1.50
Item: Home_Crystal
HP: 10
Hard: 5
Tough: 5
Flammable: No
Conductivity: No
M.Conductivity: No
Special: Crush to teleport to home city
The last item Leuen analyzes catches his eyes. What counts as my home city if I’ve not been in this world for longer than a day? If I’ve never seen a city here?
-X-X-X-
Securing the gems and coins into separate pouches on the inside of his doublet, Leuen tosses the Home_Crystal in his hand while sitting on top of the plastic altar. He starts talking to himself, at this point entirely too stimulated to keep his thoughts inside.
“I need to eat and drink soon. I need to sleep soon. What if this thing takes me back to earth? What if it brings me to a random city? What if it brings me to wherever the Devs set as a default point?” Leuen plays with the perfectly rectangular green gem some more, this time balancing it on his palm before holding it up to the blue ceiling lights. “What if these aren’t something this world commonly has? Is teleportation magic super rare? Is this something I’d be suspected of being a powerful mage for if someone saw?”
He taps a corner of the crystal against the altar, noting that just pressing it down as hard as he’d use drumsticks against concrete to make sound isn’t even enough to damage either surface.
“How much force does it take to crush? How does it know that I’m the one who crushed it? Is it a trap? Is it-”
Leuen stops himself before he goes too far down that path of thought. This place didn’t have enough hours put into it for the devs to have even considered making it all so that one randomly generated piece of placeholder loot could kill one person. That’s flatly impossible based on what he’s seen, and Leuen mentally apologizes for even considering it.
Setting the home crystal down on the altar, Leuen dances about the boss room with his sword for a moment, imagining himself battling whatever monsters or boss was supposed to be here, before stopping when he finally realizes he’s acting delusionally. I wonder…
--
Leuen (no surname)
Bio Age (Chrono Age): 19 (19)
Health: 11/22
--
Level: 1
Exp: 24/100
--
Phys.Stat
Hard: 2
Tough: 2
Dura: 11
Regen: 1/Day
Grit: 1
Absorption: 1
Stamina: 11
Regen: 1/Hour
CC: 50
M.Conductivity: 1.00
--
Mental.Stat
TA: 0.00
Cogni: 1
Hive: 0
H.Limit: 10
Cooling: 1
Analyze: 1
M.Fission: 0
M.Fusion: 0
Weight: 1
--
Meta.Stat
N/A
Well, that confirms it for me. I’m at half health when all I’ve done is think and swing a sword around. Health is probably durability + stamina in actuality, which means I’m out of stamina right now, which is probably why I feel so tired and barely lucid. Time for a nap, me.
Having only hard ground and hard altar and pews to slump over awkwardly on, Leuen instead decides to lean into a corner of the room, sheathed sword on his lap and home crystal laying a few feet away from him, before closing his eyes.
When he next awakes to the dim blue light of the dungeon, having no idea how much time has passed, he checks his character sheet again, confirming that he’s at full health. Doing some quick math, he’s slept for at least 11 hours, since his stamina replenishes at a rate of 1/hour still. He hadn’t lost any health, so he can’t use that to confirm if he slept for less than a full day or not, but after clearing away some gunk his eyes and stretching, he feels confident he didn’t sleep for that long at least.
Refastening the sword to his belt, Leuen takes the home crystal in both hands, and makes his choice as he turns with the full force of his upper body and all the rotational energy his legs can muster in a single step.
