62 Exploits
Callum's conversation with Primrose was winding down when Amarok stirred himself from the giant comfortable pillow Callum had purchased with a couple Mana points.
He desperately needed more Mana points for the Castle upgrade he wanted to purchase next, but Callum figured that Amarok had more than earned it during the dungeon run.
Constantly losing his bed to the giant wolf had absolutely no bearing on his decision to purchase the pillow was a lie he told himself.
For the first time since it had been created, Amarok got up off of the floor pillow and padded over to the door and started to wag his tail. Curious, Callum opened the door and found a startled Ravi with a plate in hand and the other poised to knock on the door.
"Oh, I was just coming to get you. The other two parties have returned from the dungeon and the cooks just finished grilling a whole elk; it's absolutely delicious and you should grab some while it's hot," Ravi said when he recovered from the surprise.
Callum was about to respond when Amarok's jaws suddenly clamped down on the large chunk of elk meat on Ravi's plate and promptly went back to his new bed. His tail was wagging even more energetically.
"You, mutt. That was my food, you furry thief!" Ravi complained. He looked at Callum with an aggrieved expression on his face, "I think I just delivered room service to Amarok."
Callum hid his smile from Ravi. Which was harder to do because of the amusement he sensed from Amarok due to his bond with the Dire Wolf. He didn't sense any true animosity from Ravi over the food theft, so he didn't worry too much about it.
The two of them left Amarok in the room with the door slightly cracked, in case Amarok wanted to leave, and a reminder for the wolf to close the door if he left. As they made their way to the hall for food, Callum checked to ensure Ravi really didn't mind the food theft.
Callum and Ravi joined the rest of their party at a table close to the two parties as they shared their experiences of the dungeon's third floor. The current situation resembled the scene of what they'd experienced several hours before, except someone else was at the focal point.
At some point during the discussion, a crude map of the third floor was passed to their table. Callum knew that Ravi was silently judging the mapping skills of whoever had created the subpar map even as the group intensely studied the scrap of paper.
One thing was clear from the discussion and the map, their party wasn't strong enough to clear the third floor. They needed to fill the sixth spot in their party or they needed to level up multiple times; even a new addition might not be enough by itself.
The highest leveled member of their party was level 30 while the third floor contained a multitude of goblins that were tier two monsters, effectively they were Advanced Class level.
On the third floor, individual patrols always had at least one tier two goblin and were much larger than those on the previous floors. Their party could take on those patrols, but it would be too costly if they had to wade through the patrols.
Even worse was that these patrols often employed stealthed messengers or magical means to contact nearby patrols. One mistake on their part could see them swamped under numerous tier two goblins.
"You need to have Advanced Class members in your party just to clear the third floor. How do adventurers ever clear those dungeons that have dozens of floors?" Callum whispered to Boren who was seated right next to him.
"That's an issue isn't it? Dungeons usually scale their floors much more smoothly. Even parties with level twenty members might be unable to clear the second floor of this dungeon. It's just another sign that this dungeon has never had adventurers in it before."
"I'm not following, how does that make a difference?" Callum responded.
Alea leaned in from across the table, "Dungeons are at least semi-sentient. There is a lot of debate about how sentient they actually are; over the millennia, many have conducted experiments to try and determine exactly how sentient they are."
She glanced meaningfully over at Osmar before continuing. Callum got the impression that Alea and Osmar had had many debates over this very topic, "Just like you are learning how to be a dungeon delver, dungeons have to learn how to be dungeons."
Callum rocked back a little at her words, the implications of this revelation were staggering and something he had never really paid attention to before. However, he could recall off hand comments that his uncle had made that alluded to this.
Adventuring and dungeon diving were in another world entirely from his previous life as a peaceful farmer. He knew that learning this would have just been a passing anecdote to his previous self; it was a lot more meaningful and important to his current life.
"I can see that some of the implications are setting in," Boren said as he clapped Callum on the back, "It surprises most new adventurers. We don't hide the information, but most of the regular population doesn't really understand or care."
Callum smiled as he spotted Amarok slipping down the stairs. He began going around the room, begging for food or pets. He could see that people were still wary of him, but they were getting used to the massive beast.
"This dungeon will learn that its floors have too large of a jump in difficulty and will add new floors in between its existing floors. It's much easier to tempt parties to go further than they should if the danger increases a little bit more gradually," added Alea.
Ravi stood up on an empty table and stomped his feet in order to get the hall's attention.
"I think we're all clear that this is a dungeon that has never been run by parties before. So, I think that it's time that the adventuring parties discuss how we were going to split up the exploits."
His words were met by blank stares and confusion by many. But, cheers and whistles sounded throughout the hall, including from those around the puzzled Callum.
"If you're a party leader wishing to run the dungeon, let's meet at this table and discuss things."
Four people immediately went over to join him at the table and a large group of the interested or the curious crowded around the table. Voices began clamoring over the dull noise of many side conversations.
"Who gets Zagmar's Gambit?"
"I call the Bait and Switch for my party!"
"I think the party on lookout duty wanted to run the dungeon as well," Captain Xinyi's voice cut through the noise.
"Calm down everyone," Ravi roared, "We'll draw straws to decide who gets first pick!"
Callum looked over at Boren and Alea for clarification about what everyone was talking about.
Seeing his confusion, Alea helped him out, "You discovered an exploit with your walls of burning logs that you told us about. The dungeon learned from that and now any exploit that involves leaving something behind won't work."
Boren added with a wolfish smile, "But there are plenty of other exploits we can take advantage of, at least one time, before the dungeon learns it. After that, it won't work anymore."
"There are hundreds of exploit variations, but they fall into only a handful of broad categories that we name. If a dungeon learns of an exploit, it will usually be able to shut down the rest of exploits in that category," explained Alea.
Callum remembered how he was unable to repeat the trick or anything similar after his first success. He looked over at the animated discussion going on at the table the party leaders were gathered around.
"So, they're splitting up those exploits between the parties?" Callum questioned while pointing at the table in question. He continued after a nod from Boren, "What's to stop a party from just using all of the exploits?"
"Nothing, but tradition," said Alea.
"Honor," replied Boren.
Callum nodded, he had expected it was something like that. He walked over to the table and got their attention.
"The dungeon lies on my lands. I am ruling that your agreement about the exploits will be binding. I will investigate and punish any group that breaks the agreement; we have a truthteller available to get to the bottom of things."
