NOVEL NEXT Chapter 74 – Water Puzzle Skip
Early next morning, we gathered in the second floor hallway.
Standing in front of the sealed door to Deep Basement were me, T-Sub, the twins, Crys, Kimono, and Mirim.
For some reason, the entrance to Deep Basement was in the second floor and went through the main hallway of the first floor, splitting the hallway temporarily into two hallways like a stone in the middle of a river.
T-Sub easily pulled off the wooden planks that had been placed on the door to restrict entry.
Mirim took a key from her jacket pocket and opened the padlocked chains.
Behind the door, a narrow stone stairway descended into darkness. It looked the same as in the game, which was reassuring. I expected unpleasant and damp cellar smell, but the waft of cold coming from Deep Basement was more akin to the metallic smell of a railway tunnel.
I powered up my light card and T-Sub lighted his oil lantern.
“There are dungeon lights further down and when we reach the water puzzle room. However, the first level is completely dark labyrinth of stairways full of stupid, deadly dungeon traps. Stay alert and follow me closely; one wrong step and you fall down to your death. Don’t step on suspicious shadows, don’t touch the walls, and don’t freak out about sudden cobwebs. There shouldn’t be any Domination Spiders because they spawn from the lower floors only when the Cartouche Floor is opened, but you’ll never know. If you see them, remember that they create illusory copies of themselves and try to bait your attention to the copies. Kraj, Bodhi, Kim – you are fast enough to hit both the real ones and illusions, so there shouldn’t be any problem unless they come in large swarms... Anyway, I’ll show you the fastest path through this stairway labyrinth. Let’s a-go.”
Full speed ahead toward death flags, I guess.
Deep Basement was different from the faux-natural cave systems of most Mu-Ur underground dungeons.
The overall edges and surfaces of Deep Basement were clear and straight in 45 or 90 degree angles, and uniform both in shape and color. Ledges and protrusions on massive walls looked artificial in classic low-poly way – like the room-over-room architecture of retro-era 3D first person shooter games.
If normal dungeons were solutional cave systems like Hang Son Doong, Deep Basement was like a system of Salina Turda galleries.
Normal background NPC’s in the game had somewhat rational routine movement paths – for example, walking between home, workplace and saloon – and regular eating and sleeping habits mimicking living beings, and at least some random canned answers containing trivial rumors and gossip to keep up the illusion that the world continued its normal life even when player wasn’t around.
But in silly places like Deep Basement all that illusion of normalcy was thrown right out of the window.
Some of the deeper areas looked like they were designed by a crappy procedural AI just before the release date and filled with copy-paste mid-boss monsters with random stats and random routines.
Sub-area architectures changed between reloads and enemies spawned in unexpected places where life routines where impossible – like waiting inside empty, windowless secret rooms which opened only when player walked over some invisible line.
Even the more intelligent lifeforms deeper down behaved erratically and talked in ancient gibberish. Sometimes they attacked like frenzied zombies, sometimes opened doors for you with a happy expression, or behaved like you were one of them, or ignored the player completely.
When we descended in the Deep Basement, I truly felt like I was inside the game again with NPC sidekicks following in line behind me.
I had to remind myself that this superstructure of smooth surfaces and sharp angles was how the Starfish Mansion above would look like, if you were to remove all the complicated objects, decos and wall textures.
Underneath all the ornamental surfaces, there was just Strangers-crafted darkstone/darkmetal textures and reality-splitting default polytopes that could resist million points of damage before cracking or bending.
“All this time there was such a vast place underneath our feet…” (T-Sub)
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, Big-T.”
In poetic terms, we were descending in the unconscious id of Mu-Ur world.
After carefully navigating through the first floor, we quickly reached the water puzzle room in the second floor.
The first thought that came to my mind how beautiful the puzzles were in person instead of seeing them in-game. That’s how it often was with fine art; when you looked at a photograph of a painting, you weren’t actually looking at the actual painting – the subset of colors and pixels photographs can reproduce is limited and inferior compared to the real thing in real life.
Simplistic artworks that looked wonderful in person – say, a panel consisting of only single color – were judged to be boring because people only saw the low-res digital reproduction on the Internet.
The same applied to knowledge; if you looked at things not knowing the context of what you were actually looking at, you ended up believing that satire was real and fake fail video made for clicks was a real fail.
Anyway, the water puzzles were beautiful both in appearance and in their intricate mechanical design. But we didn’t come here to just admire them.
“Crys, you wanna try solving the puzzle?”
“I am solving it.” (Crys)
“...Hm?”
“Open it.” (Crys)
“Ah, I see. I was just a tool for you. A dissector tool made of flesh and bones... Sob, sob…”
I guess I have to fill these Unholy Chalices myself to open a doorway into deep darkness.
Cloudy water trickled down into the Rococo cabinet from a square pipe above, flowed through the miniature gates and bowls on the shelves, and finally disappeared down a furrow on the floor below the cabinet.
There were pile-ups of calcium stalactites on the cabinets and thick layer of dust on the floor. The cabinets had not been touched for a very, very long time, which was good news.
I carefully loosened up the stiff shelves and solved the first part of the puzzle as normal while explaining the solution.
“The trick here is to time it on the audio cues of the water drops: one two three, pause, one two three, pause. Then we push this trigger here to get the chain reaction going –”
After the first cabinet was done, you would normally take the final measured cup of water and use it on the second cabinet to open the secret passage on the right side of the room. But this time, I followed Kurdt’s instructions: draw the shelves halfway out of the cabinet and allow the water flow down the sides of the shelves.
Yeah, would be great if this just breaks the cabinet and nothing happens. Then we can all go “welp, didn’t work” and return back up...
No, Crys wouldn’t leave it at that. He probably carries a stick or two of dynamite under his coat. He’ll blast the right side wall exactly the same way I would do if I were speedrunning this area.
And since the twins went through the trouble of coming down here, they want to hunt Arimo and his minions at least.
I heard a small click from the left side. Then there was a series of loud thumps, and a new secret doorway opened on the wall.
Kurdt’s dream was right.
“Great Scott and stars above! The ancient prophecies were right! There are no roads where we are going!“
“Shut up, idiot.” (Kimono)
Still a better love story than Arimo’s magical vampires.
Looking down into the new secret passage, I could see a helical staircase made of black metal bars around a center column, and a dull glow of distant dungeons lights in a massive cavern.
In the anime flashback, the dungeon where Cursed Children and Flame Tank were found had a similar staircase, but it was much wider and made out of giant bones. Same design, different material.
Steep descent, no handrails. There weren’t any dungeon lights directly down in the Dais Floor, but lights from nearby sub-areas bounced in just enough that we wouldn’t have to descend in total darkness.
I couldn’t spot any Argoidar friends below, but they were silent and sluggish beings by their nature. Maybe they were lurking and wobbling in the shadows just outside my vision.
“Bodhi and Kraj, tell me if you see any movement below. We’ll use a safety rope and test if it’s–”
“We go.” (Ivorythief)
Reavertooth and Ivorythief rapidly descended the stairs together and stopped halfway to look up, wondering why we weren’t following them.
“Okay, I guess the stairs are stable then. Guys, wait a bit, I still need to check something.”
I went back to the water puzzle cabinets to see how the water flowed. I was worried that there could be a timed mechanism that closes the secret passage behind us after we go down. Because that’s exactly the kind of trap Deep Basement liked to throw at you.
“We should lock the mechanism open.” (Crys)
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Kimono, break the shelves of the left cabinet and use them to restrain the mechanism.” (Crys)
“Yes, brother.” (Kimono)
I guess were destroying these artworks for safety reasons.
After making sure that the puzzle cabinet shelves were locked in place, we returned to the stairs.
“Master, should I go down next?” (T-Sub)
“Sure, I’ll be going last then.”
Crys, Kim and Mirim came down here just to check the puzzles, they’ll return back up after escorting us.
We can’t afford to lose most of the leading figures of Revolution Movement if something here goes terribly wrong.
“Alright, I’ll see rest of you alligators later. Don’t start any rave parties while I’m away, and don’t let anyone open random doors, and don’t do wild quickscope trickshots.”
“Yes, brother.” (Mirim)
“When I say ittekimasu, you say itterashai.”
“Itterassai?” (Mirim)
After saying my goodbyes, I went down the stairs behind T-Sub.
Mirim turned on her heels and headed back up, but Crys and Kimono followed me without hesitation.
“...Wait, are you guys are coming further down? Did you forget that only four of us can teleport?”
“We will accompany you until the teleportation room and return the same way.” (Crys)
“Oh…kay then. Just curiosity?”
“Simple curiosity.” (Crys)
“Explanation accepted. I won’t object to having more firepower on the way, but you should’ve told me before I said my goodbyes, now this feels a bit awkward.”
Kimono had a smug grin on her face, like she had succeeded in pulling the cleverest prank in the world. Surprise, we’re following you instead of going back. Great prank, boss.
In the game, the problem with sidekicks was that they weren’t able to improvise in unusual situations and got stuck on corners.
In here, the problem with sidekicks was that they were real people with their own interests and ideas.
“Always doing whatever they want, treating me like I’m a punchline to some inside joke... Just because I keep doing it to them they think it’s okay to do it to me. It’s not like you can expect any sort of self-reflection on my part or anything...”
While I kept grumbling, our party of six reached the bottom of the long helical staircase.
I immediately stopped the twins from running wild around.
“Boys, I understand you’re excited to hunt in a dungeon again, but don’t run around too much, this floor has void trapdoors too.”
“Hunters?” (Ivorythief)
“Yeah, other hunters and monsters here make traps. They’ve been making traps here for centuries. Silent and slow hunting from now on, no jumping on top of random objects. Understand?”
“Yes.” (Reavertooth)
“Understand.” (Ivorythief)
I surveyed the surroundings and compared the area to my memories from the game. Everything seemed pretty much the same, except the tall staircase bulging out of the dungeon wall. No wonder players hadn’t found this before.
The low thumping sound didn’t come from the opening of the secret door, it was the mechanism that pushed the staircase from the high ceiling of the cavern all the way down to Dais Floor.
“There doesn’t seem to be a way to activate the door mechanism from this side.” (Crys)
“Yeah, would be inconvenient if the stairs retracted behind us. Timed traps are too common in Deep Basement, always have to keep in mind that an action now might trigger a reaction much later...”
“We go what way?” (Reavertooth)
“Don’t get impatient, there’s info to dump and unpack here. First, we definitely don’t want to go that way.”
I pointed my light card at a narrow ledge on the other side of a dark chasm: the remains of a broken stone bridge.
“That’s the direction where you would arrive here to Dais Floor the normal long way around. It’s one of the worst parts of Deep Basement, if you ask me. It’s full of random insect monster encounters and poisonous sludge in every corridor. We skipped three RNG-heavy speed bump areas. However, if something happens to the staircase, those are our only normal routes back up.”
Then I pointed to the opposite direction – into a long, wide, straight corridor.
“If you go that way, up that ledge and continue forward, there’s a tribe of deviants who live only on vertical surfaces, like some extremist free climbers slash mountain goats. They build cute little huts on the walls around the chasm and make ritual sacrifices to the abyssal floor in the darkness below. Kooky stuff. But that’s also an unintended way to emergency-exit this place, although it only works for you two, Bodhi and Kraj, because you can climb the walls without equipment, using your skills. If some surprise wall drops down between us in a corridor and our party gets separated, you two can take that route back up. For us others, that route is practically impossible.”
The twins nodded in response.
“Then, that path down on the right. If you go there, you’ll eventually reach a low gravity area where deviants called Lais live in half-levitating stone trees. If you look from this angle here... you can almost see the first guard towers hanging from the ceiling. See that dungeon light down there? We don’t want to go that way, that’s the start of another labyrinth zone. Bad ending and massive waste of time. However, if you accidentally aggro the Argoidar here, you can run there and have the Lais and Argoidar fight against each other. That’s another roundabout emergency strat, just in case.”
Then I pointed at a pair of felled stone pillars ahead.
“This is our route forward. We’ll go down the slope behind those pillars and enter the Argoidar Flat area of stone carvings. There shouldn’t be anyone except Argoidar there, but you always have to stay vigilant for surprise enemies in Deep Basement. And I’ll repeat again: do not attack the Argoidar, no matter what. They attack only if they get attacked first.”
All that said, we approached the broken and felled marble pillars of an ancient underground temple. I didn’t remember much about the deep background lore attached to Dais Floor, but these temple ruins probably originated from some unknown civilization that lived and died long before Strangers.
The twins mantled over broken pillars to the other side, but the rest of us took the long way around the rubble. I shouted another warning after them.
“Krajannar and Bodhicoirn! Remember not to step on the Argoidar Flat lines! That’s a taboo trigger!”
My voice echoed in the cavern.
The Argoidar did not speak and made very little noise in general.
Someone yelling loudly in the Dais Floor was probably very fresh and different for them, but they shouldn’t care about sounds more than they care about random visitors and their movements – as long you don’t mess up their routines.
I hope the Argoidar here are as tame and lame as in the game.