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A New Existence...3,649 words
Dungeon Core.2,447 words
Grand Opening!3,839 words
A Brother Alone.1,685 words
Stumbling About Without Legs.2,377 words
A Library is a Place for Learning.1,748 words

A Library is a Place for Learning.

"We'll have this done in ten minutes, then we'll be back at the barracks and show them that Raptor Squad won't be the best for long." A white-spotted griffon said. He seemed to be the leader of the group of four, and judging by his voice, he was barely out of adulthood.

the rest seemed charged by his words, however, which made Xavier metaphorically shake his head and return to what he was doing. The runes were positioned in a way that if anybody got near the room his dungeon core was in, he could conjure a massive maze of reinforced stone.

The fight with the receptionist was pathetic, He wasn't even a combat class before, well, now, and he could see how they were screwing up! One of them seemed to be some sort of stunt flyer, doing flips and rolls in the air to dodge flying metal wing shards. Unfortunately, he seemed to be getting in the way of his teammate, another young griffon hen who seemed to have a skill in dive tackling. If the System didn't prevent party members from dealing more than half damage to each other, he'd swear the acrobat would get killed by his teammate with how many times he dodged into her. Still, he'd bet mana on him taking more damage from his teammate than the Librarian.

He focused his main attention, which seemed to have little difference in how much focus he could give a task, back onto his runes. they were carved all over his room, and were basic as basics could get in Runic Scripture. All they did was specify that a block of stone should be raised from tens of hooves below, with supporting runes to specify the dimensions. as a dungeon core, it seemed he knew exact distances just by the two points being inside his domain.

Now the issue, is how could he power it? Typically, enchanted objects had channels carved into them that you flowed mana into. However, there were potentially two problems. His core had protomana, not mana, and second, he couldn't just push it out of his core. Every time he used up his protomana he was using an ability. Unless...

His other focus noticed they had finally beaten the librarian. They took several minutes on what should have taken them less than one. Each of them was near half health as well, although one of them must have promised the king their life because the librarian dropped enough chits to buy a full course meal.

His first plan failed. drawing runic instructions to take mana from his exact location only sucked up the protomagic around him, as well as giving him a notification about his S+ soul resisting an effect called D rank Mana Drain. not to mention, several minutes in, it was highly inefficient. The script to specify his location, since he couldn't just make up random coordinates, had to be extremely descriptive, and it was five times bigger than the script to move the wall. If it did work, he'd run out of space to write quickly.

He almost carved a chunk out of the floor instead of a smooth line when he noticed that the group had somehow gotten so lucky, they managed to fight the quills when their wandering pattern had them the farthest they would be from any Animated Tomes. And then he did carve a chunk out of the floor, a large one.

They. Were. Tossing. Books. Just- Just... willy nilly on the floor! What civilized creatures did that in a library!?

"Feather droppings. This is an awful dungeon, isn't it? If you're going to have so many useless books, at least have one of them open a secret passage."

U- useless!? Heathens, blasphemers, b- absolute bullies! the knowledge they were throwing on the floor took him over ten years to get his claws on! Missed meals, odd jobs, and awful pay in university went into his knowledge...

He tried to take a breath and realized he couldn't... It seemed that was the final straw. He untethered his Head Librarian.

The doors to its office creaked open. And the head librarian paused at the sight of the party. No amount of mental nudging got it to move and attack them. The party stared at it, yet it seemed to ignore them. Looking down at the books scattered on the floor...

 |   Head Librarian has been afflicted with the status Enraged. |
  |		 double damage dealt and received.	 	 |

The Librarian's normally gentle sky-blue glowing eyes turned a deep red. Its wings lit up with runic scriptures for increasing hardness as it threw them at the party.

They scattered, fast. Unfortunately for them, all of the cover the library had was the bookshelves, which the mobs took care not to attack when they were full of books. It wasn't something he ever directed them to do, just something they started doing on their own.

The unfortunate part was that they had emptied almost all of the bookshelves. Wood splintered and cracked as the bookshelves toppled. They had nowhere to hide, although Xavier bet even if they weren't panicking they wouldn't have a chance at winning against the boss which out-leveled them by twenty levels. So far, they had been going up against C and D-rank mobs, and the party had lost half its average health.

The stunt flier was the first one to get hit... He had tried to corkscrew around a wing shard when a bookcase next to him toppled over due to a hasty dodge by one of his team members. His head, well, it was bloody, that was for sure. Despite Xavier calling the segments of wings shards, they weren't sharp, they were actually really dull and blocky. So when a griffon collided head-first into a block of metal? Flesh caved in first.

He thought maybe killing a delver might be some emotionally charged moment, He didn't exactly despise violence, but any remorse or disgust just wasn't present. Although there was satisfaction. While the books they threw on the floor were effortless to create, and he could just destroy them and remake them back on the shelves, it was still incredibly rude and inconsiderate to just toss them about. He was determined to never put a secret passageway into his library if this was going to constantly happen.

 | 1/1 Dungeoneers killed +1 Level. |

After he dismissed the message only the white-spotted leader was left alive. The Divebombing griffon seemed to have been the one who knocked over the bookcase, and stood still horrified, probably blaming herself. the other griffon seemed to use very few active abilities and just used his claws. He dealt a fifth of the Head Librarians' health before getting hit with enough blunt force trauma to stun him. The second hit finished it.

The leader seemed to be getting lucky, however... getting this far was too lucky in fact. the Griffon didn't have any skills relating to luck, and it clearly wasn't his skills. He was awful at fighting.

What he seemed to be good at was fleeing though. Most of the bookshelves had been destroyed, and he was slowly running backwards.

It was only at the entrance that he turned around and ran. Three wing shards chased behind him, down to stairs, closer and closer until they were touching his tail...

And with an audible thunk, the shards fell outside his domain. The Griffon had gotten away, past his domain boundary. The Head Librarian stood outside, looking at the small group of assembled griffons who looked shocked and battle ready. Xavier was surprised. While he knew everything that happened in his domain, it took concentrated effort to look outside of it, so he rarely bothered.

Well, if he had an audience... The Head Librarian entered back inside the library before coming back out with a wooden board and a nail. using its own body to hammer it into a signboard that now existed on the outside wall.

 | 	    You have marked the griffon Jaxier as a renegade of knowledge.   	    |
  |  Any creature with the knowledge subtag will deal double damage to the Renegade. |

The griffons crowded around his sign, giving each other incredulous looks before they looked back at the way Jaxier had gone. His sign had a wooden carved-out depiction of the griffon, below it said, "For the crime of rough treatment of valuable knowledge and disregard for etiquette. The Griffon depicted is banned from the Grand Library of Griffonia."

He wasn't expecting any actual effect from this. But a permanent debuff to the griffon he'll take. he soon repaired the chunk he had torn out of the floor and continued making channels that lead to his core. Of course, he also replenished his monsters.

before he did, however, he split his upgrade points in half, putting three in his upkeep, and three in his monster stat. He hesitated... before applying the two points he had been saving into Runecrafting. With his runic scripture upgrading to III, Knowledge flooded his mind.

Elemental Mastery. Elementalism was considered the basics of magical manipulation. Certain classes could go farther with it than others, but that didn't mean it was useless. Cloudwalking, fire breath, earth manipulation, water breathing. Each and every creature had at least a single innate ability based on one of the four elements of water, earth, fire, and air. These talents could also be mimicked by spells.

Runic Scripture grew more advanced the farther you went down it. Paragraphs of script are reduced to sentences, and finally, words. Each Element had a word that corresponded to it. yet... Even at this height of the skill, where he could rewrite the script he made for the walls in five words, he still didn't know what those words were.

Each word worked as a master spell. It connected to... something, he didn't know what, which would take his intent and turn it into a spell.

While this knowledge was great, it didn't help with his current predicament. The fact he couldn't push raw magic out of his core. with the last channel in the floor complete, nothing. Of course, it was a long shot since he wasn't exactly willing to carve his own core. He may have been stupid enough to act on impulse once, but after dying for it, he wasn't going to make the same mistake...

back to the drawing board, he guessed.

Author's Note:

So, been on a unintentional hiatus on this. This was more for the fact that The math got away from me in several instances, and I had to take time to make it simpler, and plan out the later maths. I had a lot of percentages that I decided to just make flat numbers.

I was also making too many charts, which took up a lot of time and effort. Every character/mob I introduced, even if they weren't going to be a reoccurring character, I made a statblock for. Which was clearly a mistake, but I enjoyed the process.

So for now, I'm going to reduce the amounts of statblocks I actually make and post. Sorry for those who enjoyed all of them, but it's just a lot of work to get them to a point where I can link them.

The important characters will have them still, don't worry, and when a new mob is introduced, I'll post a statblock, but if I increase the level of a mob without major changes to abilities, I won't be putting a new statblock in.

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GlitchyFox

GlitchyFox #1 · Mar 24th, 2023 · 2 · ·

so he got a permenent debuff for abusing the librery books? fair enought. he should have read the room and thought about how this dungon worked.
Maby it should be a case of he is banned and debuffed untill such times he dies or donates the ammount of books he damaged/ destroyed through his actions but ones that are not in the librery yet. send him on a real self reflection and fetch quest

Black--Soul

Black--Soul #2 · Mar 25th, 2023 · · ·

Great chapter overall. Polite behavior cost you nothing, impolite behavior costed them deerly...

Nice to see the Griffon ruine themselves because they would not stay open minded...

Looking forward to the next chapter in the story.

Black--Soul

Black--Soul #3 · Mar 25th, 2023 · · ·

11538370
Pretty niffty idea, i like it.
But after the team just died, i doubt we see that one Griffon anywhere near the Dungeon ever again...

Tonto the Trotter

Tonto the Trotter #4 · Mar 30th, 2023 · · ·

Nice chapter, a little short but still a good read.

Tonto the Trotter

Tonto the Trotter #5 · Apr 5th, 2023 · · ·

11542690

A few small suggestions for additions to the Dungeon.

Inkwell Slimes - Slimes that use a hard bottle to retreat into to avoid damage. The bodies are made up of ink which the quills can dip into to write in the books? They'd primarily focus on blinding or trying to engulf and suffocate intruders.
Totem Lecterns - Inspired by the Ghostbusters Video Game, these lecterns levitate and move around, generating shields to protect boss monsters or allied monsters. Perhaps providing a bonus to attack damage for book-based enemies who can sit on them? Name inspired by totems, sometimes seen in Dungeon core novels, that provide buffs and debuffs to Monsters and Invaders.
Tome of Madness - A book written by a Mad Griffon, the book could be gained by a donation of a book absorbed by our Core. Or through some unique perk/achievement? The Book is one of those gamble rewards, with a chance of it becoming a hostile boss monster, inflicting negative status effects/madness or providing a boost/boon?

Davenfjeld