Level 1 Fallen

We stayed holed up in the sanctum for another three days after Marron finished the primer, in order for all of us to read through the books that she had picked out. Well… most of us, at least.

Despite being the one most interested in the subject of the lost civilization, Marron was forced to abandon the idea of reading all of the books herself due to her inability to translate the text automatically. By the time she had finished with a single book, the rest of us had each gotten through ten. Not to mention the fact that her Chosen simply couldn’t translate them at all.

If we were to wait for Marron to read through all of the books, it would take at least a month. For that reason, she reluctantly gave up on the idea of reading through the collection, and instead asked to be able to return to the sanctum after the request had been completed.

I had no reason to refuse her there, so we made the deal and returned to the dungeon. As expected, we could all properly read the text on the pedestals now, and the answers to the questions appeared to glow once we had read them.

Thanks to this, our progress through the dungeon started out extremely smooth. Bella and Diane took turns answering the questions again, while I stayed with Marron to look out for any traps that might be hidden in the dungeon.

We managed to get through the first three floors without answering a single question wrong. However, something strange happened on the fourth floor. As usual, we had been given five questions, all of which we had gotten right. But instead of stairs leading up to the fifth floor, we were presented with a set of stairs leading down.

“Did we do something wrong?” Marron asked in confusion, though it was hard to say that we had failed any of the questions, since Bella and Diane were being returned after each question passed. In order to get Diane back, we descended the stairs, at which point she appeared before us again.

After receiving an explanation, Diane studied the stairs for a moment, looking thoughtful. “I see. So that’s how it is. That certainly explains some things.”

“How?” Bella questioned. “How does this explain anything?”

“Why are there three paths after each question?” Diane retorted, causing Bella’s mouth to abruptly close. “Logically speaking, there should only be two paths after each question, representing the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. At first, I thought that the third path was just to allow people to be redirected to the question from another path if they got an earlier question wrong.”

“You’re talking about the difference between an ‘accurate’ answer and a ‘modified’ answer, right?” Marron questioned, to which Diane nodded her head. Seeing Bella and I still confused, Marron took the initiative to explain. “History books will often alter certain details in order to exaggerate events, or to cover up embarrassing secrets. Sometimes, the cause of an entire war might be misrepresented in order for the defeated party to be portrayed as the villains.”

“This is what is usually meant by ‘history is written by the winners’. If that holds true here, then certain questions will have a ‘secret answer’ which, when selected, will give us a different path. These alternate paths will likely lead to the top faster than giving strictly the textbook answers.”

Diane agreed, turning to face me. “Sorry, Drake, but can we return to the first floor? There’s something that I would like to try.”

I perked a brow at that, looking at the others. “So, we’ll eventually reach the top the normal way, but we’ll have to go up and down a few times to get all of the questions right?” I asked, to which Diane and Marron both nodded. With a sigh, I held out my hand for Diane and the others, teleporting us back to the first floor.

As soon as we were at the first floor, Diane threw three shadow daggers out, one down each branching path. Just as they had before, each of the shadow daggers shattered as soon as they entered the paths. “Got it… Bella, can you answer ‘no’ for this question? I want to test something.”

Bella looked puzzled by what was going on, but followed Diane’s instructions. She walked up and answered ‘no’ to the question about if she understood the rules. As usual, she disappeared, and one of the three paths lit up.

Seeing the path that lit up, Diane threw out another shadow dagger, this time at the only path that did not light up regardless of which answer was chosen. Once again, the dagger was crushed into nothingness, earning confused looks from both Marron and myself.

“I’m testing for secrets. Since even this question leads to three paths, there are only three possibilities. Either it is possible for people to be led back here with the proper combination of correct and wrong answers, this intersection is created in such a way to mask the existence of the secret answers, or the unlit path itself would be the secret answer.”

“There don’t appear to be any moving parts in this dungeon, aside from the torches being able to light up. The stairs are all covered with dust when we arrive. Taking that into consideration, the dungeon doesn’t strictly give the same path every time, but gives you paths that ensure that you reach the stairs after five correct answers.”

“With that theory in mind, we can eliminate the first possibility, as this position should never be less than five questions from the end. The test just now also eliminated the last possibility, that the unlit path would be the right answer. So, each intersection is designed in a way to mask the existence of secret paths, while also being able to intelligently redirect challengers towards the stairs depending on how many questions they have gotten right thus far.”

“Okay… what does that tell us?” I asked, unsure what we had gained other than needing to start the dungeon over with a brand new list of questions.

“It means that there are multiple stairs going up or down on each floor,” Marron explained. “With the right combination of answers, we’d be able to take a direct path straight to the top. But, without knowing which questions have secret answers, I don’t know how we’d be able to take advantage of this information.”

Diane simply smiled at this. “We just need to question our own answers. Instead of blindly answering ‘correctly’ each time, we need to pull up the relevant information from the texts saved in our systems, and review it to see if everything makes sense as it was written. For example, the ‘correct’ answer to the second question was that the Kalnid race plotted the assassination, which I answered by guessing due to the names of each race.”

“But, what if that wasn’t the truth? What if they had been framed? Looking back at the relevant texts now, it feels like there was a fair bit of tension between the Cromorans and the Falns. In addition, the Falns responded to the attempted assassination quickly, proposing an organized assault against the Kalnids that solidified their relationship with the Cromorans.”

“While not expressly stated in the texts, the circumstantial evidence could indicate that the assassination attempt was orchestrated by the Falns, but the Kalnids took the blame in the history books in order to preserve the relationship between the two races.”

Marron’s eyes widened slightly, nodding her head. “I see. That’s certainly a plausible theory. Though, answering in this way will drastically slow our progress in the dungeon, and may even cause more deaths due to misinterpreting the written accounts and overthinking it.”

Diane smiled slightly at that. “It should be fine. If we start losing people to getting wrong answers, we can just go back to the textbook answers until we hit the next floor. Ultimately, our goal is to push us towards a more efficient path without increasing the overall risk.”

After saying this, Diane led the way down the illuminated path. “The first question should be mostly subjective, so Bella should come back even though she selected ‘no’. For this question, we just need to answer it as the system instructs.”

“After all that, you’re not going to try to find a hidden answer for this question?” I asked with an amused tone, but Diane just shot me a look with a perked brow.

“Since there aren’t any spatial distortions that we’ve seen in this dungeon, this question can’t have a hidden answer. We went left from the entrance, which means that even if another left path is present, it would just be a disguised dead end. That should be the case with any question set along the perimeter of the tower.”

“Of course, since we can’t use our maps, or any sensory skills, we would have to track which intersections are near the edge manually.” Saying that, Diane confidently selected the glowing option on the next pedestal, disappearing as Bella reappeared in her place.

Naturally, we took the chance to explain Diane’s new plan to Bella, who seemed about as confused as I had been to start. Still, we followed the path to the right and continued to answer the questions as they were posed. However, we were now doing so at a much slower pace, taking our time to look at each question and seeing if there could be any hidden information in the related texts that we had read.

This led to a substantially longer climb back up to the fourth floor. And, since we had chosen a different path right from the start of the dungeon, we hadn’t hit any of the same questions that we did the first time.

After reaching the fourth floor, we found stairs leading up to the fifth, rather than the descending stairs that we had originally found. This gave credence to Diane’s theory, though we ultimately had to pause our climb of the tower, as it was getting late. And, since we couldn’t teleport back in beyond the first question, we had to camp out in the hallway.

The next day, we continued our climb, though not without some incidents. After reaching the sixth floor, we began to encounter stairs going down, taking us all the way to the fourth before we were able to make our way back up. And starting from the seventh floor, we began to encounter questions that had not appeared in the texts.

Inevitably, this led to us failing on the eighth floor and having to start over. Thankfully, since we chose the same path at the start this time, we were able to rapidly ascend back to the eighth floor without wasting time thinking about each question. Although it took time to run the full distance, we were able to make it back up after only an hour thanks to what Bella had come to label the ‘Drake Express’.

Reaching the first question that we had gotten wrong on our last attempt, I set Diane and Marron down, letting Diane step forward to answer the question. Diane looked over the options, musing as she considered which one to pick this time. “We’ll probably be able to finish this dungeon tomorrow. Hopefully, the Trial of Blood won’t require as much time to complete as this one did.”

It took me a moment to process what her main concern was, before I recalled the date. “That’s right, the next expansion is in just a couple of weeks now, isn’t it?” I asked aloud, and Diane confirmed as much.

“Right. Once the next expansion comes out, we’ll need to see what new content has been released, aside from the player dungeon.” After Diane said that, she pressed her new answer, and I carried the newly appeared Bella with Marron to the next question. Though, since the same path lit up as the last time we had gotten to this point, I could already tell that she had guessed the wrong answer again. Hopefully, Bella would be able to make up for it with a lucky guess of her own.

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