Elsa found herself blinking her eyes. She stood, glancing at her body at the odd realization that she felt lighter than usual.
"What the fuck?" She cursed immediately.
Her pulse pistol was gone. Her mana shield emblem was gone. Her gauntlets were gone. And, try as she might, though she still saw a tattoo at her midsection, she could not feel any energy from it or the other one she had. That was to say, she was without anything to fight or defend herself with but her brain and her body.
She gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath, then another.
'Goddammit.'
Of course she was furious, but she was also not an idiot. If the dungeon could move people between what was akin to separate dimensions, then it wasn't strange that it could remove her equipment as well. As for her spirits. . .she found that odd but shrugged.
'It can mess with memories already,' She thought, 'Being able to stop some energy should just be another shitty thing it can do.'
With that thought, she stared at her surroundings.
She was alone this time in a single, white room that reminded her of the floor-between-floors. She raised her brow at a ground littered with mana orbs and scraps of metal, then she turned left.
". . ."
There was a divider in the room. A barrier of blue with a large timer that seemed made of mana counting down from 10 minutes at its middle. On the other end, there was a beast. A snake-like creature with emerald scales. It was large, its body coiled as it watched her with its thin pupils.
'Hell that looks more like a small dragon than a damned snake.'
Before the anxiousness came, and before her impulsiveness could grip her, Elsa took a breath and forced her brain to think. The timer made her realize that time was ticking. If it existed, then something would definitely happen once it reached zero.
'Fuck, don't tell me the barrier will disappear?' Elsa found herself cursing immediately.
Her shitty thought was that the dungeon wanted her to fight the thing. Of course, she thought it was impossible. Fight the thing? With what? The dungeon had taken all of her items and her spirits too. Then she glanced at the floor littered with mana orbs and scraps of metal.
'So it wants me to use what's in this room to defeat it. . .' She thought incredulously.
If the theory was true that the dungeon was something man-made, made to test individuals as they climbed its levels, then Elsa thought it made sense that it'd throw her in this situation. If it had access to her memories, then it likely knew what she was capable of. And if it knew that, then it was a no-brainer that it could throw her into a personalized challenge.
"What the fuck?" She cursed. It made sense, but damn was she pissed.
It wasn't impossible, but she'd be pushing herself. As the timer struck 9 minutes, Elsa began working. She sat and grabbed the nearest mana orbs she could find as a mana line came from a finger and connected to it
'Damn, I haven't coded under pressure before.'
She was creating a basic 'order', etching it within the mana orb. Specifically, that order, something that could be thought of as code, was a simple one: erupt all the mana in a burst of force. It worked in the same way the burst mode of a gun would. Instead of collapsing mana into a concrete shape, it merely forced it out extremely quickly. In the same vein that fast moving winds could crush through objects with its force, fast moving mana could create a force of its own. Scaled up using all the energy in a mana orb, an extremely basic mana bomb could be made.
Though it sounded simple to describe, it was not an easy process. She closed her eyes as time ticked, 1 minute later, and she had completed it.
'That's slow. . .' She thought.
Of course, she had also inscribed within it a basic pressure sensing code. It was as simple as 'if pressure is applied twice within a miniscule time frame of each other, activate the other code'. Essentially, an if then statement. As well, she had added a timer to the actual forced expulsion of mana from its activation.
One mana bomb completed, she created 3 more without any pressure sensors or timers, and then stopped, taking 30 seconds for those. Mana bombs were one of the most wasteful weapons someone could create, and the only one she knew how to make. Thankfully, however, at least she didn't have to use the ones she had gained from previous floors.
Elsa grabbed a large plate of metal and placed them atop it, the most complex bomb in the middle while the other three circled it.
"Now I need a mana conductor to link the activations together. . ." She muttered.
The creature looked to have tough scales, so one mana bomb going off alone was not going to cut it. All of them had to explode together. She could activate them all herself and then chuck em, but she didn't trust her human reflexes against a creature like that. One error and she was dead.
'So I definitely 100% need em to do it themselves.'
Usually, she'd use the blood of a beast like a sandworm as a mana conductor. Looking around, however, there was nothing like that. It was the one thing missing in the room and yet it was the thing needed to create permanent mana lines code or data could run through. Unless she wanted to waste a lot of effort linking the activation to her pad through a private chain of the mana web, that was the only thing she could do.
'Well shit, I don't even have that much time to try that, it's gotta be a mana conductor,' She thought. She had only ever tried a hand at creating something linked to a chain of the mana web for her One Eyes, and that took her within the ballpark of an hour for each. Trying the same thing for mana bombs was something she had never done as the result was not worth the time expended. Lightly damaged One Eyes from their flight could be fixed, but bombs were disposable one-time weapons no matter what.
Elsa stared at the timer, 6 minutes 30 seconds left. Then she stared at the face of the snake, its eyes still narrowed at her, waiting for the moment the barrier would drop.
'I don't have time to waste thinking either, dangit.'
Elsa gritted her teeth and grabbed the sharpest piece of metal she could find.
Though human blood was a terrible mana conductor when compared to literally anything else, it would do enough for her purpose. What she'd create would be godly unstable, but it would work. . .perhaps only once before the mana lines shattered.
She stabbed into the tip of an index finger and blood naturally came. She was careful, enough for it to be useful to her, but not too much that she'd bleed out. Though it didn't quite matter.
'The dungeon heals us after every floor anyway,' She thought
Just like that, she drew lines of blood upon the piece of metal her bombs were, connecting them to each other. Then a mana line came from her finger and she began placing it through the red part, creating a faint, hazy, but permanent-for-now mode of data transfer.
With that completed, she returned to the most complex mana bomb of the bunch and etched a code into it so that its activation would send what basically amounted to 'trigger too guys' through the mana lines connected to it. That done, she etched code into the others that would accept that message and activated the already previously set code to expel all their mana in a burst of force. By linking them with mana lines and simple instructions, she could set them all off at the same time.
By the time she was done with all of that, there were 2 minutes left.
'2 minutes huh,' She thought, in her element. She had been a bit impulsive. If she had taken at least a minute to think of her entire plan before starting right away, she would have earlier realized a fact. 'I don't even need a timer. I'll just detonate it myself.'
She placed the makeshift contraption in front of the barrier, then drew her blood from the most complex bomb and along the ground a good distance away.
She was working with more focus now. In little time, she set its mana lines down, and also fashioned a simple detonator from another mana orb laying about, grafting it with only the action of sending a message across the line connected to it after a single tap of pressure, and the bomb at the end with a code to take it and activate.
"Alright."
Elsa sat meters in front of the user-detonated mine she had created within 8 minutes, a finger above the detonator on the floor in front of her. The room was narrow enough that a large enough explosion would catch the snake in its path as long as it came after her. Clearly, that was intentional on the dungeon's part.
Time ticked slowly while she watched the timer and the creature.
0.
The barrier disappeared.
The snake charged, its form slithering in a rush towards her, its tongue flapping in and out. It was hellbent on devouring her.
Elsa grinned.
"Fuck you."
Its head right above the mine, she tapped the detonator.
A brilliant flash of blue rocked the room as the explosions went off as one, shaking the entire toy of the space and splashing the crimson of blood across the white walls.
As the flash of blue died down, Elsa looked at the headless body of the snake in content. Past its body, a golden doorway had appeared on the other side of the room.
"I'm a fucking genius!"
She jumped up and began picking up all the remaining mana orbs, watching as they disappeared into the dungeon's storage. After all, it was a free meal, no? She glanced at the scraps of metal and ignored them. They were merely iron. She looked at the snake and picked up its mana orb too.
"I guess this floor really was private, huh," She muttered as she entered the doorway.
Passing, she found herself in a white room. This time, the floor-between-floors, finding all her gear already magically back on her person.
"Oh? You guys are already here?" She raised a brow as she walked forward. "Don't tell me the floor didn't do anything to you two? Ya'know, take away your stuff and powers?"
There, the dragonian and homunculus were already leisurely standing about.
Lilias shook her head. "It did. It took my weapons."
Rose, besides her, nodded, brows scrunched. "And I couldn't summon my Gear or flames. I didn't even know it was possible to restrict that."
Elsa looked at them suspiciously.
"Then how'd you guys pass it so fast?"
She doubted they had the same level of skill as her when it came to coding. And, even if they did, it made no sense that they were the first ones here. She might have picked up the remaining mana orbs, but she still killed the snake in under 3 seconds with her explosion.
The only alternative was that their experience on the floor was different, tailored to each individual.
"My monster was a quadruped creature that looked like a large toad, I just fought it using mana channelling," Rose said. "My countdown timer was 1 minute."
Lilias nodded. "I had a similar monster, and fought it as well, though I utilized a scrap of metal in that effort. My timer was also 1 minute."
". . ."
Finding that she had been correct in her assumption, Elsa stared at the two, realizing that with their regenerating, tough bodies, they really could just go head-to-head with whatever monster they were pitted against, weapon or not, until they came out on top.
In front of them, she felt her accomplishment diminish in grandeur.
'I slowed them down huh. . .' She thought, realizing they had been waiting for her to come out.
"What was yours like? How did you solve it?" Rose asked her then.
Though feeling slightly ashamed as Lilias also looked at her with interest, Elsa explained her personal floor.
"Got a green snake monster. Got a barrier for 9 minutes. Got mana orbs and scraps of metal," She said, murmuring, "Well, I made a linked chain of 4 mana bombs, set it up, and exploded it when it came rushing at me."
The two girls before her blinked their eyes.
"That's amazing," Rose said, her eyes widening. She supposed there were still parts of the girl she still didn't know.
Lilias nodded in agreement. "9 minutes? I have little knowledge on making things like that, but that should still be quite a feat, especially under pressure."
Though a blush came upon her cheeks, looking at their heated expressions, Elsa laughed it off.
"Yeah yeah, keep complimenting me." She grinned.
Though they rolled their eyes at her in unison, her mood was elevated.