It works on your fellow party members, too; you could cheat a little and bring someone below where they’ve been before. There was some debate about that quirk, but I decided to go with it, see how people used (or abused) the feature, and adjust as needed. Besides, even if you cheat your way down a few floors, you’ll still have to deal with the challenge waiting down there. There’s a boss stationed at every level, guardians that work along the lines of the local boss warlords dotted around the Forest of Jura. I was thinking of making the ones located before save points particularly powerful; if you wanna take those guys down, save points weren’t going to help you.
Basically, someone would need to be strong enough to reach a save point in the first place before they could take others down there, so I didn’t think anyone would try anything too stupid with them. If a problem came along, we could always reconsider. We had some nice bonuses in the treasure chests, after all, so I hoped our visitors would try hard to defeat the bosses on each floor.
Was it okay for our bosses to kill (or be killed), by the way? Sure, that was another key point. Ramiris’s Mazecraft had the power to revive life itself, resurrecting any adventurers who came into the Dungeon. This could be done only with the subject’s permission, but as long as he or she existed as a consenting part of Ramiris’s realm, it was all good. Ramiris was, in essence, the eternal leader of anything made with Mazecraft. If she was killed, the whole thing would disappear, but otherwise, any of her servants could get revived at a save point, and a “servant” was anyone she had forged a pact with or otherwise agreed to the presence of. I still couldn’t believe the power of this skill.
Now I see why she wanted Beretta so bad. Ramiris was no big deal out on the surface, but in her world, she was invincible. It’s just that the invincibility only worked on people who were part of that world. It didn’t work on golems with no free will, including that Elemental Colossus that vanished. Beretta, meanwhile, wasn’t just a puppet—and that meant he was invincible, now that he served Ramiris. She had Treyni, too, now, which made me begin to wonder if I should start worrying about them. Treyni was kind of strong, after all, and if she couldn’t be destroyed, not even Benimaru or Shion could beat her. Beretta and Treyni were still outside, beavering away at the arena construction work, but still…
Thanks to Ramiris’s hard work, the labyrinth was smoothly approaching completion. Once things calmed down a bit, I’d need to talk to her and her servants about keeping the maze defensible. But that’d be later.
“Ramiris, did you make the thing I asked for?”
“Oh, this, right? Here it is.”
This was a resurrection item.
In order to receive the immortal attribute within a Mazecraft world, you needed to give your express permission. But we planned to have tons of people storming in, and if it was open to the general public, it’d be a pain to get everyone’s agreement on paper. Maybe Ramiris could keep track of a small handful of visitors, but if multiple parties were running around at once, she couldn’t keep up.
That’s why I asked if there was a disposable item for single-use resurrection purposes. What she gave me now looked like a regular old armlet, knotted together like a friendship bracelet.
“Did you check to see if this works?”
“Sure did! I tried it out on Beretta last night!”
“Whoa, what are you doing to him…?”
Apparently, Beretta willingly agreed to this, his reasoning being “I am a demon, so even in the worst case, I will not truly die.” I know I asked and all, but this was ridiculous. Thanks to that, however, I knew we had a working bracelet. Treyni had taken Beretta’s core out of his body, and within ten seconds, the corpse was transported out of the Dungeon and fully revived.
“Perfect. I appreciate Beretta being brave enough to try it.”
Ramiris smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes! This was the first disposable item I ever tried to make, after all. I figured it was possible, but I’m just glad it worked!”
This was her first time? So what if it didn’t work? I shuddered at the thought. She could’ve at least tested it on animals or something. I wish she wouldn’t be so rash.
Regardless, we now had Resurrection Bracelets. Ramiris reported that she’d also prepare return whistles that brought you back to the surface in an emergency. We could sell both of these at the labyrinth entrance—buy them or don’t; it’s your choice. Don’t blame us if you die or get lost down there, though. Me, I’d definitely buy ’em. We could work out the prices we’d charge later, but for now, we were all set.
If you think about it, though, these Resurrection Bracelets are just Ramiris’s power in a handy physical form. All it did was put you back at the Dungeon’s entrance in the state you entered it in, assuming you died within the labyrinth. I think we’d better carefully explain to customers that it wouldn’t revive you just anywhere in the world. Some people out there, you know, it’s in one ear and out the other. If they die outside somewhere because they assumed the wrong thing, that’s their problem—but I’d still feel bad for them, so I ought to make sure I get the message across.
So the basic framework of the Dungeon was complete. Not bad for a single week’s work. I asked Raphael out of curiosity if it could make something like this for me, but:
Report. The subject Ramiris’s intrinsic skill Mazecraft cannot be replicated.
It sure didn’t take its time providing that answer. No, only Ramiris could do this, and really, I ought to thank
