The Mansion at Last

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The double doors creaked open, revealing an entrance hall that managed to look impressive despite its poorly kept state. A checker patterned floor of marble tiles was cast in colored light coming in through a large stained glass window in the ceiling two stories above, while the wood paneled walls were decorated with paintings, gobelins, and decorative displays of weapons, shields, and armor.

In its hypothetical hay day, the place would have been reminiscent of the splendor of Brighton Manor. Now, however, the floor was caked in a layer of dirt and grime that made John retroactively feel better about the worst state his room had ever been in. Even if keeping it from getting worse than it had was more his mom’s achievement than his own.

Paths were tracked into the dirt and grime, but since they criss-crossed in the center and went to every door on the ground floor as well as up the stairs to the second story walkway, that told them nothing. More telling was that two of the doors stood out.

On the left hand side under the stair upwards, one of the doors was made out of stone while the rest of them were wood. Meanwhile, on the right near the front, one of the doors was boarded up very excessively.

Since the room held no mutants, despite having plenty of space for a fight or three, they decided to take a look at the closest of the unusual doors first: the boarded up one. “So, if we hadn’t just beaten the ‘greatest creation’, that would have been my first guess to what’s behind here. A mad scientist making a monster he can’t control and so just haphazardly imprisoning it somewhere it can still be unleashed on intruders without too much difficulty is a fiction classic, games or otherwise. With that out of the running, and the stone door being the one with ‘boss door’ vibes, I’m betting this is going to be a secret or a step towards the other Bonus Objective.”

Qhila had no comment to that, so without further ado, John grabbed onto one of the boards and pulled. He had half expected it to come off with ease, as while there were a lot of boards nailed on, each looked like a haphazard job. Instead, not only did it not come off but it didn’t even budge. Not even at his second attempt where he threw his whole weight behind it without worrying about falling on his ass in the process. “This is a lot more solid than it looks…”

He turned his head to see Qhila look at the door through narrowed eyes, with a similar expression to when she’d noticed that part of the wall was the wrong type of rock back in the previous Segment. She gestured for him to make room, then spent a few seconds examining the door and the boards. “The nails are decorative. This is all one piece of wood. Either the boards were fused to the door and frame with magic or the whole thing is a dummy carved from a single piece in the first place.”

She pointed to the edge where one board looked to be held against the doorframe and pushed against it with the tip of her dagger. Instead of wedging the blade tip between plank and doorframe, it simply scratched about a bit to no effect.

Now it was John’s turn to give the door a dose of suspicious side-eye. “Stand back.” As soon as the kobold had made a bit of space, he pointed the water gun at the door and gave it a small spurt of alchemist’s fire. A few seconds after that burned out, the scorch mark also faded away.

“Indestructible walls,” John commented drily, “another Video Game Logic classic. I’m pretty sure that, barriers notwithstanding, this one is still partially because of technical limitations, though. Having complete environment destruction that looks and behaves right is very hard on both the [developers] making the game and the computer running it, so it’s usually only done in games where that’s one of the main gameplay features. And even then, there are usually exceptions because having impassable barriers is very useful for level design. Otherwise, it’s usually only specific, indicated bits of environment that can be destroyed, only in cutscenes that it can happen, or just the entire environment being indestructible.

“In short, if we can actually knock down any doors or walls in here, it’ll probably either be ones that specifically look damaged and fragile or only by using stuff that we found in the Dungeon. Enemies might still be able to, but probably only bosses or specific types of wallbreaker enemies. And they may be limited in what they can break too.”

“... That sounds ridiculous but not any less than everything bloody else about your barriers, so sure.” Qhila shrugged with a resigned expression. “Are we still expecting something worthwhile behind the door?”

“Yes. The door is definitely still a hint of some sort. Otherwise, it would either be a regular wall or a door to a regular room. But before we go looking for another way in, we should take a look at the stone door. I’m pretty sure we should save actually opening it for last, but examining it could be valuable.”

They did so, finding an incredibly detailed stone rendition of the regular wooden interior doors of the mansion. It was, in fact, so richly and finely detailed that John found it hard to believe that someone would go to the trouble. This led him to suspect that it was actually a wooden door that had been magically petrified.

“There’s a symbol on the underside of the handle. But not one I recognize…”

“Nice find.” John crouched down to take a look, stealing a glance at the kobold’s voluptuous rear along the way. “Actually, I think I might know it…”

It took John a moment to think of why it looked familiar, and another to find the pertinent wiki on his phone. “Aqua regia. I recognized it from an alchemy puzzle game I got stubborn about 100%-ing a few years ago. It was supposedly based on real Hermetic alchemy stuff, or the mundane parts of it anyway, but I’m guessing that was bullshit given you didn’t recognize it…”

“That might just be because it’s Hermetic. [Father] taught me using the Draconic notations for alchemy, since that’s what he knew. But the foundations of low alchemy were discovered in four or five different places independently, each with their own symbols and notations. Either Hermetic or Taoist is most common on Earth, while the Draconic one might be the most common in the Kingdoms.”

“Ah.” Hopefully, his recipe system would save him from having to do too much cross-notation work. While not exactly difficult, converting between imperial and metric was a pain in the ass and that was with just two systems. “Anyway, I’d wager we need aqua regia to get in, and that either there is some somewhere or the manor contains the tools and ingredients we need to make some. And there is a strong possibility the key ingredient or the equipment to make it is behind the barred door and that once we’ve taken the long route to get there, some contrivance or other will break it open for us to leave by.”

“Well, let’s get to it then.”

“This is the only wine rack with a board at the back.”

Their exploration had brought them to a wine cellar. Since it lacked any mutants, it seemed like a strong suspect for having a secret, an ingredient, or a lead to the Chevo family’s fate. “Sounds like we should try to move it out of the way then…”

Starting with the brute strength method, John proceeded to try just that, and found that it was fairly easily moveable. Surprisingly easily, given its size, but then it was nearly empty and he hadn’t really been moving much furniture since putting points in STR.

Musing over that was substantially less interesting than looking behind the proverbial door number one, though. Behind which was another door, specifically of the steel double door that’s featureless except for a round indentation variety.

“Guess we know what was behind the door in the mine now…” Qhila remarked drily.

“I don’t think we do, at least not all of it. With two parts to the key, plus hidden doors, this is probably a lot more than just a shortcut. Either it’s two separate secrets or there is something major in between the doors. A secret level, a bonus Boss, a [loot pinata] or something.”

“A what now?” Qhila stopped in her tracks, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

“Uh, a [loot pinata]?” he asked, continuing when Qhila’s expression confirmed that that was the part she was asking about, “It’s gamer slang for an enemy with great drops despite posing very little threat. Usually the challenge is in finding them, catching them, or killing them before the escape. A [pinata] is a decorated container that kids whack with bats to get the candy inside.”

“Ah, like when the foragers find a wasp nest, smoke it and bring it back for the kids to eat the brood.”

“... Do you usually eat wasp larvae?”

“No, it’s mostly subterranean fungi, roots, and bugs. Hive-building wasps mostly live above ground, so it’s an uncommon treat.” Qhila seemed entirely unfazed by his apprehensive tone.

“I hope you won’t mind that I’m not particularly eager to try kobold cuisine anymore…”

Qhila shrugged and resumed leaving the cellar. “You and most of the Abyss. Kobold food has a general reputation for being disgusting to other demihumans.”

“... This is some kind of foreshadowing, but I have no idea what it’s warning us about.”

They had returned to the entrance hall after exploring the ground floor west wing, and found several tracks of cleanness through the muck that had greeted them initially. Tracks that were drawn haphazardly through with neither rhyme nor reason as far as John could tell.

“Cleaning slimes,” Qhila declared after sniffing at a trail. “Usually, they’re incapable of trying to eat anything that’s alive and bigger than my thumb, but if you mess up when making them, or tweak the formula on purpose, they can be dangerous. Even then, they’re unimpressive fighters, but if you don’t realize that they aren’t harmless until you’re drowning in caustic slime, they don’t have to be. Putting a ‘defective’ one at the bottom of a pit trap is a kobold classic, and it doubles as trash disposal when there are no intruders.”

“... If we run into any, let’s assume they’re not the harmless kind until proven otherwise.”

They proceeded to the second floor west wing, which turned out to be a bunch of nice bedrooms, likely for the owners and any guests, that were in pristine condition. They did also find some cleaning slimes in there, but they were confirmed by both experimentation and Observe to be the harmless kind.

“Well, that just leaves one ingredient left,” John commented as they entered the mansion’s kitchen. Or what used to be the kitchen anyway. While there was an old school wood fired stove still indicating its original function, the room had been converted to an alchemy lab. It lacked some of the modern chemistry tools of Qhila’s, and had some stuff in it that Qhila’s didn’t, but there were enough things overlapping to make it obvious.

“One ingredient and a way to get into the boarded up room.” Qhila gestured in the general direction of the thus far closed off section of the manor. Evidently, her sense of spatial relationships was good enough to tell her what John’s minimap was telling him.

That was a racial trait of kobolds, according to the monstergirl encyclopedia. The Abyssal one that he had gotten as a reward, that was. Off the top of his head, all he could recall about the mundane monstergirl encyclopedia entry on kobolds was that it was of the dog-like variety typical of Japan.

“True that. Which means either the way in is hidden somewhere in here or we missed something upstairs…”

They proceeded to spread out to take a closer look at the contents of the room, as well as the adjoining pantry-turned-ingredient-storage. From which, the things needed to make aqua regia were conspicuously missing. Aside from that… “Are pickles useful to alchemists or frequently made by them?”

“Not really. Not in classical alchemy anyway. Strictly speaking, gastromancy involves some alchemical processes, but it’s usually considered its own thing. Why?”

“Well, there’s a jar of pickles on the bottom shelf here. If there’s no reason to have those with your alchemy supplies…” He proceeded to try to pick it up, only to find that the jar was fixed in place. After trying to mess with it in a few different ways, he discovered that twisting the lid didn’t open the jar. Instead, it caused a click to sound from behind him.

Turning around, he found that the opposite cabinet had swung out slightly from the wall, revealing a narrow crack. Pushing the hidden door open further revealed that the barred off room beyond was a dining hall.

Like the living quarters, it was completely spotless in terms of dirt and grime, but the flawlessness of the scene was somewhat reduced by the fact that there were a few chairs toppled and some of the cutlery scattered on the floor.

Beyond that, the main table was set for 8 people, complete with plates and bowls for food in the center, though all of it was completely spotless. There was also a silver bell next to the plate set at the head of the table. “This is kinda eerie…”

Qhila shrugged as she slipped through between him and the doorframe, brushing against his leg in the process. “I guess. Let’s just see if we can find something useful. Salammoniac is a white or brownish-yellow crystal or powder.”

They spread out to search the room, with John starting with the table while Qhila examined some of the wall decor for hidden… anything, really. Examining the table setting closer amped up the creepy factor when he found gold jewelry on the chairs. Mostly rings, but also necklaces on two chairs and a monocle and a set of gold buttons at the head of the table.

“Got it!” Qhila’s victorious exclamation had John turn just in time to see her fish a pottery jar out of the fireplace. In doing so, he knocked the silver bell off the table. On that cue, a pale green liquid rose out of the seemingly empty floor vase next to the fireplace.

John was tense for a moment, then partially relaxed reflexively as he recognized it as a cleaning slime, then went back on full alert when he noted that it was twice the Level of the other ones at 8. “Behind you! Dodge!”

So warned, Qhila managed to evade as the slime made a clumsy lunge towards her, toppling the vase in the process. John and Qhila both threw glances about the room, populating his minimap with 8 red dots stemming from more slimes rising out of decorative containers Qhila hadn’t checked yet.

Despite the worrisome way it started, it turned out to be a very easy fight. Qhila had not been kidding when she said they were unimpressive fighters. Aside from doing a clumsy lunge when someone got within arm’s reach, they just crawled closer slowly enough for the duo to walk backwards away while hosing them down with alchemist’s fire. The closest it had to challenge after they hadn’t gotten completely taken by surprise was to mind not backing oneself into a corner while the slimes were still spread out.

The fight wrapped up with neither of them taking any damage, and while they were checking other potential hiding spots just in case there were more slimes, something dawned on John. “I think I know what happened here. Or well, what the story is, anyway. The family were using cleaning slimes to, well, clean, probably made by the eccentric loner heir. Somehow, either by design or by accident, the slimes in here ended up being the unsafe kind. When the family was done eating and rang for the cleaners, they didn’t realize they were in danger until it was too late. That’s why all that’s left of them is their jewelry, made from the famously acid resistant gold.”

Bonus Objective Completed
Discover what happened to the head of House Chevo
Reward: 50 Dungeon Points, 250 EXP

“I guess that settles that,” Qhila commented, and went back to checking for slimes.

By chance, they wrapped the slime check up with John near the door that was boarded up on the other side. “I’m going to try something that’s absolutely stupid, but that is exactly why the [Developer] may have made it so it works anyway, as a gag.”

He proceeded to open the barred door, having noticed that it opened inwards. Despite the boards being fused to the door when examined from the other side, this worked perfectly, leaving them with an open doorway with planks across. A swift kick got rid of one of those, demonstrating that the barrier was only indestructible from one direction.