Minkalla

Minkalla is a massive artificial construct of unknown origins. It translates to The Forge in the language of a long lost civilization. Minkalla acts as a training ground for the young cultivators of all eight Great Powers providing both tests and rewards.

## Origin

Minkalla's true origins are unknown, it seems to be assembled from a vast number of ruins and predates recorded history. It may have fallen from a higher realm or been assembled by multiple Tier 50s.

The most commonly accepted theory comes from a scrap from a Descender's AI that referenced a "divine puzzle box" that dropped as a Tier 100 rift reward that was solved/assembled and then sent to a lower realm.

## Appearance

Minkalla resembles a factory the size of a planet with three hundred and sixty massive spires of copper and bronze. It is covered with constantly moving gears and venting steam. At the start of a cycle Minkalla radiates vast amounts of energy and at the end of a cycle appears dead and hollow.

## Rules & Features

No one below Tier 11 or above Tier 14 may enter Minkalla. If a cultivator advances to Tier 15 while in Minkalla, they explode.

Prices increase and rewards decrease for each Tier a cultivator is above eleven.

There are seven floors of Minkalla, each floor has a Floor Reward unique to the floor.

Each Floor has a Floor Theme with its own Reward.

Minkalla and the system around it are completely barren of Essence, all of it consumed by Minkalla.

Instead of Essence, Minkalla provides Genesis Energy which is required to progress through it.

Genesis Energy is better than Essence in every way. It can be gained in several ways

* Killing monsters
* Killing other cultivators (only half is transferred)
* Completing challenge rooms (rewards based on amount wagered and performance)

The more Genesis Energy a cultivator has the more they stand out to spiritual senses, this can be mitigated with several items unique to Minkalla.

Between each floor is a safe zone, a seemingly infinite blank space with a pillar in the center. This pillar can be used to either exit Minkalla and claim the Floor Reward or progress to the next floor.

## Floor Rewards

Upon completing a floor, one can choose to exit Minkalla from the Safe Zone. When exiting, a cultivator may pay a price in Genesis Energy to receive a reward depending on which floor they have just completed. A delver may take the reward of any previous floor when exiting Minkalla.

### First Floor

One Tier 8 skill

Specificity decreases with higher Tier, with Tier 14 receiving a random skill and Tier 11 receiving any skill they can describe. Paying additional Genesis Energy can increase specificity.

### Second Floor

Fixes and Perfects Essence allocation.

For Tiers 12 and 13 the cultivators are also brought to peak Tier 13 Essence

The exact Reward for Tier 11 is unknown.

### Third Floor

One Tier 14 skill following the same rules as Floor One.

### Fourth Floor

The reward for completing the fourth floor is a concept.

At Tier 14 cultivators receive a generic concept that can be used to advance to Tier 15 and achieve Eternal status. This is a major motivator for many Minkalla delvers who have reached the end of their Tier 14 lifespan and are unable to advance without a concept. As a last ditch they come to Minkalla.

With each lower Tier the received concept becomes more personalized and stronger.

### Fifth Floor

A Tier 20 skill following the same rules as Floors One and Three.

### Sixth Floor

Merge skill beyond flawlessly for better than perfect results.

At Tier 14 merge two Tier 8 skills.

At Tier 13 merge a Tier 8 and Tier 14 skill.

At Tier 12 merge two Tier 14 skills or three Tier 8 skills.

At Tier 11 merge a Tier 20 and Tier 14 skill.

### Floor Seven

Gain a new skill slot

Tier 14: A single core skill slot, assign a skill to it and it is locked their permanently.

Tier 13: One normal core skill slot.

Tier 12: An innate skill slot that cannot be changed out.

Tier 11: A flexible innate skill slot.

## Floor Themes

### Essential Dysfunction

Turns natural essence powered attributes, like allocated strength or flexibility, into depleteable resources. As you lifted things or ran around, strength would effectively de-Tier until the essence provided no benefit. Regenerating mana would slowly be less effective, and mana pools would shrink. All aspects of cultivation are affected by this and only once you finish the floor are your attributes returned to normal. This theme possesses the most direct traps, such as pits, spikes, and rolling boulders, with a large array of monsters.

Reward: Mana and stamina regeneration is increased. On the first floor, this is about a five percent increase separate from essence, which slowly falls off with advancement. This scales until at the seventh floor, where it’s approximately a two times multiplier, cutting non-wound recovery time in half and has a noticeable increase forever.

### Eternal Darkness

All physical senses are completely blocked, rendering everyone on the floor blind, deaf, and with physical touch and even proprioception sharply muted. The only sense that isn’t blocked is spiritual perception. There are many dangerous areas on the floor, not hidden by anything more than the floor’s natural theme, and simply walking in a straight line can be dangerous. Monsters largely favor ambush tactics, making it even harder to detect danger.

Reward: Spiritual Perception is improved. On the first floor, it slightly increases resolution and adds faint additional feedback, such as color perception. By the seventh floor, it returns almost perfect, detailed feedback on everything within its range and is substantially better at bypassing any blocks.

### The Hills Have Eyes

Everything is alive, aware, and trying to kill you. Everything. Anything not spiritually bound to you gains a faint motive spirit and begins trying to kill anything alive. Air will avoid lungs, stone will deliberately fall with the intent to crush, water actively attempts to drown. It’s best to avoid having to eat or drink while on this floor.

Reward: A growth item gains its own motive spirit. On the first floor, it becomes able to automatically activate itself in accordance to some stimuli, akin to a very basic [AI], but by floor seven it is as intelligent as whoever it’s bonded to, and is even able to absorb and utilize skill shards of its own.

### Conceptual Lock

Concepts are affected as though by a very strong concept suppression, making them very difficult to utilize. Monsters lean strongly towards those with powerful Concepts or presence abilities of their own and have no suppression from the floor.

Reward: Any ability which a Concept possessed prior to entering Minkalla become stronger and more resistant to being suppressed, scaling to twice as strong at floor seven.

### Courtly Warfare

Instead of directly fighting monsters, find and join a faction known as a ‘Court,’ and do whatever is required to ensure they win their floor-wide war. The Courts are unusually sapient for a rift or ruin monster, and centralize themselves around a seemingly-random theme, with a variable number of factions thematically related to that theme. Previous common appearances have featured the four seasons, the four level 1 elements, Day and Night, Mages and Warriors, Stars, Moon, and Sun, and more. Generally, the sooner the floor appears, the more sides there are, but it has also appeared on floor one as Ocean versus Land versus Sky and on floor six as a massive web of alliances with every known mana aspect having a representative court.

Reward: A growth item gains a new effect. For the first floor, it mostly seems to accelerate when the growth item would get new abilities. Instead of Tier 25 where a growth item would gain a new effect, now the effect is unlocked before then and shifts all the upgrades the item would get corresponding down by the same margin. By floor seven it adds a completely separate set of powers which grow at the same rate as the original growth power. In addition, Boons are available to the winning side.

### Genesis Cultivation

All spells cost Genesis Energy instead of mana or essence. The monsters on that floor drop more Genesis Energy per kill, but the floor remains heavily rooted in resource management.

Reward: On floor one, the most recent Tier of essence that’s been cultivated is converted to something similar to Genesis Energy, enhancing all aspects of cultivation, but particularly in the stacking bonus that comes with cultivating the same areas for multiple Tiers. By floor seven, not only is all essence converted to Genesis Energy, but the effect lingers until Tier 16.

### Blood is Thicker

Bloodlines, and other innate non-talent abilities, are drastically improved in strength. Most enemies on the floor will have bloodline equivalents.

Reward: Change your mana aspect. On floor one, it's a minor change from a level 1 element to a related level 2 element, all the way up to floor seven when you can out and out have three complete high-end aspects perfectly merged or separated in the mana pool perfectly. Or you can change your mana type to Arcane or Void. For those with a bloodline, this theme reward allows them to change their Rank 1 bloodline or pave the way for their Rank 2 bloodline if they were not of a Rank 2 species to begin with.

### Mundane Life

No mana can be used on this floor. For anything.

Reward: A growth item becomes less dependent on whoever it’s bonded to, reducing the item requirements to Tier it up, reducing the spiritual strain it puts on the person, and makes it more mana-efficient. By the seventh floor, it requires only essence to Tier up, puts no spiritual strain on whoever is using it, and produces mana instead of requires it as well as serving as an external mana storage.

### Back to Basics

Start off with no essence, nothing, at functionally fresh Tier 1. Regain essence as you progress, and with a bit of effort, you can assign it to somewhere it wasn’t before, allowing for a permanent reallocation of essence. Enemies are appropriately low-Tier, but scale quite fast.

Reward: Concepts empowering the body become stronger, or if the Concept doesn't do so, it begins to. On floor seven, it's a full second very strong Concept, or the original is about three times as strong if it was able to empower the body before.

### Floating Islands

There is no floor, and flying items are weakened to the point of being unable to support additional weight. Falling far enough will result in a loop, though it’s unclear where exactly the lowest or highest point is, but it still requires falling a long way before a loop happens. The ruins are condensed in this theme to small floating islands and monsters, if not already capable of flying, gain wings or some other method of flight.

Reward: Improved ability for internal concepts to fly and external ones to move space around them. On floor seven, it's the equivalent of a dedicated, very strong Concept for it that is nearly impossible to ground the user without overwhelming force. If a Concept is already primed to help with flight/spatial manipulation, it is strengthened instead.

### Unskilled

Skills are completely blocked, including Innate skills granted by talents.

Reward: Upgrade a Tier 8 skill at floor one. The number you may upgrade increases with each floor (for totals of 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 16). You may spend two Tier 8 equivalents to upgrade a Tier 14 or 4 Tier 8 to upgrade a Tier 20. These skills have more ability to be changed as the lower Tier you are, and elemental effects can be added at will.

### Mind Over Matter

All physical existence fades, rendering everyone into spiritual beings. Physical cultivation does essentially nothing, and moving is hard without a skill or Concept to aid. Physical appearance also fades, and everything becomes more like the abstract idea of itself or its Concept.

Reward: Concepts become less willpower-intensive. By floor seven, any foundational uses of a Concept- that is, any things which the Concept itself does, not general uses of a Concept such as locking down space or flying- are functionally free to use, costing less Willpower than most people recover. The further from the primary use (or uses) of the Concept a use is, the less this benefit applies to it.

### All Paupers

Items don’t work at all, for anything. Not only are wands just inert sticks, a sword will not cut, armor will not block. Potions act as no more than water, and even the most potent foods do nothing more than provide basic sustenance.

Reward: A Growth Item lodges itself in your spirit. On floor one, this means you can instantly materialize/dematerialize it, and it becomes impossible to permanently destroy. On floor seven, it practically serves as a second Talent and becomes incredibly powerful, always staying at your Tier and developing new abilities as it’s modified akin to a skill. The exact abilities depend on the item, but the spiritual strain of the item likewise increases.

### Opposite Day

Mana aspects are flipped, becoming the opposite of what they ought to be. Likewise, physical cultivation boosts mana, and magic cultivation boosts the body. This also applies to monsters.

Reward: Gain the ability to rework a chunk of your cultivation, ranging from the last two Tiers on floor one all the way up to a complete, perfect redo with better than perfect compression on floor seven. Anything that is reworked is slightly more potent than usual, even if it's remade to the exact same thing, like a partial conversion to Genesis Energy.

### Taxing Skills

Skills become more expensive with each usage, tracked on a per-skill basis. Channeled skills become more expensive to use at a continuous, ever-increasing rate. Monsters tend to come in huge groups.

Reward: Gain bonus skill slots. On floor 1, this is two extra Inner skill slots and five extra Outer skill slots, effectively one Tiers worth in total. By floor seven, it grants an extra four Core skill slots, thirty Inner skill slots, and one hundred Outer skill slots, slightly more than doubling the current skill slots available to a Tier 14.

### Self-Identity

Those entering the floor will find their appearance, cultivation, non-consumable items, body, and skills changed to another random person upon the floor, keeping only your Talents (consumable items vanish, but are not gained). Upon leaving the floor, the changes revert. Monsters are predominantly mimic and shapeshifter-types.

Reward: Remake a part of your body. On floor one, this is replacing your eye or a hand to be better than perfect, a bio-mechanical substance that grows, heals, and for all intents and purposes is alive despite also for all intents and purposes being artificial, with the remade body part functioning similarly to a growth item. On floor three and deeper, that body part can be enchanted in addition to generally being made of higher-quality stuff than your baseline body. By floor seven, the entire body was remade into the strange biomechanical substance as a perfected being.

### New Growth

Only things which have been obtained on the current floor can be used. Skill shards and items can drop at an increased rate on this floor, and skill absorption is increased. Monsters usually have highly adaptive defenses, swiftly gaining resistances to attacks they are exposed to.

Reward: Skills become quicker and easier to absorb, modify, and move. By floor seven, absorbing skills is instantaneous and modifying skills is roughly as easy as if it were one stage closer to the core.

### World of Cardboard

All items become exceptionally fragile and can break under the slightest touch. This does not apply to magic, to which the area is highly resistant to. Monsters are frequently those which use the terrain to their advantage, and heavy on ambushes, in particular.

Reward: Item-enhancing Concepts are enhanced at floor one, scaling up to a three times increase in strength by floor seven, and if the Concept didn’t initially possess such an ability, it gains that usage, up until floor seven when it is as strong as the initial Concept.

### Wasteland

No healing or regeneration. Monsters are numerous, weak, and frequently pack monsters, often willing to use suicide tactics to deal even the slightest injury.

Reward: Concepts that aid in healing, regeneration, or repairing are enhanced, up to a three times empowerment by floor seven. Those which did not have an aspect along that theme have it added.

### Folded Reflections

Fight lots of mirror versions of yourself and other people, similar yet different in some way. It culminates in a fight against you as you are right now. Incredibly dangerous final fight.

Reward: Experience a number of other lives equal to the floor depth, change your Concept to one of them, or fold their effects into your current Concept.

### Spirit Journey

A psychedelic journey through your own mind, facing inner demons in the form of monsters. Perception matters as much as reality, and ghosts from the past are the greatest danger of all. It is extremely challenging to remain in groups, though technically possible for those who are exceptionally close.

Reward: Gain a pseudo-bond spirit guide familiar. On floor one, it's little more than a mote of light that points out things of interest. By floor three, it's a small animal-like spirit that can be directed to do basic things. By floor five, it's fully sapient and able to fight independently. By floor seven, it's an extremely powerful accompanying spirit on the level of a dragon that has its own Talents and skills. It remains fundamentally a part of the person and can turn immaterial to reside inside their spirit. If killed or destroyed it will reform given enough time.

1. ↑ Chapter 163
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 Chapter 173
3. ↑ Chapter 170
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Chapter 172
5. ↑ Chapter 196