Shadow Sanctum Archeon

**Shadow Sanctum Archeon** (シャドウサンクタムエリジウム) is the guild headquarters of *God Eaters*, widely renowned for being a nigh-impenetrable fortress and one of the strongest guild dungeons throughout YGGDRASIL.

## Background

While still a game the dungeon was originally located within a gargantuan mountain range in the realm of Niflheim.
It was originally the home of a high ranking dragon-type boss and as a homage to the monster the guild ended up creating the giant dragon statue located on the top of the base.

Even before being conquered and modified by the members of God Eaters the dungeon was highly feared by many players. Many guilds and parties has, on several occasions, tried to conquer the dungeon but all ultimately failed before even getting to the 4th floor. It wasn't before God Eaters gave it a try that someone was finally able to subjugate the dungeon. The victory did not come easy, the guild had to spend over a month and a half preparing for it but even then they needed two tries.

The journey to the dungeon itself is very lethal, with the entire area being covered in a thick snow storm that would deal heavy damage to all players, even those with high resistances to environmental damage, and high HP monsters that would slow down the progress of any party. The inside of it was even worse, with many powerful monsters and other hostile entities crawling around everywhere, and a plethora of complex traps that had varied effects. Most of the traps would impose debuffs on players that would last for an obscene amount of time, making exploring even harder, and some would split the party by forcefully teleporting them.

Even though it has plenty of space on the surface and looks like a giant castle, the majority of the dungeon was located underground.

## Layout & Features

While still just a dungeon, the Shadow Sanctum Archeon consisted of only eight floors. After God Eaters conquered it, the entire dungeon got reconstructed, and three new floors were created. The layout of some of the floors stayed the same but most of it got remodeled to better fit the tastes of its conquerors. For travel between floors, there are specific points on each floor, where gates open to allow magical transit. The gates between the floors were divided into two zones, the upper and the lower. The lower zones consisted of floor one to eight, and to travel between floors you just need to find the right gate. The higher zones, consisting of floor nine to eleven, were more complex in their design and were nigh impossible for newcomers to navigate.

Thanks to it being a rather high ranking dungeon the amount of data storage for custom NPCs were a bit higher than the normal guild base. Despite needing several tries God Eaters were also granted additional data levels for not only beating it in two tries but also for defeating one of the dungeons hidden bosses. With the additional data levels the guild is able to create a total of 2,500 levels of custom NPCs.

Additionally, Archeon is filled with traps on every floor that lay in wait to catch any invaders off-guard. Invaders often find it hard to escape from the traps, let alone fight off the naturally spawned monsters.

### Surface

The exterior shown outside the dungeon depict Archeon as a giant castle or temple with the statue of a large dragon resting on top of the roof. Large several meter tall wall surrounds the sanctum, functioning as the first line of defense.

* **Known Areas**
	+ **Temple of Canteon**: A giant castle that functions as the entry point into the dungeon below, it guarded by Demon Knights (level 35 guardian type monsters).
	+ **Wyvern Rock**: The plateau right under the temple is the home to a giant level 80 Wyvern as well as other smaller lower leveled wyverns.

### 1st-3rd Floors: Labyrinth

The first three floors are large subterranean maze with a underground city at the end with a giant coliseum in the center. The floors are filled to the brim with different traps and is undisputed the floor with the most traps in Archeon. Slimes and other types of low leveled monsters wanders around.

* **Floor Guardian**: Leonides
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Labyrinth City**: A moderately large city filled with beastmen and other demi-humans. Statues of Leonides can be seem around the city.
	+ **Underground Coliseum**: Built as a copy of the Roman Colosseum but with a closed of roof. Golems and the village residences act as the audience, while VIP seats are prepared for guild members. Beastmen work as cleaners as well as Leonides care takers.

### 4th Floor: Soul Mausoleum

A subterranean burial chambers where several dozen undead wander around. There are lots of statues of goddesses and angels dotting around. The guild thought it would be fitting to have a graveyard themed floor under their giant coliseum

* **Floor Guardian**: Valentine Darkheart
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Crimson Tomb**: Valetine's residence. Her room looks like a royal chamber with golden accessories adorning the walls and such. There exist a small shrine with a carved out statue of her creator besides her bed/coffin.
		- **Darkheart's Win cellar**: The largest storage of wine in Archeon, the room had no other function then cosmetic purposes. The wine stored in the cellar is said to taste thousands of times better than anything the New World is capable of creating.

### 5th Floor: Giant Forest

Gigantic dense forest teeming with life, many different beast type monster as well as plant based lives on the floor. This floor is about 300 meters in height. A fake sun , as well as a fake sky, exists on the ceiling, reproducing the day and night cycle that changes according to the time of day. There is no weather except the wind produced in this area. It is around 5 square kilometers wide, and the center has a large lake.

* **Floor Guardian**: Sulvena
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Giant Tree**: The largest tree on the entire floor, located near the central lake. It is the residence of Sulvena.
	+ **Ruins**: The floor is designed to have abandoned and overgrown ruins sprinkled around, they serve no further purposes then decorations.
	+ **Poisonous Marshland**
	+ **Garden**: Deep within the forest there exist a large garden, it houses the vast majority of farms and other food-stuffs that provide Archeon with life sustaining food and water. It also provides medicinal herbs for brewing special potions and other ointments.

### 6th-7th Floors: Ant Cave

The cave is split into mainly two layers the "surface" of the cave and the maze like tunnels underneath. The floor had a very limited plant life with only the hanging roots as well as the fungi's that was spread around. The cave has no natural light source except the ores in the walls. It was recommended to always bring your own light source, or skill that could counteract the semi-total darkness. The floor is the home to mainly giant ants but other insect type monsters can be found crawling around.

* **Floor Guardian**: Aeacus and Ant Queen
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Top Layer**: A giant cavern with roots hanging from the ceiling, various minerals in the walls and the ground mostly dirt and gravel. The floor was rigged with multiple pit falls and ant lion traps as well as spider nets.
		- **Mine**: A cave system stretching more then hundreds of meter filled with ores and minerals, many considered to be extremely rare in the new world.
	+ **Ant Hill**: The main entrance into the tunnel system underneath. The hill is guarded by multiple Ant Guardians (level 35-40).
	+ **Tunnels**: A very complex and convoluted tunnels system that works as a maze. The tunnels are rigged with traps as well as crawling with ant type monsters. The tunnels leads to different chambers, some more pleasant then others.
		- **Spider Hole**: The home of multiple spider monster.
		- **Ant Nest**: The home of the *Queen Ant*, a high leveled insect master, and the birthing nest of the floors ants. The area has great amount of spaces, enough to have a proper boss battle. It was designed so when the Ant Queen was defeated the Ant King, Aeacus, would appear to enact revenge.

### 8th Floor: Monastery

The floor is mostly a giant mountain monastery that branches out into many smaller ones, with a large body of water at the mountain foot. Similarly to the 4th floor, this area has a fake sky completed with a fake moon and sun.

* **Floor Guardian**: Deus Carrion
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Grand Monastery**: The largest of the monastery located at almost the top of the mountain, it is usually very foggy there. The residence of Carrion.
		- **Cherry Garden**: At the top of the mountain lies a beautiful "hidden" garden with cherry tree's that blossom all year long. Here lies the entry point to the next floor.
			* **Gate of Vritra**: The gate that leads to the next floor, it is guarded by Deus Carrion.
	+ **Battle Grounds**: Every monastery is set up to have at least one outdoor dojo each, their purpose is to train the soldiers of Archeon in hand to hand combat.
	+ **Sake Brewery**: The creation center of Archeons famous Sake.
	+ **Lake Grandiac**: The large lake surrounding the mountain. The water is crystal clear and is filled with different kinds of aquatic life forms.
	+ **Hot Springs**: The hot springs are said to have regenerative properties, able to heal most non lethal wounds as well as recharge stamina.

### 9th Floor: Mount Blackrock

The entire floor is a fiery and hellish landscape with lava flowing everywhere. The entire floor is filled with dragon type monsters and NPCs, it is also the home to Archeon's strongest NPC.

* **Floor Guardian**: Abbathor
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Mount Blackrock**: A giant super volcano found in the center of the floor, it covers roughly fifty percent of the floors landmass. The volcano itself possess multiple areas with great importance.
		- **Golden Pile**: A giant pile of gold that Abbathor sleeps on.
	+ **Production Area**: Located deep inside the floor's volcano lies the base's production center.
		- **Alchemist Lab**: This area is responsible of creating all of the Sanctums potions and medicines.
		- **Blacksmith**: This area create, repair as well as refines all of the Sanctums armors and weapons.
* **Ruins**: Several temple like constructs can be found built around the base of the volcano.

### 10th Floor: Suites

This floor contains Guild Members' and NPCs' rooms. It also includes imitations of large communal baths, cafeterias, beauty salons, clothing stores, grocery stores, fitness salons, nail salons, and numerous other types of facility rooms. These facilities were originally just for decoration in YGGDRASIL, but they become real after the base's arrival in the New World.

* **Known Areas**
	+ **Round Table Room**: Conference chamber of God Eaters guild members.
	+ **Brewery**: A giant brewery that creates a multitude of different alcoholic drinks. People of the new world believe that the alcohol from Archeon to be the Nectar of Heaven, believing it to be nothing lesser than the drinks of the gods.
	+ **Bar**:
	+ **Spa Resort**: Largely public, it has a total of twenty baths with nine types for the two genders. It is made up of twelve zones in total. These zones include a large jungle bath, a traditional-looking Roman bath, a yuzu bath with yuzus floating on it, a carbonated bath, a jacuzzi, an electric bath with a low current that electrifies the body, a cold bath with charcoals floating on it, the Cherenkov pool, a mixed open-air bath with an artificial scenery, a sauna, a bedrock bath, and the lounge. Valserion prefers the natural hot springs of the 8th floor but they have less room and are usually very crowded.
	+ **Staff Canteen**: A white-washed canteen area, where the maids and the servants of Archeon gather for meals.
	+ **Grand Kitchen**: A giant kitchen divided into multiple zones, each zone specializing in different cuisines and styles of food, able to satisfy any guest no matter their preference.
	+ **Manicure Salon**
	+ **Courthouse**: A courthouse for serving judicial rulings.
	+ **Funeral Home**: A room that has an atmosphere of a funeral home that is a mix of Japanese and Western styles.
	+ **Guest Room**: A room reserved for guests and visitors from outside of Archeon.

### 11th Floor: Throne

* **Floor Guardian**: Veyron
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Throne Hall**: This great hall contains many high-leveled vassals who have been hand-picked by the Floor Guardians.
	+ **Great Library**: This library is the residence of Tyra Dia. Here is where the guild stores book-shaped items along with normal books. Magic scrolls are also manufactured in this area. It is guarded by several high ranked demons.

### Treasury

This place is spatially isolated from other areas, so a Guild ring is necessary to enter the Treasury.

* **Area Guardian**: Twin Knight Sisters, Nimue and Vivien
* **Known Areas**
	+ **Golden Bank**: The vault that holds World Items. It is also the resting place for God Eater's former guild members.

### Systems

As a dungeon, the Shadow Sanctum Archeon has numerous systems incorporated in its data that regulate its maintenance and defense.

**Administration System**: In order to gain access to this system, it requires the guild leader saying the keywords, which are "Master Source — Open." It records the daily maintenance costs, the numbers and types of vassals or NPCs present, all sorts of magical traps and gimmicks, and so on. In other words, it can record the names of all the NPCs made by the guild members. One can exert large-scale control over them all from here. If it could still function like in YGGDRASIL, one could access this system from anywhere. In the New World, the system can only be operated from the heart of the dungeon, the Throne Room. Additionally, the system is also capable of verifying an NPC's current allegiance.

**Defense System**: The Shadow Sanctum Archeon has a defense system managed by Veyron in order to keep invaders occupied upon entering the various floors from within inside the tomb's domain itself. If Valserion gives Veyron the command to do so, he can even use booby traps that cost money. This includes spraying poisonous gas or create sudden floods of the undead. Avoiding the use of money to activate traps, however, Veyron can instead use the defense system for POPs and traps with serfs. After Archeon is transported into the New World, friendly fire is no longer disabled like it was in the game. As a result, if someone like Veyron and the others attempt to observe Valserion through surveillance magic, the latter will automatically respond in kind with a magical counterattack of his own. In the worst-case scenario, if it does happen, the counterattack will be overlapped with Archeon’s defensive network, leaving both sides clashing against one another.

**Mercenary System**: Otherwise, it is also known as the automatic spawn system. This system only produces monsters that are level 30 at most. They were the POPs, in other words, monsters that are automatically spawned by it from within YGGDRASIL. On the other hand, there are other types of monsters much higher in level than 30 alone, which can also be summoned, but only through YGGDRASIL's gold coins. The high-level vassals that the Floor Guardians bring along were beings created through YGGDRASIL’s mercenary system and required expenditures of in-game currency or real money. The former can be created again for free if they are destroyed, but the money spent on the latter would be wasted if they died.

## Trivia

* In YGGDRASIL, Archeon was located in Niflheim, a cloudy, dark cold world.
* As for Guardians, the Sanctum has a limited data quota available for its customization. Archeon players could buy cash items to expand the amount of data.
* The majority of the denizens that live and reside within Archeon since gaining sentience in the New World generally view humans as a type of food, plaything, toy, or lower life-form due to their largely heteromorphic/demi-human population. However, despite this generally abysmal attitude to humanity, there are a few exceptions of a few denizens who are at least merciful to humans or have at least a better view of them in comparison to their comrades.
	+ Despite this normally abysmal attitude towards humanity, there are in fact a few exceptions to this and a very minuscule number of humans inhabiting or working within the tomb and whose racial background is generally ignored by the inhabitants for various reasons.