[D'sP] They Have Parchment - Chapter 357 (Patreon)

Doyle thinks for a moment, then nods, ‘The flat increase to what it takes to make the next floor is a bit strange. I figured with the fact there are dungeons with very few floors, just as there are dungeons with a ton of floors, it would be more variable. If anything, the fact I keep nearly maxing out how much can fit in each floor should make it so each floor comes slower.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘That sort of thing would have come up right at the beginning. If you had done stuff in a way that pushed for something like that, you would already have gotten a path messing with that sort of thing. Not to say you won’t in the future, but even though your available paths stay the same, what they do can change as long as you haven’t put points into them yet.’

Doyle, ‘Oh, that would be a reason to start a path by only putting a handful of points in and explain why there is a limit. Maybe the limit is even something based less on a system thing and more on just how much a soul can handle.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Maybe? That’s getting a bit deeper into the weeds than even my school taught about the soul. We got some info on how skills, paths, and levels work under this system; but the details beyond that are left out. My guess being that our knowledge is based on so many analogies and abstractions that beyond those basics, everything starts to break down.

‘After all, it isn’t like a soul is some three-dimensional entity. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to seamlessly slip through time and space when untethered by a soul shell. Hells, I doubt dungeon fairies would be taught so much if it wasn’t for dungeon cores delving into the sea of souls to grab their boss souls. Though even then, your kind are only dipping your toes into the surf.’

At that point Ally keeps talking for a few more moments, but she notices something has distracted Doyle. She isn’t sure what, but decides to let him stew on it.

Later on, Doyle sighs. While he had an idea, it wasn’t something he could test at the moment. Right now, he was going to make a new floor. After all, while they did get pushed back, Ace had made it too close to his core for comfort. Though speaking of Ace, out in the town he was having a much better time as Jim informed him of the most recent events.

Jim nods to Ace, “The difficulty increase has finally stopped. Also, the Barrai’s have finished assessing things. While they can’t be fully certain, it seems the monsters are not stronger in any statistical way. As in, their stats aren’t higher. Which I guess is an important point.

“Anyway, what has changed is completely in the realm of refinement. It might have seemed that they got stronger. However, after what I’m sure is a bunch of bloody work, they’ve pinned it down to them being more efficient. The goats aren’t stronger, they just have the strength focused better.”

Ace bridges his fingers, “Interesting. Is this on the level of muscles literally being moved around or similar to weightlifters doing targeted exercises?”

Jim shrugged, “Both? It is a little hard to tell when the monster bodies vanish so quickly. Though they are certainly leaner.”

Ace, “Okay, now the important question, can we get similar results for ourselves? Will proper exercise change how the Strength stat works on our body?”

Jim, “We can try. While Doctor wasn’t in sports medicine, there was a shocking number of books on it in the one city’s community college. Going by the sports stadium they had, it is safe to assume they’re one of those sports focused colleges. Not the best for learning, in my biased opinion, but good for us.

“While how our bodies work has changed to some degree, the basic gross physical features are the same. Those books contain a wealth of knowledge on how to target whatever muscle groups you might desire. So while we don’t know what it will do, we can at least test it. In particular, we can make use of people in the outer circle.”

Ace sighs, “Make sure they know everything going into this and that they are properly compensated.”

Jim shrugs, “Experiments happen. As long as we aren’t doing them secretly, intending to harm, or against someone’s will? I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

Ace, “Yet I will consider it, because this is my burden.”

Jim sighs, “We’re here to help. I won’t say that you shouldn’t take control like a dictator or king. We might just need it, at least in the short term. However, don’t let it make you paranoid. That’s just a path to insanity and seeing all you worked for slipping through your hands like so much sand.”

Ace raises an eyebrow, “You’re worried about me because I don’t want to set up unethical human experiments?”

Jim, “Because you had to worry about it. This isn’t even a gray area. Medical companies did much shadier stuff in the open pre-system.”

Ace laughs, “As if what a company was willing to do is any kind of moral guide.”

Jim shrugs, “Well, it can help point out what not to do.”

Ace rolls his eyes, “Get out of here and tell Doctor. Skills, paths, and levels are interesting; but we can’t give up on the true basics just yet.”

With Jim gone, Ace turns back to his paperwork. Well, parchment work, if you were one to remember the original meaning of the word. That or maybe vellum is you ignore not sourcing it from calves. After all, while they lacked the basic materials to make a decent form of paper, the dungeon did not lack animal products. In particular, the inner circle had managed to get some of the meat drops replaced with leather.

This was a boon not only in that it allowed them to replace their rapidly dwindling paper supply, if imperfectly. It also provided a material for their crafters to make armor. Not just the classic leather armor, either. While many overlook it, metal armor also uses a bunch of leather as well. Whether it is for all the straps or as a layer between the metal and human to absorb some of the blow; leather was everywhere.

However, Ace was really hoping to get proper paper production going as soon as possible. Parchment was an interesting material and as with many cases, “interesting” meant sub-par for what they wanted. If you’re using something regularly, you want it to be as boring as possible.

For instance, as they quickly learned, the reason old parchment books were hardcovers with metal clasps? Well, that was because parchment was very sensitive to things like humidity and would easily wrinkle and warp if it changed at all. The wood cover and the clasps to tightly close the book was there to keep the pages flat.

Though Ace wasn’t sure what type of paper, they would end up with. While there might be other types, Ace knew of three and they all had their weaknesses. Of course there was pulp paper, but also cotton and bamboo paper. The biggest headache being where to get the supplies, which made him lean towards the bamboo paper if they could get the proper type of bamboo.

You don’t want to use the common stuff, but rather the larger varieties. The problem was it being weaker to water than the other two.

As for cotton paper? While you could get the pure stuff, most people will have dealt with the lower percentage stuff as it was commonly used in fancy paperwork and legal documents. Also, paper money tended to be made of the stuff because it was the sturdiest. Ace didn’t know where he had heard it, but apparently the general rule of thumb was that for each percent of cotton in the paper, you can expect a year of use, with the 100% being able to last a hundred years. That may be wrong, but it didn’t particularly matter to Ace as if they wanted truly long-lived paperwork, they already had parchment.

Of course, the biggest problem always comes down to cost. Paper made from pulp was the cheapest. Even if trees take a while to grow, they’re big and you don’t even need to use the best of a tree for the paper. None of it was available yet as every method required knowledge, skills, and equipment that they lacked, let alone the raw materials.

As Ace worried about feeding his growing bureaucracy one of its core needs, paperwork. Jim had already informed Doctor about Ace’s requested experiment. And so the testing started immediately. He had been ready for something like this ever since he had been informed about the Barrai’s discovery. It had been inevitable that this would need to be explored, with the biggest potential downside being if it took up a skill slot.

However, from what Doctor had gathered, that wouldn’t be a problem if done right. Wolf’s Rest might have been one of the smaller settlements, being on the outside of this region of system placed settlements. However, it was also one of the places filled mostly with young adults and the early middle age folks.

That meant Doctor had been able to examine more than a few “gym bros” and it seemed to get a skill for something like weightlifting, you really have to focus on it. Just following an exercise plan wouldn’t be enough. Though this new experiment would need to be a lot more invasive.

They had been warned about not sharing their paths and Doctor basically agreed with that. In a world like this? Letting others know the details on what makes you tick is asking to die. However, this experiment would likely involve getting to know all of that, especially if the work ended up opening up thematic paths for it.

Doctor smiled, while he had mostly switched over to being more of a family doctor, his younger years had delved into some interesting things. He wasn’t like the Barrais, by no means. That didn’t mean he hadn’t helped run a few medical tests, especially during medical school. There was a never ending need for people to record the boring results. Except he hadn’t found it boring and now there were new borders to push into. Borders that might not be there once they connected up with the greater universe, so better to get the fun out of the way now.

All the while, down in the dungeon Ally watched this development. It wasn’t a new subject and she didn’t actually know the answer. Well, that isn’t quite correct. She knows the answer for herself and the multitude of possible answers for humanoids. But that’s the trick. How much things like exercise will affect things depends on the species and even the person.

For her personally, exercise would be pointless. As Fae royalty, while her body was real, it was hyper affected by her mind and type of Fae. There is a reason the Unseelie tended to either look noxiously ugly or horribly cold. You don’t become a powerful Unseelie without a certain mindset.

Then there were humans. Ally shook her head, humanity was a chaotic mix. Every bloodline you could imagine. Any sort of mindset. Strange science and mad wizards warping the edges of sanity. You can find anything and everything in the human race, not just in this dimension, but as far as her mother could tell, any dimension they existed in.

Just this world alone was strange. Humans are rarely psionic as their brains don’t form that way. You’re more likely to find entire branches of humanity that are psionically null than a place with a handful of psionics. Then this planet gets added to the system and it seems that every one of them can gain some form of psionic power if they try. Ally shakes her head and turns to her partner, Doyle, as he finishes making a new floor.

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