[D'sP] Making It Back - Chapter 364 (Patreon)

The camouflaged assassin vine fell lifeless to the ground and right away began to evaporate or at least that was how the despawning made it look. Doyle ignored this, instead focusing on the trickle of information coming in from the monster. This doesn’t actually do anything directly.

It wasn’t like he was going to have to drop everything whenever something interesting is going to be deconstructed. However, in this case, there was something to gain. It wouldn’t boost his skills or patterns, but it would give him some more insight into what exactly happened to those camo vines.

And the answer was interesting. As an ambush predator, the assassin vines already had a low level of natural adaptation. Doyle hadn’t really noticed as it was more about making the vines match the general vibrance of nearby foliage. And since everything is from a limited number of plants, they don’t really get to show off.

However, within that adaptive surface layer, there was the possibility to go further. It was clearly rare for it to trigger, but allowed for an actual shift in color and texture to happen. On top of that, if the changed assassin vine survived long enough and was able to stay fed, it would release phytochemicals every once in a while.

Those chemicals are exactly the thing that allowed the other assassin vines to make the change. And since they are dungeon monsters, the monsters are always full, and any changed assassin vine would keep pumping out those chemicals and changing those around it no matter the environment.

Though thankfully, the actual spread of those chemicals is quite short. Otherwise, Doyle would have to worry about using them elsewhere. Because, while an interesting adaptation for wild assassin vines, it would easily get out of hand in a dungeon.

Out in nature, assassin vines naturally tend towards being bare vines because it is the most energy efficient. This camouflage feature, while nice, is always just a period of hunger away from being reverted. For the change to not only stick, but get passed around requires a rich hunting ground with a strange feature that makes not just being vines worthwhile.

In a dungeon, where they don’t have to worry about food? Doyle could set up an ever transforming horde of assassin vines if he could collect more examples, especially since they seem to readily override one another. It almost makes him want to set up strange scenes for them to adapt to. For instance, could he develop a candy cane themed assassin vine? If it was possible, and nothing pointed towards it not being, the assassin vines would basically be like some character in a free to play game that makes their money off of selling skins.

Though just as important for Doyle is that he gained the ability to spawn assassin vines with the fungal camo. Sure, he rarely spawned stuff directly if at all possible. However, having the option means that he won’t even accidentally run out of them. Oh, and he got five more levels to the assassin vines pattern, which was nice.

And as an extension of this discovery? Doyle went and did a bit of carving on the sixteenth floor. Not at the volcano, though. Rather, he carved images around the entrance island of kelp and seaweed with the intent to blend in and hide. Maybe it would help the assassin vines placed there to adapt. Maybe not.

Going by what Doyle now knew, such a change would in theory be inevitable, questions of aquatic survivability aside. Though maybe the carvings would help speed things up. Besides that, there weren’t really any other assassin vines placed in a location that could gain some form of camouflage. An inevitable result of him having placed the monsters properly. 

About the only out-of-place assassin vines, are those just out in the open. Could they adapt to blank stone walls? Yes, but it would be purely cosmetic and Doyle wasn’t quite sure what to carve for them so he ignored them for now.

While this was happening, Ace was making progress. He had found a new angle in his training and that provided him a breakthrough in his magic. Before, he had focused on external aids.

Now, though, Ace delved into the internal uses of his magic. While his magic was mostly of wood and plants, it was also partly of nature. He hadn’t figured out healing beyond a limited form of faster natural healing. However, Ace had much more success with general buffing his own abilities.

Attempts on others went... Less than well. Ace wasn’t going to give up, but planned to keep to self buffing when Doctor wasn’t around. Either way, this breakthrough was enough to get past the plateau he had been stuck at.

And so, in the shadow of the recent death on floor fourteen, his team was once again making progress. They had beat the floor before and so, besides the surprise at the assassin vines hanging out between the sides, they were ready. Except now Ace had enough physical might to keep up with the monster’s increased capabilities.

It wasn’t a walk in the park, though. While Ace had gotten qualitatively stronger, the others weren’t so lucky. Though with Ace’s example, everyone in the inner circle of the town was searching for their own breakthrough. Of course, if it was that easy, it wouldn’t be a bottleneck and so for the moment, Ace was the strongest person in Wolf’s Rest.

Then, a week later, they finally made it back to floor fifteen. The mountains rise up around them on three sides and extend off into the misty distance. There is a large tree positioned right at where the valley takes a turn and the sight of what may lay further in is cut off. Though this doesn’t prevent them from seeing that a decent flock of the four-winged birds are nested in that tree.

However, more directly threatening was a group of kobolds just uphill from them to one side. There are only three kobolds and a grass goat, but they had noticed that the dungeon liked to build communities of kobolds. So these three likely had reinforcements not too far away.

That didn’t stop the group from beating them down. The party was just cautious as they did so, keeping an eye out for anything that might want to join the fight. And they were justified to do so, though not because they were jumped right away by even more kobolds.

Rather, they got spotted by another kobold camp. Those three kobolds then sent off one of them to alert the outpost uphill from them. Susan noticed this and so, after taking care of the two kobolds that remained behind and their goat, the party headed uphill to see what was there.

The answer was more kobolds, some goats, and a couple of axebeaks. Said axebeaks by the time they had gotten there were now being ridden and the kobold cavalry descended upon the party. Behind them, the rest of the kobolds and their goats followed at a more sustainable speed.

Not that the axebeak riders planned anything that could be described as sustainable. Rather, their goal was to rush down the mountainside at top speed and hopefully take out at least one person in the group before they zipped past. Well, that was the plan.

It is just that Ace’s party knew that was the plan as well and so was ready. The kobolds tried to use their weapons and the axebeaks attempted to run them over. However, Ace wasn’t having it.

He buffed his sturdiness, set down literal roots, and raised a wooden bar across their path that was anchored by logs coming out of the ground angled towards the enemy. Now, this obviously wasn’t enough to phase the two charging riders. That sort of thing is one of the simplest solutions, and so they commanded their birds and easily vaulted the bar.

Right into the rest of the party’s response. As the two axebeaks flew over them, weapons struck out, crippling the legs. This resulted in both the birds and their riders going into an uncontrolled tumble down the mountain. A trip that they didn’t even survive a third of the way.

Then the rest of the kobolds approached Ace’s defensive structure. Except Ace had never planned on the bar taking out the axebeaks. Instead, he had been readying it for this.

Sharp spikes of wood practically burst out of the bar in an attempt to skewer the advancing monsters. A couple regular goats take damage, but for the most part their slower speed allowed them to stop in time. Not that the skewered goats were out of the fight.

By this floor, many of the frailties people were used to from before the system had been shored up. The goats wrenched themselves off of the spikes and the holes in their hide was forced closed. While they had lost some blood to the hit and when tearing themselves off of the wood, the bleeding basically stopped after that.

This was expected and matched by the party to some extent. So now the two sides were facing off against each other, when Ace triggered another spell. He hadn’t put down roots for nothing.

Off to one side of the wood pole, he grabs onto it and swings it like a baseball bat. His roots provided the stability needed to take full advantage of his buffed strength. And so, with this display of might, the now spike covered pole was slammed into the kobold’s front line.

After which, Susan sneaks in under the pole and begins to slice each of the impaled enemies. Her small dagger coated in a nasty poison meant to make sure those affected can’t help but bleed. A needed contribution so that they don’t have a chance to recover.

Not that the monsters which ended up thoroughly impaled on the spikes would survive. However, there were those further from the front that got hit and would have been able to continue the fight.

Then the one mage that was in the group managed to surprise Ace and take control of the wood bar away. It wasn’t enough to counter attack, but just having the spikes recede back into the bar, freeing a number of kobolds and goats, was worth it. Ace, in turn, gestured and a field of thorny vines rapidly grew up beneath the magic using kobold.

Said kobold was not up to the task of controlling two spells at once and was soon cocooned in vines. Though soon enough, the vines fell away. The kobolds almost celebrated this only for them to realize the vines had been released because their mage had already died.

Not that this marked the end of the fight. Those kobolds and goats that remained still put up a good fight. If any of Ace’s team had slacked off, they wouldn’t have gotten away without some serious damage being done to them. However, the best counter to a mage is either another mage or an assassin of some sort.

Which means that when Susan shows up again, almost directly behind Ace with a dead kobold skewered on her daggers, well, then it was all downhill for the monsters. An unrestrained mage, especially one with some talent for crowd control, spelled doom.

However, in winning this fight, Ace’s party lost the floor. While Ace himself was unharmed, that was certainly not the truth for the others. They lacked the toughness buff and so felt each blow that they ended up taking. As even without the axebeaks and their riders, the kobolds alone outnumbered the party.

Now, they had the healing to patch everyone up. Except, if every fight went like this, they would soon run out. So Ace decided it was better to retreat for now. After all, they had reached their goal of making it to the fifteenth floor once again. And this time? They weren’t going to let themselves be pushed out.

Camouflage - Chapter 363

Kelly Figured Something Out - Chapter 365