[D'sP] Two Extremes - Chapter 379 (Patreon)

However, despite managing to pull out a bunch of dirt to keep that tree alive, not everything they hauled out survived. Now, they are used to dungeon items dissipating when you leave a dungeon if they weren’t meant to be loot. It is just this was the biggest example of that they have ever seen.

Not even the carts were safe. While most of the materials they had worked themselves stuck around, not all of it did. Whether it was the pieces that hadn’t been worked on enough or parts made by something without a skill for it, most of the carts ended up falling apart. Especially one group which had used vines to tie theirs together.

And of course, not every item they tried to extract survived either. Entire piles began to fall down as this or that item at the bottom of the pile suddenly wasn’t there anymore. This caused quite a mess as everyone had been pulling at least one cart and the stronger members pulling multiple carts.

Though amidst the chaos, Jim noticed a detail. Not a single one of the stone age tools had vanished. Which, considering the fact that every other cart ended up missing multiple items, was strange, especially considering how many duplicates there were. Much of what had vanished on the other carts seemed to be exactly that, things that the team already had multiple of.

Yet even the rough quartz scale axes all stuck around. There was clearly more to them if the dungeon didn’t want even a ghost of a chance that they’d miss them. Yet, despite that, none of the others had found what Jim and his team had.

Which while interesting, Doyle had seen enough and so focused on his own gains. Except there weren’t any gains yet? The kobolds who had used the portal to go directly to the last floor were just standing there with their bags of stuff. ‘Umm, Ally, why haven’t I deconstructed all that stuff?’

Ally, who had just made it to the core room, pointed over to the side where he had swiped some notifications while observing the return of the three teams. ‘You have to accept them back. When you let a monster out of your dungeon, even if you gave them instructions to immediately return, they’re free. Upon returning, you have to accept them back.

‘Just be glad the system makes this easy. Remember, your whole point is to eat all that sapient cruft in the world energy and send out the purified power. A fully realized monster? That is a ton of world energy being released and so it isn’t natural for a dungeon to easily take them back. Most unawakened dungeons tend to just have them drop whatever they brought back and head right back out because they don’t feel right anymore.’

Doyle turns to the message, ‘Huh.’

{Monsters have returned to your dungeon. Do you want to accept them back?

Yes/No/List}

‘So, is there a downside to accepting them back?’, Doyle asks as he pokes the list option, but it just lists out the seven kobolds with only the leader being differentiated from the others. Though even that was just the name having “healer” added to the front of it. It would be utterly confusing if not for the fact that when he focuses on one of the names, it highlights the kobold.

Ally shrugs, ‘They’re now fully independent monsters. You accept them back and they lose that and become proper dungeon monsters again. So, no downside for you. Also, it looks like the healer maintained his connection to the boss. If you released him, you wouldn’t get another, the semi-sapient slot, only returning once he dies.’

Doyle, ‘Huh, be kind of cruel to separate him from the other kobolds. Though if them not being accepted is the only thing keeping everything intact, I could put it off until I check out what they got instead of just seeing an after action report of how it all deconstructed.’

Ally nods, ‘While they are of your dungeon and aren’t delvers, they’re not currently one with your dungeon and so just like you can’t steal a party’s backpacks, you can’t take theirs either.’

Doyle, ‘Okay, now what have they brought me?’ and he starts to look through their backpacks, sorting everything out.

Easiest to pick out was the Mana cables. The kobolds had managed to find seven diameters of the stuff. It went from cables as fine as a human hair up to a single short piece of cable as thick as a man’s forearm. Though most of the sizes were closer to the small side, with only that big one and another about half that.

After looking at the cables, Ally and Doyle both agree that the big cable was likely for military applications, matching the mechs and such that the refugees had seen. Then the next biggest would be for the main power lines. Not many of those had been seen, but maybe the dead civilization had been smart and buried their lines where possible. No need to leave them above ground and vulnerable.

Then Doyle tried to use his deconstruction skill. Which conveniently worked. It had been a question, what with the stuff not having been automatically absorbed. However, since they weren’t outsiders, once he wants to deconstruct the stuff, it just works. This netted him the pattern for sealed quartz Mana cable at level 99.

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Should I wait on absorbing this stuff until after I break through my limit? For some reason, I doubt those cables were all exactly level 99 in quality.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘We have no clue you’re missing. It could be years so better just to deconstruct it all. Besides, my bet is only the small piece of military cable was that level of quality. Most common household stuff tends to be made by low-level crafters. Though what counts as low level will vary depending on the area.’

Doyle nods, that does make sense. Then he turns to the next collection of items. At first, they seemed to be quite desperate. An odd mish mash of boxes and plates, which despite their differences, Doyle felt were connected. The only clue was many of them had a place to slot in something or a small stud to which something could be attached.

After a bit of back-and-forth Ally sighed, ‘It must be magitech of some kind. Call the healer over and have him throw some Mana at it. If that doesn’t work, use some of that cabling.’

This finally got a result. The plates started to flop around while the boxes seemed to cause the air itself to swirl. Though this was enough for a clue.

Ally, ‘They’re a type of Mana engine. If they were actual magic items, they’d probably qualify as a basic form of perpetual motion engine.’

Doyle, ‘But what are they doing? I can sort of feel something, but it doesn’t make sense.’

Ally nodded, ‘You don’t have a fine enough sense for gravity and the effect is quite small. These basically add a bit of gravity going to the side to spin a wheel or what have you. My guess is that the boxes are actually gear trains to make use of the force better.’

Doyle cracks one box open, which reveals she was right. ‘Huh, I would figure a direct force effect would be, well, more effective?’

Ally, ‘It can be if you want a lot of power. Much better to do something to directly power it at that point. The benefit here is that using gravity is lower wear on what you’re propelling. After all, it’s just falling, whereas propelling something involves imparting force.

‘They technically aren’t true perpetual machines, even the properly enchanted versions as they run off of Mana, whether that is something you are supplying or is just being pulled out of the atmosphere. Besides, they’ll wear down, eventually.

‘However, they’re really good for long-term applications. Oddly enough, turning gravity ninety degrees to itself in a small area isn’t that hard or power intensive. Sure, try to lift yourself and you’ll have a problem, but this is redirecting gravity in a small area instead of reversing it or directly countering it.’

Doyle, ‘But why would they have so many of these? It seems like something you would standardize like batteries.’

Ally shrugged, ‘They probably were doing something stupid, like using them to turn mana into electricity to power their older devices. You know, instead of keeping the old infrastructure until it wasn’t needed. Just because magic makes mini generators more efficient, doesn’t mean you should spam them all over the place.’

Doyle, ‘How would they be more efficient with magic?’

Ally, ‘Electricity is more lively and willing to move. Same with fire and other such lively elements. Though your universe got off lucky. In some universes, the addition of magic makes using electricity for devices impossible as it will jump right out of the cable. Nevermind stuff like petroleum and gunpowder. That stuff just ignites right away and explodes with the slightest of invitations. At least your world will be able to rebuild their technology.’

Doyle, ‘So why not just use magic to make electricity directly?’

Ally, ‘While normal electricity isn’t lively enough to cause problems, making it from magic tends to have it go wild. Better to create it with some mundane spinning.’

Doyle, ‘Well, I guess I won’t figure much from them. Let’s see what I get!’ and he absorbs all of the devices.

Though the result disappoints him quite a bit. He didn’t get a pattern for the device itself, but rather of the array used to make it. Worse, it was stupidly low level.

{tiny area right angle gravity array [lv1] lv3}

Ally, ‘Why does it suck so much?’

Doyle, ‘Well, it is apparently stupid simple, like, to the point of me questioning how it even counts as an array.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘No, an array this simple should be of a much higher quality. You don’t get to mess with stuff just by drawing a couple lines unless you’re highly skilled at it. This is the kind of thing you get by cheating.

‘I’m going to guess that they either got it as a system reward or some natural array was discovered. And with how organic it looks, my bet is on the second one.’

Doyle, ‘So what, there was a place that just happened to have stuff lined up right to make this array?’

Ally nods, ‘Happens more often than you would think. Though most often natural formations and arrays tend towards hiding things, if only because that allows them to survive without being wiped away by a passing beast. Though I guess I could see this surviving if it was big enough. Despite the tiny descriptor, the actual array could end up covering a massive area.’

Doyle, ‘And because they just copied it, it is low level. None of them actually understood the damn thing and they likely didn’t want to “waste” a skill on it. After all, they already know the array. Why bother figuring out more?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Laziness is almost a creation wide constant. You’d probably only find a place with beings that doesn’t have laziness in the deepest depths of some Order corrupted universe. Though even there they would have the understanding that everything needs a rest to work most effectively.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough. Now let’s look at what else we got. Those were the biggest categories of stuff from what I can and I doubt we can figure everything out from individual pieces.’

Ally, ‘We can do a bit more of a rapid fire review? If we don’t have a clue right away, just deconstruct it and move on. While those gravity motors proved you won’t always get the pattern for the actual thing, we wouldn’t have been getting anything no matter how much we debated about what something was.’

Doyle, ‘Sounds like a plan.’

Grabbing Everything - Chapter 378

The Rest Of It - Chapter 380