[D'sP] Rather Not Know - Chapter 394 (Patreon)

Ally sighs, ‘I really wasn’t properly prepared for this. Not anyone’s fault. My instructors couldn’t have known I’d be assigned to you. Better to prepare dungeon fairies for what they’re going to experience and not a one off bit of nonsense like our situation.

‘Just the fact I got assigned to a dungeon on a newly integrated world is odd enough! My classmates on fully integrated worlds will have easy access to the instructors. And here I am, unable to even call my mom whenever I want, let alone people with the information I need.’

Doyle nods, ‘Being cut off from your community, even if not fully, is always going to be hard.’

Ally, ‘Not that you’re doing much better. If anything, you’re even more cut off!’

Doyle tilts back, ‘True. I am completely cut off and don’t even know what happened with my family. However, that was partly by choice. Not the family thing, the community thing.’

Ally, ‘Do you want to check up on your family? It would be hard and we wouldn’t get more information than whether they’re doing alright or not, but it shouldn’t be impossible.’

Doyle stays quiet. He isn’t certain what would be worse, knowing they’re out there suffering or already dead. Before the system, he hadn’t even visited them that often to begin with and, shocker, hadn’t really connected with them for the most part.

Doyle sighs, ‘No.’

Ally nods, ‘The offer is always on the table. I have some favors I can pull to get it done.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I... I can’t. If they show up here, I’ll deal with it. For now? I don’t know. I just don’t know what I would do. If they’re fine, that would be one thing, but what are the chances of that? Besides, my parents aren’t exactly young.’

Ally pats his core, ‘We’ll deal with life as it comes. Now, do you want to get back to designing the floor or should we take a break?’

Doyle sighs, ‘Let’s get the floor finished.’

Ally nods, ‘Will do.’

Doyle turns to the seventeenth floor. It needed his most dreaded enemy, trees. Though right now, it was just what he needed. A mindless task to grind away at.

And boy, was there a lot of trees to create. An ocean of them!

The joke cheered him up some and Doyle focused on actually making them. For this floor, he decided to go with a more northern style forest. In other words, pine trees everywhere and a chill in the air. The floor wasn’t going to have snow or anything, but people would certainly notice it.

Not that pine trees was all there was. Doyle made sure that there was a variety. Well, a visual variety. They were all just wood and leaves placed around to mimic different trees. Which to be fair, is pretty cool since with a tree pattern, he would have been limited to whatever trees he had access to.

After the trees came a decent variety of resource nodes. Not all of them made sense. It isn’t like modern wheat will be growing in a small bunch like some ornamental grass. Still, it does the job and so Doyle ignores the strangeness.

Though there is a temptation to add a random element to where the resources would grow. Doyle tamps down on that desire in the end. Maybe later it can be implemented.

For now, Doyle turns to another important resource, the ore. If the kobolds are going to be smithing, they need metal ore to do that with. Good thing there is a giant cliff. Just one catch, Doyle doesn’t want this to be another mining spot for the delvers.

In his mind, the floor has become a location for the kobolds to shine. So, if the ore was available to mine? It would turn the kobolds into just another road bump for people to mine the ore. Especially with the plan to have mithril.

Even down on the 13th floor, despite the kobolds being a challenge, Ace’s people had gotten raiding the mithril down to a science. They sneak a team of people with a couple mages skilled at earth manipulation past the kobold camp. Then they hit the mine, kill the kobolds, and extract the ore in its entirety.

After that, they simply backtrack a bit and climb up the wall far enough away from the kobold camp to get away unnoticed. And yes, they are literally carrying chunks of ore, some bigger than they are, right up a sheer cliff. It really brought home how much stronger people are now.

Before, they would be fighting enemies of about equal strength and it hid the power of even the people who weren’t focused on Strength now had. It was honestly getting to where the limit on what some of the Strength focused people could carry was now how sturdy what they were lifting was. They could pick up a house, as long as the house didn’t come apart.

A tough ask when you’re trying to pick up something so with your hands. If they weren’t also starting to tap into the supernatural side of the Strength stat, they’d be ripping hand-sized chunks out of things by accident. Doyle had seen something like this described in a story as “world of clay”. In other words, being so strong that everything was like clay to you.

Good thing a part of Strength is the equivalent of touch telekinesis. The classic filler of all those plot holes where super heros would lift things that wouldn’t stay in one piece. The power where instead of being super strong, you’re actually lifting whatever it is as a whole with mind powers.

That isn’t how this works, though. Well, it is, but as Doyle could clearly see, the effect isn’t Mana, Qi, Psionic, or otherwise. Simply put, their Strength itself is forcing itself into reality. Kind of insane to see after living for so long in a non-magical world.

This did turn his thoughts to something else. ‘Hey, Ally, what’s up with the basic stats? Strength forcing itself into reality so they can carry things that they shouldn’t be able to? It almost seems like stuff like Mana and Qi could end up redundant.’

Ally laughs, ‘Never redundant, but that is because they combine. Sort of. I’m not sure on the details, but going by how your stat view thing works? My best guess is that after a certain point the energies you use get mixed into your stats.

‘Which is super important if you plan to travel. Mana isn’t the same everywhere. It isn’t like gravity where it works the same across the entire universe. If a weak magic user from one side of the universe got teleported to the other side, they would find the local Mana resist them, maybe even to the point of being unusable.’

Doyle, ‘Odd that.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘If stuff like gravity is a “law” of a universe, then magic is the “chaos”. However, from what I’ve learned, once a power combines with you? That power is now being carried with you wherever you go.

‘Though I will note, with a system in place, the variance will be much lower, while also much more abrupt. Instead of a gradual change across space and time, the system will maintain borders. On one side, magic works one way and on the other, a different way. The only exception is Quintessence, which is like gravity, the same across an entire universe.’

Doyle nods. Yes, he finds this a bit odd, but he does understand the concept behind it. Though just as equally, his instincts tell him that it won’t matter to him, even if he has entrances on opposite sides of the universe. This causes him to pause.

Ally had turned back to her screens, but Doyle got her attention again, ‘I think I just figured it out.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘So how do you think it works?’

Doyle, ‘My instincts told me this wouldn’t affect me and not because I am technically my own dimension. Now, it didn’t tell me specifically why, but I should have it figured out.

‘See, I feel that it won’t affect me because I eat away the differences in the powers. What if not all cruft is the same? Just like attunement, the cruft flavors the power. Any magic user can easily use my Mana, but out and about, they’re using “flavored” Mana.

‘It is like water. I grew up in one place and the water was just water. However, when I moved, the water in the new place had a “taste”. To a magic user, the local Mana has no flavor in the same way. Yes, you can get used to water from other areas, but that takes time. Though I guess this also works with accents? After all, many people see it as other people having an accent and that they don’t.’

Ally frowns, ‘That is shockingly plausible. However, if it was that, I would probably know it already. There is probably another element? Like, maybe it also gains something from the local Akashic record?

‘I know that borders tend to be between culture groups, though that is a chicken or the egg sort of situation. Is there a cultural border because how powers work is divided or does power now work differently because of the cultures being different?’

Doyle nods, ‘Could be, though I really should focus on the floor. I seem to be quite distracted right now.’

Ally laughs, ‘Fair enough! Sometimes that happens.’

Doyle sighs and nods again, turning back to the floor. He needed to plan out the ore deposits. Except, does he want a deposit?

Though having been away from the problem, an answer pops into his head now that he is back on it. The point of this floor was for the kobolds to have been mining here for a while, so of course the ore deposits would be mostly played out. 

Instead of putting in an actual vein of ore? Have a bunch of tunnels with signs of them originally being a vein and at the end a facade of ore. So yeah, delvers could go in and chip that away, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

As for how the kobolds would get ore? They’d go in and do the work, but as long as delvers aren’t on the floor, ore chunks will spawn in. That way, the kobolds can keep working and once delvers show up, the vein will “happen” to run out of ore right then. A tidy solution.

Now Doyle had to figure out where the deposits would be positioned along the cliff. A pause and he realizes the answer. Copper, tin, and iron can go randomly along the wall. On the other hand, the mithril will be placed behind the waterfall. Oh, and a copse of hardwood trees being used for charcoal.

In fact, Doyle figures this would be a good floor to introduce steel on. Bronze has been the mainstay of his monster’s equipment till now, but for the boss on floor 20, something more was needed. This was thinking ahead a little too much, but Doyle can’t help but consider making a male kobold be the boss and seeing what kind of magic ends up being tossed around.

The question is, should he make it an elder kobold? Which isn’t something he wants to answer right now, anyway. After all, he hasn’t even seen how they do in a fight. So, even if he does end up making floors all the way to 20, he would hold off on the 20th until a group got here and actually fought the elder kobolds.

Doyle shakes his core and puts these plans for the future to the side. The basic environment is now set up and so it is time to add the monsters. A much easier task when limiting the options to kobolds and elder kobolds as there aren’t any odd ball numbers to worry about. Just 50 and 100 makes for simple math.

Math that is done quickly and makes Doyle wish he could still whistle. With 105,240 points on the floor, even after removing the ten percent farm reserve, means 1,894 kobolds. And any two kobold slots can be rolled together for an elder kobold.

Just Kobolds - Chapter 393

The Lakes Are Too Small - Chapter 395