[D'sP] Been A While - Chapter 398 (Patreon)

Ally putters around the dungeon for a little, but there isn’t really anything for her to do. Doyle had just recently automated the floors and so she didn’t even need to check in on the camera and such. That turns her attention outward.

The town was thriving, some would even call it a city. It didn’t quite have the permanent population for that. Though if only counting the average people staying the night, it would be close. Sure, counting the day time population would push it over that magic 5k people seem to settle on for a city on this planet. But Ally considers that cheating because way too many people arrive and leave.

It was honestly kind of shocking to her. Many of the merchants seemed to prefer stopping here for a quick purchasing spree, before heading right back to Bennett town. Yes, she could understand the fact it meant getting a head start on travel to their destination.

Except, the biggest thing that allowed them to do this was the near complete lack of bargaining that seemed to go on. Oh, sure, they’d dicker about small things. But when it came to their purchase of massive quantities of meat or other food stuff?

They just paid what the stated price was. Ally got that until the system came, they had mostly left such things behind in this area. That with technological mass production of goods, one item was equivalent to another. But they should be able to see that wasn’t the case anymore!

A goat steak from the first floor is inferior to one from the sixth floor. Maybe not by a large degree, but higher-level things inherently provide higher-level goods. You can make paper that can resist scissors, as long as whatever you made the paper out of had a level significantly higher than the scissors.

This was just a fact of life now. The amount of mystical energy within something determines so much. And this world just kept having more and more power. Irritated with how well things are going in town, she turns to the Internet.

A good way to catch up on things that have nothing to do with this planet besides the pre-system history. In a fun twist, this actually meant she could keep up with what was happening in the fae court. Sure, Ally couldn’t chat with them and wasn’t able to check on more minor courts as those had the potential to actually interfere here. Good thing none of that mattered to her.

Like, sure, Ally’s mom had the connections to affect this planet despite the quarantine. Except the system wouldn’t allow her. A good thing as anytime a being on her mom’s level touched a place, the weight of their existence would change it. Regular mortal worlds had decent odds of falling into the Fae Wilds if she turned too much of her attention on them.

And while the potential is interesting, it doesn’t keep Ally glued to the web. She shouldn’t be having a problem with this. The reason it is a dungeon fairy and not anything else is because the fae mindset is particularly suited to this sort of position. Yet for some reason, she was jumpy right now.

Not to say the fae couldn’t be flighty. In fact, many are. However, just as equally, a fae could spend a hundred years cleaning a house every night as long as a saucer of milk is left out for them nightly. And it isn’t like they all would go and do something else during the day. Some brownies would literally just finish cleaning and wait motionlessly for the next night to arrive.

Except, no matter how much she wanted to avoid it, Ally knew what the issue was. Her own growth. Seeing Doyle’s stats at level ten was honestly shocking to her. If it wasn’t for Ace and friends, she doubted people would have made it past the 11th floor. Even beating the 10th floor would be in question. Ally sighs and pulls up her status.

{Name: Ally Huxley

Race: Autumn Court Strange Dungeon Fae

Soul Bound: Doyle Huxley

Paths: [0] Redeemed Dungeon Companion III 100/100, True Dungeon Companion III 100/100, Primal Magic I 10/10, Limit Breaker I 1/1, Hidden Advisor 15/15, Fount of Knowledge 30/30, Godly Friend 75/75, Unseen Watcher 120/120, Hidden Advisor 30/30, System Screen Multitasker 100/100, Autumn’s Jester 3/100

Level: 23

S[133] A[170] C[146] I[303] W[207] P[196] D[181] K[371] L[257]

Skills [5/10 Class, 3/5+1 General]: Tutor lv122, Primal Glamor lv7, Courtly Manners lv31, Telepathy lv174, Soul Sight lv61, Dungeon Scryer lv215, Bargain lv72, Spatial Slip lv7}

Her stats aren’t bad for someone at level 23. It isn’t her that is weak. Rather, it is the people here who are strong. Ally had known this would be the case right from the start. A newly integrated world’s population was always stronger.

Not because the system boosted them, though many would like to blame it on that. No, rather, since everything is new to them, even magic itself, they gain more experience. Not as in the nebulous thing that gains you levels, but life experience, which is exactly what paths feed off of.

Sure, the stats and paths gained this way aren’t the end all, be all. A powerful being isn’t going to be powerful because they had a couple hundred extra stat points when barely into a double digit level. However, it certainly helps survive long enough to become powerful.

Also, it didn’t help that she basically started at level 10. Just thinking back on how, at that level, she didn’t even have a single stat break 30, let alone 100. Though she probably could have made up some ground with different paths.

Ally had, admittedly, focused on paths that ended up enhancing non-stat abilities. The perfect example being the hundred points sunk into “System Screen Multitasker”. It did what it said on the tin, enhanced her ability to multitask with the blue screens. However, as with most paths that directly deal with manipulating the system, it didn’t provide any stats at all!

Still, the extra control and ability to use macros was too handy. Besides, you rarely got the option for a system path if you haven’t gone all in on it to begin with. At least, her class path granted some significant per level increases.

Though if there was one thing she should focus on even above the paths, it was her skills. Doyle was having problems getting bottlenecked, while Ally certainly had not. She’d even managed to get a skill over level 200. To be fair, it is the dungeon scryer skill, which she has multiple paths devoted to.

It would be hard not to gain a massive number of levels in it. One of the virtuous cycles of the system. Focus on a skill and you’ll get paths for it. Those paths will help you use the skill better or in different ways, gaining levels in the skill.

Though with all her skill growth, she’s missing something important. New skills, especially ones that would qualify as part of her class. Worse, the system has heavily been restricting her ability to look up potential skills.

She looks over towards where Doyle’s core is. They’d been getting along a lot better, but she still felt torn up about how far their relationship had sunk previously. Ally shakes her head, she understands that a relationship, especially one as close as theirs, isn’t a matter of balancing benefits. They’re a team and now the both of them are properly handling their side of things.

Ally takes one last look at her status before closing it. On the one hand, she understands that Doyle doesn’t really understand what sharing his last name with her means. Hades, she hadn’t even thought about it when it first happened.

But there is a reason for all the stories about fae wanting to steal your name. While it isn’t some sort of True Name thing, for Fae, their own names have power. To share his last name and be soulbound? A gift like none other. Even if, as a dungeon fairy, she didn’t actually get any of the usual benefits.

That is mostly because this system restricted it. Most fae are limited in how they can gain someone’s name because of the required procedure. A dungeon fae can manufacture the situations in a way that doesn’t go against those limitations. After all, if it was as simple as, “Hey, what’s your name?”, and then shaking their hand, way more people would lose their names.

And while Ally is diving a little too deep into her self worries, Ace is being frustrated. They built a giant third wall and that was the easiest part.

Ace stares down at the paperwork in front of him. Because of course, once making paper was figured out with their resources, someone would magic up a solution for mass production. As after all, you don’t need masterwork paper for normal paperwork. You reserve that for special deals and letters to the powerful. So now Ace has a bunch of extra paperwork generated by others.

At least when it was just his team, the paperwork had a clear purpose. They needed to record what had happened and paper lasts long enough for that purpose. Besides, paper is very compact so you can fit a lot in a preservation box, if needed.

Though if you aren’t careful, it ends up being preservation boxes all the way down. After all, the box isn’t inside itself, so what will protect it? Admittedly, you quickly run into diminishing returns because stacking them inside each other comes up against the problem that each of them still needs power to work.

The inner ones end up starving if you aren’t careful. Though that is a strategy in and of itself. After all, they’re only starved until the outermost one breaks down and its power is not available further in.

Ace closed his eyes as he felt the beginning of a headache. There was always that joke about needing paperwork in triplicate. Except he understood it now. In fact, only three copies? That was for simple paperwork.

Well, he couldn’t be sure this was why it was done pre-system. For him, it was needed so everyone involved had a copy. Which, as he thought about it, probably was the reason? But yeah, at least with magic, it was easier to handle.

Err, well, as easy as that paper where when you write on the top sheet, it transfers to the two other pages attached to it. They even copied the idea of having the pages be different colors. Ace cringed as he realized they had managed to reach tech parity for paperwork as of a few decades ago.

Then there was everything else, which was quite a bit more out of date. Because of course! Paperwork would be the first thing to modernize. There wasn’t even a proper printing press yet. People’s magic control wasn’t good enough to whip up the tiles and no one had gotten around to hand carving them.

And to be honest, Ace wouldn’t be surprised if it was left until someone could magic it up. The current batch of wood carvers were more into artistic expression instead of rote copying. Not that he blames them, it just made things difficult for him.

Ace sighed and pushed the current stack of papers to the side and pulled forward another stack. At least the paperwork from Bennett town’s officials, tended to be sensible. He was so close to banning the “good” churches.

There didn’t a day go by that one or another petitioned to be officially recognized. Though at least the most delusional that wanted to be made the state religion or to kick out the other religions had stopped or gotten kicked out for other things.

It was kind of funny, at least in Ace’s mind, that he preferred the “evil” religions. They didn’t bother him except for legitimate things. Of course, most such things involved the “good” religions harassing them in illegal manners. Not that they didn’t harass them right back. The “evil” religions just kept within the bounds of the law.

Cheating Themselves - Chapter 397

Am I Strange? - Chapter 399