[D'sP] Extra Spicy - Chapter 195 (Patreon)

Back in the dungeon, Ally claps, ‘That was quicker than expected! I was going to bring it up in a couple years but I guess your world has stabilized more than normal.’

Doyle tilts to the side.

Ally laughs, ‘You ever notice how all the fantasy worlds had multiple races? That isn’t natural. Sure, sometimes you will get a world that technically has two but this is because elves like to be extra spicy racist. The whole dark elf thing? They’re just elves. Your world wasn’t the best, but at least there was an attempt to come together despite differences in skin color.

‘Though I guess even more technically, modern day dark elves would count as a different species as an elf can’t have kids with a dark elf without magical or technological interference. That is even worse than humans and ancients, what you would call neanderthals. The only hold up, is I don’t know if it counts when they purposefully did it to themselves? Wood elves, of course, just live their lives despite being the quote unquote, unholy mixture of both or as others would call them, regular elves.

‘Never say that around a light elf though, they co-opted the name pretty hard. My mom always loved to tweak their noses over that. I don’t really blame her on that. She has lived on quite a few worlds and watched the whole thing happen time and again. All it takes is one outside influence to get to an elven planet before they are powerful enough.

‘Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked there. Back to why most fantasy worlds end up with multiple distinct species. This happens. Not specifically just from a system placing them, of course, what with all those universes that started with magic and didn’t need it.

‘What it is, is that anytime an end of the world type thing happens you have whoever is in charge spread them around. At the low end of power, this happens through the races themselves traveling through space. At the high end, you have systems and gods playing around with the population. Gods in particular have a reputation for not even waiting for the world to end before playing with that kind of thing.’

Doyle lets the silence stretch for a moment before responding. ‘So wolfkin? What’s up with that? They look human except for what look almost like cosmetic differences.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Blame your universe. This place loves the human form. Even when it can’t manage to copy paste humans to a planet, you end up with stuff like elves, dwarves, and beastkin. If you want something a bit more divergent, they are out there, just under a different classification.

‘Quick, run down, kin are what you have out there. Based on a thing and they have some benefits from that, but overall human. Then you have the folk. Generally, they will have a humanoid form but some part of them is heavily based on their source. It can be as simple as a human body with an animal head, a complete fusion, or anywhere in between. Oh, and there are, of course shifters like werewolves but those are tricky.’

Doyle nods, ‘That makes sense. Even in our fantasy the idea behind shifters can’t seem to make up its mind. Now let’s get into the nitty gritty of it. How often should we expect people like that and similar?’

Ally answers him as well as she can but in the end that answer is only the system knows. Though of course with a lot more words. About the only useful bit Doyle got out of it, was related to her first comment about the world having stabilized.

The basic idea behind it is that the system has a window within which it will introduce new races. This window started the moment a world has settled enough from the introduction of magic until true nations begin to form. That time period is when the world is safe enough to add them but not so settled as to do more harm than good.

All those fantasy stories about demon kings and such were the so-called demons are just living on the same planet as the others are a good example of what can happen if done wrong, sometimes purposefully so. After all, a god will get a lot more worship if the populace believes they are all that stand between them and the other.

After that was settled, Doyle went back to working on the stone sphere on the seventh floor. He was getting close to completing the outlines when something quite interesting happened. Jim was back in the dungeon but with a new team. Most of the members weren’t too out there. Susan, Zach, and Sammy had all been in the dungeon enough.

Besides them, though, there were two oddities. The first was that Doctor was with them. Sure, he delved with the best of them, but that was generally not with the other founders. His healing was just not all that needed by them when compared to other core members of the town.

But the person who really threw Doyle for a loop was Jay Sela, the son of Camila. You know, the leader of the wolfkin that just showed up in town a few weeks ago. Sure, the wolfkin had been delving into the dungeon. Ace even gave them more slots so they could catch up.

It is just that up until now; they had at most included one of the humans in town, instead choosing to fill out their roster with other wolfkin. More than that, from the sounds of it, they planned to go as far as they can. They even seemed to want to break through the boss and hit up the sixth floor.

Now, it had been over a month since the founders had ganged up on the boss and passed through. In that time, with the reward of beef in front of them, the town as a whole had advanced in power. It wasn’t an odd day when someone got to the fifth floor. The core citizens regularly would defeat two to three of the patrols before retreating.

Hell, the people farming the first couple floors would sometimes head on down to take a look. The first patrol tended to be too much for them, but they tried. None of them, however, believed they could beat the boss yet. After all, it took basically all of the founders to beat the boss even after she was on her own.

Ally, however, felt this was about the right time for a legitimate boss kill to happen. The town was growing fast both in population and strength so it was just a matter of time. Time which might have run out.

Jim didn’t even bother to do a shakeout run of the first floor. The floor just was not any sort of threat to the group. It wasn’t until the fourth floor that they had to slow down as even the maze saw them walk through it without pause. Though that was mostly because today’s configuration had a pretty direct route from the entrance to the exit.

Mind you, the wolves on the fourth floor weren’t all that difficult for them either. As far as Doyle could tell, the team was simply using it to get in some last-minute practice for their teamwork. Not that they needed it. While they hadn’t delved into his dungeon with this particular group setup, it was very apparent that it wasn’t a quick team up. No, the group had been working together for at least a week.

Not that Doyle minded how quickly they steamrolled through the early floors. There was a reason why the system just automatically gave out teleport checkpoints. When the point of a dungeon is to have adventurers drag out as much loot as possible, you don’t want to hold back the stronger ones from getting to the good stuff.

Then Doyle dropped his wool gathering as Jim stepped through onto the fifth floor. They had an unlucky roll of the dice as the patrol was just then passing by the entrance room and saw him. Sure, the kobold patrol can’t enter the safe room, but now they know they are there.

In fact, after the town beat, the boss Doyle had to go and order the kobolds to not just station a patrol there. He did notice that they tended to linger a bit longer in the area, but he felt that was fair so left them alone.

Jim and the leader, the kobold with an axe, stared at each other until the rest of the group had entered the floor. At that point, the kobolds retreated a distance and formed up, ready for an attack. Jim just shakes his head and turns to Jay.

Jay takes a couple sniffs and shakes his head. As far as he could tell, there weren’t any other kobolds nearby. Sure, a wolfkin doesn’t exactly have the same ability to smell things like a wolf does, but their sense of smell is definitely well above a humans.

From there, Jim takes a good five minutes or so to watch the monsters. Then, after another check with Jay points out the leader, healer, and the spear kobold farthest to the right. The rest of them had fidgeted and shifted around, only those three had shown signs of extended training. The rest of the group nods as they pay extra attention to the three.

Kobolds who just happened to be the ones ensouled through the bosses Soul of the Community path. It hadn’t gone unnoticed by the town that a few of the kobolds seemed to be learning along with them. Not everyone was able to point them out, but Jim, in particular had gotten quite good at it.

Thus prepared; Susan, Sammy, and Jay charge forward and out of the safe room. From the kobold’s back line, a ball of ice and blade of wind flies towards them. Zach isn’t a slouch though and while he can’t quite manage a double counterspell yet, a sheet of summoned wood easily took the brunt of the attack, with the rest being deflected to the left.

As that sheet of wood vanishes, an arrow flies out and strikes true, stabbing into the eye of shield kobold second to the right. The shield kobold is knocked over having not expected this and if not for a quick work of the kobold healer she would have died right there. Then the shield kobold dies, anyway.

Doctor didn’t have anyone to heal yet, so put into practice a little anti-healing. It wasn’t a harm spell like some roleplaying games like to put as the yin to healing’s yang. No, this was simply an act of undoing. What once was magically healed returned to its previous state.

At this point, the three melee fighters crashed into the kobold’s shield wall. A wall that now sported a hole which Susan took full advantage of to slip in and try to take out the ensouled spear kobold. The kobold leader, however, had seen this coming, Jim not exactly being circumspect about pointing out their targets.

Susan dodges back to avoid a bash from the kobold leader’s bronze shield. Though she wouldn’t be a Barrai if she didn’t manage to slip something in. While not killing the ensouled spear kobold, Susan does manage to flick out a throwing needle that lodges in the kobold’s shin.

Not the most deadly of wounds, but the poison on the needle is bad news bears. This was a local vintage though, so not a killer. No, it was just created by processing the myconid spores and so the ensouled spear kobold’s body locked up, paralyzed. A heal from the kobold healer goes uncontested as while that does remove the needle, it does not take care of the poison.

While magic healing can seem all powerful, you need to use the right magic. A spell to heal a wound would aggravate a cold and simply remove the damage from a poison. No, you need a spell to kill the cold or remove the poison.