[D'sP] The Twelfth Floor - Chapter 294 (Patreon)

{Twelfth floor dimensionally anchored

World Energy cap +9,700 [Constitution(97) * 100]

twelfth floor spending limit set to 51,240 [Previous floor’s limit(41,160) + Intelligence(84) * 120]

Monster level cap updated

Quintessence debt paid back by 5}

Doyle sighs to himself. You would think that after twelve times, the act of creating a new floor would become routine like brushing your teeth in the morning or some such. Maybe someday it will, for now though, each new floor feels just as strange as the last.

He shakes his core and focuses back on planning. With his double level up, the number of points he can spend has increased by about 25% from the last floor. Almost enough to make him wish he could have done the previous floor here instead.

Though Doyle quickly kicks that feeling to the curve. Every floor will have an increasing amount of points to spend and thinking like that will only cause him to save all his ideas for next time. Plus, he already knows what he has to do. Even if ironically it was the plan for the last floor originally. He needed another maze, because even if at this point the town isn’t preparing some massive reprisal, better safe than sorry.

How to do the maze though? Because while it wouldn’t be hard to make a mind breaking maze, what with portals and moving sections being a thing. However, he also wanted it to work like a normal floor. With the first maze floor he had made, things were a bit too small to be an actual challenge.

The maze components of floor three were at this point more about making it so a random miner can’t just rush down to the ore veins at the start of the day. Except thinking about it, Doyle realized there was something quite un-maze like about the third floor. At least in the more classical sense.

It was more of a cave with caverns being connected by wide passages. A classic maze would do with thinner hallways as they tend to be limited in space. Though speaking of limited space, that brought to mind another form of maze that might fit in.

Now, Doyle has to admit he is missing the most classic building material for the maze. However, lack of corn doesn’t prevent him from making a corn maze of sorts. After all, he has grass and wheat patterns to work with. Though that brings attention to the fact that grass and wheat count as separate patterns in the first place.

That detail Doyle just throws under the label of system nonsense, instead turning to what the maze should be and what monsters should inhabit it. Seconds pass as he considers all his previous experiences with such things. While he had lived in a more urban environment after grade school. The house he had grown up in was smack dab in the middle of farm country so a corn maze or two wasn’t rare to see each year.

Though admittedly, Doyle tended to see more of them than actually testing his mettle in them. Not from a lack of desire, so much as being in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking. All the public corn mazes tended to be set up near towns. So no matter how many corn fields he might have passed everyday on the way to school, few if any mazes were within walking distance.

That left another source of inspiration. Because who doesn’t love a good corn field in a scary movie? Doesn’t even need to be night for a cornfield to be scary. Row after row of corn, looking one way and you almost feel you can see to the horizon. Look the other? An impenetrable wall of green.

A good source for a dungeon maze. Though the lack of corn diminishes the atmosphere a bit. Then again, a giant field of grass with occasional plots of wheat for people to harvest sounds like an excellent floor. Whereas a field of corn would likely end up getting stripped by delvers.

Doyle nods to himself, a field of grass, taller than a man, would work as the base. As for the scary part? Well, the nature of the maze would help, but the real kicker would be the shadows. Those that twist innocent views into forlorn landscapes filled with hidden danger.

So, of course, that meant using the lesser shadow wolves. Doyle already had a wolf floor and used the lesser shadow wolves in a few places. Why not make a floor for them as a whole?

And what better location than a grass maze that they could run through? Plus, if the light source was offset to the side, there would be a ton of natural shadows to take advantage of. The question was how big it would be and how much spatial warping?

Obviously, there needed to be some tricks so people can’t just walk through the walls. Well, actually, make it so they can do that, but it makes it harder to finish the maze. That feels like the way to go about it.

Doyle pauses as an idea comes to him. To make a challenging maze that was extra tough on those just wanting to get through? All you have to do is make the straightforward way the most challenging.

With that in mind, Doyle turns to the size of the field to be. He could specify the size, down to the meter if need be. Except that doesn’t feel right for this.

Rather, a field that seems to go on forever would more fit the theme. Too bad Doyle didn’t have any wood golems or pumpkin based monsters to work with. Maybe later.

For now, Doyle had to figure out the way to make a seemingly infinite grass maze that could both separate a group and bring them together as needed. That honestly didn’t need too much room. Just look at the sixth floor!

Doyle had way more space now than he did back then. A simple infinite scrolling maze should be a piece of cake. Except he wanted more. Any 2d maze has a limit, even with portals involved.

If Doyle was going to limit himself like that. He might as well just make a few four-way intersections and have a really long complex series of directions you need to take. More than enough pre-system video games had included that sort of madness. Doyle wanted something more.

Like a ball of clay, Doyle mentally grabs the floor and begins to knead it. Concepts like up and down or even simple things like distance begin to mix together. Not that Doyle notices, trapped in a moment of intense concentration.

Dirt over stone, planted with grass. Land to all sides, yet also above and below. The sky overcast, yet given to a feeling as if one would scrape their head on the clouds. Straight lines losing their direction and shapes with the wrong sides.

Grass in perfect rows, viewing into the infinite, yet just steps away from another path. Distance between each barely enough that you can’t reach through and yet to attempt to walk it leading down dark paths. A man could lose themselves both physically and spiritually, yet be only moments from both the entrance and exit.

Fae lights bob along just above the grass. Willowisps, foxfire, ghost lights, giddy flame, Irrlitch. Denizens of the swamp, taken up home where none should be. Their paths are straight, yet they wander randomly through the sky. Patterns emerge, yet do they really?

With each sweep, they leave behind new shadows. Their arrival only brings light that hides. Old shadows slink off to welcome the new.

The more Doyle presses on the floor, the more he loses himself to it. From imagining hands molding clay, at some point such images fall away. Now he is shaping things purely without form. Each change brings new depth to his work.

Holes appear in dead ends that lead downward. Meeting up with other places where rock stairs ascend into the sky and yet at some point you find yourself climbing out of a hole. The transition was a mystery that even the most vigilant watchers would miss.

A cold wind whips through the field, waving the grass until new paths form behind it. Then, as quickly as it came, the wind dies down, leaving the maze changed. All the while grass continues to grow, reaching to the sky and righting itself after falling. Even seemingly more permanent paths made of cobblestone can quickly fall to disrepair and vanish.

Yet there always seems to be more paths to tread. As one vanishes to nature, out of nowhere, a new path can be found, freshly laid out. There is always a path from any point to the entrance and exit, yet no map can contain this place.

Then came the monsters. Simple enough monsters. The Lesser Shadow Wolf came with Teamwork, Bite, and Shadow Phasing. All important skills, but they need something extra for this floor and so 60 adjustment points are used to unlock a fourth slot.

He just needed to get the right skill to fill the slot. Doyle, still in the middle of his creative throws, barely needs to pull up the list to grab what is needed. As if lit by a neon light, it stands out to him, Eerie Howl. Another ten points to grab it and equip the skill.

The lesser shadow wolves weren’t the strongest monsters he had available, but for this task, they would work perfectly. After all, myconids aren’t his strongest either and yet they did the job just fine. If anything, the wolves should work better as every one of them was mentally superior to even the lesser myconids, with only the regular myconids beating them. Though even ignoring that, each wolf would have the teamwork skill.

It wasn’t perfect, but Doyle had never liked the idea of perfection, anyway. Rather, he preferred always reaching further and aiming for excellence. And as he came down from his moment, the floor that spread before him looked exactly like that. Excellent!

Admittedly, at 500 a pop, 51,240 points didn’t spread too far, especially after setting some aside for the farm. Though 90 wolves out hunting should be enough with 120 waiting in the farm. It had been tempting to make more changes, but this would have to be enough.

Doyle couldn’t help but take a moment to just relax. The stress of creating this floor was greater than anything he had previously experienced. While he could feel that it was still the same size as it should have been, he could also tell that it was something more.

Not only that, but there was no need to carve anything for his conceptual reinforcement. The very creation of the floor had imbued the place beyond anything his simple artistic works could manage. The entire floor felt like what his limit breaker cliff had felt like, except different.

This creation wouldn’t reward others with a limit break, that was for sure. However, something lurked which normal system mechanics seemed ill prepared to handle. Not that the system couldn’t, Doyle felt that very clearly. Rather, this was to be one of those mysteries in the world which made people wonder. The spark of the unknown.

Oh, and if you tried to raid the floor, bad things would happen. Doyle wasn’t sure how it worked exactly, in fact it felt like it might never do quite the same thing twice. Within the strange workings that he had built, Doyle could feel the touch of fae powers twisting to an unheard beat and chaotic wills. There was a connection there that led through him and to his partner. Though if he hadn’t been looking so closely, he wouldn’t have noticed.

Which might be a problem as it seems like Ally hadn’t noticed this connection either. Doyle turned to her to find out what was up and show her the new floor.

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