[D'sP] A New Deal - Chapter 346 (Patreon)

Doyle is stuck thinking about his hexapes for a while, when suddenly Ally comes in and alerts him to something more important. Mainly that he once again has enough sapient sourced energy to create a new floor. This shocks him as he expected it to take a while longer. In fact, his expectation that this would be the case was a big reason he was spending so much attention on holding Ace and company on his thirteenth floor.

Ally shrugs, ‘We got a new influx of people. It seems that some of the further away towns have had their misfits reaching that critical breakpoint where they can’t grow fast enough locally. You’ve not noticed because they’re already strong enough to zip through the first five levels.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Then what’s catching them? Basically, before this, those who have made it past that point are out of the danger zone. Sure, some people still die, but it tends to be from bad luck instead of lacking skill. Plus, they tend not to party wipe past that point as they’ve learned to retreat.’

Ally shrugs, ‘They are dying for basically the same reasons, just pushed back. The reason those others are doing fine is because they’ve learned their lesson on how to delve into a dungeon on those early floors. On the other hand, these new people are blowing through the early floors and so learn their lessons later.

‘Given enough time, I’m sure we’ll have idiots dying on every floor. It has only been as stable as it has been, because everyone was new at it. Now that we’re seeing a mixture of skill levels, things are starting to stabilize like they would elsewhere.

‘Also, Ace and the others have sort of put their thumb on the scale. This is especially true with Jim. For some reason, he is very good at getting new guild members trained up on how to dungeon delve. Even more impressive though, is the fact his training is generalized instead of specific to your dungeon.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Humanity, at least on this planet, aren’t really in a position to be spending their lives so freely. I kind of wish Ace would force everyone that plans to enter to take that training.’

Ally, ‘That’s not fair, some of those who are dying aren’t just humans. The wolfkin are getting in on the action and, if anything? They’re much worse off when it comes to population.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Welp, I hope they can manage themselves. While I do feel something for them, I’m not going to make it any easier on them than I already have. This isn’t a deathtrap, but I’m not adding padding to all the edges.’

Ally laughs, ‘That would be hilarious to see, though! Just imagine it, the wolves all have hot pink foam coating their claws and teeth. They’d still probably be able to kill, mind you, it would be a lot harder.’

Doyle nods, ‘Life, and death as the case may be, finds a way. Anyway, let’s get started on that new floor. I’m thinking no boss this time. While they are close to my last floor already, just increasing the distance between checkpoints will help keep them from advancing so quickly.’

Ally, ‘And speaking of which, did you figure out what you wanted to do with resetting checkpoints?’

Doyle, ‘Yes and no. First up, I’m not going to force people to redo the floors on some kind of schedule. While that would help reset people who did stuff like pay their way to the deeper floors, doing so would just mean they had to pay again. It isn’t like resetting the people farming the sixth floor would suddenly make it so they can’t beat the fifth floor boss.

‘Rather, this will purely be a punishment for people. Is it possible that I’ll reset someone who cheats to get past a boss? Sure, but I’m not going to put that into stone. Instead, it will be an automatic punishment for stuff like purposeful raids. Which I’m thinking of turning over to the System to handle. Well, to the Adventurers Guild who will pass it onto the System to monitor.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘It isn’t that important of a thing, but passing it off to the system?’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I’m not passing it to the system. I’m delegating a small portion of the responsibility to an entity better prepared to handle it. There is no way for me to check in on every team that accidentally or “accidentally” bumps into another team on the same floor.

‘Sure, in theory it should be pretty obvious if a group is raiding a boss. However, what about if someone just catches up with the group in front of them? With the system handling it, not only am I passing off the responsibility, but also the recognition.

‘The system can flash up a warning to any delvers about to get into that sort of situation and it won’t be the dungeon talking to them. Sure, this won’t actually stop them from raiding the boss, but it will make using such a method to beat them pointless. After all, what good is beating the boss if you don’t get the checkpoint?’

Ally, ‘Well, that does sound like a good deal for you. What’s the catch? Neither the Guild nor the system hands out stuff like this.’

Doyle, ‘This one actually is mostly free. What I’m giving up is the ability to use this against guild sanctioned raids.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘And why would you ever want a raid, even if it is Guild sanctioned? Or rather, especially if it is Guild sanctioned?’

Doyle nods, ‘It sounds crazy, partly because it is. However, I read the paperwork and true raids are still something they have to get permission for under this deal. The kind of raids they are talking about aren’t the “beat the boss with all the people” kind of raids.

‘Rather, this is mostly about educational raids. Stuff like having a team of new adventurers doing their first delve while accompanied by a senior member of the Guild. Now, for other dungeons, I can see this being a bad thing. I’m sure a ton of deaths come from newly trained kids being stupid.

‘I don’t want to be the child murder pit. Will there occasionally be a party of adults needing lessons? Sure, but most of the time, this sort of thing is going to be kids either just out of, or maybe even still in, grade school.

‘Plus? In the long term, this will be better for growth. Dungeons where the Guild can do this will obviously be preferred for them to start people out at. Sure, they can manage it in unawakened dungeons that just haven’t managed to protect against raiding. However, this deal makes it an official thing instead of a gray area.’

Ally, ‘Well, it sounds like you’ve thought a lot about it and I really don’t have anything against it. So, since you aren’t giving up control, you can at least give it a go. Unless, of course, they have some sort of minimum length rider on it?’

Doyle, ‘Yes, but no. If I cancel it before the first decade is up, they have a month before it actually cancels. However, now is the time to make the deal if I’m going to at all. If we weren’t being isolated by the system, this would be too risky.

‘All it would take is for the guild to call in outside reinforcement before the month is up and close my dungeon in a permanent manner, if they felt a need to. Right now? The world will still be isolated a decade later and so that extra month isn’t as heavy a consequence.’

Ally, ‘I actually feel you’re cutting it a little close. Yes, the world will be isolated, but in a decade people will likely have connected again. Plus, by then, someone will have grown strong enough to damage your core.

‘Right now, you’re just riding on the fact that your core is too magically dense for them to currently hurt you in the same way a pre-system gun wouldn’t even phase Ace. Quintessence is stupid powerful, but you are not innately any more energy dense than anyone else your level. Which combined with your slow leveling speed will mean it isn’t going to protect you as long as you might think.’

Doyle, ‘I hadn’t really considered that. Still going through with it though.’

Ally rolls her eyes, ‘I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t do it. Just letting you know what will be happening in the future. Though you don’t have to worry about everyone and their grandma suddenly being able to beat your dungeon as they race ahead in levels. People will slow down after they’ve reached about where they would currently be if the system has always been here.

‘While game-like terms are thrown around a lot, the system is standardizing things and overlaying it onto reality. It isn’t overriding reality. So, the concept of “experience” isn’t some hidden number being kept track of by the system in the background, but rather literally your experiences in life reacting with magic and what not to power you up.

‘What is special about integration is that you have all that life experience from before and it wasn’t automatically applied to what you used it for. That makes it so that after integration, people can apply it however they want.’

Doyle, ‘So this is me leveling fast?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Eh, I’m sure things aren’t going quite as smoothly for you. After all, you don’t have all that much life experience living as a dungeon core. While all of this is more the realm of True Immortals, it is understood that transforming into a new form provides a leveling and skill penalty till you’re used to it.

‘Sure, you’re experiencing a ton of new things, but those are conceptually duplicates of already existing experiences. You’re lucky your skills aren’t growing slower. Though that is probably the system messing with things, because dungeons are sort of important.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I’m going to ignore all this. I’m leveling myself and my skills as fast as I can. If I try to look too deeply into it, I’ll just be wasting my time, at least right now. For now, I’ll trust Ace to have enough vested interest in my dungeon that I should be able to hold out for a decade.

‘Or I guess I should say Jim’s vested interest. It’s not like I’m giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry that joins the Guild permission to set up official raids. This is something only Jim can sign off on. Not even Ace can do it.’

Ally laughs, ‘Well that is a bit of important info you forgot to mention. If only Jim can sign off on it, you should be fine. I wasn’t worried about someone randomly doing it, but the chance of someone infiltrating the Guild and signing off wouldn’t be zero. Though, do you get to pick the wording? Or at least can see what it will say when it pops up this option to him?’

Doyle shrugs and pulls up a screen with a short message. ‘This is what it will say, I don’t have a choice, so it is what it is. If I could have written it myself, I would have come to you first before even making a rough draft.’

Ally nods, but is clearly distracted by reading the note. In fact, despite how short the message is, she takes a while.

With a nod, Ally looks up from the note. ‘This will do. You might not have noticed since you already know what he will be capable of. However, this is written such that unless you’re searching for it, most people will think it means they can do the training raids you explained. So yeah, get that set up first. We want that decade-long timer counting down. But then we have a new floor to make.’

So Close - Chapter 345

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