[D'sP] Low Hanging Clouds - Chapter 347 (Patreon)

Out in the town, Jim is reviewing the bane of his existence: paperwork. He would much rather be out scouting the forest or delving the dungeon, but even if the Adventurers Guild understands and makes room for their members desire to adventure, paperwork is still required. If anything, Guild officials need to do more paperwork as they offload the work from regular adventurers.

Of course, most of that is taken care of by receptionists who specifically are not adventurers themselves. Not to say they’re weak, but rather that the Guild understands their members and wants people more likely to stick around. However, the Guild Leader position is required to be an adventurer because that tends to make things flow more smoothly.

Jim is just unfortunate in that he doesn’t have any local employees yet, with all the actual Guild employees being brought in by the system. So, to make sure local culture and customs are observed, much more of the paperwork has to go through him. Whatever the case may be, he was thrilled when a blue screen popped up to distract him. Then he read it and felt a headache coming on.

Sure, the fact that people breaking the rules of the dungeon were going to get punted back to the first floor was clever. In fact, it was a punishment that would only get more punishing with time and those intending to delve deep being the worst hit. However, it wasn’t actually something he had direct control of.

Jim didn’t have the option to pin someone as having their progress reset. However, you better believe everyone and their dog was going to blame him. After all, it was “his” dungeon. Maybe not right now, but Jim could definitely see a time not far in the future where people come and complain to him when their progress is reset after paying for a group to get past a boss.

Whatever the case may be, Jim isn’t in control. All he can do is even more paperwork and get this change out to the public. Oh, and he should probably tell Ace about this first. With a sigh, Jim stands up from his desk, almost wishing to return to the menial paperwork as at least it wouldn’t get him yelled at by the public.

Meanwhile, down in the dungeon, Doyle feels satisfied. He has worked on the permissions and such for quite a while and was happy with the results. It surely wasn’t perfect, but that is why he left himself enough room to allow modifications when the unexpected happens. Though now it was time to start on the fifteenth floor.

So, after a quick message to Ally so she would know it was happening, he focused on his core once again. At this point, the actual creation of a new floor seemed almost too easy and so he decided to use this leeway to watch even closer. Maybe it was just practice, but if things were literally easier, he wanted to know why as Ally didn’t.

{Fifteenth floor dimensionally anchored

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

fifteenth floor spending limit set to 81,480 [Previous floor’s limit(71,400) + Intelligence(84) * 120]

Monster level cap updated

Quintessence debt paid back by 5}

With the floor finished, Doyle ignores the message as he thinks back on what making the floor felt like. Because it was easier to create. At this point, while the ease of creation likely wasn’t going to keep getting easier, at least not so quickly, it was noticeable.

And what was the difference? He wasn’t certain, but there was a feeling of a deeper control and less pushback. Doyle remembers making his first couple floors and how, in creating them, he had to force the changes needed. Maybe with future floors, an answer will present itself, but for now the question needs to be put aside while he makes the new floor.

It was going to be another open floor. Because no, he wasn’t going to stick with any theme. One mental sigh later as he comes to terms with the fact that this is still all too new and he focuses on the details. So far, his open air floors had all been seemingly massive. Infinite vistas, a skybox that doesn’t seem to have an end, stuff like that. Even twelve appeared larger than it really was.

Sure, by now most people had realized the dungeon didn’t literally contain floors that were bigger than the eye can see. That didn’t matter to Doyle though as it still looked that way and he wanted to have even more of a change. The sky part was easy enough. Just throw up some low-hanging clouds. The question was how he would limit the horizon?

It took a while, but eventually one of his neglected monsters provided an answer. A mountain valley! It would even explain the low-hanging clouds. They weren’t actually low; you were just that high up. Well, Doyle wasn’t going to actually change the air density or anything, but once again, it was what it looked like that mattered. So the Axebeaks would finally have a proper landscape to strut their stuff and since it was already going to have birds, the Hexku would be included as well. Plus kobolds to ride a few of the Axebeaks. And maybe...

Doyle stops himself. Down that path lies just throwing every available monster at the floor and he has way too many and not enough space. Maybe in a later floor he can make a space so large everything has its own little biome to live in. For now, mountain valley was the prompt.

Though there was one little bit of infinite that needed to be included despite trying to avoid such things this time around. As he took all the space and created a jagged valley between two “mountains”, actually just facades, Doyle realized a potential problem. What if people tried to climb the mountains?

In his other floors, the skybox either ended or had an infinite loop going, while trying to dig down met with dungeon stone dense enough to stop just about anyone. The question was, how to handle people trying to summit the cloud covered mountains, because someone would inevitably try that. People summited all of the world’s tallest mountains just to prove they could and his fake mountains wouldn’t be any different.

This problem was easily fixed with another false infinite. Just looping the climber within the clouds which would cover up the deception. Sure, the first time someone climbs for an hour only to take a few minutes in the climb down and it would be revealed. It is just that Doyle doesn’t care about them finding out. In fact, to some degree he would prefer they not attempt the infinite climb. Sure, it would likely generate a ton of cruft for him to feed on, but would be quite boring for everyone involved. With the clouds, there wouldn’t even be anything to see.

Though the looping isn’t limited to the mountain climb. Rather, Doyle placed some portals in a tricky fashion so they cover the entire sky. As for why it is tricky? Well, firstly because he needed to do a lot of work so people don’t realize when climbing that they’ve looped. Most importantly, though, is that each loop actually brings you closer to the start of the floor ever so slowly. It would take a silly amount of climbing to make a difference, but if someone tried to fly straight up, they would easily end up back at the start.

Then Doyle turned from the sky to the ground. Pre-system, he had once gone through a mountain valley in a car and seen quite a few more on the web. However, he understood that his experiences couldn’t really deliver the majesty of a proper valley, especially not the pictures. Even the few science movies he’d seen in a museum theater during a field trip weren’t quite there.

However, that wasn’t going to stop him from making an attempt. First order of business was to throw around numerous giant chunks of rock. While it might be tempting to place boulders around in an artistic fashion, Doyle had a better way that wouldn’t have a pattern to it.

All he had to do was whip up a house size piece of rock and drop it off at the top of the mountain. At which point, the rock would roll down, breaking apart and gouging up the mountain side. Doyle even managed to start an avalanche with one of them. Then, once everything has settled, he lets the floor’s natural speed up to weather and age things so it doesn’t look like someone had just been throwing around giant rocks. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but the moss growing over the boulders gave them a nice touch and a softer edge.

The only problem was that he wasn’t sure where the moss came from. Unless it counted as shrubbery, he didn’t have the pattern for it and it isn’t like some of it hasn’t died already. Quite a weird thing, but since there isn’t anything he can do about it, Doyle focuses on finishing the floor.

The Axebeaks would just be out and about, this being their natural habitat. However, Doyle needed to figure out what to do for the kobolds and Hexku. While a camp and letting the birds nest in the boulders would work, he felt they needed something more personalized.

This started with the Hexku. They needed trees, but while the air density was lower, the design clearly portrayed this area as being quite high up. So no forest for them. However, Doyle didn’t want the scraggly trees you normally see. Instead, he placed a few sturdy trees. Maybe they don’t quite match the theme, but at least a single large tree looks better than a forest of normal sized trees.

Of course, by having so few trees, it made the Hexku an obvious threat, if avoidable. That is, as long as delvers can make their way around the trees without drawing attention. Not that Doyle is going to force them into such a situation. Rather, it would be their own greed.

See, Doyle was going to place his first treasure chests. Sure, before this he had a couple floors that would deliver loot in a chest, which most referred to as treasure chests. But the reality of that was it was simply a delivery method for loot and he could have had it appear on the ground. The chest simply kept everything from spilling out.

These chests, which would be placed beneath each tree, would not fill with monster drops. Rather, what was inside would have been there from the get go, waiting to be nabbed. Doyle even built in a fancy little mechanic so that they would grow even more tempting with time.

To start, the chest would have a bunch of copper coins. After all, unlike monster loot, this was just there. Well, it would be. Doyle wasn’t planning on paying the full price for some copper coins to make them real from the start. Instead, the chest started out with only a few. The catch was that the chest would slowly absorb power like a monster or regular loot drops and every time enough power was gathered, a new copper coin would appear.

In theory, the only limit would be how much the chest could fit. Which since Doyle went with slightly smaller chests than what most people imagine when you say treasure chest, wouldn’t be all that many. Except he had that figured out as well.

Once the chest was four-fifths full, the next coin that would be created will absorb 99 copper coins and get created as a silver coin. Then, if the chest still wasn’t looted, if it became full of silver coins the process would repeat with gold coins which was his current limit. Though Doyle very much doubted people would wait that long.

More likely, after more people start delving this deep, the chest will either be looted regularly or they’ll figure out the break even point to make it worth fighting the birds.

A New Deal - Chapter 346