Starting on the first floor, because despite what Doyle had said he couldn’t help but check the floor in numerical order, he starts to give them all a once over. First floor? How can you improve on perfection? Second floor? Marvelous! And of course the third floor is random, so not much to do there.
Though at this point Doyle suspects something and takes a moment to gauge his mental state while flipping between all the floors. It takes a minute but he catches it. Whenever he is looking at the floors before his boss, they feel set in stone. Not a human mental feel, but a dungeon instinct feel.
Doyle tests and he can change things. It is just that he doesn’t want to. This necessitates another look through from the top with that in mind. He still doesn’t find anything to change on the first three floors and he isn’t certain if that is because of his dungeon instinct or there really isn’t anything to change. About the only thing that stands out is there are quite a few more anthills around than before, but he had expected them to spread, anyway.
The fourth floor is the one that sets his worries to rest. There is something to change on the floor. As it was created, the floor places the ambush wolves by teleporting them into place right before the floor is entered. Now, Doyle has changed it to use portals like on the sixth floor.
That one little tweak out of the way, he returns his attention to Ally’s room only to find her frowning. ‘What’s up?’
Ally rolls her eyes, ‘Apparently you did too good of a job at making the sixth floor a battle of attrition. Doctor had to heal a few too many booboos and isn’t doing too hot either so they plan to come back tomorrow. This is such a tease!
‘I guess we can use this as an object lesson about the stamina of various power sources. Most of their team is martial, which depends on a person’s stamina. Very easy to improve on the low end. Magic users, on the other hand, depend on their minds. Not so easy to recover from mental fatigue and generally you have to get up there before improving a person’s ability to recover.
‘Of course, on the true high end, all those minor differences tend to melt away until you get to True Immortals who are infinite fonts of powers. At that level, you worry more about throughput. I’ll come get you when it is time to watch them again.’
Doyle nods, ‘Sounds like a plan’, and with nothing else too pressing turns back to his floors. The sixth onward hadn’t really been tested so didn’t need much and he had already checked one through four. This left the boss floor and one important thing he had been putting off in relation to said floor.
The boss was sapient and not in the “animal recognizes itself in a mirror” type of way. She was a person and Doyle really should do something about that. She had a chance to settle in and got killed twice already. Good thing that as one of his bosses it was incredibly easy to talk mind to mind with her. You know. Once he respawned her. He hadn’t exactly automated the floor yet.
That chore out of the way, Doyle sends over a friendly hello. It isn’t actually “hello” mind you, she doesn’t speak any language yet, let alone his. This, of course, gets her attention and luckily, being a dungeon monster means there isn’t any confusion on her end about who is speaking to her.
Though she does do a quick glance around to try and spot him before answering with a string of thoughts and concepts that Doyle roughly translates to mean, ‘My Dungeon Core, have I displeased you? Few travel through my domain and while the non-people are better trained, The People are not getting enough proper fights.’
Some of what she is saying gets a little rough around the edges as various concepts mix. For instance, Doyle decided to go with domain though it could have meant floor and only the fact it felt like she would have included other floors as well if she was able to travel.
Doyle assures her that she is doing a decent job and he was simply talking to her to find out if she needed anything within reason.
This sets her to thinking for a while before she finds an answer. She doesn’t really even have a full understanding of the concepts, but requests herbs and equipment to brew with for the mages and more metal and stone to reinforce the town.
Doyle is a little torn, he doesn’t really want to change up the town structure too much and more metal is not in the cards at the moment. Not that they have the ability to smith the metal, anyway. At least not easily, as he does remember that bronze was popular for the ease of forging.
In the end, Doyle decides to add a bunch more herbs to the area, a few small bronze cauldrons, and makes a change to the outer area so that stone that is purposefully mined would stick around. That way, they don’t end up with a bunch of perfect stone bricks.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
After informing her of this, the boss nods her head and responds that it will do for now and questions if she can ask for more in the future. Doyle doesn’t have a problem with that in theory, though pulls Ally over.
Ally raises her eyebrow, ‘So, what’s up with your kobold boss?’
Doyle nods at her, ‘Do you mind if I have her come to you first whenever she needs something? I can’t guarantee that I will always be available. Huh, and now that I said that I realize that was quite rude and made it sound like you don’t do anything.’
Ally laughs, ‘Yeah, that wasn’t the most polite, but I understand what you mean. If you get in the zone while carving, it could be quite a while before you realize she was trying to talk to you. At least with me, I tend to keep things on a mortal scale right now. So sure, she can poke me when needed.’
Doyle brightens, ‘Wonderful, let me patch you in’, and then connects Ally into the near talk he has been having with the boss. A quick greeting later and he manages to communicate what is up and also that if the boss can’t get through to Ally, it is perfectly fine and in fact preferred if she then goes to him directly.
That done, Ally shakes her head, ‘Not the easiest thing to understand.’
Doyle sighs, ‘I’m really going to have to focus on naming skill and language pack even if they are a bit pricey. 100,000 and 1,520,000 world energy is a small amount to pay to have a proper name to call her and the ability to actually talk.’
Ally frowns, ‘While the naming skill is nice, couldn’t you just call her something until you got it?’
Doyle shakes his core, ‘I tried. Something about how she is one of my dungeon monsters prevents it. I can feel energies coil as I get closer to calling her something and they don’t just ever seem to coalesce. Caused a terrible case of that feeling when you have a word on the tip of your tongue.
‘I could probably earn the skill by trying hard enough, but the price is low enough for the current me that I don’t feel like bothering. Plus, I can tell that it would be easier and flow more naturally if some outside entity had referred to the boss by that name already and I don’t want to let Ace or Og Pwner to name my first boss.’
Ally laughs, ‘Fair enough. Though you aren’t really giving them a fair shake with their names. Both of them have good reasons for doing what they did.’
Doyle nods, ‘True, but examples of a good reason could be them calling her something like Spazzy because of how she fought when surrounded. Better not leave it up to chance at all. Oh, and I’ll need it quick because I bet if enough people start calling her a specific name it will stick on a more magical level.
‘Oh, and a side request related to her. I am horrible at being social so could you chat with her occasionally? Before this all, I lost more than one acquaintance because I would only communicate with them when first communicated with. She might be a murder machine right now, but she can and should be so much more. That community path of hers has a lot of potential and I don’t want to stunt it.’
Ally sighs, ‘You mean like how you only ever seem to talk to me when you need something? Though I can’t really blame you, what with you having had zero Karma to start with. It isn’t like the system magically makes you a more social person. You would need a skill for that to happen and even then it might not fix the whole not talking thing.’
Doyle is quiet long enough that Ally wonders if he was just dropping the conversation. Then he responds, ‘You know? I hadn’t really connected those two things. It would make sense that not having a strong connection with others would lead to not talking to them.’
Ally rolls her eyes, ‘Ya think? I’m honestly surprised you had acquaintances at all.’
Doyle bobs his core, ‘I was really into trading card and roleplaying games, both of which are activities that you do with others. I’m sure if my only hobbies had been stuff like reading or nature walks, no one would have even known that I existed there at the end. Thank goodness for computer scheduling or else I suspect keeping a job would have been hard.’
Ally looks down for a moment, ‘That’s really sad, you know that? Didn’t you at least have family? Their bloodline connection should have overruled the Karma nonsense.’
Doyle rolls his core back, ‘Eh? Kind of? Some of them were nice but even with them I tended to be the responder and not the person reaching out. Nothing against them. I really did like to just stay home and read there at the end. If it wasn’t for needing money for food and stuff, I really doubt I would have left the apartment. Hell, with enough money, I wouldn’t have had to leave for food either. I wasn’t exactly a fan of delivery but I wasn’t exactly a fan of grocery shopping either.’
Ally nods, ‘Well, I don’t exactly think being a dungeon core is going to help with that in the short-term. Though if you ever feel like talking more about it, I’m willing to listen.’
Doyle sighs, ‘Kinda, yeah? But later. For now, despite it having been months at this point, things still feel very much up in the air. I don’t think everything has fully hit home yet.’
Ally laughs at that, ‘Welcome to the rest of your world’s population. I don’t have any proof but I very much suspect that the system is doing something behind the scenes to soften the blow and spread it out. People as a whole really shouldn’t be adapting as well as they do.
‘Like, the entire world was literally reduced to bits smaller than the smallest particle your world knew about and then put back together again. Human structures were seemingly at random protected or not as a few years passed while the few survivors got put through a strange tutorial where you could just die as much as you wanted. Sure, places will try to hold on to the past like the place up-river, but enough places like this will pop up that within a hundred years everything will be settled enough that the system will start letting outsiders in even if at a limited capacity.
‘All of this is weird and sometimes you just have to hold on till things stop spinning.’