Doyle sighs, ‘How long till they get to the second boss?’
Ally stops laughing and shrugs, ‘If I had to guess, you have two to two and a half weeks.’
Doyle’s core brightens for a second after hearing that. ‘I wasn’t actually expecting them that soon. It feels like a month or more on the inside. Why so quickly?’
Ally pulls up a screen showing a workshop on the surface. ‘They need magical defenses. Not just because of the Udoroot, but it certainly is giving them a kick in the keister about it. If I had to guess, the planet as a whole is only three months out from having monsters on the surface that use active power based attacks.
‘Generally, that will mean Mana and Qi. Anyway, this is because the concentration of world energy on the surface is about to hit the first major plateau. That of being a tier one world.
‘With that? Well, there is a reason the system didn’t bother doing things like expanding the surface area or anything. It is going to be rough. To go from a tier zero world to a tier one world is like night and day.’
Doyle, ‘That is only slightly frightening, what with how I’m a dungeon that is disconnected from the world I’m on. Now, how is all that related to them messing around there and needing protection from magic?’
Ally focuses the view on an unassuming helmet. ‘This piece of equipment takes up an equipment slot.’
Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Yes, it is a helmet.’
Ally giggles, ‘Sorry, I let you walk into that. Anyway, under the system there is a stark difference between regular gear and equipment. Then again, I think you only heard about it through someone explaining it in the dungeon.
‘So yeah, equipment is active power gear of which you can only have a limited amount based on your stats. For how many slots you get, all you need to do is ask the system. Though if you care about formulas, here it is!’
{ RoundDown[(S + A + C) ÷ 10] + RoundDown[(I + W + P) ÷ 10] + RoundDown[(D + K + L) ÷ 10] }
Ally nods, ‘Would be a lot more compact, but I don’t think there is any operator that represents rounding down in a single symbol. Probably is, but that seems like something most would know, anyway.’
Doyle laughs, ‘I actually know this one! Though only because I went on a wiki dive for what a certain symbol meant. The equation would look like this!’
{ ⌊(S + A + C) ÷ 10⌋ + ⌊(I + W + P) ÷ 10⌋ + ⌊(D + K + L) ÷ 10⌋ }
‘Which certainly looks cleaner. Though just as much as it looks confusing if you have no clue what it means. The forward and backwards ‘L’-like symbols represent the floor function or some such and you can represent rounding up with upside down ‘L’ symbols.’
Ally nods, ‘Fair enough. Anyway, this helmet.’ and she pulls attention back to the blue screen displaying the helmet in a workshop up top. ‘Is equipment.’
Doyle, ‘But it isn’t masterwork? At least, from what I can feel I don’t think it is?’
Ally, ‘Of course it isn’t masterwork. They want that, they’ve got more than a few pieces from us already. I’m kind of surprised that at least Jim doesn’t already have some enchanted gear.
‘While rare, I suspect we’re dropping around one piece of equipment a day and that mostly goes to Ace and friends since they actually kill things other than cows. Anyway, while the helmet isn’t actually magic equipment and if analyzed wouldn’t display any effects. It isn’t truly powerless.
‘The thing is made of leather from a successful predator that someone hunted out in the forest. In here? The power a creature can have is inherently limited. Outside?’
Doyle nods, ‘Of course, but does it just have more magic from being bigger or some such?’
Ally, ‘Well, that is where fun things like Bioaccumulation kicks in, though size does help. Anyway, a fox isn’t inherently more magical than a rabbit. However, the rabbit will gather magic naturally and through the food it eats. Then, when the fox eats it, all the magic the rabbit had gathered will be absorbed.
‘It isn’t a perfect transfer of power, of course, but the same was true for the rabbit eating the grass. This is why only herbs tend to be rated by age. Their only option is to sit around and slowly absorb power, so while a hundred years ginseng means something, it wouldn’t for a fox.
‘That all to say, there are reasons most mythological monsters that aren’t a deity’s pet tend to be at least omnivores, if not outright carnivores. It is to the point that in most monster classifications you have air, land, and sea monsters, then the fourth category of prey. The last one is generally championed by Elephants, Unicorns, and Qilin. Notice the lack of flying and sea monsters?
Stolen novel; please report.
‘There is a reason for that. Both the sky and the sea are too open for prey animals to survive well and be flashy. Don’t assume there aren’t herbivores in those places with a lot of power. They just aren’t going to stand out. Also, there are whales in the sea which some count as prey. Except for the fact they eat krill just as easily as plankton, so technically don’t count.’
Doyle nods, ‘Yes, now about the helmet?’
Ally coughs, ‘Right, so yeah, I think that leather comes from a bear. One of those pre-system apex predators. It will have eaten enough by this point to become truly magical. Maybe even almost to the point of evolving into something like a hindbear.
‘So when killed, all that magic doesn’t just vanish. At least not if properly processed by someone with the right skills. Something the town finally has. That means while the helmet doesn’t have some realized defense, it is equipment and stuff like the Udoroots mind blast will have a harder time going through it.
‘This isn’t a solution to their need for true magic gear, but it will tide them over until sometime next year when people who were crafters pre-system manage to figure out making masterworks.’
Doyle, ‘Will it really take a year? Getting a crafting skill to a hundred shouldn’t be too hard, at least going by my own skills.’
Ally shrugs, ‘They’re limited by their resources. That and there is a bottleneck at 99, though it shouldn’t be too hard for this town to manage. Though a year is actually quite short.
‘Without a dungeon to provide energy soaked materials, five or more years wouldn’t be seen as slow. While your drops take away some of the skill needed because they’re all in perfect condition, the extra power in them makes up for it.’
Doyle sighs, ‘Guess I should start on a new floor. Though for some reason, this feels way too fast.’
Ally, ‘It is! Though not because you are an awakened dungeon or anything. Rather, it is because you’re in a newly integrated world. In a more settled world, the people delving you would be a little too strong for you.
‘When there are more dungeons to choose from, fewer people would come and they would be more discerning. Why challenge a dungeon you can’t beat if there is an easier one a few days away? That means the people delving won’t be facing as much of a challenge and thus feeding you less.
‘There would still be deaths, but more a fool’s death than the end of their rope style deaths. Anyway, what do you plan to do for your next floor?’
Doyle sighs, ‘I think I’m going to be boring. It isn’t until floor 13 that I get my new bird monsters or mithril. So instead of going all in on designing things, I want to take the myconid design and make it stranger.’
Ally snorts, ‘You say boring and then talk about making the myconids stranger. A bit of a contradiction there.’
Doyle nods, ‘I admit it is. Though so far I’ve messed with space and I know that isn’t the only vector available to me. I am a diverse, strange cavern dungeon, after all.’
Ally, ‘You just want to play around with environmental evolutions after the voidbold thing.’
Doyle, ‘I’m not going to deny that. Now let me focus on forming a new floor.’
Like riding a bike, Doyle blasts through the creation of a new floor. At this point, squeezing a larger area into a much smaller area feels old hat. Though that realization tempted him to change up his eleventh floor.
After all, the delvers don’t realize what artistry and technical skill was needed to create a new floor, so why not make something more obvious? But no, that could wait.
{Eleventh floor dimensionally anchored
World Energy cap +7,700 [Constitution(77) * 100]
eleventh floor spending limit set to 41,160 [Previous floor’s limit(33,480) + Intelligence(64) * 120]
Monster level cap updated
Quintessence debt paid back by 5}
Doyle knows exactly what the floor will be used for and he doesn’t want to waste a clever trick on it. Well, a trick that doesn’t further what the floor will be used as, that of a place to farm. Same as the first and sixth floor.
Being right after a boss, this is where most people will end up working out of. Doyle had stumbled into making the sixth floor a good farming floor, but this time it would be on purpose and without all the bells and whistles. That meant using the raw area instead of taking so much time to link portals.
So Doyle waited, he needed an idea of what he had to work with. Then, after a bit of time, the expansion of the floor slowed to a crawl. That meant this was all the space he was going to get in the near future so he did his usual measurements.
Simple enough, he just visualized a square of small rooms and judged how many could fit. If Doyle would be honest with himself, it isn’t exactly the best way to do things anymore. What with how he can reposition large blocks of space.
Still, knowing that a square of small rooms with 64 rooms to a side would fit put things in perspective for him. Other measurements, like meters and such had always started to feel a bit abstract after a point. Though he did do the calculations and based on the diagonal of the square, he could fit a sphere with a circumference of a little more than four-fifths of a kilometer.
Of course, Doyle could have just cheated and used his natural sense for how big the floor was. Except he had a couple reasons not to do that. First was that the actual size kept expanding, bit by bit.
Second and more important, he wanted a buffer. So far, the void hadn’t noticed him, which was honestly the most likely outcome. However, given enough time, the chances of being noticed will eventually catch up to him.
When that happens, Doyle wants each floor to have a section of solid stone or better, between the dungeon proper and the outside. It isn’t a surefire solution, but will keep the weaker pests at bay. Especially once the stone starts getting dense enough.
Doyle takes a glance at the first floor. It is the outermost layer, the thickest layer of stone, and the smallest surface area to find and attack. Of course, size is more of a function of power in the void than it is an actual solid thing you can measure. Though to attack him will require whatever it is to enter his dimension where space and time are proper rules.
Besides all that, Doyle is currently snug up against his original dimension. That means if anything powerful enough out there wanted to swallow his dungeon whole, it would have to scrape him off the dimension like some kind of barnacle. Not impossible, but dimensions don’t like being scraped.