Midway through the next day, Ace finally finds out about the approaching headache. While Doyle hadn’t been able to confirm it was Jan the day before, Ace has access to Jim. After someone who was out managed to catch sight of the large caravan of people, it was only a matter of hours before Jim managed to confirm not only that it was Jan, but that she had only half of the original people still with her.
Ace wasn’t willing to instantly assume the worst, especially when, by Jim’s estimate, she had managed to pick up extra people numbering at least as many as what she left with. However, she hadn’t really earned herself any leeway. Plus, Jim was able to scout out the stronger people in the group and every single one of them was from her core believers.
Sure, if it was just the people who had left that would make sense. But having so many more people join her? There had to have been stronger people with them at some point or they wouldn’t have survived. The fact they aren’t around anymore has some dark connotations to it which will need to be figured out and brought into the light.
With a sigh, Ace turns to the rest of the founders, “So we should probably finalize the town’s name before they get here. While it isn’t like people get alerted to the town’s name when they enter. However, with the few that have decided to join we do know that the message they get includes the town’s name. Or in this case, the word unnamed with brackets around it.”
Off to the side, Kyle steps out from the crowd that had gathered. “Sir, while most people have been referring to the place as Dungeon Town, that name is probably a dime a dozen. Just on this planet alone there should already be a couple lucky places with that name.”
Ace laughs, “That was never in the cards. Those of us who lived here mostly didn’t bother with a name because we aren’t really interacting with other places. It is only the people visiting from the town up river that calls the place that. Using dungeon town as the name would be the same as them naming their place up river town. If anything I at least want the name to come from one of us instead of given by somewhere else.”
Above them, Doyle turns his observation away from them. While knowing what the town will be called is interesting, it isn’t as important as the returning Jan. Admittedly Doyle doesn’t have a horse in the race but they will likely be the greatest source of energy in the near future.
Sure, the people up river had been sending team after team, but most of them weren’t staying in town on a permanent basis. Whatever else might be in the works, since Jan is returning she isn’t likely to give up on the town. At the very least, his dungeon is the most tempting resource on the planet outside of other dungeons. There just hasn’t been enough time for anything else to develop.
Most important to Doyle is the fact that most of Jan’s group are weaklings. That means that to feed them they will need to dive the first floor at an increased rate and there is no way Ace is going to put that on his own people. Feeding what is less than 50 people even if you count the ones from up river that stuck around is nothing compared to feeding hundreds. There has been some work on getting some fields up but even with skills and magic it still takes time to grow edible plants.
As luck would have it, though, Doyle had some plans already on what to change. The first is to move around his instances a little. If he was to be honest, this change was something he had been putting off, anyway. Right now, his fourth floor gets two of his instances when rarely do people even get to the third floor despite everyone wanting the third’s ore. Jan’s return was just enough of a jolt to stop his procrastination and move those two over onto the first floor.
This brings the number of instances on the first floor up to eight. The second floor still has three of his spare instances but enough parties hit it up that the extra instances are still worth it. Though Doyle’s change brings up an issue which had been the main force behind not making the change. How to inform the town that the change happened? Or more to the point, how to inform them without also informing them he was awake.
Though this thought makes him take a step back. At the start, he was worried for a number of reasons. Just the fact that all it would take is someone to camp a person on every floor to take him hostage was a major threat. While no one on the planet could in theory kill him at the moment, there are many worse outcomes than death.
If he had let them know he was originally human, that would have been a major weakness. It would have told them that they could threaten him, get him to do what they want. A malicious person could have easily forced him to change the dungeon to suit their needs.
Now that threat is reduced. For someone to attempt it, they would have to first reach his core and no one has managed that in a while. Besides that, the town and even the place up river have become somewhat dependent on his dungeon for meat. Sure, Jim still goes out to hunt and the patrols will bag any game they come across but there aren’t any factory farms to supply a pre-system style diet.
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On the other hand, just because they haven’t reached his core doesn’t mean they can’t. As it is, the founders are split up into two teams and they don’t bring a healer with them. If Ace, Jim, the Barrais, Doctor, and one of the other founders who knows how far they could get. Though even just the addition of Doctor to a pre-existing team would be a major threat, giving them a sustain that has been missing.
In fact, the more Doyle thinks about it, the more worried he becomes. The two teams have both managed to make it to his boss’ floor without any real support. Every other team that has made it to the wolf floor did so through having a healer.
Doyle sighs to himself and puts aside any plans to reveal himself for later. Though it still leaves the question of how to tell them about the new instances available on the first floor. This question takes Doyle a decent amount of time to figure out and even then the solution wasn’t perfect.
Since he didn’t want to communicate the change directly, all he could do was make a visible change so they get curious. So with that in mind, Doyle changed the ground cover on all the floors to grass interspersed with clover instead of being completely clover. This doesn’t mechanically do anything in the dungeon but any change that is so widespread should cause the town to look into if anything else changed.
Besides that, there were two main things. First was to amp up the tactical ability of the two dagger kobolds in the vine room. Second also involved kobolds, though this one targeted the ones in the camp and allowed them to go into the three goat rooms when delvers aren’t around.
With the dagger kobolds, Doyle hadn’t been holding them back but there was only so much planning they could do. To make up for that, he gave them a few more tactics to use as well as shifting a few things around in the room to allow for better hiding places.
For the camping kobolds, the change was even simpler. Everyone knew that if you were going to see a trap, it was right between the berries and the camp. This was really an oversight on Doyle’s part but he hadn’t bothered to change it till now. With their new found ability to wander, the kobolds will be able to set many new and exciting traps. Still somewhat limited because the goats will still be grazing in the rooms, but better than before.
And with that, Doyle manages to ramp up the difficulty of the floor without adding a single new monster or piece of equipment. Why make it more difficult? Because even with the place up river, he had been limited on how many people were around. Now that there was going to be a large number of people taking up residence he could kick it up a notch.
Plus, he wasn’t exactly a fan of those who abandoned the town. While it wasn’t intended, they had not only left most of their founders behind to fend for themselves. But they also left Doyle in a more vulnerable position. If the people who stayed hadn’t managed to thin the wolves as much as they did who knows what might have happened.
Doyle shakes his core and now finished with the changes turns back to Ace and company. And of course, they hadn’t managed to decide on a name for the town yet. It seems they had managed to reduce it down to three choices, but the debate on what to take rages on.
After listening for a bit, Doyle does manage to figure out the names and who supports them. The first is Haven and has Ace behind it because he likes the simplicity of it. Second is Osto Strato, which Jim is particularly fond of. And of course, as a wild card, Jimmy had suggested Wolf’s Rest and for some reason it had garnered quite a bit of support.
Haven was a simple enough name and Ace supported it because it represented an idea. He wanted his town to grow into a true haven on the planet where the strong protect the weak. Though he might have been a bit affected by the sudden appearance of Jan and so is projecting his desire to protect those under her from her.
Osto Strato is a bit of a joke that grew legs. Originally, someone had suggested Bone Street as at some point they had discovered that the system provided roads included ground up bone as part of the filler. Of course, Ace shot that one down because of how morbid it was. But sometimes a good joke won’t stay down no matter what you try. So knowing that Ace wouldn’t allow such an obvious name one of the people had remembered what it would be in Esperanto. With the new suggestion not being so in your face about the reference, Jim was able to get it past Ace.
And finally we have Wolf’s Rest. A name that Jimmy shouted out with little thought, the very first name suggested in fact. While the name is fun enough, it also has its morbid side as in this case the “rest” bit refers to all the wolves that are now resting under the soil. Still, it sounds nice enough and was oddly popular so Ace lost his chance to veto it.
Doyle turns away from them as it seems like the argument will take a while longer and shifts his view to the upper edge of his territory. Jan’s group has gotten much closer by now. So close that going by their speed they should show up early next morning.
Technically they could have reached the town that night but Doyle can see a group of people that had gotten ahead of the group. He wasn’t sure when they had gotten there but it should be recently. The much smaller group had rushed ahead with the tents and all the other assorted equipment. And while not finished they had managed to set up two thirds of the stuff and should be ready a few hours before sunset, right around when the main group would arrive there.