Doyle and Ally turn their focus to the newer bags. Those, while still easily felt, weren’t free from problems. If the old bag felt like it was covered in a fog, the new bags had the barest wisps of mist.
Still there though, which meant figuring out what was going on ramped up in importance. Doyle started by comparing all the bags in town. Though not much came of it, besides the fact that the smaller bags seemed more susceptible to whatever this was.
Ally, on the other hand, had dived into the intergalactic web. Not the best source for this, as clearly the bags weren’t being damaged, at least not as some results posited. That and there wasn’t some void critter attached to the bag, eating most of what gets put into it.
Maybe a regular dungeon would have a hard time telling with that one, but Doyle has the outside perspective needed to see one way or another. The only thing close was a few hits about weird stuff happening when extraplanar pocket dimensions break down. That didn’t seem right though as it isn’t like these bags are disconnected from their source and floating free.
Back with Doyle, he has carefully observed things and all that has managed to do is double confirm that the smaller bags are being changed quicker. This leads to a few guesses, stuff like maybe the smaller the space the less resistance it can put up. Overall, though, Doyle is stumped by what is happening.
Even more so when he reconvenes with Ally. She hasn’t done much better. There are things that can happen to bags of holding and space rings, but this doesn’t seem to match any of them. That and the fact it isn’t inherently reducing the amount of space in the bag leaves her stumped.
Every single “something has happened to my bag” result is always connected with at least a small decrease in internal size. After all, whatever is doing it, needs some place to exist within the bag so as to affect the bag. Doyle even did an in depth double check of his own floor in case something was hiding out, but there wasn’t anything.
Both of them sighed as they sat back and watched a time lapse of the original bag’s progression over the week and change they had spent researching things. Why did they stop? Nothing too important, Ace had just reminded them of the time.
Maybe not as monumental as some future important dates, but the town decided to celebrate it being six months since the system came. Well, saying it like that makes it sound like they are celebrating the system apocalypse. No, rather, they are celebrating their survival.
To the crowd Ace readily admits that in the future they’ll likely celebrate only on the anniversary. However, he felt that surviving half a year in this mess was worth being happy about. So the town set up a nice little event with all kinds of food and decorations and everyone had a fun time.
Some, a little more forced than others, seeing as Ace shut down access to the dungeon for the day. Can’t exactly grind away at farming if the farm’s closed. Still, one day of not farming isn’t going to starve anyone at this point so not many truly mind.
Though this does bring another thing to light. They were likely returned at the height of spring. So while the leaves haven’t yet started to change color, the winter months would soon be upon them.
Wolf’s Rest was fine. They had everything they could need to survive the winter and their houses were built of sturdy post-system wood. The problem would be any place that didn’t either make new homes or use the tutorial settlement controls to upgrade the existing structures.
Why? For the same reason all the buildings that weren’t being maintained were starting to fall down. Weather was now magical. Sure, an average rainfall wasn’t anything special, but it would still manage to leak through what would have been perfectly fine roofs.
Now that winter is coming? Well, those cold winds would pierce the vinyl siding and brick walls alike. Nevermind the fact that central air on those buildings wasn’t exactly working.
If it wasn’t for the fact that wind would find a way in, the old buildings would have been near unlivable. What with their designs being based around sealing off the outside. They needed the fans of central air to blow air around.
Sure, there were some older buildings which had been built before that was the craze and even a few newer designs meant to take advantage of the outside instead of ignoring it. That wasn’t the majority though and winter was going to freeze anyone inside of those pre-system buildings.
Ace is thankful that they had gotten Melonie early enough. At this point, while still leery of it all, the place up river had people leveling up and crafters working on their skills. While they wouldn’t be able to build a house in moments, they should have enough time to set up proper winter shelter.
Though if worse comes to worse, Ace was willing to send some of Rest’s people over to speed things up. After all, they had much more experience with building wood houses. Well, wood and bone houses, but the place up river doesn’t have an infinite supply of bones next to it, so at most they would be bringing their bone glue.
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Ace smiled when he remembered that development. It had happened early on, but snuck under the radar until much later. A man had moved into town who used to work for a place that did restoration projects for just about anything you might label as “heritage”. A part of that was making and using stuff like the hide, hooves, and most importantly the bones of horses to make glue. Now, the town doesn’t exactly have any horses lying around, but beef bones? Well, the dungeon can provide an infinite supply of them.
At this point, Ace has a small team of crafters working on the matter so the town always has a good supply of the stuff. Plus, much to Jimmy’s delight, creating the glue allowed his bone carving skill to evolve into bone working. One more step on his path to combining his carpentry and bone related skills together.
Though he is still a bit off as Jimmy still needs to get wood carving, combine it with carpentry for woodworking, and then finally he can combine it with bone working. And all those steps that require skills to combine? He needs to make the skill levels equal or have an epiphany.
Not an easy goal at all, but seeing as Jimmy also has architecture to take up his time, a decent hobby. Besides, bone scrimshaw and wood carvings when integrated into a house properly improve the structure. So either way, he isn’t wasting his time.
Nor is he the only crafter taking up this sort of path in the inner ring. Even the Barrais are getting into it, using their acids to etch and color metal. Not that they have a lot to spare. Most of their crafting time is devoted to either making poisons, antidotes, or acid for the bone glue production.
Still, to the outside world, no one would have noticed a thing. Sure, there are a few decent carvings available in the small market just outside of dungeon road, that being the unoriginal name for the path leading to the dungeon. However, once you get past the facade they have around that road, every house in the inner circle has become a work of art.
Doyle and Ally hadn’t really noticed it until now with the decorations as it was a slow process. Now though, any worry about the discovery of Doyle’s awakened status through the carvings is gone. A dungeon takes from their surroundings and Doyle’s? Well, even a normal run-of-the-mill cave dungeon would start having intricate carvings appearing on the walls.
Though it does make Doyle’s efforts to hide the eleventh floor carvings somewhat pointless. The only thing the inner circle is missing at this point is someone with a skill like Doyle’s conceptual reinforcement. Least until the crafters get good enough to start making masterworks. Then they’d probably just enchant everything.
After all, while conceptual reinforcement can be powerful, it tends to work more in broad terms and subtle effects. That is how it can be done even on things that aren’t of masterwork quality. Enchantments, on the other hand, concentrates the power.
This reduces the more esoteric effects it can potentially display, but allows for a more controlled outcome. Which is honestly more what the town would want, anyway. There is a reason conceptual reinforcement is mostly seen among religions. They have enough faith that the effect will be beneficial.
That isn’t hyperbole or a sense of false security either. Their faith as a concept guides the result. Without faith or the single mindedness of a dungeon core, the skill can result in some nasty surprises.
A good example of this being from the carvings on the eleventh floor. If a normal sapient had worked on that, either the skill would have failed or each individual carving would have had its own minor effect. Not only that, but the same stray thoughts which resulted in the spores being contained around the myconids, might have instead contained the myconids.
Of course, all the tangents are exactly that. Doyle and Ally are at the end of their ropes when it comes to the bags of holding. What is happening to them doesn’t seem bad, per se. Rather, it just seems that something is removing them from his control.
Doyle is completely out of ideas and Ally is down to dire options like calling in one of their deity friends or asking her mom. In that order, of course. Both would rather interrupt Moota or Jess over asking Ally’s mom.
Not that she would be angry, but her nature as a Fae Queen would require something in return. The first time was free because of their relationship and the fact it was an emergency. This time? Ally doubted it.
Besides, even if their deal was long done, there was something in town that Jess might be interested in. There were wolfkin now and while not as close as wolf folk would be, potential sapient followers would always be of interest to any deity, let alone one that was losing control of her old faith.
Not that Moota wasn’t on their minds. It is just that they didn’t want to have her over too often in case the alchemy deities got curious. Better to go through a loner like Jess.
The only question was how to introduce the two sides. Doyle couldn’t just pop a bible for wolves into his dungeon and call it a day. Maybe he would even need to fully realize another lesser shadow wolf to allow Jess to pass the message on herself.
Though that would be hard as it would need to get to the wolfkin without being killed by the town guard. A challenge on the best of days and with how close they are to the inner circle, all the more so. However, Doyle felt it might be worth it so he adjusted the seventh floor just a little bit.
Now, instead of pulling from the farm automatically, Doyle has to personally create new lesser shadow wolves when they’re killed. This means that ones in the farm have a chance to absorb energy and become real enough to leave. Though since he is going for all four of them, this takes a couple weeks to finish.
Which is honestly short compared to the first one he did. That took a week and change just to fully realize a single lesser shadow wolf. This time, though, Ace and company are much more active on the deeper floors.
After all, they’re only days out from reaching the tenth floor. They just need to make it through the ninth floor with a little more steam in the tank. Sure, resting at the end of the ninth floor is an option, but they want to be fresh enough that resting doesn’t need to involve a good night’s sleep. The town needs them up top on a regular basis at the moment.