Doyle knocked on Ally’s door and once he was invited in he noticed that she was watching the town’s construction team. ‘What are they up to?’
Ally shrugs, ‘Not much, honestly. They’re just interesting because of the differences. I’ve always lived in a place soaked in magic. To build a house you don’t cut the wood with an axe, you shape it with magic or just grow a tree into the right shape to start with. About the only thing that needs to be created with tools is stuff made with iron alloyed in. Fae royalty don’t get too hung up on the stuff and being a dungeon fae means even that is gone for me.
‘Oh, I guess you might be interested in what they are building. In the scheme of things the building isn’t important, but it will affect the delvers. They’ve decided to centralize all the dungeon loot trading nonsense. So yeah, it’s going to be this big warehouse where the merchants can set up stalls inside of.
‘A decent plan since so much of your dungeon’s output is food and raw meat at that. Kind of unhygienic if you have raw meat out in the open. The warehouse will allow them to add cooling magic and other similar effects to allow things to run smoother. That and they will be able to offer a flat price well below market value just outside the building and let them do a bit of arbitrage.
‘Sure, there aren’t going to be grabbing even most of the meat, but there will be enough delvers who really don’t want to deal with haggling over prices. I know that pre-system there wasn’t really any actual haggling, but it will be making a comeback. If only because it gives experience to a lot of core merchant skills.’
Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Huh, I would have expected that with the system backed currency things would be even stabler. My world ended up dropping the whole haggling thing because we didn’t have to guess the worth of things. At least not in most places. The main currencies were stable and large corporations set the prices.’
Ally nods, ‘That does happen on a larger scale. You can’t exactly claim a kilogram of iron is worth too much more or less than its actual value. Sure, on some level you will still have people arguing over the price to save that last copper, but one solar system trading their excess iron to the next over is just going to go off of the base price.
‘Sure, they won’t get as much, but at that scale, the goodwill and reciprocation is worth more. Because sure, right now they might want to sell iron, but they might end up needing to buy it in the future. Though don’t doubt that they still haggle at the top! Not that they didn’t in your world pre-system. You were too far from that level of business. Anyway, no matter where you are there will be special materials which will always be haggled for.
‘Of course they won’t be paying in system coins. After a certain point, people will only be trading items for items. Even crafted goods can be so rare that you can’t put a price on it. Well, the system is perfectly fine putting a price on it, but that is just asking to get fleeced. Not on purpose, mind you, the system is just paying the true value.
‘Which if it sounds similar to the true cost you have to pay to fully spawn an item, that isn’t by mistake. Not even the system would break down some of those items into quintessence. While it can, in theory, create everything, even the system has limits. Oh, by the way, that means you too have limits. Don’t worry, the system will warn you before you accidentally deconstruct anything that you can’t put back together.’
Doyle lets the silences sit for a moment before responding, ‘That was interesting to learn. I didn’t exactly expect to learn it, but here we are.
‘Anyway, I came here to ask about something unrelated to that. See, I figured out how I do the whole fast growth thing when delvers aren’t around and also why it does stop when the delvers show up. I’m messing with time! And while the effect is basically a passive thing, it is something I actively do to a floor and so can’t continue to do when outsiders are around.’
Both of Ally’s eyebrows raise, ‘Huh, that makes a lot of sense. Now, did you actually notice time being manipulated or are you just guessing? Because time manipulation is a little bit rare, to say the least. Especially since going back in time is limited to dimensions who have never had more than one True Immortal around and definitely never reversed to a point before when a True Immortal was born on the dimension.’
Doyle rolls his core to the side and back, ‘Maybe? Like, I have a more active form of time manipulation in my strange dungeon stone. After all, I’m using that to age my assassin vines into elder assassin vines. Since I have that to compare it to, I can safely say they are similar, but I can’t claim with certainty that it is time manipulation.’
Stolen novel; please report.
Ally scoffs, ‘Close enough. If you can actually age stuff with it, then it counts. There are a few spells and such that when discovered by a place will temporarily be considered time spells, but they tend to just be based around speeding up things like decomposition instead of actually aging things. The common rust monster half the time gets mistaken for doing it when first showing up on a new world.
‘What you are describing however definitely counts. Of course, this universe has by now had multiple True Immortals here and so no actual reversal is possible. Speeding things up, though? Well within our power, and the systems power as well. The biggest limitation normal mages have with it is that using it doesn’t magically make more mystical energy show up in the area.
‘So they’ll figure out a time spell and try to use it to grow magic herbs only for the herbs to die. Sure, when the herb has absorbed all the world energy in the sped up space it will draw in more from outside the effect, but it will be limited by the normal flow rates involved. You generally only see stuff like that being used to grow low end herbs if a place naturally has quite a high base level of world energy. That way, even though the plant will get less, it will still be enough.
‘Even then, it doesn’t happen often. Instead, they’ll just buy the herbs from somewhere else. After all, why waste their natural advantage that could be used to grow better herbs? So that only gets used in dire circumstances and emergencies. That aside, about the only commonly seen time magic is stasis magic, which is sort of cheating. It technically effects time, though more towards just slowing everything down and time gets dragged along with it.’
Doyle nods, ‘So, what does this mean for me?’
Ally laughs, ‘Eh, not much. You’ve had the power since the start and things haven’t gone crazy. It’s just something dungeons have to help them reset. Now, I think you might have a bit more of it than some other dungeons, can’t really be certain. Though there should also be dungeons with more of it than you. This is probably all related back to your dungeon type.
‘But yeah, you can’t control it to any decent degree. On or off only, which I will admit is good to have. Still, if you try to abuse it, the system is going to have words with you, if you survive whatever happens. Before a True Immortal shows up on the scene, time is a lot more fluid. After? Well, it is a lot like how having a delver on a floor messes with your control except permanently. It isn’t an exact analogy, but time just sort of gets brittle.’
Doyle tilts in the other direction, ‘But I’m not my old dimension? I’m sort of my own dimension.’
Ally shrugs, ‘You’re sort of still connected to it at the moment. That doesn’t mean you aren’t independent, but you aren’t completely separate, either. After all, you’re sharing the system. Along with that, there are a few base things being shared as well, especially since you came from this dimension.
‘You know, basic stuff like time and gravity. Kind of a basic function to help a dungeon like you accept people from a more diverse range of dimensions. Once you separate from this place, though, you likely won’t be quite as attached to the next. Not that I know anything for certain. Right now, I’m mostly weaving facts together from my dungeon studies and things that I’ve picked up in the fae court.’
Doyle nods, ‘Okay, so I can play with it, but keep a light touch. Now, with that out of the way, I’ve finally figured out a method of leveling up my patterns. At least for non-living things. It seems I’ve just been relying too much on my skills to create stuff and if I, you know, actually work at creating them my patterns improve. I kind of feel silly looking back on it. Still need to work on stuff like grass, but that can come with time and is part of why I was looking into the whole time thing.’
Ally frowns for a moment before laughing. ‘Well, it does seem a bit obvious now. I really should have realized that though because it isn’t like dungeon cores are the only beings with stuff like that. For instance, some blacksmiths will develop a skill that allows them to do stuff like mass produce nails and doing so doesn’t improve the nail pattern either.’
Doyle sighs, ‘I can see why that didn’t connect though. With the smith, they have to do something outside of the norm. For a dungeon? Our main way of creating things is what causes it. I know hammering out nails is a classic way to train a new smith and now consider if doing that didn’t level up the pattern. On a certain level, that is how it is for dungeons. We’re just hammering out nails by the bucket full and don’t get anything for it.’
Ally shakes her head, ‘When you look at it that way, it seems a little unfair. Anyway, what have you decided to do about living things?’
Doyle pulls up a screen showing his testing room, ‘Let me show you! At first I tried to make a perfectly shaped seed but that didn’t work too well. Instead of changing the seed, it sort of just smashed the seed into a new shape. So instead I’m going for the classic method of growing a ton of wheat, choosing the best examples and then repeating.
‘Of course, as a dungeon, things are a lot simpler for me. I don’t need a ton of new seeds to sow the next generation. Instead, I can just deconstruct the good seeds and create a bunch of clones. Now, I suspect when I use creation to make living stuff, there is a small amount of genetic drift happening. After all, my horned rabbits might all be white with brown spots, but they’re all unique as if they were natural born.
‘Though as a caveat, I think I could prevent that if I wanted to as well. It is all new so I haven’t played with the possibilities yet so we will have to see. Not that I would without a good reason. Genetic diversity is probably quite helpful. It probably stops nonsense, like someone figuring out some voodoo doll trick and taking out all the copies on a floor.’
Ally nods, ‘That sort of thing does tend to be a problem when people try the whole clone army gimmick.’