[D'sP] 3aa - Chapter 500

Ace makes sure the various corrupt guards and merchants get their day in court. Sure, this isn’t a pre-system court with a judge unrelated to the case. Though at least they pretended to be neutral.

In fact, more than a few of the patsy’s ended up with a slap on the wrist. The central figures, though? Well, if they were lucky, they were exiled and that was mostly among the corrupt guards.

This causes a bit of a ruckus in town as people hadn’t really thought through the whole “justice system” aspect of being an independent city-state. Though this settles down relatively quickly. People have become a bit hardened.

There are those dying weekly both in the dungeon and out in the forest. The numbers aren’t large, but this isn’t some story on the news. They’re people you’d see around town, but no longer. And as much as people hate taxes? They hate even more when the rich try to dodge them.

Though with an example made, Ace is able to guide the town to more peaceful ends. In his words, “There’s enough fighting already. Why fight with words and laws when you’re already fighting with steel?”

Not that many were fighting with steel. The material is a little too expensive for that right now. Besides, bronze is just as effective. If not more so for certain purposes.

All the while, down in the dungeon, Doyle is focused on his database skill. In fact, he is so focused that he misses when the second year passes into the third. Not that he had been rightly sure of how far along the year had been in the first place. Did it take him weeks or months?

Doyle honestly didn’t care as he poked at the skill and refined what he wanted from the end result. At first, not much changed. That is, until his idea to merge everything back into one list begins to work.

It started small. The golem sub-table with a single entry merged into Creature Patterns. That one shift was like a dirt dam springing a leak. The water begins to flow and opens the hole bigger. Dirt eroding until nothing can stop the floor.

In this case, that means reducing the complicated Dungeon Pattern Database skill down to a simple list, sorted by level. This is important in two major ways for Doyle. It proves he can alter how it displays. As well as leveling the skill itself more than a few times.

Dungeon Pattern Database goes from level 100 to 134.

But Doyle doesn’t stop there. Just combining all the small lists into a big one? That causes the list to be a lot harder to parse and quite long. So he starts with the patterns he has the most control over, those of his monsters.

Once again, starting with the easiest. Though instead of the golem, Doyle targets myconid sprout lv72, myconid lv66, lesser myconid lv62, and lesser myconid troop guard lv53.

Why?

Because they’re all the same thing. This isn’t like how there is a regular goat, grassen goat, and wooden goat. The myconid patterns are all just life stages of a single species, the myconid. From young to adult and a diversion for fun.

So why would Doyle be any less skilled at creating a regular myconid than he is at making a myconid sprout? After all, if he wanted a myconid created with the skill of his sprout pattern, all he has to do is create a sprout and let it grow up.

Which with the farm, is what he was already doing. Except when those myconids die to delvers? His myconid pattern doesn’t level up. This likely has to do with the conceptual connection he has with the monsters. That or some restriction from the system itself that makes more sense when you understand the underlying mechanics.

You can never discount system nonsense as an answer when you’re touching the edges. The system doesn’t break and glitch, but it can certainly be quite jarring.

Whatever the case, it takes comparatively little time to collapse all the myconid verities down into a single Myconid pattern. Though it lost a couple levels, ending at lv70.

This change was not peaceful. It caused literal pain. Though not physical or mental pain, but rather Doyle’s soul ached. He couldn’t see it, but in his soul core, the bits representing the different kinds of myconids shifted around and through others parts. The pain continues until every bit once again settles down.

Which is why the change only took “comparatively” little time. Making the change on his status panel? A couple days at most. Recovering from the pain? Well, now, that took a couple weeks.

But it did enough. Because throughout this process, Doyle had been watching his list of paths. New options would pop up on the rare occasion, but as much for the work was trying things that didn’t work and then thinking of more methods to try. None of those paths matched what he really wanted.

Now? There was a path with only a single problem. The path, “Actualized Status Reorganization”, cost 120 points and Doyle currently only has 53 path points. Which, fair enough, he had been neglecting to raise any of his other skills. So Doyle turns his attention to his list of skills.

{

Skills [6/10 Class, 4/5+2 General]: Territory Control lv102, Dungeon Rules lv100, Universal Deconstruction lv100, Dungeon Pattern Database lv134, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv100, Conceptual Reinforcement lv99, Biosphere Balancing lv81, Psychology lv84, Village Planner lv51, *Root Rune Use lv53

}

A decent list of skills, which is likely on the high end compared to those in town. Though speaking of the town, Doyle finally noticed how much of that has gone by. ‘Hey Ally, been a bit out of things. Can you give me a quick update on the town?’

Ally looks up from some article, ‘So you’ve finished torturing your soul?’

Doyle tilts away and to the side. ‘I didn’t plan to do that. Besides, I managed to keep the dungeon running.’

Ally raised an eyebrow, ‘Your dungeon managed to keep running on pure instinct despite you being in the metaphysical corner laid up in bed and unable to move. I tried to help, but what little healing magic I remember isn’t exactly meant to handle the soul.

‘Besides, you weren’t actually hurt, even if you were hurting. That was more like growing pains. If anything, someone capable of helping, an utter rarity since, need I remind you, almost nothing touches the soul! At best, they would be able to speed it up at the cost of even greater pain. I don’t think even time magic would have helped since the soul isn’t exactly bound by it.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough. I get it, that was unexpected and I need to be more careful when messing around with the underlying mechanics of a skill. Though I’m surprised that if what I did was enough, more people don’t run afoul of this.’

Ally sighs, ‘What you did is quite a bit more than more people would even think to attempt. Patterns aren’t something to throw away for most. It takes time and effort for each one and so people cherish those they have.’

Doyle, ‘So uh, how’s the town doing?’

Ally rolls her eyes again, ‘The town is fine. They repeated the celebration from last year. Though this time they could afford to be a bit more extravagant to bring in year 3aa. More important is the regular delvers and their progress.

‘Now, obviously the beef farmers are still on floor six. I don’t think that will ever change, even if you ended up making a new “beef” floor right after a boss. Floor six is simply too easy for regular people to handle. At this point, I wouldn’t even call the people focused on farming the floor adventurers. Even if they did join the guild.

‘Honestly, on a more developed world they probably wouldn’t have joined at all. That or they would have joined as support personnel instead of straight adventurers.

‘Which, now that I think about it, is probably why people who enter the dungeon are delvers and not adventurers. A delver can be anyone, as long as they’re going into dungeons.

‘Anyway, the proper adventurers who delve our dungeon are making progress, with many beating floor ten now. The numbers are a bit top-heavy, but you get that kind of thing anytime there is a sudden increase in adventurers. Admittedly, that normally happens because of a baby boom, war, or famine.’

Doyle nods, ‘Good to see them progressing. Though it also means they’re knocking on my door once again. I guess it is a good thing there’s ten floors till the next boss?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Your boss floors do act as shortcuts. Though let me remind you, there isn’t anything bad about them reaching the end of the dungeon. While this isn’t 100%, people generally can’t even scratch a dungeon core like yourself without either some system-gifted boost or being level 100.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I know, but we both also know that delvers in the core room feels icky. Anyway, I need to work on my skills for a path which might zonk me out for even longer.’

Ally throws her hands up, ‘Of course! Well, before you actually buy the path, you should probably go and automate more of the floors. I know you heavily rely on farms, but better safe than sorry with that kind of thing.’

Doyle nods, ‘I have a few matters to set into motion before I buy it. Also, it’s an actual path this time, so I might be fine?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘The system isn’t that powerful. If it is anything like with the myconids, you’ll still feel it. Like I said, this is more like growing pains than an actual injury that can be healed. And with normal growing pains? At least those are physical and so in extreme cases, medicine can help. This is the soul core! You’d feel it even if you got knocked out.’

Doyle, ‘Well isn’t that a jolly thought!’

Ally shrugs. There isn’t really much more to say about it.

And so Doyle turns back to the skill list and decides to work on village planner and psychology. While floor 21 is still crashing down on a bear, the clear signs of “civilization” can be spiffed up to appear to lead to an actual community. Abandoned, but still, a village that needs planning.

More to the point, Doyle now wants to turn the top of the mountain into said village and give it a very specific vibe. Which is where psychology comes on.

Oh, sure, making a spooky ghost town isn’t exactly hard. Doyle wants more than that. An “otherness” that points towards it may be not being of human origin. This also isn’t the hardest when you can cheat by warping space a little and creating buildings whole cloth without worrying about building them.

A few angles that aren’t quite right, in both meanings of the word. Doors that are sized in a way that doesn’t quite feel fit for humans. Ceilings that are a little low. Basically, making the town wonky, but consistent in that wonkyness.

On top of that, the layout needs to make sense. Thus the town planning part. Anyone can slap down a few roads and place empty buildings on them. To make the places have meaning and purpose that makes sense? All while maintaining the otherness? Now that’s where the challenge is!

So to make sure it stays consistent, Doyle puts down lines to mark the basic layout. The concept for it being that the exit portal is the source, but not the center. Which does require Doyle to move the way into the core room towards the edge of the mountaintop, but then it is easy to lay out the roads.

Satisfied with the roads, Doyle picks out a location for a residential house. This would be the “style guide” off of which he would base the rest of the town.

And Catches Them - Chapter 499