[D'sP] Glowing Berries - Chapter 489

With Doyle having seen the general terrain around his second portal, Ally moves on to showing interesting features. Though there wasn’t too much that was exceptional. Even if admittedly, anything exceptional is in fact, the exception.

After all; Doyle, Ally, and the entirety of the town had failed to find anything yet.

Now, the first thing they came across at the second portal was obvious enough. Hidden only from above, there was a beehive that had taken up the entire tree it was in, besides the canopy. Which would point towards giant bees or some such, but that wasn’t the case.

While there was too much Mana in them compared to the area for the bees to be normal. Each was still only the size of a normal bee. The giant hive was simply that, a big hive. Ally’s best guess was the fundamental change happened with the queen and or queens. Maybe one hyper-productive queen or the multiple queens changed so they work together.

If it was closer to the portal, Doyle would have been tempted to have a kobold go and grab some bees. See if they show up differently in the system and whatnot. Even with the distance, he might have tried. Except the bees from that giant hive traveled outwards, which meant in no uncertain terms, they were avoiding the dungeon.

Leaving the bees alone for now, the next item of interest and one Doyle was definitely going to harvest, a patch of berry bushes. Wineberries to be specific.

Doyle had remembered seeing them once when younger and out hiking with his family. They were grand, but that was long enough ago that he only remembered that they tasted good and not the actual flavor. And he can’t exactly fix that situation at the moment as even though he can actually spawn them, a dungeon core doesn’t exactly come with taste buds out of the box.

Anyway, Doyle wanted a sample of the berries because the bush showed signs of abnormality. The thorns were too long and while hard to tell, in the dim lighting under the trees, the berries themselves appeared to give off a glow. Maybe.

Ally could only shrug at that, ‘We’ll need to get actual eyes on the berries. Magic signatures like to appear as a glow. So they might actually be admitting light or they’re just magical in general. Maybe both. The lighting there is just so dim as to make it hard to judge one way or another.’

Whatever the case, they were happy to get a specimen of a truly mystical plant. Whether it just glowed or was magical in some other manner was unimportant. A native specimen represented the first step to getting the local ecology into gear, and preserving such steps would both help with levels and provide nice scenery later on.

And if this was the end of things, they both would be ecstatic. Obviously, though, it didn’t and the third and final anomaly really brought the mood down.

It wasn’t a swamp. That would imply water was flowing in and out. A cycle was happening. This was a mud pit at best. A bit big, but a mud pit nonetheless.

That alone wouldn’t be a problem. Heavy rain happens and you’d end up with something like that. Except such things dry up.

Actually, no, you don’t just get a mud pit after some rain. The ground gets muddy and if it doesn’t dry in time, the grass will die and rot. But it would still be wet dirt. To get proper Mud, you need something to mix it up. A herd of beasts passing through, maybe?

Still, this was a proper mud pit and neither Ally nor Doyle could spot any signs of what caused it. And it wasn’t drying. There hasn’t been any serious rain recently so it should have hardened some. At the very least, the top surface should have dried and cracked, but that didn’t happen.

Neither could see a reason for this, which was a big part of why they were leery about it. If there had been a magical glow, signs of animals, or really just about anything! It would have been just another feature. But as it ever was, the unknown is where the true worries came from.

So, to find an unexplained oddity? Yeah, Doyle and Ally were both leery of the mud pit. At least if it was a stagnant pool of water, they could have seen what was in it. There’s a reason for the old saying about how something is “as clear as mud”.

Ally suggested throwing kobolds at it, but Doyle turned the idea down. For the moment, they would sit back and watch. It isn’t exactly a dungeon’s job to be proactive, after all.

Then a kobold returns and they’re alerted that the vine pattern has gone from level 58 to 99.

Doyle, ‘Oh, no pattern for the magic berries.’

Ally nods, ‘That is frustrating. I figured we would get something like we did with the earth tree. Though most annoying to me is the fact it didn’t tell us what it was!’

Doyle turns to the core room and puts the glowing wineberry vine down. ‘Well, I can make them and they do seem to actually glow, not just emit magic.’

Ally sighs, ‘Which is probably the reason we didn’t get anything for them. They’re just berries that figured out how to handle excess magic. I bet that in your core room, they’re actually many times brighter than they were outside. More world energy after all.’

Doyle, ‘I don’t think so? Likely the plant is acclimated to wherever I spawn it and so it only releases the minimum.’

Ally waves that off, ‘Fair enough. Still, the point stands. The plant isn’t actually magical in the same way a prism doesn’t actually project a rainbow. You need light for that and the plant is similar. The flow of magic through the area is released from it without significant modification. I wonder if you could take the berry off and use the bit that remains on the plant to trickle charge a magic item?’

Doyle, ‘How is it not a magic plant when it turns magic into light?’

Ally shrugs, ‘I wouldn’t say it turns it into light in the same way a prism doesn’t turn white light into blue light. The white light already has blue light and the magic already has light magic. Going through the plant simply breaks the magic apart.

‘Though that doesn’t answer the question. Which is partly because, unlike a lot of things, “magic” plants can be hard to classify at the low end.

‘After all, no one is going to make a mistake when they see a lotus blooming in the middle of a lava pool. But what about a plant that gives you a bit more pep in your step? Is that just caffeine or is there magic involved?

‘Err, that actually is a bad example. Caffeine doesn’t actually give you energy; instead, it makes it so you don’t feel tired. Whereas a plant that gives you energy would be clearly magical. And that really is the catch here. A magical plant is magical.

‘Those wineberries? If anything, they’re less magical after you pick them. So no, they aren’t magical plants. However, they are a mystical plant. Which is going down the rabbit hole of classifications. Simply said, it deals with the mystical, even if only by getting rid of it.

‘Which can be useful! Depending on how those wineberries crack the magic apart? I can see them being planted in a bunch of ominous places. Find an ancient cursed graveyard in the woods? Plant some of these on it and suck the curse right out of it. Though only if they’re able to properly crack the magic, that is. Don’t want to make a place where you get cursed just because some berries glowed on you.’

Doyle, ‘Well, going by that I would assume it has more to do with whether it was actually Curse Mana or simply cursed Mana.’

Ally shrugs, ‘I could see that. Though not which direction it would go. Does it break Curse Mana down into the component parts or will it strip the curse off of the cursed Mana?’

Doyle, ‘Anyway, I should probably plant some of them on the 21st floor when I get around to decoration. There are more than enough people in the inner circle who can figure this out for us. And even if it turns out not to be worth much? I’m sure someone will find a use for it. Maybe wine made from the berries would glow? Stupider novelties have sold well in the past.’

Ally, ‘If it did glow as a wine, that likely wouldn’t be a novelty. I bet the glow would alter if someone added things to it. You know, like poison. After all, at a certain point, poison becomes just another mystical force. Everything does because the physical can only handle so much.’

Doyle, ‘Okay, is there anything else to check out at the second portal? It took us a while to find all of that.’

Ally shrugs, ‘I don’t know, you tell me. We literally just went over everything I know.’

Doyle, ‘Oh, yeah, that make sense. What were we doing this for?’

Ally, ‘I wanted to show you the area around the second gate now that our area of influence has stopped expanding.’

Doyle nods his core, ‘Well, it looks interesting out there. We’ll want to keep an eye on it over the year, if only to see if anything interesting decides to migrate through the area.’

Ally, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m going to keep an eye on things by default for quite a while. The world is still up in the air because of the integration. Who knows what might wander down the hills!’

Doyle, ‘True. Anyway, I’m going to go and handle my bears. I think I’ve got something that might work how I want it.’

Doyle turns to the 21st floor and despite how bare it still is, feels quite satisfied with how the floor looks. A proper mountain with ledges and caves tunneling through it. And then there is the one cave offshoot.

Later on, he would place an optional reward there with something strong defending it. Now? It was the location to evolve his bears.

First was to set up the cave itself. Seeing as the mountain was one giant block that was later carved out, everything is one giant piece of stone. That would not do, even for the normal tunnels. After all, up until now everything has been sturdy and people could fight in the most bombastic of ways. So what if instead the ceiling wasn’t sturdy?

Yes, on the 21st, there would be a risk for cave-ins. Not as a trap or anything. Doyle was simply breaking up the stone a bit. Though he also added dirt and dust into the mix as well.

While he wanted a more rocky bear, at this point the changes to the tunnels had become a part of the plan for the floor. Besides, what’s an unstable mineshaft/tunnel that doesn’t have dust falling from the ceiling in a threatening manner?

And of course, there needed to be dirt on the floor!

Doyle shakes his core and stops himself. This is not the time to design stuff. That is for later. Focus on the bears.

So yeah, at the end of the tunnel offshoot, there’s a cave. An obvious place for a bear den and treasure chest. As well as some temporary additions.

The ceiling was currently structurally sound as long as someone isn’t throwing around fireballs. But what if it wasn’t?

Now, it would be easy enough to set the ceiling to fall on the bears. One problem. Doyle can’t keep resetting the ceiling every time it falls for them. Especially with how much speed up the floor can end up under.

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