[D'sP] Another Scout - Chapter 486

Derrick has the tree gently set him down. He hadn’t seen anything noteworthy from up top and so it was time to continue their journey.

Down below, one of the ladies in his scouting group asks, “Anything to head towards?”

Derrick shakes his head, “Nothing sticks out. We’ll just keep going towards the sunrise. Still seems to be East, which is nice. The entire world being destroyed would be a perfectly valid reason for the poles to shift around. Not like it didn’t happen in the past through natural mechanisms.”

The lady shrugs, “Will do boss.”

Derrick sighs, “I’m not the boss. If you need help with plants, I can handle that, but no matter how much I spread myself out, leadership skills weren’t a part of it.”

One guy laughs, “How can you not be the boss? This was your trip in the first place! After hearing about that circle guy being sent out by the town, you right away started up your own scouting expedition.”

Derrick, “I planned to go out on my own! If I hadn’t taken the time to prepare carefully, none of you would be here.”

The guy shrugs, “I’m pretty certain you were good to just wander out even without preparation. Wouldn’t be much of a druid if you couldn’t survive in the woods.”

Derrick, “That’s the thing, it won’t always be forest. What if I hit a desert?”

The lady laughs, “Then you’d turn around or skirt it. No reason to force something like that. Sides, a druid should be at home in the desert as well.”

Derrick rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I’m a plant druid with a focus on controlling said plants. Cactus would be fine for defense, but I’m not exactly going to be growing carrots and green beans on a sand dune.

“Besides, I don’t Know any of you! I haven’t even memorized any of your names. Why are you following me? We’re just as likely to end up dead in some forgotten corner as we are to actually find something and make our way back to report whatever we found.”

Another of the guys in the group who sticks out for the simple reason that he is the shortest, laughs. “Come on! We’ve been out here for a week or so now. You can at least remember my name, its–”

Derrick covers his hears, “La La La, Can’t hear you. Don’t make me the boss, don’t put this responsibility on me. I don’t want to care.”

The first lady chuckles, “Well, what did you expect? You didn’t exactly turn us away or anything. And don’t think I don’t know about you. Not knowing our names isn’t really that strange for you. From what little I could dig up, that seems to just be a mental block you suffer from.”

The first guy nods, “Yeah, we didn’t just randomly follow the first guy who wanted to explore. There’s been small groups heading out into the wilderness since the very beginning. Many for them even make their way back! Well, as long as you count those who don’t end up scouting for more than a day.

“But the fact is many aren’t stupid enough to push things past reasonable. And while I don’t know about the name thing, I did check on your skills. You’ve trained with quite an eclectic mix of people.”

Derrick leans against the tree and without meaning to, the bark smooths out and deforms to cradle his back. “All I was doing is making sure I could survive. Me, not me and a bunch of other people. It started because I wasn’t sure if civilization was going to stick together. Which even now I’m not 100% on!”

Another guy laughs, “Well, you have the magic. Shouldn’t have much trouble now. Bet you could help even a small town keep going with a wee bit of elbow grease.”

The short guy shakes his head, “Now that is going a little far. Though us? I’m sure Derrick can keep us fed at the least!”

Derrick sighs, “I mean, yeah, probably. There’s only ten of us. Though we’d have to find a water source. Water-gathering spells are actually quite exhausting. Sure, I can take water from a stagnant pool of water and magic it pure, but it has to be actually water I’m working with. Otherwise, my whole day will basically be spent on gathering water. Which given you seem to also want me handling food? Well, that makes things not exactly workable.”

The others cheer, and the first guy comments, “You hear that? He actually figured this stuff out already!”

Derrick stares up at the sky, too tired of this nonsense to even sigh. Yes, he did do a bit of planning on how to keep the group alive. It would be irresponsible not to! That doesn’t mean he wanted them.

He had originally planned on just following the sun out into the wilds. It wasn’t some sort of plan to lose himself or anything. But there was an idea of maybe finding a quiet corner and just vibing there for a while. The world was still a bit too tipsy turvy for his taste.

Still, Derrick clenches his fists, he wasn’t going to give up. They were all out here exploring. Going towards the horizon to see what they can see! Actual exploration like this was dead before the system came. There wasn’t really a place for some random guy to go and discover. You practically needed to be rich to do an expedition to anywhere even remotely undiscovered. And even then, you could likely get satellite images of the place.

Derrick looks around the forest before standing up and stretching. The others would likely end up just chatting for a good fifteen more minutes if he doesn’t set things back on track. And while not originally his plan, at this point? Discovering what was beyond the horizon was a pretty big goal for him and that requires a certain amount of forward movement to accomplish.

And while he tries to look forward, way back in Wolf’s Rest, down near the bottom of the dungeon, Doyle is wrapping up his look back. He has retreaded much of the floors so far. All as part of both reminding himself of how it all looked and the main thing, updating all the fake trees so that they’re now real trees.

Which doesn’t change as much as some might think. Though it does make any future work, he may do on them easier. It is a lot easier to get a tree to move than it is to move a tree’s worth of wood.

And now he is on the seventeenth floor. Which is quite the forest of trees and so represented a bunch of work on his part to update it all. This isn’t hard work, per se. Just tedious and time-consuming. The main saving grace on this floor being that what the trees look like isn’t actually important.

Whereas on previous floors, Doyle had to grow the trees so that they at least seemed close to what the fake trees looked like. On the seventeenth, it was enough of a forest and so few people have visited the place that Doyle could be much looser on even the placement of trees.

Not even the map drawn up by the town had trees individually marked in it. What was recorded was the five lakes and where the kobold settlements were located. Which was the “gimmick” for this floor. Well, and the fact that this was the floor to introduce elder kobold’s.

Anyway, the seventeenth floor mirrored the sixteenths island set up, with the land being water and the water being land. The biggest divergence from this was the area around the fifth lake.

Doyle had raised up a giant plateau and like on the second floor, the cliff was a challenge. And a much tougher one as this time the climb involves water-slick handholds. Oh, and kobolds do have access to ranged attack options, so you better clear them out before attempting a climb. Though also like the second floor, the climb was completely optional with the only reward being whatever resources were growing up at the top.

But that was enough delaying. Doyle turns back to the main space for the floor. And yep, that is a lot of trees.

And replacing all those trees thankfully ended up taking less time than originally creating the fake trees. After all, since Doyle isn’t worrying about matching the new trees to the old, he can rip the old trees out and plant a sapling in their place. Which given dungeon magic, both grows at an accelerated pace, but also is assured to grow properly.

Still takes him a long time to replace everything. But eventually the floor is an actual forest and he can move onto floor eighteen.

More kobolds and elder kobolds, with the addition of windcutter axebeaks. All within a bunch of slot canyons covered in prairie grass and with the occasional room. Doyle had made up a reason for those rooms to have formed. Though looking at the floor again, he isn’t sure if that explanation would hold water.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to care about that. The floor had about the right amount of danger to reward, in Doyle’s opinion. Especially the occasional flood that would happen. Though given the themeing of the coming boss floor, the use of water was a bit off. There just wasn’t a good way to make the wind as much of a threat as the water in this canyon.

Whatever the case, if you ignore the slot canyon aesthetic? This whole floor was actually just another cave floor. It didn’t have any branching paths to ensure the flood of water remains a flood and not a trickle. All of which made it quite easy to move onto the nineteenth floor.

A wonderful flat and open space, themed to be the top of a plateau with the borders marked by ostensibly, the same canyons from the floor before. Big openings in the ground leading into the darkness.

Anyway, it was on this floor that Doyle had really sealed in the elemental theme. Instead of kobolds, it was voibolds and razor foxes were added to the mix. Though besides noting that there was harvestable wheat, there was much else on the floor. Just a big empty field, which allows the foxes and kobolds to constantly be ambushing the delvers.

So, with that out of the way, Doyle turns to the last floor, number twenty! Home of his latest goat variant, the cyclone goats, and his third boss, which is a form of said cyclone goats.

He was just here so the gentle downward slope was still familiar and Doyle is easily able to replace the space trees that populate the area. Besides that, this was once again a pretty open area. In fact, the three main places to fight are actually more like open arenas.

Just a trio of flattened spaces where the void kobolds and their herds live. Though the last space is more the boss’s territory than the kobolds. Even till now, the goat boss chafes at the restrictions Doyle has placed on it.

Which feels odd, given how Doyle’s other two bosses fell in line quite easily. Then again, they were on top. Whereas this boss was just another part of the goatherd. Just something for Doyle to think on when making the next boss.

For now, he was finally done replacing all the tree facsimiles with actual trees.

Doyle relaxed for a few minutes. Or maybe it was hours? Whatever, he let himself relax before turning to floor 21. Which for the moment is just a rough outline of a mountain with a bunch of ledges and cave tunnels. Terrain that does need to be properly finished, but for the moment Doyle has something else he wants to do with the area.

He’s had time to think about it and now Doyle has a rough plan for how to get an earth-aligned evolution for his bears.

An Aside About Coins - Chapter 485

And Plans Of Scouting - Chapter 487