[D'sP] Maybe Minotaurs? - Chapter 482

Doyle turns away from the seventh floor and to the eighth. Which, at first glance, gave him a bit of a headache. Not literally, but he felt as if he still has a human body, it would be.

Not that there is anything wrong with the floor. It is simply that there is no other floor like it. The 16 “rooms” which make up the floor vary wildly even among themselves.

A room of glass platforms and spiral staircases? Having the direction “down” wrap around, over a side wall, and then onto the ceiling? Two rooms that form a single invisible maze of portals? That’s a fourth of what the floor has to offer!

Though admittedly, after the third and fourth rooms, there are more rooms that mix together. Not the next! That’s the room which looks flat despite being a craggy bit of nonsense you have to feel out.

Then you hit a multi-room. Three of them, all about climbing vines. The way between them is holes in the ceiling through which said vines hang. This was basically an exhibition hall for the vine assassins. A dangerous foe for many as they don’t show up to magic senses. There is no major difference between a regular vine and an assassin vine to magic sight.

Which brings us to the four “rooms” that Doyle is quite happy with. Each room so far had a view out into a seemingly endless space. What with the floor’s conceit being that it is one giant tower. Each room another level of said tower, each stacked on top of the next.

For nine through twelve, this is dropped in favor for those four rooms being merged into a single space. A cube of zero gravity with cube rocks floating around. All with handholds carved into things so people can scamper around the edges and cubes. Not an original design, but Doyle enjoyed watching people get there for the first time and flail around.

And if the lack of gravity doesn’t get them, the next room certainly will. What with the fact that it is a square room. Said room also has five sides. A fun bit of nonsense with both statements being true at the same time and the cause of more than a few headaches for delvers.

The idea of doing more spaces like that did come to mind more than once. Doyle’s biggest reservation against doing so being how not everyone can handle it. So, a single room they can rush through? That’s one thing.

An entire floor based on the concept? Well, now we’re talking a hard stop for all the wrong reasons. Not only that, but it isn’t targets. Making a floor like that wouldn’t stop someone with malicious intent if they just happened to be among those who can hack it.

Though it probably didn’t help that Doyle had filled the room with oddities. Not quite dimensional oddities like the room itself. Rather, the space was simply filled with things made to look weird. Stuff like a bed in the shape of a pentagon. It isn’t like the room itself, a square with too many sides. Said bed is simply made to be a pentagon.

Whatever the case, that room leads into another way to mess with people’s minds. Though this one is more of a classic. A hall of mirrors.

 Not that there isn’t a little bit of spatial nonsense going on. Just that instead of warping things, the room uses portals. Oh, and there is one assassin vine hiding behind a mirror it can reach through. Which has certainly caused quite the scare a time or two.

Then from a room you can’t see hardly anything to an open room with a grass floor. The catch being that space is warped such that your feet will get tripped on what looks like flat ground. Even better, the monsters in the room don’t get affected by the tripping hazards.

And finally, to top it all off, an exact replica of the first floor of the dungeon. Which, yeah, is kind of interesting how by the eighth floor, he can fit in the first as a small part of the whole. Though a large part of that is getting a sphere to work with instead of a layer, which seems to be how most dungeons work. Go figure that an extra-dimensionally based dungeon would have some perks related to the dimensions of said dungeon.

While this is happening, Ally is taking care of some of her own stuff. She technically doesn’t have a specific job, but has positioned herself as the general connection between Doyle and the outside world. Mainly through spying on Ace and company.

Though she also handles this by chatting with any deities that might need chatted with. Which is an excuse because that is only Moota and Jess at the moment. With the world under lockdown, there aren’t really any active deities to worry about.

{

Ally: How’s things going with the faith from the town’s cattle?

Moota: Some people set up a larger herd of them, which is nice. Still, they’re only cattle. Nothing wrong with that, I care for them all the same. Just that the small herd managed by the town’s leaders are worth so much more.

Ally: How so? They’re all still cows from what I can see.

Moota: They might be only cows, but they can act as a sort of relay. While the herders might not believe in me as their deity. Their care for the cattle is a form of faith, which in turn gets funneled to me. Well, as long as they don’t have a primary deity they worship. The amount is not much, but quite a lot relative to what animals give. If I was mainly worshipped by sapients, I probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. But I’m not, so I’ll take what I can get from their cattle.

Ally: Speaking of sapients worshipping you. Don’t you still have an entire planet of them worshipping you?

Moota: Meh, once I “joined” the alchemy pantheon, much of that worship stopped going directly to me. It’s not like they worshipped a cow to worship a cow. They worshipped me as a representation of alchemy. Besides, there is a reason Beast Deities have a hard time gaining the worship of the enlightened and why object deities have a hard time spreading beyond their origins.

Ally: What’s that?

Moota: Uh, not sure? There just is. Some kind of psychological thing. If you’re all they've got, they’ll worship you just fine. Once things broaden? We tend to get relegated to the sidelines unless we turn into an enlightened deity. Which happens most often with object deities. Much easier for a sun god to become a god that represents the sun than it is for a cow goddess to become a goddess of cows.

Ally: Huh, would minotaurs worship you? Like, I assume kin and even folk might not, but a minotaur still has the literal head of a bull.

Moota: You know what? I never actually tried that! They’re generally feral, so it is hard to get them to form a community of their own. Shame, because they seem to individually rise to sapience much more readily than even kobolds. It is just that with creatures like kobolds and goblins, once one rises, they tend to drag the rest of their community at least part of the way with them.

Moota: Shame that I can’t think of any wolf-headed sapients. Would be nice to help Jess with the whole faith problem she has. For a successful beast pantheon to crumble is bad for us as a whole. Their strength and presence worked as protection, even if they didn’t go out of their way to help others.

Ally: Yep, as a Fae, I get what you mean. Admittedly, I’m closer to Jess than you, but I’m not blind. Not every Fae belongs to a court and we’re kind of annoying when you get down to it. Without the threat of the courts, there are worlds that would wipe their local Fae population.

Moota: lol, I looked into Fae a bit after meeting you. The courts are ingenious. A way to god-like power without the whole “god” bit. I don’t know which True Immortal from the distant past managed to stamp the court system onto the Fae Akashic, but they did your species a major favor.

Ally: Huh, never looked at it that way? Like, courts are simply how the Fae have always worked. Though I guess if it did start somewhere? That place would potentially be a TI. Though given our nature? I do have an alternate theory which just popped into my head.

Moota: Oh? Do tell!

Ally: Well, we are pretty annoying. So, if there was a time when we actually became deities instead of forming courts? We’d be injected into the divine realm to cause chaos.

Ally: What if courts are actually the result of a large portion of deities pushing us out? Like, we started having deities, but were so annoying our region of divinity was severed so we couldn’t flit into their realms so easily?

Moota: Well, we simply have to tell Jess this theory! Because I could totally see it happening. Fae are already strange enough that this wouldn’t be out of place. Like, what even is up with how sapience works with you all? Most of your people are, except some who aren’t? But those that aren’t, also aren’t the weakest or newest members? Even some of the more humanoid Fae can be non-sapient forces akin to something like an elemental.

Ally: shrugs Maybe my mom knows? But I think it is exactly that. They’re forces of nature, even if thier nature is more related to sapient formed stuff. There aren’t road elementals, but there are Fae who are intimately connected to roads. We aren’t elementals, though. That has been checked all the way up the chain.

Moota: Well, it’s a fun thought experiment. Though I should probably focus on what I’m doing. The alchemy pantheon is having some kind of meeting right now and they might be touching on my interests. But boy, what’s the phrase you found on Doyle’s planet? It isn’t the only one like it, but the feeling is so there! Ah, right, “this meeting could have been an email”. And we actually do have emails in the pantheon. Being a science, there is an alchemy deity or three that also have knowledge of high tech, if only because they worked in the field to transmute things like making regular cables into superconductors. I don’t know exactly what it means, but one of them likes to brag about their work. Anyway, that guy wired up the entire pantheon at some point, and it is quite convenient. The system doesn’t enforce any cost and while it can’t extend beyond our pantheon, within it the emails are instant.

Ally: Block of text much. But yeah, gl

}

Ally looks up from her messages and notices that Doyle is finishing up on the eighth floor. Well, he had been at that step right before she started chatting with Moota, but here we are.

Ally, ‘Hey Doyle, was just chatting with Moota and I managed to think of a thing for her. Don’t do anything yet, but she’s going to test whether minotaurs like to worship her. So maybe if that proves true, we can try developing some?

‘They wouldn’t have to be sapient, but releasing a bunch of them who already worship her through the other portal might be a boost to her.’

Doyle stops what he is doing and ponders. ‘Huh, I guess that might make sense? They do have the head of a cow, after all. If worship is a mental thing, then, unlike even the beastfolk a straight-up cattle head might work.’

Ally nods, ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Of course, if it does work that doesn’t make her free and clear to gain their worship. Just another contender for it. After all, there are minotaur deities out there.’

Doyle, ‘It is something to consider though. I’m still not the best at evolving my monsters, but if things look positive? I wouldn’t be against attempting to evolve some cattle into minotaurs.’

Floor Of The Floor - Chapter 481

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