[D'sP] Floor Of The Floor - Chapter 481

Back in town, Ace checks on a wall of lamps and nods when he sees all of them are still burning. This wasn’t what the lamps from Soul Lamps Unlimited were meant for, but they worked anyway. That, or maybe this, was their original purpose and the whole dungeon aspect is just a more public-facing reason.

After all, people aren’t always happy about surveillance. In this case though, everyone knew that Ace had his wall of lamps. Well, everyone in the inner circle. After all, they would have found out the moment they tried to get one for delving into the dungeon.

While it was possible to have multiple such things attuned to your soul. You can’t have multiple from the same source. Well, and the fact that Soul Lamps Unlimited and The Jinn running the place wouldn’t make a lamp without the person in question being there and confirming they want the lamp made.

Whatever the case, Ace’s wall of lamps allowed him to make sure everyone in the inner circle is alive, including people like Billy Brown who are out of town and anyone that is currently delving the dungeon. Which is also why they’re using the more expensive lamps. Can’t have those delving deep into the dungeon having their light snuffed up here because the dungeon got in the way.

Or the other dungeon as well. After all, it would be irresponsible of Jim not to have some people go and check the place out. Though the lamps for that team aren’t actually in Ace’s display. Those guys aren’t actually a part of the inner circle. Instead, they’re just an accomplished team that joined the Adventurers Guild in more than name.

Though for the moment, this didn’t mean much. Having local paid guild employees was still a ways off. Not that Jim expected this team to ever be anything like that. However, you did need trusted teams for exactly this kind of thing. Someone needs to examine dungeons on occasion to judge them.

Ace swings the false back of the closer back into place, covering the lamps and making the small room look like a simple coat closet. With a couple jackets already hanging there. After all, they were kind of a “state secret”, which felt weird to Ace when he had to acknowledge the fact. But they’d already had one of their own die and that was being lucky.

Sure, that death hadn’t been a secret from anyone, so a lamp going off wouldn’t change much. Except now they had people going off to do secretive things and the inner circle was gaining in power. So whether one of their number was alive or not? That kind of information was growing ever more important.

Honestly, Ace had been tempted to force everyone living in town to get lamped so it could be monitored. Likely would have as well, if Jim hadn’t quashed those thoughts. After all, people were finally free of the pre-system surveillance state that had been forming and at least the Adventurers didn’t want back under the government’s eye.

Not everyone thought that way. But those who would likely grow strong under the system? Yeah, they wouldn’t be too happy with it and would likely just leave. Having those in the inner circle getting lamps was one thing. They were the government, as much as some of them preferred not to think of the inner circle that way.

Ace sighed, just another day of paperwork. Why had they been so eager to reinvent the stuff?

Of course, he knows the answer. As much as doing paperwork was tedious, it was much simpler than trying to run this town without paperwork. Wolf’s Rest was now basically a vacation town, a trade town, and a capital of sorts. All wrapped up into one annoying to manage package. And paper? It let you keep track of things in a way that didn’t depend on someone knowing a thing because anyone could read it.

As Ace battles paperwork, down in the dungeon, Doyle is checking out the final thing on the fifth floor. Right at the center of the floor and next to the boss’s throne stands a monument.

He left it to last as the monument stood out. He hadn’t actually made the pyramid himself, after all, but instead received the structure from the system. Or because of a path? Well, he got the thing as a path reward so it should be that, Doyle just still has trouble with the idea that growing your soul can give you a building.

Because yes, what is left is the kobold monument. The pyramid mixed with an obelisk, carved with the endless forms that kobolds can take. Frilled kobolds, crested kobolds, winged kobolds, kobolds with the lower body of a snake, furred dog-like kobolds, kobolds with spikes all over their bodies, kobolds with fire billowing off their bodies, and so many more.

With the forms only getting stranger the further up the monument you get until the top, where there is only ever a single form shown. A form that is crystal clear and yet blurred. For this was a mortal creation and they couldn’t properly capture the divinity they tried to carve. Its purpose is merely to record and not connect. Presumably for the same reason the monument was just floating around, ready to be gifted to someone with the right soul.

Oh, and of course there was writing on the monument, but it wasn’t a human tongue. The written form looked like claw marks. A common way to depict Draconic.

Whatever the case, the monument was impressive and Doyle spent a few extra moments just taking it in. Well, hours, but they was basically a moment to him at this point. Anyway, he switches floor and finds himself watching something else that still frustrates him a little.

What he is watching is the endless parade of groups challenging the sixth floor.

It was honestly a shame. For how the delvers treated the floor, he might as well have made the floor a single large hallway with one encounter after the next. Not that he blamed them. Even if the monster wasn’t cattle, but rather some kind of animal they didn’t particularly want to eat, but could? People would still have farmed the floor over and over for the easy food.

You kind of need that when the giant farms of the past, which used to support the population are lost and fallow. Though at least if it was something like giant locusts, if the food situation was solved quickly enough? Maybe there would have been a chance for people to all hit up floor six like this.

But no, the floor is mainly cattle. There are a ton of goats as well? Some people even fight them. It is simply that anyone looking for food to sell will stuff their pack with beef. The local population simply prefers beef.

Still, Doyle and Ally watch as each delve explores the functionally infinite plains. Oh sure, it is just a series of square tiles lined up to give that appearance and trees being used to break up the line of sight such that delvers can’t actually see infinitely into the distance. But still, there’s nothing to stop a group from picking a direction and walking forever. Well, besides needing food and water.

Though hopefully no one ever tries that? It would be inconvenient for one instance to be locked down like that.

Doyle sighs and waits till night. Technically, there aren’t too many trees on the sixth. Most visible trees are actually being re-used, but they are still trees and so need replacing. And yeah, it isn’t like the floor is going to clear out during “business hours”. Eventually though, the floor does clear and the trees are replaced.

Which turns Doyle’s attention to floor seven. This was the floor he was most familiar with. The floor of the floor was a circle with a giant wall that spiraled outward and another around the outside.

Those walls created a spiraling area that got wider and then thinner down once again and in the first half, was a bunch of ruined buildings. With a twist. Throughout the area, Doyle had twisted space to confuse people. Things like a wall that looks flat, but when you try to touch, it is actually bowed outward. That or even larger effects like walking down a hallway on the first level of a building, only to suddenly be walking on the second level instead.

And among these spatial anomalies, hunts a small pack of lesser shadow wolves. Along with the assassin vines, which are spread throughout the entire floor are all that make the first half dangerous. Then comes the second half of the floor, myconid territory. Doyle had really packed the area with them.

Which left the reason why Doyle is so familiar with the room. Above it all, rotated a giant stone sphere. Not just that, but it scraped against special stone pieces atop the big stone walls. All to create eerie noises. Oh, and prevent people from simply climbing the walls.

Though the stone sphere is much more than just a wall topper. Ever since it was made until now, Doyle had been carefully carving the thing. 

First, it had become a World Heritage Site. Though Doyle hadn’t actually carved any true scenes into the sphere at the time. Instead, that was him setting up the dividing lines to separate the later works. Still, it seemed the system considered even the lines important. Or maybe reality itself? Not even Ally was quite sure who designates stuff like that. Especially when it doesn’t involve paths.

Next though, was the recognition of his first completed work. A mural displays a harmonious town full of all kinds of beings. Every time Doyle spends time looking at it, he feels the warmth of connection and understanding. Which is kind of weird, but he rolls with it.

Doyle takes some time to consider an important part of the sphere. So far, while the sphere did turn randomly to an extent, he had set it up so the rock kept the mural mostly facing away from the floor proper. Even after the mural was completed, he kept this feature active. But maybe he should give people a chance to see it?

After all, art is meant to be seen! He isn’t a rich guy keeping the artwork in some special warehouse where it is technically in transit to another place for tax purposes. Besides, he had literally just been looking at the monument on the fifth floor. Having even more stuff that shouldn’t be in a dungeon wouldn’t be anything new.

Maybe Doyle could even start working stuff in to make it look like the system or some aspect of the Adventurers Guild is responsible? He takes a moment to think this over before discarding the idea. That would only hold water until the world is opened up to the rest of the universe. Maybe even earlier, depending on the out-of-world employees both the system infrastructure and the Adventurer’s Guildhall are manned by.

Better to remain a general mystery than nail it down to something specific. People would have a much easier time noticing flaws if he tries to play it off as being because of the system or a similar contrivance. Anyway, the monument was already extraplanar. On the weirdness scale, extraplanar automatically rates pretty high as to be tagged that, whatever it is needs to retain some Laws from the universe it used to belong to.

You pull a human from one universe to another, and as long as there are analogous humans? Chances are they’re just another human with an interesting backstory. Maybe you could write a fun Isekai story about them, but unless they retain something that should not work in the new universe, they aren’t extraplanar.

So yeah, a mural on a giant slowly spinning stone sphere that is suspended above your head? Not as weird as the kobold monument when you get down to it.

Bone Relic - Chapter 480

Maybe Minotaurs? - Chapter 482