[D'sP] So The Traps Work - Chapter 464

The Goat matriarch is not happy. She isn’t quite sure what to make of the situation. Those strange not-lizards had attacked her kin. Yet the Father wanted peace.

However, She is the matriarch and her kin are simple kin, not Kin. Those others had no right to them for they could not decide for themselves.

She chuffed and paced around what used to be their pen. Days ago at this point, she had finished removing the wooden boundary. Yet those not-mammals had gone right back to their tasks. Same as her kin.

This is the Father’s realm and it all danced to His beat. The Matriarch snorted, she did not dance. Though the clouds did call to her. She simply has not figured out the way yet.

Or rather, the conditions are wrong. There were no clouds and the air was not right to spin some. Worse, there isn’t even a body of water.

The Father could fix this, but they had given her time, and she would use it. He did not control her. He could wait.

And so the Goat matriarch wandered around the floor as had been suggested.

While this was happening, Doyle watched. Which caused him a bit of a strange feeling. What with the rate of time speeding up as usual.

Being a dungeon core didn’t give him the ability to process what is happening as if it was going at a normal speed. Yet at the same time, it isn’t a blur of time-lapsed nonsense. There was this halfway sense of knowing what is happening, but most of it fell away as unimportant.

Which, in this case, meant Doyle had a pretty good idea how the days are passing for the raid boss. She wandered the entire floor, knocking down the other two pens while she was at it.

Though Doyle also felt the fact that the results annoyed her. After all, the fences aren’t actually there to prevent the goats from running away. Oh sure, they would wander around, but that was where they are supposed to be and so they stayed in the general area.

While the goatherd kobolds did technically do their job. It wasn’t needed. More akin to some animatronic set piece with everything going through the motions. Well, more free-form than that. They don’t mechanically repeat things and can freely react to the matriarch.

Though that touch of freedom almost seems to annoy the matriarch even more. She would do things and be accompanied by one group or another. Only for them to return to their place if she leaves them alone.

And not in a natural “wander back to a good place to live”, sort of way. Which isn’t something Doyle can fix all that easily. It was like clockwork. If the matriarch stopped giving the goats guidance, then the goats would hang around doing whatever they were doing. Right until they suddenly shift gears and begin to wander back.

Not one by one or in small groupings. Doyle actually found it creepy when he watched it happen one time. As a group, the entire herd of goats would turn towards where they needed to go and begin casually walking there. The matriarch could stop this with even the simplest nudge to even a single goat in the group.

Still, Doyle could agree with her that this behavior was annoying. To him it felt more like some old stealth video game. One where the guards would go searching for you, only to suddenly snap back into patrol mode and leave, no matter what you had done.

Which wasn’t too far off how it seemed to work. The boss couldn’t even give a standing order to prevent this. While the goats might do what they were told for a bit, they would always snap back to their dungeon activities.

Doyle couldn’t even say he was disappointed in this reaction. After all, it would be mighty inconvenient if the boss could basically kidnap all the goats on the floor and let delvers through with an easier fight. Not that she was capable of such a thing either. As a boss, she would have to protect his core when push came to shove.

However, until that moment she could mess around. And not that Doyle was trying to make a perfectly predictable dungeon. It was just that having all the goats clumped up or spread to the four corners of the floor wasn’t good floor planning.

There needed to be a balance between order and chaos. The fights will never be the same, but the general setup needed a flow. If only because Doyle wanted more of a sense of progression. Both within a floor and over the entire dungeon.

Though this left the two at a bit of a standoff. Doyle mostly just wanted the raid boss to be in position when the time came and not try to mess up the other fights. A seemingly easy enough request.

A shame that said raid boss seemed to be against such things simply to be contrary at this point. She would wander the entire floor, looking for the edges, not just physically, but of the scene. This was both for good and bad. In particular, she ended up triggering more than a few kobold traps.

Doyle had to control himself to not broadcast his excitement over that happening. As while he didn’t want his monsters to be unnecessarily hurt. It was also true that he rarely got to see the kobold traps in action.

On the early floors, there aren’t enough kobolds to spread them around and they tend to end up in the same locations. The best example of this being on the first floor where the entrance into the kobold camp almost always has some sort of trap there. A predictable event that everyone in town knows about and that even the arrogant sorts that turn down “spoilers” for the dungeon, will have heard of. Sure, which trap used might vary, but there isn’t much the kobolds can do with a stone opening that can’t be changed too much or it reverts to the base form.

Doyle was sure that out in the wild, a group of kobolds, especially with a mage or two to help, could have done many things. It was just that the limitations of a dungeon kept things in check. The kobolds finally got to stretch their trap-making skills starting on the 17th floor.

Though Doyle had to admit, it was partly his own fault. Even in areas where they could do more, like at the end of the second floor, he had the layout of things locked down quite a bit. On the 17th floor, Doyle had finally eased up on what he allowed the kobolds to do. And this was just something he was noticing right now!

It hadn’t been a purposeful choice. Doyle had simply desired that the floors be relatively the same with each run. Which translated into how his rules and instructions were interpreted through his abilities as a dungeon.

This wasn’t even on the level of a person’s subconscious doing things. A dungeon core didn’t have that sort of thing, even if Doyle wasn’t quite used to that even at this point. Instead, it was on an even more basic level. The way quintessence works relies on intent.

Now, what qualifies at intent? Doyle isn’t sure and neither is Ally. This topic is diving into the source code of reality itself. All because dungeon cores are a fundamental part of this reality. Not universe, not even Creation, but a broader aspect of both the many dimensions and the void itself.

While Doyle couldn’t make heads or tales of this new layer of reality that he had barely peeled back a single unimportant corner of, his own core was plugged in like a single transistor in the computer that is existence.

Also, this was not what Doyle had gone looking for! He had simply wanted to figure out more about the damn kobold traps. Because finally! Finally, he had someone stumbling into and setting them off semi-regularly.

Most people who made it to floor 17 not only knew what to expect, but went in with the knowledge to at least avoid the traps. So while they do get set off on occasion, even then it tends to be either on purpose to disarm them or easily escaped.

Not that the raid boss was getting all that hurt on the traps. Their movement abilities and high stats meant they were able to generally avoid the worst of it. Though they did end up needing to respawn a couple times.

Which Doyle took particular note of. If only because it proved the traps being laid out by the kobolds were effective. Oh sure, a few idiots would trip over a wire and get taken out by a nearby kobold on the rare occasion. But that wasn’t the same as the traps being in and of themselves, lethal.

So, forgetting all that deep-magic nonsense he had dredged up, Doyle focused back on his new boss. She wasn’t traumatized or anything by the two deaths. Then again, the nature of being a dungeon boss should take care of such things by default. It would suck if every dungeon boss ended up a mental wreck because of how much they die.

Though the deaths did have one effect. Doyle put it down to the fact that knowing you will come back if you die is completely different from actually experiencing it. So after her first revive, the Goat matriarch seemed to chill out and worry less.

Not that she stopped worrying or being annoyed by the situation. She simply wasn’t in as much of a rush. Though Doyle felt it was probably getting close to when he should once again make an appearance.

There is a sense of stabilization coming to the floor. Which was odd, but could be for any number of reasons. Top of the list simply being that this is the first time he had so obsessively watched a floor right after it was completed. Well, mostly completed. Doyle wouldn’t consider it truly complete until the boss is settled.

And so almost without an active decision on his part, the sped-up time on the floor began to slow and even out with the rest of the dungeon. Slower and slower until things clicked into place. Though Doyle waited a bit longer before making his presence, well, active presence, known. Kind of hard to leave his presence while literally inside of the dungeon.

Doyle actually brought out the imitation core he kept around Ally’s room to have a more physical presence. ‘So, you’ve had a chance to look around. I’ve noticed that you see where things don’t work like you would expect. Which I sadly have to inform you, I can’t fix.

‘Even if I made the others follow your orders to the T, they would still end up resetting. It is simply the nature of a dungeon monster. I can do all kinds of things and give them complex paths to follow, but follow they will. Unlike goats outside, they are fully a part of the dungeon.’

The Goat matriarch huffs and paws at the ground.

Doyle tilts his core to the side, ‘Yes, it can be disturbing, however, you’ve also seen that as long as everything ends with them being back in their area, things keep going. I don’t have complete control over them. I can’t make them stand still like statues.’

She turns her head to stare directly at him with one of her eyes.

Doyle, ‘No, seriously. Can you control your stomach? Like, I’m sure there are people out there who can decide to not produce stomach acid or some such. The mind is quite powerful. I simply have not bothered with that.

‘I don’t want to micromanage you and your herd. You basically won’t see me around if you don’t get my attention first. The entire dungeon needs me and if anything, I’m putting too much on Ally when it comes to handling you and the other bosses.

‘So, can you please work with me on this? I’m not going to tell you how to lead your herd. I just don’t want you messing with the other monsters too much and to be back in position when delvers show up. We’re deep enough that it won’t happen to often so you should mostly have the time to yourself.’

The Cheating - Chapter 463

Settling Down - Chapter 465