[D'sP] Stratus Cloud - Chapter 461

Doyle took a moment, which is extra subjective when in the timeless void, all to make sure this soul of a goat was truly a goat soul. It was. Best guess was that the soul core had been previously in the void long enough to lose any tendencies and then ended up in a regular goat.

Not perfect, but close enough.

Doyle grabbed the goat soul and retracted into his dungeon, the soul core squeezing through the dimensional border and scraping off some of the residue left over from their last life. 

The shimmer of life settles on the border between Doyle's dungeon and the void. Patches to thin spots and reinforcement to weak sections. This miraculous dust doesn’t last long, though in that moment he can feel it isn’t twice what he had gotten before. 

Though Doyle’s instincts tell him, this is not an inefficiency with using multiple boss slots on the same monsters. Rather, the chosen soul core didn’t have enough to offer. Which was a shame, but likely inevitable for any future raid boss unless Doyle specifically hunted down soul cores with a ton of baggage.

Speaking of soul cores, his chosen core flows through the outer layers of his dungeon without pause. It passes by the fifth and tenth floors with the local bosses barely even registering the passage. Though for some reason, the oft-forgotten ant queen seems to notice.

Whatever might be up with that, the soul core soon reaches the receptacle, diving into the armed and armored cyclone goat along with a double shot of the usual power that creates a boss. From there, the changes happen rapidly. First to change is the skin-tight armor becomes skin armor.

In a wave from the point of contact with the soul core, the purple-black bronze alloy armor appears to fall into the goat’s body, leaving behind changes for and flesh. Gone are the neutral browns and patches for white. Replaced with a similarly speckled color scheme, except of lighter and darker purple patina. That buttery smooth look takes on a rougher matte appearance, though below the fur, the goats hide maintains the buttery look of a mithril alloy.

And the change reaches the hooves, the mithril and gold alloy gold leaf just as readily merging. The hooves become an organic metal, though even more tilted towards metal. However, they do take one aspect of the original hooves and turn it up to 11. These golden hooves aren’t going to be marked with a fingernail like a gold sculpture. Their hardness boosted to be equivalently harder than the metal hide is, maintaining the relationship between the two.

Then, last but not least, the transformation reaches the great spiral horns and their mithril coverings. Just as with the rest of the armor, mithril easily merges with horn. Each twist and mark on the original horns is preserved, not as a weakness, but a display of the goat’s achievements.

Any potential weakness those marks has introduced was wiped away as horn was replaced with organic mithril. Stress points and flaws changed in their very nature with mithril’s material properties not having the same weaknesses as natural horn.

Not that any such marks would have been easy to exploit. Dungeon monsters naturally heal almost completely. About the only things that stick around tend to be thematic and meaningful scars. So a monster that gets an eye slashed out might maintain a scar across the eye, but the eye itself will be fully healed.

And the process continues inward. Doyle can feel that the transformation is not turning the entire monster into metal, the change being literally skin deep. However, there are other changes being made. Muscles grow denser and shift to more effectively carry the weight that comes with being partially made of metal. Bones, while not turning metallic themselves, do gain some properties of such, most important being a bit of bend. Thus becoming less likely to snap.

Of course, as with all things, these changes must come to an end and Doyle can feel everything slow down.

Except this still isn’t quite the time for that. The extra ten levels from the boss slots settle into place, raising the monster from 38 to 48 and with that the last change happens. An evolution of form, taking the goat boss beyond being just a cyclone goat.

The goat’s body becomes slimmer as it scales up in size, growing to reach the average adult’s shoulders. From the head, a second set of horns grow out, the original set pushed back slightly as the new horns reach a third of the length. Well, a third of the new length, as the horns had grown with the increase in scale.

And from the goats back grows a small ridge. Half spines, half fins, this strange protrusion raises questions that will have to wait for everything to settle. Though it is almost enough to miss the changes happening at the goats feet.

The hooves change color from gold to silver. Dropping the gold and changing to match the mithril of the horns. With all that, a few rows of fishlike scales replaced hair around each hoof. The scales, however, maintain the matte purple-black bronze appearance of the goats fur, making it even harder to notice.

Then with a final surge, the goat’s pupils change. From the soft, rounded rectangular bars commonly found among goats, the bosses sharpen. Those pupils lose all softness around the edges, becoming perfect rectangles with corners and sides so sharp, you could use them to check a straight edge instead of the other way around.

This change almost worries Doyle. After all, he wanted a goat and not a golem or automaton. However, his worries flee as the pupils finalize and the new boss lets out a monstrous bleat. Which you would think isn’t going to be the scariest thing, but it seems that at some point the voice box was slightly altered. So while the bleat sounded organic enough, it had a depth and metallic quality to it that would raise the hair on anyone’s arms.

And while all this was along the lines of what Doyle wanted, there was one step missing. The system had not given him a choice of what the boss would become. Oh sure, he went into the process intending to make a raid boss, but with the troop lord, a raid boss option has been listed. Instead, the boss went straight into becoming whatever this new variant of goat might be.

So with this new goat, all there was is to check their status and see what they are.

{

Name: [Unnamed] Matriarch Stratus Cloud Cyclone Goat

Race: Goat

Dungeon Bound: Doyle Huxley

Paths: Metal Matriarch 20/20, Cloud Grazer 20/20, Raid Boss I 0/0

Level: 48

S[437] A[319] C[466] I[95] W[113] P[98] D[175] K[93] L[93]

Skills [5/5 Raid, 3/3 Monster]: Spiral Blast (Air Mana Powered) lv121, Cloud Walker lv74, Air Dash lv38, Tough Hide lv38, Metal’s Endurance lv38, Cloud Chariot lv38, Gather Clouds lv38, Bestial Leadership lv38

}

Doyle glows as he reads the status. Even more strangeness, though entirely in his favor and somewhat expected. After all, there has to be more statistical benefits to being a raid boss than just what the other bosses got. And it appeared part of that was they get is extra paths and more skills.

Doyle turns to Ally, ‘Heyo, getting any info pop-ups about raid bosses and their paths?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘No new information screens. What happened?’

Doyle tosses over the bosses status panel and explains, ‘Well to start, I didn’t get a choice to choose what evolutionary path the goat would take. As for the status, we’ll, extra paths and skills.’

Ally hums, ‘I can see how things are coming together. Though I also see why I wouldn’t be informed. A dungeon Fae simply would never come across this information as the assumption is a dungeon will not wake up.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘But can’t you access the various status screens?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Yes, but no. There are some screens that I can just natively access. However! Most screens I currently can access are available because of my one path and the fact you gave permission. Without both, one of which an unawakened dungeon can not give, I could not access them.’

Doyle, ‘But can’t unwakened dungeons do stuff in the interface? Like, presumably saying yes to a dungeon Fae in the first place requires a decision an unawakened dungeon technically isn’t capable of consciously making.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘There is a difference. Well, okay, not entirely that much different, but there is an important detail. The system is basically acting as the primary caregiver of a child when it allows a dungeon to summon a dungeon Fae. Combined with the fact that depending on the universe, dungeons can even do so naturally, it is allowed.

‘However, in the same way children and their caregivers were not considered capable of giving permission for certain things like tattoos and whatnot on your world before the system came. Unawakened dungeons and their dungeon Fae also have similar limits.’

Doyle, ‘But you do have some things you can do, then?’

Ally nods, ‘Oh sure, and it is honestly even more tilted in the Faes direction than it would be for a child. After all, dungeons aren’t expected to “grow up”. There simply isn’t enough time in a universe for that to happen.

‘It might feel a bit insulting, but the dungeon Fae and dungeon Core relationship is less caregiver and child, more owner and pet. Well, “owner” also isn’t quite right? More like the meme about a cat adopting a person. Yes, the person has most of the responsibilities, but they “belong” to the cat.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can see that. Dungeons have a soul because one is needed to make everything work. However, they don’t need to use it for sapience. We’re kind of in the opposite of the problem that a beast has. They have a hard time getting one, but once they have it, can use it. Cores just get one, but have a hard time using it. I wonder what sort of souls normally get attracted to form a dungeon?’

Ally shrugs, ‘By the time a natural dungeon awakens, they’ve long ago lost any of their previous experiences.’

Doyle, ‘Well, I’ve got a raid boss now and the floor should automatically handle the most basic details of a raid floor. Are there things I can do to customize it?’

Ally, ‘Not particularly at the moment. What you're asking about would be more focused on paths. Oh, and the way raids are handled tends to be pretty intuitive, especially since you have such free-form instances.

‘I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but chances are they’ll be stuck at the exit, waiting for another team. Oh, they can just face the raid boss with a single team, even a single person if they want. Though I doubt anyone around can handle that quite yet.’

Doyle, ‘And they’ll know when there’s another team?’

Ally nods, ‘With the system they’ll get an alert about who the other team is and be given an option to team up with them. Though if they’re already organized into a raid group, it will automatically pair them.’

Doyle tilts back, ‘Okay, I guess that sounds fair enough. I wonder how Ace will react?’

Ally scoffs, ‘With aplomb. He might be newly integrated, but they’ve done a shockingly thorough job of collecting information on the system and what living with magic means. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know more than some people on worlds that have been integrated for hundreds of years.’

Doyle laughs, ‘I don’t feel that is particularly fair. People tend to be less up on things when it comes to their actual situation than you would expect. Things work, and so they don’t bother learning why. It takes an outsider asking questions or an odd duck poking around to actually learn what’s what.’

What The Fire Doin' - Chapter 460

I'm Going To Cheat - Chapter 462