[D'sP] Various Realms - Chapter 459

Spiral horns covered in the magical metal, mithril. That buttery silver metal of myth, most magical and light in ways mortal metal can’t be. Capable of transferring power in quantities other metals can’t compare to, though it is Mana specifically which to the delvers above might as well have no limit in throughput.

These horn covers poke through a purple-black bronze alloy helm. Though it doesn’t end there. The armor flows down their body like a breeze. While not completely covering the goat, this armor hugs their form. Maybe a little too closely, but Doyle is expecting the whole “boss transformation” thing to fix any nonsense. And if not? Well, he’ll be able to make new armor for the goat since this set clearly ended up not being integrated.

However, one other feature stood out from the rest. Doyle hadn’t found a true solution for the hooves. As in, a solution that could be used for the regular goats as well. He did figure out a clever way to fake it though, for the goats hooves were a buttery gold.

This luster was only surface deep, though using a proper gold and mithril alloy. Doyle had simply used the idea of gold leaf, which thankfully is low tech and easy to make. If time consuming and tedious. Though both of those are also negated as he isn’t the one spending hours to flatten the gold/mithril leaf.

The only disappointment came when Doyle tried to make regular gold leaf. It seems gold leaf is too thin for his current control, what with the final thickness being measured in nanometers. Maybe someday Doyle will be able to directly create gold leaf, but until that day, at least he can get pretty far so the kobolds don’t need too much time to finish the work.

Oh, and Doyle was careful not to look too closely at the hooves either. The kobolds, well, they don’t exactly have a Skill for gilding and he couldn’t justify buying one. Though they went a bit heavy-handed, so at least nothing was showing through.

Doyle was tempted to “gold leaf” the entire goat instead of having the armor. If only because a shiny goat would look stranger to him than a goat in armor. While an armored goat wasn’t exactly a thing “pre-system”, at least to his knowledge, humans had been throwing metal plates on all kinds of things since it became an option.

In the end, Doyle decided armor was the better part of valor. Which left only a few clean up tasks before it was time to go fishing again.

First order of business? Well, since the pre-existing goat was going to be the base of the boss, it might as well be the best goat he can make it. First was raising the goats level to the floor max, 38. Give it a bit more head room for what came next.

An intensive training regimen. While it wasn’t worthwhile to train the normal monsters beyond the little he had dabbled with the slinger kobolds back on the second floor. For a monster that would be a boss? Well, Doyle wasn’t certain if the training would matter, but maybe, like the armor, it might affect the end result.

Besides, this is his first raid boss, even if only using two boss slots for it. If there is a time to put his all into things, this was it. So fully armored, Doyle sent the goat through a bunch of challenges. Stuff like having to fight a bunch of myconids at once. And it is specifically myconids because they’re human-sized.

Doyle did have a healer kobold on hand for the goat. Not that he would have minded taking the time to train a new goat. More important was that a new goat would have required the armor to be resized for them and the horn covers completely remade.

This need for caution slowed the training down significantly. That or the fact he couldn’t just keep throwing monsters at the problem until one showed up with that ephemeral quality known as “talent”. Which, given how quickly some foxes trained compared to others, must be included in the equation somewhere.

But eventually, the goat is ready. Doyle pulled back and gave it a final once over and yep, that’s a goat. The armor was a nice touch, but being a dungeon monster it is not like it could get buff or anything. Which honestly is a good thing as it meant the armor didn’t need refitting.

It was time.

Doyle pierces out of his shell, and once again enters the void. Mind splitting again and again, spreading through the non-existence between dimensions which was defined not by any constant, but the soul cores.

The previous two expeditions had their difficulties. In particular, finding his myconid boss required searching through many fungal worlds and avoiding elder entities that seemed to prefer such places. However, his search for a goat boss turned up a fun new problem.

There just weren’t that many goat souls.

Oh sure, there were a bunch of satyr style creatures and more than a few goat bodied centaurs. But that isn’t a “goat” goat. So Doyle took some time to think back on his experience.

He had seen so many examples of goats back when he first received the pattern. If in a bit of a traumatic fashion.

And there really wasn’t a lot to see. In fact, from what he could remember, about the only sapient goats were deities and so wouldn’t really count. What with deification doing a bit of a run around on the whole “soul” thing.

Not that Doyle thought there weren’t goat souls out there. Rather, it was more that finding said soul would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Except the needle is made of plastic the same color as the straw. Which left him with a choice to make.

Keep searching for a goat soul or find a blank slate to use. Both had ups and downs to them and in the timeless void between existence, either would be equally viable.

Doyle spreads his mind thin over the seemingly infinite branches of himself. Stretched out across no space at all, feeling other dungeon cores and dimensions. Caronas of free floating soul cores glitter.

Edges and points of his awareness taste, feel, see what there is. And there is a lot of goats. Most dimensions with humans have them. Yet, just as equally, they are places where no human exists.

This was not a certainty, though it seems domestic goats are close enough to wild goats that there isn’t a problem. As sadly for someone like Moota, while Doyle gets a sense for cows as defined by his pattern basically only exist where there are sapients raising them. The various wild cattle species not seeming to count.

But this side track was just to distract himself from the lack of results. Not that Doyle hadn’t found any souls with the residue of having lived as a goat. Rather, just as in his memories, they are mostly fire-based. Which wouldn’t be a problem if they were “goat” first.

Instead, as Doyle looked deeper into each of those few souls, it was clear that the fire came first. An interesting thing to find as this didn’t seem to actually be connected to those deity adjacent fire goats from memory.

Rather, there seemed to be a thematic connection to a being similar to the myth of Prometheus. Not that fire from a deity can grant sapience or knowledge, but rather the connection between fire and thought caused a conceptual connection.

And so, in a rough grouping of dimensions, which in the void is hard to figure out as location is somewhat made up, base creatures that evolve into fire entities have an increased chance to gain a soul. Which meant the soul ended up more based on the fire instead of the creature. Even the enlightened who gained a fire sub-type seemed to suffer from this.

In fact, the closer Doyle looked, the less it seemed that being aligned to fire made it easier to gain a soul. Rather, fire itself seemed to have a soul. Which was kind of hard to detect from the outside, but it had gained most of Doyle’s attention, no matter how diffuse it was at the moment.

The end points of his senses begin to split once again, branching in two and then again. And this allowed him to see that he wasn’t the only one examining what is going on, either. Other dungeon cores are exploring the concept, whether in simple curiosity, to find a boss soul, or to check on the potential of ensouling regular monsters. Then there are the bright spots. Beings existing in the void that shine so brightly with power that none can see them if they don’t want.

Doyle has a guess as to what those few bright spots are, but can’t connect the dots. Just as he can’t see past the light, a brightness made of power and concepts prevents it. Their presence is likely invisible to anyone else and Doyle doesn’t doubt that such a being could hide from even a dungeon core’s senses in the void if they bothered.

Which is neat, but those few bright spots clearly don’t want to be bothered right now and it would be better for him to focus on the fire.

Like, where is the fire coming from? Because there is that divine connection. Except, was it really divine? After all, Prometheus isn’t technically a deity in the myths. Or rather, his kind were seen as the deities before the deities and called Titans.

What if that distinction mattered? After all, there are many sources from which a deity can spring. Yet all of those methods? They require the faith of souls. Oh sure, the mythology connected to Prometheus didn’t require faith. The Gods were just the Gods. Born into power.

However, once you delved into more modern takes on the concept? There was a divide. Titans became their own concept, separate from deities. And boy, does Doyle miss being able to just go and ask Ally. Though it doesn’t help that things like “thought” are also smeared across the unreality of the void. If not for the timeless and spaceless nature of the void, thought would be impossible.

Yet over timeless moments, frozen in-between the ticks of a clock, Doyle is able to drill down into what is happening. Both following other cores and yet also leading, order breaking down.

Why?

Why are even those that are already sapient being changed by the fire?

The Fire lives.

Under a Titan’s gaze.

Heavens are personal, and yet the hells are connected. What about between?

Elements. The classical four and five and less and more. Not after lives, but current lives. The fire of the soul is a soul of fire.

Not Prometheus as known, they weren’t a fire deity or titan. Yet as the infinite Abyss, grey Hades, and nine Hells reach out to all realities, if partitioned by strange borders. Elemental realms also gather and spread. A taint on mortal life.

Those elemental realms are not as unified as the “lower” realms. Rather, taking more after the heavens. One place sees four, another five. More and less.

Yet like the afterlives, which it honestly feels weird to Doyle that the “negative” ones are all connected while the “positive” ones are split up, the elemental realms seem to be grasping for more. A never-ending fight not for souls, but a space for them to exist.

Only True Immortals are inherently capable of existing forever. Even the heavens and hells have a life span. Even things seemingly as primal as an elemental realm of fire will die.

The heavens get around this by a constant infusion of new believers. Like adding grains of sand to an hourglass so it doesn’t run out.

The hells, and this explained them all being one thing, seemed to expand their lifespan by absorbing other realms. The three-fold omni-realms spread across the fabric of reality and the void are constantly fighting and invading other places to draw them in. Defined by their lack of restraint and split only by the divide between Order and Chaos.

Which left the elemental realms.

No Goat Shoes - Chapter 458

What The Fire Doin' - Chapter 460