[D'sP] The Townsfolk Finally Push Deeper - Chapter 444

A few days after the 19th floor is complete, Doyle still couldn’t get over the theme that had developed. Wind. Because while he didn’t have a wind variant of his goats, he did have the wind wolves. Though this just turned his attention towards an old path benefit.

Doyle supposedly should have an easier time developing elemental variants of his monsters. Which, technically might be true? After all, his variants that weren’t just “monster gets older”, are mostly elemental.

The void kobolds are up in the air, but otherwise? Windbreaker Axebeaks, freshwater aquatic assassin vines, and the razor foxes. Two wind and a water. Maybe a third wind depending on what you could say of the void kobolds.

So, what would it take to evolve a wind goat? Doyle turned and looked at his various floors. What would be a good place to add a new wind element to things?

Floor 15. That was the floor he had settled on. In particular, the upper reaches of the pseudo-mountains to the valley. Doyle figured he could add a wind whipping along the top of the floor.

A wind strong enough to rip a man off the ground, dashing them down the side of the valley if they aren’t securely anchored. Just another feature to prevent people from poking at the edges of the floor. And onto this new feature, Doyle adds another change.

The outposts would send one of their regular goats up into the winds. This did not end well for the goats. Which was perfect! After all, from what Doyle could tell, environmental stress is a factor in elemental evolutions. Besides, this wasn’t much of a resource sink.

The farm zone is replacing the goats easily enough. His only potential worry would be if somehow the outposts all sent their goats up at the same time and then a party entered. Though even then, it just means the outposts are all down a single regular goat.

Not to say the goats are a strong opponent. There are just large enough numbers involved that one isn’t going to change things. Or if they would, whatever party was having the trouble shouldn’t have been on this floor in the first place.

This all takes time, during which Wolf’s Rest was also developing. In particular, the regular citizens in town have found the secret of the 13th floor, now known as “Bird Mountain”. Knowledge that Bird Mountain had a source of mithril.

Suddenly “The Slaughterhouse”, floor six, isn’t the most tempting target. Oh sure, people kept farming The Slaughterhouse. Steak had only gotten more expensive outside of Wolf’s Rest.

At first, the knowledge that it came from a dungeon kept the price down as people expected an infinite supply. Now, though, they realized that an infinite supply didn’t mean you had access to it all at once. Rather, the supply would never run out, but only so much could be harvested at a time.

Besides that, it was also a fact that most of the hardcore Slaughterhouse farmers are too weak. Their skills stagnant and levels stalled. It wasn’t even like pre-system speedrunners. They didn’t strive to improve their times, instead making each delve as easy as possible.

Now that was coming back to bite them. Even with instancing, there is a limited supply of mithril every day. That meant first come, first serve and most people who had been perpetually farming cattle found the odds not in their favor. Some had even made choices that meant they would have a hard time even beating the tenth floor.

This discovery had confused Ace and the others at first. After all, one of the big claims of the system is that a path will always be positive. No matter the path you pick or how bad it sounds, you will not be hurt. So how could path choice make it hard to advance?

In the end, it came down to the fact it only promised the path wouldn’t be negative. And they aren’t! Even gave some nice bonuses. Stuff like increases drops from cattle and what not. Which is the problem.

While they gave positive things, the paths also specialized them. A lot. It was hard to get them to reveal information, but this seemed to include things such as bonuses when fighting cattle that don’t apply to anything else. All while not getting hardly any stat points.

After all, why bother with an extra point of Strength a level when you aren’t leveling much and the cattle specific bonuses outweighed the stats? Oh, and it isn’t like their path is broken. Rather, they are simply specialized.

If instead of Wolf’s Rest, they were living in a great plains where giant herds of wild cattle roamed? Their paths might be enough to make them the strongest around. If only the dungeon was cattle focused, they would be fine.

The dungeon isn’t, and so they are a bit screwed. It wasn’t unsalvageable. In the eyes of the rest of the universe, they are still quite young and low level. If anything, this level of specialization could almost be expected. Though the lack of stats is not normal and more a result of a lack of knowledge.

Though Ace admitted to a bit of schadenfreude. He had been trying for so long to get people to delve deeper. Except now he wishes they wouldn’t. Every day the inner circle had made sure to harvest as much mithril as they could, so they had a stockpile.

Now though? They’d be fighting everyone else for it. 17 seemed to have some mithril, but that wasn’t an efficient place to gather from. If only because it is so far from the last checkpoint.

Ace sighs and leaves his office. The dungeon was busy, but that’s like saying the Barrais had secrets. For the moment, Ace wanted to escape the crowds though, so he ducks into the inner circle area instead of heading out by the main street.

Besides, the inner circle is more interesting to look at. Despite having less time than ever, everyone had continued to rebuild their houses. Not all at once or anything. It simply happened whenever a person felt they could do something significantly better or needed something more.

A new design they wanted to try. More room for a new workshop. Then there is simply the fact that with how easy it was to do, sometimes they just wanted to change. A rebuild is simply too easy for them.

Ace shakes his head, this obviously isn’t the normal state of things. Though it isn’t like there are many rules on what they could build, besides a general “don’t mess with your neighbors”. It is only once you got to the normal parts of the town that stuff like “building codes” and “zoning laws” counted. Though it certainly helped that there is so much room to spare.

Sure, eventually the inner circle would become more crowded. For the moment, though? Even the more extravagant houses had tons of space to spare around them.

Ace walked along a paved path. To each side are raised garden beds of strange plants. He isn’t 100% certain, but thought it was a group project between Doctor and the Barrais. Either way, when he made his way through the garden, Ace reached his goal, the wall.

With a quick hop, Ace is on top of said wall, the barrier between the inner circle and the rest of the town. It isn’t being replaced like the houses. Would be kind of hard to keep the inner circle hidden if they did. Though there is an ongoing effort by the inner circle crafters to replace the old wood piece by piece. All with an eye towards never having the defenses breached.

In particular, the lower third of the inner side is being replaced with stone. Not just any stone, though. It is stone being quarried from the very source of his current problem.

Everyone knew the value of mithril. It was one of the classic mythical metals, after all. What most missed is the reinforced stone around the ore. Which thankfully, was still accessible even after people had gotten out all the mithril. This was slow going, but that’s why only the lower third is being replaced at the moment.

On top of the wall, Ace looks out over the rest of the town. It is an odd sight and many people new to the town ended up commenting on the extreme feelings of dissonance. Like someone took the modern style of cities and then slapped on a melange of old building styles.

In particular, the fact that every building has flourishes and fancy details. After living in a world where the only flourishes on a building tended to either be painted on or the fact a wall is all glass? The carvings incorporated into the actual building itself stand out. Nevermind the town’s “bone” theme.

Of course, it all made sense when you get down to it. Ace sighs, there had been some pre-system professionals who hadn’t understood the reasoning. After all, why would you have such fiddly bits on a functional building? It would just make things harder to maintain.

They weren’t wrong. Each bit of carved detail? Another point of weakness. Another point that was harder to clean. Except, they missed that those bits improved the quality of the building.

Besides, that extra bit of physical labor is partially desired now. Pre-system, such things was work that cost money without “return”. With the system? Every repair, all the cleaning, and any replacement? That all represented skill growth.

Better yet, the repair and replacement fell under the same skills that are used to make the building in the first place. Oh sure, there are specialized repair skills, but the skill to make can also repair. This represented a chance to train the next generation of builders without needing to constantly make new buildings.

It wouldn’t be the same, but it meant you could train them at the lower levels of the skill. That Ace isn’t going to need to set aside a piece of land for people to make rickety shacks and rough log cabins. The presence of skills really did turn a lot of pre-system presumptions on their head.

Ace sighed, “Or it should.” He turns away from the town and looks into the sky. Ever since the town had gotten organized, they had been gathering everyone’s recollections of the various guides. 

It certainly sounded like things aren’t so idyllic out there. Yes, putting up the best building possible meant higher skill workers. Meant long term training opportunities. Yet still, greed and penny pinching held sway.

Ace was honest enough with himself. The inner circle is slowly turning into nobles. Yet out there? Classic feudalism, as well as basically every other way to rule is represented.

All because while raising the floor of a population helped a society as a whole? A single person gaining enough individual power can overthrow it all. Deities and immortals tread the world. Sure, a bunch of civilians with hundreds of levels could create a heavenly civilization, but all it took was one guy with a thousand levels to knock the blocks over.

At least there are those out there who seemed at least neutral to regular people growing. It isn’t some sort of grim dark universe. Ace wouldn’t even claim it was grimbright. Overall, the universe seemed like a decent place.

Except there was a reason the planet was getting a hundred years of protection from the system. And Ace is going to make sure there is someone strong enough that they had a seat at the table. Because even with new worlds being inducted into the system all the time, Ace liked to believe his planet is special.

It certainly seemed to be. The magic kept getting denser. People kept leveling. They were a year in and it wasn’t slowing like nearly every guide that had been asked assumed would happen. So even if Ace had to do it himself, when the universe got let in, he would make sure they had a say.

low Between Floors - Chapter 443

We Should Gather Faith - Chapter 445