[D'sP] Testing The New Toy - Chapter 429

With a new toy to play with, Doyle focuses on the razor fox while waiting for the town to get to his core. There should be more to it. After all, this wasn’t just a “fox”, it was a razor fox. And sure, it has some interesting skills, but they weren’t required.

Why was it a razor fox? So, Doyle began to experiment with them. The pattern only had two skill slots and yet started with three skills. Once again, why?

Oh sure, you could just see Bite as an extra thrown on because it was a fox. But what about the stone wolf pattern? A wolf should have Bite as a skill if anything did. In fact, every other wolf pattern did. It was only the stone wolf that lacked it, keeping the total skills below the max.

So, if Extended Edge and Wind Blade were the most important, it would make sense that Bite would have been dropped. Now, it would be easy to assume this was related to the original animal that was absorbed to get the pattern. Maybe the razor fox that got in was simply more skilled? Ally even suggested that as a reason.

Doyle had no way to determine this and so could only come at things from the other direction. Besides, even if that was the answer, he might find something else. However, there was only so much he could do with just playing around on the last floor.

He didn’t want to permanently change his early floors, but maybe he could play around with things temporarily? They were automated so any changes he made would vanish after a delve happened. Doyle turns his attention to the second floor.

It wasn’t perfect, but the forest area at the end would be a good place for them. Doyle concentrates and splits off an instance which doesn’t allow people to enter for the moment.

There are seven kobolds in the last room of floor 2, which cost a bit more than a razor fox. So after some consideration, Doyle replaces two of the melee kobolds with foxes. Though he doesn’t open the instance to others. After all, that would just mean he would have to repeat this all over again for the next test.

So instead, Doyle splits off a new instance using his modified instance as the base. And that instance is the one which he opens up for delvers to explore. It takes a little while, but soon enough a group stumbles into this modified second floor.

And they are not ready. This is just a random party of six, with the lineup of three melee tanks, a water mage, an archer, and a new old role. The medic. They weren’t a “cleric” or a “healer” and didn’t know healing magic as most people would think of it.

The medic role instead knew spells that did practical things such as sealing wounds and moving stuff out of the way when you’re pulling an arrow out of a wound. This didn’t heal anything, but rather put a person in the position for their body to heal itself. Very useful, especially since they were also getting a crash course in traditional emergency care.

It was this team’s medic which prevented things from going horribly wrong. Two foxes might not seem like much, but people had been too comfortable with the early dungeon floors. So an unexpected fox taking a swipe at the back of a melee tank’s leg almost ended in death.

The archer snaps their bow down, giving up on a shot at an enemy mage. An arrow flies and pierces the foxes own leg allowing another of the melee fighters to stomp the monster. Still, the tank that had been hurt was bleeding out quickly, the foxes attack having nipped a major artery.

Their medic got in quick and sealed the wound. It wasn’t perfect, but all that mattered was the tank wouldn’t bleed out. Any internal damage could be fixed on the surface. Which is exactly where they retreat to, not even seeing the second fox.

Suffice it to say, their report caused a bit of an uproar. Many were even tempted to brush them off as liars. Except, when Doctor showed up to personally get to the bottom of things, he confirmed that something at least similar to a fox and using magic had made the wound. Oh, and he fixed up all the damage, but no one paid attention to that, not even the injured tank.

And the uproar only got worse when the next few teams sent in did come across a fox. Though this wasn’t because Doyle wanted to mess with them or anything. Rather, that single fight provided some interesting insights.

So he dissolved the used instance and turned back to the last floor. More foxes were spawned and tests were run. Not much came of this, but it represented a small step and come the next day, Doyle made a new fox instance for delvers to find.

This time, the group that stumbled upon it was anything but unprepared. The town had been sending in small teams of three on occasion to check the second floor and they got lucky. And uh, well, Doyle didn’t learn much with this instance.

Now this didn’t make Doyle mad about it, but he was disappointed. Then it made him a bit more selective. Oh, he wasn’t going to target the fox instance, but he was going to target who wouldn’t get it. This isn’t something he can do normally, but since it is for only a single instance, one he is actively paying attention to, Doyle figured he could manage.

And a fresh instance later, Doyle gets to watch a team of new delvers play with the foxes. Though this time having been warned about them. The fight goes a lot better for everyone involved. Well, not the foxes, but at least they had a good fight.

Of course, while Doyle is having a good time researching things, the town leadership was having anything but fun. The town was in an uproar over the new foxes. Not because of the change, but because it wasn’t consistent. If there had suddenly been a couple of new foxes on the floor every time, that was just how things went.

Ace was in a meeting about it, having heard of their trio fighting the foxes, when news of another group fighting them arrived. “We need to do something!”

One manager from the adventurers guild shakes their head, “It’s a dungeon. What can we do? If it wants to replace everything with foxes, we couldn’t stop it. Well, I guess if we had managed to stop a fox from getting in, but we’re too late for that.”

Ace shakes his head, “Not like that. The dungeon will do what the dungeon will do. What we can control is our messaging. We need a spin to put on this!”

Kelly, “We don’t even know how deep the dungeon is anymore. What spin can we add to the fact it is being erratic?”

Jim, “Well, we could use that as a spin. Tell them that we think we’re about to hit the last floor and the dungeon is getting more active because of that.”

The manager frowns, “That isn’t how dungeons work? The early floors should practically be set in stone!”

Ace scoffs, “Oh sure, that is how they normally work. Hades, that is how this dungeon has been working! I don’t even suggest we directly lie to them as this kind of thing will become known to them.

“We, you know, mention as part of our official announcement that we do believe we’re on the last floor. Then we let them make their own connections. It wouldn’t even be a lie. We haven’t seen the last floor in a while and there hasn’t been a boss, so we should be close.”

Jim, “Just going to say, that doesn’t mean we’re near the last floor. Besides, we got stuck on a floor or two long enough that we might be quite a distance. If anything, I’d bet the twentieth floor is both the last floor and a boss floor.”

Ace shrugs, “Twenty still seems close enough. If no one else has a better idea, we need to go out there and make the announcement now. One encounter yesterday, two encounters today? Now, that doesn’t mean anything, but many will see it as a pattern.”

No one else had a better idea causing Ace to slump back in his chair and sigh. “I wish we had professionals for this. Pre-apocalypse, we could have hired someone to do our messaging from anywhere in the world! Now? I wouldn’t be sure about getting someone from more than a few settlements away.”

Though there wasn’t anything he could do about it for the moment and so Ace forced himself to stand up and face the crowd gathered just outside the inner gate that leads to the dungeon.

Down in the dungeon, Ally keeps track of these events as she idly browses for information on monster patterns. “Huh, wonder if he has figured out how to get around the whole, ‘don’t change the early floors’ thing?”, she muses out loud. Something she has been trying to do more.

The out loud part, that is. Ally had found that after using telepathy so much, her voice had gotten weaker. Oh sure, the system prevented actual atrophy to a certain extent, at least as long as she kept growing. However, there is a difference between things not wasting away and being able to chat for extended periods of time when needed.

And speaking of chatting, Ally notices there is an incoming call. “Hello Moota! How’s things going?”

A blue screen pops up, showing Moota in a small room made of clouds.

Moota sighs, “Sick and tired of clouds? Though that isn’t new.”

Ally laughs, “What is it with deities and their cloud based realms?”

Moota shrugs, “I would guess momentum with a touch of mortals thinking of ‘heaven’ as being up and nothing says up like clouds.”

Ally nods, “I can see that.”

Moota, “Anyway, things are going well for me. It wasn’t caused by your town directly, but some people noticed that my shrine caused the cows to grow better and spread it to the rest of your community. Seems that having a source of meat has caused your community to almost worship it.

“I will admit, having basically been a fancy dairy cow, thinking of the ‘meat’ side of the equation isn’t pleasant, but life goes on. At least my worship is being spread.”

Ally, “I would say that comes more from the culture pre-system. Seems they placed a lot of cultural significance on eating meat. Which is terribly wasteful, especially for a world without magic, but eh, that sort of thing happens.”

Moota sighs, “Well, yeah. Anyway, Jess has been texting me a bunch lately. Worried about when she’ll get her lesser shadow wolves. How long till they’re ready? She won’t ask herself, seems a bit shy? Or at least nervous. Not what I expected from one of the first beast deities I would get to know.”

Ally, “Huh, she really should have come by and asked. We’ve actually had them ready for a while now. Though since we just had a beast wave, maybe it was for the best. Would have sucked for her to get them out, only for them to be caught up in that nonsense.”

Moota raises an eyebrow, “Already? How’d you manage that?”

Ally shrugs, “I figured you would realize it yourself. Floor six is going non-stop from dawn to dusk. As you already noted, people are a bit into cattle products. Anyway, we placed them in the farm zone.

“It wasn’t a problem since most groups don’t clear the floor to begin with. They’re just there to farm as much as they can carry. Which means any monsters that do stick around, develop faster than not.”

Moota, “Well, I’ll have to tell her. Or maybe you should message her?”

Ally shrugs, “You’ve already got an active chat going with her. After we’re done here, you can send her a quick message. Anyway, let me tell you about some of the stupid things that have happened!”

Razor Sharp - Chapter 428

Mixing Skills - Chapter 430