[D'sP] Freshwater Aquatic - Chapter 423

Floor 16 changes shape over the next few days as Doyle focuses almost entirely on it. Not just to optimize space usage, but the more he observes, the more changes are made to ease up on power usage. Oh, it wasn’t big savings or even anything that would be noted on his status screen.

Rather, it was simple stuff. A tiny ridge under the water to more naturally guide the flow. A small tweak to a small section of the caldera wall so it insulates better. Changes that allow the floor to maintain itself more naturally instead of depending so heavily on hand wavy dungeon nonsense.

Though changes on that level are almost instinctual and near impossible to force and so much of the time involves Doyle just watching the floor. Whether it is the now more frequent delvers who get there, the ant colony, or the more predictable monsters. It makes Doyle reminisce a little, though his memory never was the best so he can’t tell if he had an ant farm as a kid or is just kludging together memories spun whole cloth from all the commercials.

Though with each new delve into the floor, Doyles attention inevitably turns to one specific group of monsters. The waterlogged assassin vines. They don’t often get a fight and seem less than stellar at it when they do.

The problem is obvious from the get go. Assassin vines move around by use of liquid pressure. Their strength is fine at doing so and they’re quite snappy about it.

Underwater there are, of course the usual problems of movement. You aren’t going to be swinging stuff around with any grace, for instance. An issue that the assassin vines seem to already have an answer for in the form of a more stabbing grab. Not like the start of their attacks wasn’t already mostly a stab in the first place. They just don’t swing the vines around as much.

However, the assassin vines did have one further issue. They got bloated and slow. Now, unlike normal plants, they could flush out enough water to not die from excess water. However, they run on a carefully balanced level of pressure and all the excess water they’re absorbing from being submerged is throwing that off.

Besides that, and not technically an actual problem, but the vines lay across the sand. When the assassin vines are hanging off the ceiling or wall, they gain the benefit of their vines already being part of the way there. This still works with the shallow depth that the assassin vines are at. Their vines extend towards the shore and get them part of the way already.

If these monsters were deeper, though? Well, someone could swim right over them and with all the issues? Doyle doubted the plant would catch someone even leisurely moving around.

And with that final realization, nothing changes. Well, nothing drastic. Doyle keeps observing things and tweaking the floor. But there are small things changing. Stuff that no dungeon can force, at least not for any monster of any worth to them. The conceptual change and physical alterations for a monster strong enough to matter going beyond what any of them could handle.

It hasn’t even finished by the time Doyle moves onto other things. Different floors where he tweaks things to be more efficient. Minor changes to loot drops and natural drops. Herb spawns moved slightly to make them more natural. Sometimes this was even as simple as confirming that yes, this was how things should be and that it didn’t need to change.

All the while Ace and Jim push themselves and the other core members to keep growing and advancing. They haven’t quite made it to the first kobold camp. The elders are not yet revealed, though it has been close a couple of times with the wandering elders. Though that seems to be more a function of the elders avoiding the delvers to some extent.

And that sounded decent, if maybe a little mediocre, seeing as they weren’t facing the main force of the kobolds. Except it would discount the growth not represented by stats or skills. All of the core members who could make it to the floor had been learning to fight in this unfamiliar terrain.

Not a forest, they have one of those outside of town. If you could even call the floor a true forest. There was simply too little diversity. No, they were learning to fight in a “minefield”. Not with actual mines as the kobolds hadn’t quite managed to use spells in their traps yet.

Well, preserve spells in their traps. The mage kobolds were more than capable of using magic to set their traps. And of course, Qi already provided numerous benefits to trap setting, what with it being able to boost their physical abilities. There just weren’t any plates of metal that release a fireball when stepped on.

As Doyle watched another attempt, his guess was solidified. They knew where the first kobold gathering was. Groups going off in New directions each time was one thing. That represented simple exploration.

This time? Jim’s team was set up to head directly towards the first lake. A straight line, something Jim wasn’t capable of messing up in even this simulacra of a wooded area. Then, part of the way there, they veered off in a direction that completely avoided things.

Could Doyle have figured this out by listening to them talking in town? Did Ally likely already know about it from her own scrying? The answer was yes to both questions, but part of the fun in watching them was not knowing all the details.

Though before Doyle could dig into this little tidbit, an alert distracted him. It was for his second variant as his underwater assassin vines had finally adapted.

{Freshwater Aquatic Assassin Vine

S[10+2] A[7] C[8+2]

Inherits from [Assassin Vine]

Required Skills: Hydrokinesis

Extra Skills: Hydrokinesis lv1

Cost: World Energy[300]}

There was just one minor problem, though a problem that was easily fixed. Doyle simply had to unlock a new skill slot for the Assassin Vine. And thankfully, by unlocking the variant, the cost was two-thirds paid for, anyway. So, after the 20 points gained from a new monster pattern and 10 points he already had, assassin vines had a third skill slot and he had 656 adjustment points left.

Not that he Had to buy the extra slot. It was simply that the variant required hydrokinesis and the monster would lose too much strength if either grapple or rapid movement was dropped. So Doyle went with the path of least resistance.

Though just the stats don’t say everything about the monster. After all, it says nothing about a new addition to the plant. That of bubble sacks which naturally lifted the vines off the ground. And of course, the monster was more than capable of controlling how much gas was in those sacks so the vines weren’t just straight up and down.

Another interesting quirk that Doyle only found out about after testing the monster was what all hydrokinesis did for the plant. At the most basic level, the skill was a simple improvement on the plant’s pre-existing hydraulic based movement. Then there was the fact hydrokinesis went beyond to include instinctual control over how much water got absorbed. And at the high end, almost so subtle that Doyle almost missed the effect, the skill assisted cutting through the water.

That last bit technically didn’t even extend past the plant. Rather, it interacted with exactly the water touching the monster. The lack of a mind being the limiting factor. At least, that is what Doyle guessed. The aquatic monster still lacks mind stats after all.

Though Doyle did feel a bit disappointed about one thing. This variant abandoned one of the unique features of the assassin vine. It wasn’t important or anything, but the fact that the regular assassin vine worked without any supernatural powers was quite novel.

Doyle could only sigh and move on. There are obviously some limits on making such a big change, so rapidly. Because he felt that it wasn’t necessarily required that an aquatic assassin vines needed to gain something like hydrokinesis. Rather, if you made changes over a long period, the plant would adapt. You know, like the pre-system understanding of evolution.

Whatever the case for that may end up being, right now it is easy for Doyle to swap out the assassin vines around the entrance island with these new variants. Though this does leave him with one other thing he can do with them, or rather, the regular assassin vines. After all, they have a third skill slot now. The question being, what to fill it with?

Since it wasn’t a rush job, Doyle began to idly scroll through the list of skills while continuing his work on the various floors. Sure, there are a lot of impactful skills to choose from. However, Doyle decided he wanted to keep the base assassin vines to their non-magical roots, so no conjuring spines or clouds of pollen.

Besides, he already had the myconids and their spores. Though getting the assassin vines to grow something spiky wasn’t the worst idea, just that Doyle would want it to be a natural adaptation and not the result of a skill forcing the issue.

Doyle paused in the middle of altering the branch of a tree so the wind is slightly more likely to kick up dust devils. Skills weren’t inherently magical, so would a skill to grow thorns, spines, or what have you be magical? ‘Hey Ally, got a question.’

Ally looked up, ‘It has been a bit since the assassin vine variant, did you manage something else with them?’

Doyle shook his core, ‘We basically spent a few days just idly going back and forth over them and unless someone decides to actually fight them, I doubt more will come to mind. No, I want to know more about a certain subset of skills. Though I guess technically, it is related to the variant.

‘Though only in the fact that I unlocked a new skill slot on the regular assassin vines and now want to fill it. Anyway, would a thorn growth skill be magical?’

Ally shrugs, ‘For your assassin vines? Maybe not magical, but likely Qi based. If you had a rose monster, you’d likely have an option for it to not be.’

Doyle, ‘So it is entirely based on what they naturally grow? Because having looked through this list, that is what it seems like.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Not quite. The difference is you can’t start with “sharp thorns” or even “thorn growth” unless they already exist. Though I guess for a dungeon specifically, you might fall under that limit. Because for regular creatures, they would gain skills that allow passive modification to their bodies on a more general scale and then specialize.

‘That or alter themselves through other means and then take the skill. A herbivore with blunt teeth isn’t going to get a “sharp teeth” skill without magic. However, if they sharpen their teeth with something? At that point, the mundane version of the skill opens up.’

Doyle, ‘I guess that opens up the question of how important various versions of a skill are. Is a mundane skill for a thick hide better than a magical or qi version?’

Ally shrugs, ‘It is all trade-offs and not even in the way you might be thinking. A magically thick hide doesn’t vanish in a place without magic. The damage just won’t recover as easily. The downside instead being that it is more vulnerable to methods that target magic.

‘On the other side of things, a mundane thick hide requires more to heal since there isn’t supernatural power to help. Though the hide also isn’t weak to blades that can slice through magic. Not that there aren’t also blades made to slice through natural armor. It is all just balancing different things. For instance, if the town could figure out how to make a token for plants? One of those would do really well against your assassin vines.’

A Little Housekeeping - Chapter 422

Tough Vines - Chapter 424