[D'sP] A Little Housekeeping - Chapter 422

Time passes and yet no more tremors happen. This left everyone a bit jumpy. Even if there wasn’t a stronger quake coming, they sort of expected a repeat of the weak first quake.

 All the while, down in the dungeon, Ally was coming up blank. ‘There just aren’t any good matches! At this point? I’ve got to assume the system is purposefully screening the information I need.

‘The only other option is for us to be the first to experience this in the universe and that doesn’t hold up. Not only has the system been around for a good long time. There are more planets being integrated than a mortal could count. Even if most don’t have life, there would be reports of this phenomenon in the system.’

Doyle, ‘Or you’ve already found the answer and decided it wasn’t the case. Like, the planets had magic and the system a bit more than a year. I’m sure some of your assumptions about how things are going could be off.’

Ally sighs, ‘Well, you aren’t wrong. But I tried to correct for that at least a little. After all, I have to filter things at least a little! Strange reality tremors are shockingly common and vastly varied in source.’

Doyle, ‘Well, we’ll just have to leave things as they are for now. Ace and Jim have both been delving pretty aggressively as of late. How long do you think it will take for them to find my core?’

Ally pulls up a few short clips of the two groups and their more recent delves. ‘More than any other floor, 17 is full of kobold traps. The Barrais are even having a hard time with it, and they have actual training with traps!’

Doyle, ‘I think that won’t actually hold them back that long.’

Ally, ‘They’re kobold traps. Simple, but effective. Even if they can spot them, that doesn’t remove them.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Once they can spot them, they’ll be able to handle it. This isn’t a cave floor where they can’t go around them.’

Ally shrugs, ‘We’ll just have to watch and see.’

And so they did. There was something about those tremors that lit a fire under Wolf’s Rest’s inner circle in a number of ways. Most direct is that both Jim and Ace felt unsafe.

Not that they had felt particularly safe to begin with, but for a while things had felt stable. Now they delved harder and encouraged the rest of the inner circle to do the same.

Though speaking of the inner circle, Ace finally got around to expanding it as well. First up was Marigold Sole, the leader of the deerkin in the town, as well as her two daughters, Daisy and Daffodil. On the other side of things was Darren Silverwhiskers, the raccoonkin leader and his wife, Cassidy.

That was only five people added to the settlement’s core, but they were an important five. With them, the inner circle once again could represent all the current major groups in town. Not that Ace was planning to willy-nilly add any new species that happen to show up. It was just that the system clearly meant for at least these three species of beastkin to be based in the area.

Besides, Ace had grown attached to them. And sure, unlike the Sela’s family, these five haven’t decided to take the full plunge and live in the inner circle. But they have good reasons for this to be the case. The Soles prefer accommodations with the rest of their kin. While Darren was also the head merchant and needed to stick around the raccoonkin base for work reasons. Otherwise, he would soon find himself out of a job.

Ace wasn’t too certain of what to think about the raccoonkin’s base. It was outside of town, though not by much. In fact, it would be either right outside the next expansion wall or the wall would be shifted to put the compound right inside of it.

The deerkin had a small camp out in the forest, but it wasn’t a permanent situation. Rather, they just had a clearing with more permanent buildings set up. Not that all of the deerkin went out to harvest herbs, but they had a tradition and were quite good at it.

Ace could only shrug and let things develop. The town was growing in population and he had made sure everyone was welcome. Which wasn’t easy! Whether it was making sure the various cults followed the rules or that the beastkin were treated like people, no one was making it easy for him.

Though what Jim focused on was the inner circles’ progress in the dungeon. Not that Ace wasn’t paying attention to those things, but as the guild leader, Jim took it personal. This included a lot of work getting the new members up to speed, at least as much as he can manage.

Mary Sole’s two daughters were too young to have the system active and so couldn’t be helped. The other three? Well, Jim wasn’t quite able to get them to the last floor, but they managed to advance past both bosses. Though they ended up failing the climbing wall challenge.

This immeasurably disappointed both Jim and Doyle. Then again, things weren’t like they were when the wall was first climbed. When it was the original inner circle, here all alone. Everyone felt death following close behind. All of them had to be fighters, besides any other profession they might be aiming for. Then with Sela? Well, Jim wasn’t certain about that, but this newest batch?

One was a leader and the other a merchant. What reason would they have to reach so far? To break limits that most never even reach and won’t be important to them? If anything, the fact that all of them managed to break their limits at the start is the oddity.

Though, despite Jim feeling like this was a setback, the core people all advanced in their strength. Well, that or they were already strong and just didn’t bother with the dungeon. As it stands, Jim still lacks a method to test competency, though he certainly wouldn’t be first in line for such a device. Every organization everywhere would probably want such a thing.

Whatever the case, Jim was able to push the various core members to where over half of them could reach the 17th. Not necessarily delve the 17th floor, but at least get there. That was good enough for Jim.

He was even able to settle his worries about the ones who couldn’t quite make it. While everyone has certainly started more combat focused, some settled into crafting. Oh, they didn’t give up raising their power with combat. It is just that without more Paths focused on combat; they weren’t ever going to quite match up in that arena.

Well, “settle” might be a bit much. Jim managed to live with the understanding that they wouldn’t be as strong in a fight. He still tried to push them to keep advancing. Even if they weren’t going to be as strong in a fight as others, they couldn’t be falling behind in their own professions.

All the while Doyle watched, not just the last floor, but all their interactions past the second boss. Doyle would never claim his dungeon was perfect, but under such close scrutiny, small edge cases kept popping up. It was kind of frustrating.

The eleventh floor? Sure, there were literally thousands of sprouts, but that meant the walkways got overcrowded easily if the delvers didn’t clear the monsters quick enough. Not the worst problem, except it resulted in more than a few sprouts getting shoved into the water.

That made those sprouts harder to kill as the most common solution was magic fire. However, it also neutered them. Even with magic, their spores had a hard time getting into the air while the sprouts were mostly submerged.

Doyle ended up fiddling around with the problem for a few days and sure, could easily fix it. All that was needed was a small wall on the side to contain the sprouts. Except that stood out a bit too much for his taste and made it so the legit strategy of sweeping the sprouts off the path was ruined. So instead, he accepted that some sprouts would be pushed off and instead raised the edge a little.

It was just a small ramp, a bit of a lip, but the change did the job of reducing the issue. Some sprouts would still fall in the water, but only individuals instead of multiple at a time. That is, unless a delver was purposefully pushing them into the water. Which Doyle was fine with and didn’t even fully work. If too many went in at once, they would pile up, with many remaining above the water and releasing spores.

The next place Doyle worked on was the 13th floor. Not that anything there was necessarily “wrong”. In fact, the change Doyle ended up making likely wouldn’t ever be noticed. What he changed was the kobold smelter.

When he first made the forge to smelt mithril, Doyle didn’t have any proper methods of insulating the world energy. So he cheated. By way of throwing points at it, a high density of world energy was locked in place.

Except now, the town above had discovered some methods of doing the same, if not quite as effective. However, what that meant for Doyle is that with those methods, he could pull back some points. Not that he planned to spend them or anything.

It was simply that Doyle felt the inefficiency and it picked at him. Ally assured him that there would never be a point where such a set up was going to be free of point use. To smelt mithril always required a bit more of a proper forge instead of the small makeshift set up the kobolds have.

Either that, or a skilled crafter who can forcefully maintain the world energy density. Which wasn’t going to happen on floor 13 ever. There was simply not enough skill or power to force.

Though Doyle was more than willing to settle for reducing the point cost from 845, down to 572. A savings of a couple hundred and change felt more than worth it. Besides, maybe later on other techniques might show which would allow him to improve it even more!

Or rather, Doyle had to admit to himself, help with the next time he set up a smelting area. There was a bit of a pattern where areas before the most recent boss felt settled. That whole instinct thing to not overly change prior floors.

Ally confirmed that it wasn’t actually connected to bosses, at least not directly. However, she also noted it was likely personal to each core and Doyles simply latched on to boss floors. Not that he could cheat the instinct by never placing another boss.

There were more than enough examples of other unawakened dungeons breaking their patterns if enough intervening floors were made. The break points were more of a habit built on top of an instinct. Rather than the instinct itself, which would still pop in to settle things if needed.

Then, after those changes and a number of other minor things, Doyle focuses on floor 16. Both to watch the fights and how the monsters are living. As well as to sculpt the floor boundaries a little bit more.

The 16th’s original shape was a sphere, but even without Doyle realizing it, the shape had been squished to make room for everything. Which was convenient at the time, except it didn’t make the best use of the space.

So with his attention turned towards it once again, Doyle began to carve up the space. This wasn’t easy as unlike 13, he couldn’t just cut away all the space below the surface. After all, an “ocean” a couple inches deep doesn’t really work for the floor.

However, the islands themselves and the ground beneath them could be hollowed out more. This took a while and a good bit of finesse, but finally Doyle was happy with the results. It wasn’t quite a cylinder, but the ceiling at the edge of the floor no longer resembled the ceiling in an attic.

More Shaking - Chapter 421

Freshwater Aquatic - Chapter 423