[D'sP] Not CEO Material - Chapter 417

Doyle turned to Ally, ‘I have indigestion.’

Ally slowly turned to face his core and raised an eyebrow, ‘The what? You’re a dungeon core. You don’t “eat” in a way which could do that.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Seems to not be the case. I did some mediation or whatever you’d call it and figured out my instincts were pulling me away from creating a new floor because of the sixth floor.

‘I’ve got more than enough world energy, but it isn’t getting a chance to diffuse to my other floors. Which I’ve equated to indigestion because the other analogy is choking on something and I don’t like that image.’

Ally nodded, ‘Fair enough. I guess you just have to do something to spread them out. Maybe make it so they only get so much time or so many tries on skipping the first five floors? I know we already have some stuff set up for that, but it is meant to punish people breaking the rules.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘That would work, but not how I want it to. If I force them to occasionally start on the first floor it won’t push them forward. I’ve been fine with them farming the sixth floor because they need food.

‘However, I’m not going to replace their need to grow their own food. You’ll note that while there is wheat and such around, I’m not putting in entire fields of the stuff. Nor am I leaving chests full of wheat seeds for them.

‘If they want to live off of me? They’ll have to really work for it. A quick trip through the first five floors doesn’t push them. No, I’ll have to change things so people are forced to delve deeper. Well, that or at least not spam the same floor over and over.’

Ally, ‘Well, with that in mind, I don’t exactly have a straightforward solution.’

Doyle, ‘There is one way, but I’m not touching it with a ten-foot pole. Mostly because the answer is to redistribute the cattle over multiple floors. Make it so only farming the sixth floor is no longer as effective as moving through multiple floors. But I simply don’t have the mental space right now to jiggle that.’

Ally nods, ‘All good. There’s a good bit going on right now. Do you have any other ideas? Well, I mean, you could just reduce the drop rate of steak, but with winter and all, that would suck for them.’

Doyle, ‘Well, I could reduce it by a small amount? Like, have the cattle drop steak only 90% of the current rate. After all, they’re exporting steak right now.’

Ally smiles and shakes her head. ‘We both know you won’t. That isn’t excess food. You could drop twice as much meat and people would still probably be hungry in this community. You aren’t going to make it easy on them, but you aren’t going to starve them.

‘From the perspective of a dungeon? This doesn’t matter one way or another. In fact, this would be the perfect time to move the meat deeper into the dungeon because people will be more willing to delve for it. Except, we aren’t just any dungeon, are we?’

Ally huffs, ‘I’m sure you realized I was against being softhearted. I can’t really say much about my actions. It is just how we’re trained. Which isn’t meant to be an excuse, just how it was. Anyway, you need that sort of viewpoint when dealing with an unawakened dungeon.

‘And, well, I’m a Fae. We are famous for our flexible morals. Though I guess more appropriately, unlike most sapients, we don’t have any inbuilt feelings about morality.’

Doyle, ‘I’m pretty certain morality is something people learn from their upbringing? Like, on this planet, just about everything under the sun has both been considered moral and immoral. There were civilizations that committed human sacrifice!’

Ally shakes her head, ‘No, I don’t mean that kind of morality. That’s learned. Rather, I mean when you learn that kind of stuff, most sapients will develop a feeling or voice in their head which tells them when something isn’t “moral”.

‘Fae never have that. We can follow codes of conduct and intellectually understand moral systems. It isn’t hard to “get” that stealing isn’t good for a civilization. However, breaking those rules won’t make us feel bad. Fae are inherently amoral.’

Doyle, ‘Oh, yeah, fair enough. It might surprise you, but I didn’t have much of that myself. Then again, it would be kind of hard to be a dungeon core if you did get squeamish about killing people. Sort of the job.’

Ally tilts her head to the side, ‘I thought that came about from you getting turned into a dungeon core? I hadn’t brought it up since you seemed to still maintain some human feelings. And uh, until recently you still had problems with instincts.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Nah, I won’t say I was fully amoral, but I felt a lot less of that. I’d have made an excellent CEO if I didn’t also care about people. To have a position like that, not only don’t you have to feel nothing about indirectly killing people, but you also have to not care about them in a more direct, “I’m firing you to make it look like my company is making more money this quarter”, sort of way.’

Ally, ‘Well, it will take a while before that kind of leader rises again. When you’re on the edge of life and death, leaders who don’t have actual reasons for those kinds of decisions don’t last long.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I am almost 100% certain that some of those types will have managed to gain leadership positions. They might not last long, but people basically worshiped the rich and many thought they must be smart to earn that much money. Which is very much not the case.’

Ally shrugs, ‘The assumption that those on top of any system or organization being smarter or more qualified is a universal thing. People just want it to make sense. So when they have to ask why this or that bumbling idiot managed to get to the top, more than enough will pretend they’re actually running some kind of plan.’

Doyle nods, ‘Some things never change. Though speaking of the leader not having a clue, I’m sort of out of ideas on fixing six. I said your original idea wouldn’t work and that thought isn’t wrong. Except, it would help in the short term.

‘Do you have a way to introduce it without confusing the delvers? Because I figure them showing up on the first floor out of nowhere isn’t going to go over well with them.’

Ally, ‘Whatever we do to change the floor will make them unhappy. Thankfully, we don’t have a phone number for them to call and complain on. They’ve already gone through the floors before so the only ones that will have a problem are those who bought a ride to six.

‘That isn’t common, but by this point there are one or two dungeon farming teams made entirely of people like that. Most of it coming from them having gained specialized butchery skills which cause the cattle to drop more meat.’

Doyle, ‘Wouldn’t people with skills like that be split up into multiple groups? It would seem like something you don’t need more than one person to have. Which I guess to say, I’m asking if it stacks or something stupid like that?’

Ally shrugs, ‘It certainly doesn’t stack, taking the highest skill level used on the kill, at least while in a dungeon. The reason they do that is because the skill uses a bunch of power and stamina to boost the drops. So instead of getting a good bit from a few cattle, they got a decent bit from all the cattle.’

Doyle nods, ‘Okay, that does make some sense. And I assume whatever skill this is, will eventually level to a point where they start breaking up the team? At least to make the best use of the skill? Though I guess an explanation of why the skill is working like that might be helpful.’

Ally, ‘The skill is simple enough. Or rather, skills, because there isn’t just one that does it. The idea behind this sort of butchery and any similarly positioned resource skill is to focus on retaining power in what they harvest.

‘Outside of a dungeon, that will mean using their own power to seal in the harvested materials natural power. In a dungeon, though, the skill is a lot more straightforward. You simply need to get to the body and wrap your own power around what you want to have drop before moving onto the next body.

‘Which is a fair reason for having multiple people on the same team with the skills. That way, they can more easily get to the dungeon monsters before they despawn. So yeah, not really a problem since the effort and spent power makes up for the fights not actually being as hard as would normally merit the drops. It is just that kicking them back to the first floor probably won’t be taken too kindly.’

Doyle brightens, ‘Actually, I think that information is exactly what I need to implement your idea! After all, it sounds like we have multiple teams of people who didn’t actually “earn” their way to the sixth floor.

‘While it might be confusing for them at first, if I time the change right, I could get them blaming the fact people were bussing people to the sixth floor. In particular, given how people like to do things, there is likely a group specialized in this sort of run, making multiple trips a day to get people past the boss. Right?’

Ally nods, ‘Theres two such groups. Or rather, there is one overarching group and they make it look like two so people think they’re competing. That way, they can appear to squabble all the time, all while knocking out any actual competition without people being too angry at them. After all, they’re still “fighting” each other, the third group must have been too weak to survive some “healthy” competition.’

Doyle nods, ‘That’s perfect for my purpose. We simply need to be on the lookout for when a third group crops up again, because I assume the “two” groups are particularly active when that happens? Probably running people for extra cheap?’

Ally nods again, ‘They tend to go through a bit of a price war if they even see signs of a competing group’

Doyle, ‘Then we simply have to wait. It isn’t like I’m being forced to solve it right now. Keeping things as they are for a little won’t hurt. After all, it doesn’t look like Ace and friends are quite up for the tasks of clearing the last floor quite yet. The all kobolds strategy seems to be working quite well.’

Ally rolls her eyes, ‘You have more kobolds than the sixth floor has cattle. Err, well, I haven’t actually counted that so I might be wrong, but you get the sentiment. If you filled the floor with cattle, it would be an absurd number of the beasts kicking around.’

Doyle, ‘Or goats! I wonder if there will come a time when I could place more goats than physically fit in a floor? It would be fun to see Ace’s face when he enters a new floor, only to find gravity gone and the entire area around the exit packed to the brim with goats.

‘And it would have to be a zero gravity floor. At least to make the best use of the space. With gravity would require scaffolding or some such. Otherwise, the goats would just end up crushing each other.’

Ally giggles, ‘Instead of fighting the goats, the challenge would be simply clearing a path through them to find the exit. With a shifting exit, that would take a long time. Though you wouldn’t be able to have a farm and so need to respawn each goat, which sounds like a hassle.’

Pushed Back Again - Chapter 416

Year 1aa - Chapter 418