[D'sP] Pushed Back Again - Chapter 416

Susan, “Even if the kobolds made the trap, it will have been placed with a skill. Me and my husband have been keeping track of instances of kobold traps. We haven’t quite nailed it down. I personally suspect some floors have hidden kobolds, but the ratio of kobolds to their traps never goes too far beyond a certain point. I’m nine-tenth certain each kobold can only lay a certain number of traps.”

Ace nods, “I can see that. If anything, the system probably wouldn’t allow that sort of thing. For now, though, have you seen enough of the trap?”

Susan shrugs, “There isn’t much to the trap. The thing is just a fancy net trap with a bad net. The metal makes it sturdier, but a proper net would be better.”

Ace, “It doesn’t need to be perfect. The trap just needs to be good enough. Anyway, we better start exploring. This place seems to just be a trap filled forest and I want to know if that is really all there is to the floor.”

Susan glances around, “I suspect it might be better to hold up here and let the kobolds come to us. These traps are a pain and half to spot.”

Jack stands up from leaning against a tree. “The problem with that is this isn’t a tunnel. They can come at us from all directions. Though I admit, I’d rather they come at us while we aren’t standing on a trap without knowing it.”

Og, “I know we wanted to get further than Jim did. Bit of fun competition and all, but maybe we should retreat now as well? I’d like to say we can take whatever they want to throw at us. Except, they could throw hundreds of kobolds at us and if even a small number of them have slings? Well, I don’t look favorably on our survival.

“I’ve been hearing about the other dungeon and it is nothing like this. What makes the two so different? Sure, the floor size seems to grow similarly, but our dungeon is full to the brim, while the other has only a few powerful monsters.”

Ace sighs, “I blame our early interaction with the dungeon for that.”

Record scratch, everyone, especially Doyle and Ally suddenly have their full attention on him. Og coughs, “Uh, what do you mean by that? We didn’t really do anything special. Least not from what I’ve heard.”

Ace shrugs, “Well, at the start there was the goats, kobolds, and assassin vines; right? So we have two cheap options and an expensive option. Then can you guess which one has the least kills? Which monster is the least effective?”

Susan, “This isn’t the best comparison, but it would be the assassin vines. There just aren’t a lot of them to cause problems and tend to be more like traps. Which while they can move around, they tend to stick to their spot.”

Ace nods, “Exactly! And sure, it isn’t a fair comparison. Until you include the fact that even of those caught by an assassin vine, most escape. We don’t have exact numbers, but until we got flooded by new delvers, basically no one died to them. And given that, can you blame the dungeon for skewing towards a bunch of cheap units?”

Og, “Huh, now that you mention it, there was a bunch of stories about how the other dungeon had a bunch of deaths to a single bear monster. Now bears are the principal threat. I guess that explanation makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard.”

Ace nods, “But I think we’re lucky. How many bears are there to a floor? And yet we have how many cattle running around floor six? I assume they aren’t feeding too many people over at the other dungeon.”

Susan nods, “That is true. We even have reports that some of our meat ends up over there. It is rare, but at least one merchant has learned a slow channel ice spell so they could get the steaks there fresh. It won’t be long before the spell proliferates, or at the very least, copied by jealous competitors.”

Ace frowns, “Do we have a copy of the spell?”

Susan shakes her head, “No, but we could easily replicate it if we wanted. At the moment, we are focused on the preservation boxes. It slows all forms of degradation down, including microbes and such. I would be willing to bet that a person in a properly sized box would find their digestion and such slowed down.

“Not that we don’t chill stuff. You’ve seen the ice rooms. We have people summoning in giant blocks of ice instead of a spell. The usability of the spell comes in transporting things when a giant block of ice would add too much weight.”

Ace’s face relaxes, “Okay, that makes more sense. Is summoned ice that much more efficient?”

Ruby answers, “Yes, summoning magic is shockingly efficient if you don’t need anything too complex. A block of ice being summoned in takes a fraction of the Mana needed to maintain a chilling spell.

“It would be better to make some sort of magical device to chill things. Maybe enchanted, but for regular folk we would probably need to find some sort of ‘ever cold’ material. Whether that is ice that never melts or a type of fire that absorbs heat instead of create it.”

Susan raises her hand and everyone goes silent. “Enemies come from all around.”

The team gathers together and begin to move towards the exit portal. Not ready to leave, but not stupid either.

Then the first kobold is spotted dashing from behind one tree to the next. It might have remained hidden, but it dodged around something, presumably a trap. The kobold didn’t make it to the next tree as Og manages to nail the monsters knee with a rock.

One beat, two, and the silence is broken by kobolds seemingly appearing out of nowhere. They were still mostly far away, having prioritized stealth. However, there was about seven already close to the party.

What draws Ace’s eye, though, is a strange chubby kobold towards the back, which seemed in charge. “New kobold of some sort. Let’s get out. Next, people here will just have to keep moving.”

And being next to the exit portal, they’re gone in a moment.

In the core room, Doyle is dimmed, ‘I wasn’t expecting the kobolds to act quite like that.’

Ally shrugged, ‘You might have been focused on Ace, but I was paying attention to the elders. They certainly fill the role not only in age, but ability to guide. Though I will admit, Ace got unlucky.

‘There would have likely been a few scattered groups of kobolds that stumbled upon them before they grouped up. Shame that there was one of your roaming elders nearby to organize the kobolds. On the other hand, I guess it did give them a chance to examine that trap.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘No, that was honestly perfect. It gave me a view of how they can handle the other kobolds. It might not have been direct combat, but the elder fought and won against Ace’s party. Though I think it might be time to ignore them for a while.’

Ally sighs, ‘Yes, you should probably get on to the next floor.’

Doyle shakes his core again, ‘Not that. I’ve decided, I want them to find my core room. They still can’t hurt me, but who knows when the next time they might get close to my last floor? The biggest thing that worries humans is the unknown.

‘If they never catch sight of my core room again, they’ll worry how deep I truly am. By giving them a look, they’ll feel like they have a handle on things. No, I’m not building a new floor, I’m going to play with my waterlogged assassin vines.

‘I uh, I might have figured out part of why I’m not getting any better monster variants. Don’t know how I got the void kobolds if I’m right. Sort of obvious in hindsight, going by how most dungeons start out compared to my methods.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘You’re going to just go and let them reach your core? Aren’t your instincts screaming at you to not do that? It generally isn’t seen as healthy.’

Doyle, ‘Eh, I can tell it isn’t smart, but I also see the benefit at the moment. I think my instincts are picking up on the situation and the fact I’m not just an unawakened dungeon. If anything, this might happen more than you’d think, but unawakened dungeon cores can’t tell their fairy.’

Ally, ‘Hmm, that is possible. I know that dungeons can form new floors at an odd pace. It isn’t like I can check on when you’d be able to do so. Though I do have to wonder what would hold a dungeon back from forming a new floor. Even your reasons seem a bit vaguer than usual.’

Doyle tilts back, ‘You’re right. That is odd. Give me a moment to get a feel for this.’

Doyle settles back and does the equivalent of shutting his eyes. What was the root of his decision? He wanted to let the town discover his core so they knew they managed to catch up.

This wasn’t wrong. However, was it everything?

No.

There was more. His instincts did have a slight push for this kind of thing, though tempered by making sure there wasn’t someone actually dangerous around. But it wasn’t the only reason.

Beneath his surface thoughts, there was something else. A desire to not form a new floor. But why?

Doyle floated in the sense of his body, the dungeon as a whole. It felt–

Hmm? Dry? Thirsty?

Why? He had enough world energy. Right?

Doyle turned his attention to his status, specifically the world energy pool. And yep, he has enough coming and going. Well, maybe?

He turns to Ally, ‘This is going to take more than just a moment. I’m going to be doing some math.’

Ally nodded, ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on Ace for now.’

With that, Doyle retreated to keep track of his world energy income. It flowed in and out like the tides as one day and then the next passes. Of course, at night, it slowly dwindled to the cost of general maintenance.

The numbers didn’t lie. Was he getting enough world energy? Yes, sorta. In fact, even accounting for the loss over the night, Doyle was making a tidy profit.

There were a couple problems though. While there was a lot of world energy flowing around. However, much of it was located early on and much of that was shallow.

The first one was obvious enough. Floor six was where most delvers went. And technically, it wasn’t a problem. Except, it wasn’t like his world energy resource pool was some magical space that could insert world energy wherever it was needed.

World energy tended to gather where it was harvested. That meant floor six had most of his world energy stocks at any point in time. Once again, this isn’t a problem in theory, but it is like the difference between drinking directly from a cup and drinking through a straw. Each new floor is like making the straw longer.

The problem comes from the second issue. It was “shallow”. As in, the world energy harvested tended to go directly to maintaining the floor. Which was what really caused the first one to be an issue in the first place. If the world energy had a chance to sit around, it would diffuse to the other floors.

The solution wasn’t easy. The cost of maintaining his sixth floor was already cut back to the minimum. What he really needed was more people delving deeper. Because the reason he wasn’t jumping at making a new floor, was that his current dungeon would have a harder time supporting it.

Not that it couldn’t support the new floor. Doyle had more than enough world energy. However, it would begin to feel like he was struggling to breathe. An entirely uncomfortable situation that his instincts had been gently guiding him away from.

Cracked Wood - Chapter 415

Not CEO Material - Chapter 417