[D'sP] Punt The Goat - Chapter 401

Doyle watches as the party argues back and forth about Daisy for a bit, but soon enough they’re continuing their delve.

This brings them to the first boss floor. Which surprisingly, at least to Doyle, wasn’t a complete curb stomp. The kobold’s put up a semi decent fight and it isn’t like they’ve all been there for a long time training. People from out-of-town show up regularly and have to go through the early floors. Which also means that Doyle knows the kobolds don’t go this hard on the average delver.

Even Ally is confused at the start of the fight. Then it hits her, ‘They’ve hit some sort of breakpoint!’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘What do you mean? As far as I’ve seen, even if there are bottlenecks, power tends to scale rather smoothly.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Not as in power, but skill. I should have realized it when the first masterwork was crafted. Also, this won’t be quite as obvious on the tenth floor if it is what I suspect. Let’s wait till then and I’ll tell you after I confirm if I’m right.’

Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough. It isn’t like I think the kobold boss is going to beat them, just that they are being challenged more than I feel they should be.’

Then the delvers hit the sixth floor, and the resulting fight was disappointing. Doyle understood this was normal. The kobold boss and friends had been clearly fighting above their level. Still, going from a skillful fight to a series of boring battles against beasts was quite the let down.

At least, the seventh floor has some excitement. While the lesser shadow wolves aren’t any better than usual, they still fought well. Though this mainly came from them retreating to get a better angle or lure them into the elder assassin vines. Stuff they could always do, it was that with weaker teams; they didn’t bother.

Then eight was a strange watch as always. Doyle had heard some out-of-towners compare it to a dungeon within a dungeon. Though the oddity came not from it challenging Jim and his team, but in the variety of challenges and how they deal with them.

Floor nine, on the other hand, is incredibly straightforward and Jim’s party bull their way through. It isn’t quite as effortlessly as the fourth floor, but Doyle bet that if the monsters had been similarly leveled, nine would have been the quicker floor for them to complete.

After all, it is literally an open tunnel with no side passage from the entrance to the exit. Ally agreed and even bet that if they really wanted to rush it, they could probably run past the monsters. Though as the team reaches the tenth floor, both of them fall silent, the easy banter giving way to a tense atmosphere.

Though while it is clear that Jim isn’t letting his team skip fights they come across, he also isn’t against skipping fights that aren’t directly in their way. Which includes the sections of floor ten where it drops down into a pit. So instead of climbing down, the team uses their stats to easily climb across at the top. At least they don’t skip the fights where the myconids are off to the side.

Except right from the start, it wasn’t as good a fight as the fight floor. Don’t get it wrong, this was more challenging. The monsters had a level three times that of the fifth floor. It’s just, the fight was straightforward, at least comparatively.

Then they faced the boss and its direct minions. This was better, but still nothing compared to the kobold boss. Ally nodded, ‘I was right.’

Doyle, ‘So, what’s the answer? It obviously isn’t just “boss equals better” or some such.’

Ally shrugs, ‘It sort of is. Though the key is part of the benefits of being a boss, that of having a soul and remembering their past because of it. Except, one monster isn’t going to change the tide against a team like Jim’s, at least not in a controlled environment like this.’

Doyle, ‘But then the bosses would be basically impossible for the people that are meant to challenge them. They specifically are limited in what combat experience they can remember during a fight. That’s something you told me way back when.’

Ally nods, ‘That is correct, there is a limit in what they can remember. Except, that limit isn’t set in stone. Jim and his team are Skilled enough that the sapient monsters have more of their memories unlocked during the fight, especially those memories of fighting these people in the past. Because that is something normally restricted so even if a boss is skilled, the delvers come into a fight where the boss can’t counter them.

‘And the kobold boss has one thing up on the myconid boss. The kobold has those pseudo-sapient companions. This is important not because they specifically remember, but because they’re leaders of their own groups. That reduces the weight of command on the kobold boss.

‘Each of those companions can run their group independently. The monsters can react right away instead of following their instincts until the boss can get around to giving new orders. On the tenth floor, the myconid boss doesn’t have that.

‘Not that I’m putting them down! The myconid boss does a phenomenal job, it just needs to command all of their monsters all of the time. To be honest, most other monsters would likely do even worse. After all, the myconid have a robust communication system based on their spores and magic. The boss doesn’t have to look to see who’s saying what and where they are.’

Doyle, ‘Huh, I guess that makes some sense. Though it certainly shows how lucky, I was to get the kobold boss. It is actually kind of sad that they’re down on the fifth floor.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘You could always move them deeper.’

Doyle flinches back, ‘I uh, guess I could? Just doesn’t feel right.’

Ally nods, ‘That would be the dungeon instinct to leave earlier floors alone. There isn’t anything wrong with that. You should keep it in mind, though. You weren’t originally a dungeon core and so will have an easier time breaking out of it if needed.

‘Anyway, we’re onto the fun part. While it isn’t like the floors after a boss fight are suddenly tougher, but if you use the boss floors as measuring sticks? They’re onto the section that will challenge them.’

Doyle, ‘Not this floor, though.’

Ally nods as they watch the team wreck the 11th floor. It just can’t be helped. Most of the danger is basically a gear check and not the actual monsters. If you can properly resist the much denser myconid spores, well, the sprouts aren’t going to do much.

The biggest thing is that despite the weakness of the monsters, the sheer mass of them is enough to prevent the party from ignoring them. Jim and friends are forced to actually kill them, taking up their time. Which does double duty for the floor. Because not only is it testing a party’s staying power and endurance, it also tests their method of resisting the spores.

After all, if you use an external aid, it will need to last the fight. Which is a problem for some of the potions available outside of Ace’s people. Since the fight needs a much higher resistance, some alchemists figured out how to trade time for power in their potions.

Then Jim’s party is onto the 12th floor. Both Doyle and the delvers had for a while found the floor to be boring. They were wrong. The problem before was because they had been stuck on the floor.

So they would have a frantic first bit, only to have most of their time taken up with aimless wandering. Now that they know what to do? The 80 lesser shadow wolves make for a hectic race fight through the floor. Like being chased through a corn maze instead of getting lost in one.

Of course, it doesn’t stop Jim’s party despite being more thrilling. Floor 13 does a better job of putting up a fight. Though that is mostly the fault of, in an interesting turn, Jim’s party did too well. The first few fights weren’t too out of place.

The party dropped in on the kobold camp to pick up the mithril ingot. That was standard operating procedures at this point. They couldn’t get enough of the stuff and it isn’t like they could find a natural deposit of the stuff. At least not yet.

Then they made a mistake. The hexku were simply too easy. Well, they weren’t easy, per se. Rather, it was easy for the party to ignore them. After all, a bird isn’t going to force you to stop moving forward in the same way a wolf or kobold standing in front of you will.

So Jim’s party kept pressing forward, killing hexku whenever convenient. This might have worked fine, except for one detail. The hexku don’t wait for you to kill the current ones if you keep moving forward.

Oh, sure, only so many will be attacking. However, and this wasn’t intended by Doyle, even if not attacking? Spare birds would show up and start circling above. So when one of the attacking monsters is taken down, there is no delay before a new one replaces it.

For probably the first time this entire delve, which at this point has been going on for hours, the delvers felt like they were in danger. Now, that isn’t to say they felt like they couldn’t win. They just had to slow their roll and properly pay attention to the floor.

Once they made it to the exit, Jim shook his head. “We came in this time to make sure we realized how powerful we are. To realign our understanding and drill in how much stronger we’ve become. And I must admit, seeing Kelly punt that one goat that came up behind us into the wall certainly did that.

“Now we’ve managed to get a second lesson for free! That of how weak we still are. That we can’t run around like children, smashing things however we like. Let’s try and keep that in mind going forward for as long as we can.”

Down in the core, Ally couldn’t help laughing. ‘The never ending fight! Especially when you can get to a point where nothing on your planet could hurt you. More than a few newly risen deities have gotten smacked down by mortals when they try to proclaim themselves all powerful, let alone what other deities do to them if they don’t chill.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can see that. The whole “frog in a well” trope exists for a reason. Same as the idea behind those who would rather be “the head of a chicken, then the tail of a phoenix” or “the big fish in a small pond”. Though at least with those two, the person understands their position in the world and simply chooses to stay where they’re the strongest.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Up until someone stronger either develops there or comes in from the outside. There’s always someone stronger. The most successful people are those who help raise the floor instead of breaking through the ceiling.

‘Not to say they should ignore getting stronger, mind you. A place needs a tent pole to support the rest. Which Ace is shaping up to be. Well, Ace and Jim. Though one of the others could certainly surprise me.’

Doyle, ‘I assume there’s a reason I saw a bunch of stories where organizations are ranked by their highest rank member instead of what most of their members are.’

Ally nods, ‘Even if everyone in a group besides one is below level 10, if that one person is level 1000, they get respected. Part of why the Adventurers Guild is so stable. You don’t get a bigger tent pole than a True Immortal.’

The System Shouldn't Do That - Chapter 400

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