Dungeon’s Path

Doyle takes a moment to recover before shaking his core and sighing. ‘Welp, that always knocks me for a ringer. Still, I’m uncertain if that is a lot of cow patterns or a few. On one hand, that was probably enough patterns that I won’t get a random one for my next floor. On the other hand, I’m certain what you gave me isn’t even scratching the surface.’

Moota shrugs, “I put in as much as I could. I’m actually surprised that you got the aquatic one even. You don’t have any large bodies of water or anything. Though a large part of it also has to do with the fact many of the stranger variants get compacted down into archetypes. For instance, you got the ashen cattle. That is a stand in for every cattle type that mixes fire and earth. You could have a desert cow, a cow that lived near a volcano, or even cattle a person heavily aligned with fire has raised.”

“If you get any cows to become completely aligned with fire, you would get fiery cattle. So yeah, there are a variety of cattle, but the system chunks them together. To get a new pattern, something strange has to happen to them. I’m impressed you got both the cattle and the dungeon cattle pattern. Generally, a core would get only the dungeon specific one. Though this probably has to do with you raising your goats instead of spawning them in. Now I’ve been talking your ears off for a while, so I really should get going. The other gods will expect me back and I need to set up the cows for the settlement out there.”

Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough, will the cows show up right away or are you just going to be guiding some to the settlement?’

Moota laughs, “I wish I could just poof cows around like that. While I do have some ability to move them around, it isn’t quite teleportation.”

After a few more goodbyes, Moota teleports away. With her gone Doyle relaxes and sighs, ‘Well that was stressful. Also, I just realized. What about the potions?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘She really threw you off balance didn’t she?’

Doyle’s core wobbles, ‘Bleh, I haven’t ever been the biggest fan of being social and she very much is the kind of person that drains my batteries.’

Ally laughs and points at the back left corner of the core room. Up against the wall are seven large stacks and three fancy bottles of various potions. ‘She pulled them out of a storage device. Pretty fancy model as well, since it let her place them directly over there all piled up. Now absorb them all so we can see how much of a haul this is!’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘First I want to check on the messages I got when I absorbed the vial. A few things popped up, but I pushed them to the side. Seeing as I found out I was dealing with a god, I felt it more prudent to just not know whatever it was telling me.’

Ally shrugs, ‘I don’t think much nonsense can happen in one of those system provided rooms, but that isn’t a bad idea. Now what does it say?’

Doyle rolls his core, ‘Just let me pull it up.’

{Divine energy interference detected with Deconstruction

Multiple pseudo-divine signatures woven into enchantments on vial

Deconstruction level too low to analyze demigod powers

Deconstruction level too low to analyze demigod powers

...

Deconstruction level too low to analyze demigod powers

Pseudo-divine powers analyzed enough to separate from enchantments

Acquired Preservation [lv12] enchantment

Acquired Unbreaking [lv12] enchantment

Acquired Tiny World Energy Gathering [lv14] array

Divine signature found protecting hidden enchantment

Deconstruction level too low to analyze god powers

Divine energy surge detected on hidden enchantment

Hidden enchantment destroyed by divine energy

Glass pattern acquired at lv27

Vial pattern acquired at lv27}

Doyle just stares at the results and goes, ‘Huh’.

Ally shakes her head, ‘Well. That’s a thing’

Doyle nods, ‘Very much a thing. Do you have any clues into what type of thing it is, though?’

Ally frowns, ‘I might have an idea. Let me take a quick look at your skills real quick.’ And she pulls up one of the windows she had hidden at some point.

{Skills [5/5 Class, 2/5+1 General]: Territory Control lv15 > 19, Dungeon Rules lv19, Universal Deconstruction lv10 > 27, Dungeon Pattern Database lv17 > 28, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv21, Conceptual Reinforcement lv24, Biosphere Balancing lv7 > 16}

Seeing the jumps in skill level, she smiles. ‘I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but I’m close to it. When the vial was resisting you, it was helping you train your deconstruction skill. At first there was just some power left by a few demigods keeping you out. While you still can’t do anything about their power at level 27, your skill could separate their power from the enchantments protecting the vial.’

‘However, after you got the three more normal things on the vial, there was an enchantment protected by a full god’s power. Beyond that, there was a self-destruct mechanism built into it. So not only didn’t you get the enchantment, likely the one to improve stuff. But it destroyed itself when it detected your attempt.’

‘Now those vials are high quality work. Both the material and the design. Chances are the limit on the pattern level you could get from the vial was more on the side of your deconstruction skill instead of the object. If deconstruction had been level 100, you would have gotten the patterns at level 100. Honestly? This is a convenient boost that in a more developed world you wouldn’t need. All the patterns you knew came from the system or pre-system stuff.’

‘If you had spawned on even a backwater world that had been in the system for at least a hundred years, you would already have patterns in the fifties. You just get nothing to test the limits of your skills. In fact, now that you have a high level pattern, you should be able to grind out a higher level of creation as well. Level 27 still isn’t in the territory of energies becoming a part of the materials structure, but there should be some interesting techniques used to make the vials.’

Doyle nods, ‘Okay, that makes some sense. I can’t learn something that I can’t detect. Now how about those enchantments and the array? What’s the level attached to them because it isn’t like a pattern’s level.’

Ally smiles, ‘While the quality of an array or enchantment can affect it, that doesn’t matter for a dungeon. You aren’t carving out the design with a chisel. Instead, what matters to you is the quality of the design itself and you can’t improve that through practice. For you, it just shows the upper bounds of the effect. For instance, the preservation enchantment there only works on material and products created with a skill level of 12 or below. That is a little low, but I’m guessing they tailor what level of vial they send out depending on who is summoning it.’

‘Now that energy gathering array there is of a higher level. The reason for that is it should be what was powering all the enchantments on the vial, including the one you couldn’t get. At level 14, it wouldn’t have lasted more than a year before the vial would stop working. They’ve really cheaped out on these vials. I would more expect you to not be able to get the pattern for them rather than them being so low level. Though it would explain why they bothered obfuscating them with the divine stuff.’

Doyle dims, ‘That doesn’t seem like it would work too well. Like, what if someone with a high skill level creates a simple item? His level is high, but he could make the item at a lower level. Plus, what about things like art? I don’t see how being a better painter would make a person’s painting any different when it comes to preserving.’

Ally nods, ‘I can see why it would seem that way and it is partly my fault. More properly, it takes a lot of things into account. For instance, your question about art? At low levels, a preservation spell works more like putting the work into a good case. Higher levels will bring more to the table because art is a lot deeper than you think.’

‘In fact, you should have already known this. Just look at your skill, conceptual reinforcement. While you are a bit special, the core of it is using art to bring concepts into reality. Now here in your dungeon you don’t have to worry about what you create. People need to worry about things like that fading with time. Preserving a painting would be worthless if you couldn’t keep the painting’s mystical side intact.’

‘And of course a lower level enchantment will wear out faster. A historically valuable painting might be kept in a very high tier preservation case even if the art was drawn without skill. Though I will admit there is a lot of wiggle room involved in this. The system likes to put numbers on everything, but even the true immortals admit not everything works that way. For this specifically you can query the system if an item will be preserved or not.’

‘Oh, and preservation can be an array as well. The key thing about it is what you want preserved goes inside the array or enchanted item. You have a case enchanted with preservation that you put stuff in. Something about the effect prevents it protecting the item directly enchanted. If you try to stack preservation with multiple containers, it just takes the highest level of preservation.’

Doyle nods, ‘And unbreaking is one of those straightforward enchants. This makes more sense, and I can now see how it probably works. Though I think the using levels gimmick is all nonsense but that is neither here nor there. I’m going to deconstruct all those potions and it looks like she was kind enough to have them packed in normal bottles.’

With a thought, Doyle activates deconstruction and sweeps over the piles of potions. Everything works fine until the last three. The special so-called impossible potions that Moota provided. While nowhere near as annoying as with the alchemist vials, there is still a slight delay. Though this feels less like when he was fighting the vial and more like trying to eat too much at once. Still, they all get absorbed and a nice list pops up for Doyle to check.

{Coagulant potion pattern acquired at lv27

Flesh Mending potion pattern acquired at lv27

Regeneration potion pattern acquired at lv27

Healing potion pattern derived from Coagulant, Flesh Mending, and Regeneration potion at lv27

Antidote potion pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Cure Disease pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Fire Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Cold Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Wind Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Poison Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Lightning Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Thunder Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Blunt Trauma Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Stab Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Cut Resistance pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Climbing pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Jumping pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Invisibility to Animals pattern acquired at lv27

Potion of Invisibility to non-sapient Undead pattern acquired at lv27

Oil of Magic Weapon pattern acquired at lv27

Oil of Silver Weapon pattern acquired at lv27

Moota’s Coagulant pattern acquired at lv27

Minor Cure All acquired at lv27

Pauper’s Fix acquired at lv27

Potion and Oil patterns consolidated into Potion patterns lv30}

Doyle nods, ‘That is a few potions. Though once again a little underwhelming compared to what I expected. While the main types are well represented, I was hoping for more of those miscellaneous potions.’