Dungeon’s Path

Doyle sighs, ‘So with that bit of drama wrapped up, I’m going to assume Ace and friends will focus on delving for the next boss.’

Ally nods, ‘That seems likely enough. Does that mean you’re going to make a new floor?’

Doyle sighs again, ‘Second thing on the list. First, though, I have to take a look at my paths.’

Ally frowns, ‘Why the sigh? Paths are the core of what makes you, so they’re sort of important.’

Doyle tilts back and forth, ‘I really enjoy them, but I also don’t like how I have so many expensive ones when I’m scrounging for a hundred points at a time.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Well, you do still have around seven skill slots to fill. Also, you aren’t exactly supposed to be buying paths so often. A lot of humans tend to only check on their birthdays or if something important is coming up.’

Doyle dims, ‘That doesn’t make sense. If paths are more beneficial to get early on, why wouldn’t people be checking them constantly?’

Ally laughs, ‘What is optimal and what people actually do tend to have a decent amount of separation. Even adventurers aren’t constantly in life or death situations, let alone a farm hand or a seamstress. The few people who do constantly check are either neurotic or in some sort of situation that requires it of them. Stuff like being in a sect with a high requirement to enter or they’re an heir apparent to some kingdom.’

Doyle, ‘Still, I would think people would be checking a lot right at the start?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘People from newly integrated worlds will tend to act like this, so you aren’t alone. Others, though? You have to remember, people grow up with the system. What is a novelty to you will be old hat for them. I don’t know if this specific system works in the same way, but in some places the blue status screen will be the first thing a being sees. Sometimes even before they’re born if they have some form of consciousness while gestating.’

Doyle dims, ‘So I’m checking too often? Still, that doesn’t feel right because I always seem to end up with new paths.’

Ally shrugs, ‘And would likely have about the same number of paths if you took longer to check. While not set in stone, the paths you see will stick around on the list. If you don’t see a path and then do things that change or leave said path it will change or never appear.

‘That is one way to get more expensive paths. If you spend years smithing without checking your paths, you’ll end up with a much longer path to travel. This isn’t good or bad as it more than likely contains all the smaller paths you could have gotten otherwise. It all depends on what you did, as always.

‘I will admit. Your paths are a little off. Checking so often should be netting you things in the ten to fifty range and not the hundreds. Though that might just be because you are a dungeon.’

Doyle, ‘Why would me being a dungeon matter?’

Ally, ‘You’re more thematically important to the world. One guy born to normal parents isn’t going to do all that much on average. One dungeon will warp an entire country, world, or even solar system around its influence. Nevermind the difference in lifespan.’

Doyle nods, ‘I guess I can see that? If paths represent a being’s potential, then that would also include their potential to change others as well.’

Ally, ‘That’s a good way to put it! Anyway, are you going to look at those paths now?’

Doyle sighs again, ‘Yeah, though I really do have to figure out what other skills I can squeeze in. Maybe you can do a little searching for me?’

Ally shrugs, ‘I’ll put some time towards it. Though only as reference material as finding out what skills a dungeon has in the first place is hard enough. No clue if there will be actual listed skills to pull off of or just suspected skills.’

Doyle nods, ‘That should be good enough. Better to have something to work with than wandering randomly. Anyway, [system, show me my paths].’

{Points:53

Class: Dungeon Core III 100/100, Awakened Dungeon Core II 10/10

Location [2/1 I]: Heritage Kobold Community I 15/15, Communities of Myriad Heritages I 15/15

Completed: Goat Supremacy 20/20, Energy Well I 3/3, Commanding Subordinates 12/12, Ageless Queens 15/15, Earth’s First Home of the Limit Breakers I 1/1, Biomes Aplenty 5/5, Potion Dispensary 10/10, Elemental Animals 5/5, Cows for Milk 12/12, Vegetation Variety 20/20, Divine Border 1/1, Know Your Enemies 10/10, Pathfinder, [UNIQUE] 1/1, Community Driven 10/10, Monster Rancher 50/50, Community Builder 30/30, Extra Accommodations 75/75, Energy Well II 6/6, Kobold Community II 30/30, Engraver 5/5, Boss Builder 50/50

Started [1/3]: [TRINITY] 31/1000

Available: Awakened Dungeon Core III 10/100, Awakened Spatial Dungeon core I 0/1, Dungeon Core of Awakened Intent I 0/1, Heritage Kobold Community II 0/30, Vine Warper 0/15, Kin Slayer 0/100, Axe Sharpener 0/5, Expansionist 0/30, Fire’s Flying 0/7, Deal Broker 0/10, All the Potions 0/60, Godly Negotiator 0/500, Heavenly Gate 0/350, Clan Head 0/25, Five Cornered Square Initiate 0/100, Raising The Floor 0/100, Into The Infinite 0/60, Floors Within Floors 0/10, Phrenic Friend 0/120, PsiBane I 0/200, PsiBoon I 0/200, Deep Rules 0/500, Time Will Wait 0/500, Monster Rancher II 0/100, Energy Well III 0/18, Voidborn 0/200, Fungal Growth 0/30}

Ally smiles, ‘Well, it looks like you have more than a few points to play around with.’

Doyle, on the other hand dims right down as he reads the paths at the end. ‘Why is voidborn there? That was one of the first paths I got access to. Also, I’m almost certain it used to cost 50 more points.’

Ally frowns for a moment as she thinks back. ‘Ah, now that I think about it, that seems to be correct? If I remember correctly, we originally thought you got access to it for being born in the void. We were apparently wrong about that and now that I think about it, I don’t have a clue why I connected it to capital V void in the first place.’

Doyle rolls his core, ‘So why did I get it before? Since it just popped up, it must be for the void kobolds. Back at the start we didn’t exactly have any of those to work with. Also, still have to deal with the fact it costs fifty less points.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Might just be something you got in general for basically living in zero g. Maybe it had to do with the bit of time where your dungeon was basically a giant void with no gravity. As for the discount? My best guess is that part of the path’s cost was granting you a void variant monster and now that you have one, it isn’t going to give you another. Not the rarest thing to see, but certainly uncommon when blazing a new path.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘So. All I have to do is figure out what comes with a path and I can work on discounting it?’

Ally, ‘Yes, but no. Like I said, uncommon when blazing a new path. As in, you don’t know what your paths are going to give you so anything would be a wild guess at best. Though even known paths aren’t going to allow this to happen often. Remember, each path is to a certain point, unique to the person walking it. Even if you’re going in the same direction, your steps aren’t going to overlap 100%.’

Doyle rolls back, ‘Anyway, with that out of the way I would really like to know where all those points came from. [System, show me my skills.]’

{Skills [6/10 Class, 3/5+1 General]: Territory Control lv96, Dungeon Rules lv71, Universal Deconstruction lv60, Dungeon Pattern Database lv53, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv77, Conceptual Reinforcement lv82, Biosphere Balancing lv61, Psychology lv61, Village Planner lv31}

Ally’s eyes go wide, ‘What is up with your territory control? That one has mostly been leveling equally with rules.’

Doyle, ‘I don’t know, though that would at least half explain the fifty some points.’

Ally frowns, ‘We need to take stock of all your territory. If control is ticking up, something must be fighting your control. We’ll both look it over just in case one of us misses something.’

The two of them start examining the dungeon floor by floor. Doyle even takes a quick peek outside of his dungeon at the void, just in case something was hanging around out there. Both of them are quite thankful that nothing was found.

While he wasn’t supernaturally aware of what was going on in his dungeon, Doyle should have easily been able to detect something contesting him. That left his influence that had spread out from his dungeon, covered the town, and with each floor spread further and further into the wilds around the place.

This expansion had slowed with time and it was obvious that after a certain point Zeno’s paradox would make certain he didn’t cover the world. Though as Doyle thought about it, he could tell that if he really wanted to there were options. He didn’t.

As for the search? It took a third check for Ally to spot what was going on. Someone was contesting Doyle, just not on purpose. They weren’t even necessarily there to cause trouble for Wolf’s Rest. They would eventually do that, but when Ally finally spotted it, she couldn’t help but facepalm.

There was a fairy ring. Hard to spot as it was literally just a ring of mushrooms. A common enough natural occurrence based on how mushrooms grow. This wasn’t natural. Now they just had to figure out what to do with it.

Because they weren’t foreign fae that snuck into the world. In a similar fashion to elementals and other naturally spawned beings, the lowest level of fae tends to just pop up. Then things end up turning into something quite similar to what Doyle would recognize as an rts game.

The lowest level fae will build some form of fae structure, a fairy ring in this case. Those structures either pull in foreign fae or cause one of the fae to rank up. From there, more and more end up spawning, ranking up, and getting called in until there is a proper fae realm in the area.

As for why, what are basically fluffy balls of light, can fight against Doyle’s territory to the point that it leveled up multiple times? The fairy ring is one of the summoning type fae structures. Doyle, in turn, is a spatial type dungeon. So yeah, those balls of light and fluff were trying to mess with space in an area where space was controlled by Doyle already.

Doyle had to laugh at this as it meant he was accidentally a passive defense for the town against something popping in here. It wouldn’t prevent a mage using an actual summoning spell, but any natural or passive spawns would get culled. This was something normal dungeons would not be able to do.

In fact, if it was any other fae trying to use the fairy ring Doyle’s territory wouldn’t be able to stop it. As it is though, the forest now has the equivalent of super weak will-o-the-wisps chilling around and nothing else. Doyle could pull his territory back, but as Ally pointed out, whatever got summoned would be random.

It could be some friendly if mischievous pixies or it could end up with a tribe of malicious red caps. Ally could go out there and take charge of it, but that would just be asking for trouble as her connection to her mom would likely pull in something that shouldn’t be on the planet yet.