Dungeon’s Path

Back with Doyle and Ally, they are considering a certain thing Doyle had gotten from the second tier of his new class path. Ally looks over at Doyle, ‘So, are you going to spin the wheel now or wait?’

Doyle bobs a couple times, ‘Eh, a new monster with sapience potential is interesting, but I’m not really certain how the system judges that. After all, my goats technically had a path towards it before I chose to go down the path of more goat.’

Ally nods, ‘True, though I’m going to guess that what the system means is a monster that will tend towards naturally developing sapience. So more on the side of kobolds instead of goats. After all, it is entirely possible for kobolds to develop to the point that they become innately sapient.’

Doyle, ‘So probably looking more towards the humanoid style monsters, if only because of the universe we are in.’

Ally, ‘Not necessarily. Remember, the system was developed in another universe. Though yeah, likely humanoid. I, however, wouldn’t put it past the System to give us something like your lesser shadow wolves. After all, they just need to evolve into shadow wolves to gain sapience so in theory they’re only one step away. Of course, that one step is quite the challenge and you might never manage it. Plus, as a dungeon, you can’t ever summon a sapient monster and so every single lesser shadow wolf would need to take that step.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Might as well pull the lever and see what we get. Sure, there is the possibility that we get goblins, but we could also get something fun. [System, select my random monster with sapience potential.]’

{Determining random monster with sapience potential...

[Unnamed] monster chosen}

Doyle stares at the result for a few moments before wordlessly turning towards Ally.

She shrugs, ‘It was bound to happen at some point. While the system does tend to pull from a list of monsters and you would think that would mean they all have at least some sort of designation, that isn’t always true. Well, I guess technically it has some sort of internal identification? But yeah, this monster likely was never seen by anything even half-way sapient. It is quite possible the system pulled them from some random unexplored world in its origin system. That or the system designer bought a list of monsters from somewhere.’

Doyle tilts back, ‘So you’re saying that not only don’t we have an idea of where this monster came from, but we have no way to even narrow it down?’

Ally shrugs again, ‘It doesn’t really matter? Just pull up the description and we can give it a name after we take a look at them.’

Doyle nods and pulls up the description.

{[Unnamed] (lv20)

S[20] A[100] C[16] I[12] W[10] P[25]

Skills: Acrobatic Flight lv35, Teamwork lv20, Claw Attack lv20

Description: A clever bird-like being with a small second set of wings that have developed to manipulate items

Cost: World Energy[50]}

Ally squints her eyes, ‘Well that doesn’t really explain much.’

Doyle laughs, ‘What were you expecting when the system couldn’t even be bothered to name it?’

Ally sighs, ‘I guess this is better than I should have expected? Worse yet, is that we can’t even summon one in to check on it as the ninth floor starts at level 13 monsters. We will have to wait for floor 13. Huh, an odd bit of coincidence there. Anyway, I guess all we can do is wait to see what is up with them.’

Doyle nods, ‘While it is interesting to have received a monster with a level higher than I can use, it also doesn’t have a high enough of a level to make it too far out of reach.’

Ally shrugs, ‘My guess is that because near sapient monsters are a bit rarer than not, it capped things at your monster level cap instead of the max level of any specific floor. Anyway, what do you plan to do now?’

Doyle tilts back and sighs, ‘I just got a bunch more boss slots and I have to ask, am I just going to have enough bosses to fit one every five floors, or have I just been lucky?’

Ally takes a moment to look up a few things before answering. ‘Well, I can definitively say that I have no clue. My guess is that you got the extra slots with your latest class path because the system wanted to make sure an awakened core has enough sapients hanging around to stay grounded. Despite what you might assume, dungeon cores aren’t actually solitary beings. After all, if you were a solitary type all the eventual bosses would be a real pain to deal with.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can see that and it makes the extra boss slots make more sense. Any boss created before awakened is going to be at best random and at worst they could all be beasts that are only technically sapient. The extra slots would allow the awakened core to personally choose a few beings to share the dungeon with.’

Ally, ‘That does seem likely. Though chances are any pre-existing bosses will at least somewhat match the core’s personality. After all, the act of gaining a boss when the core isn’t awakened is pretty much just done on instincts.’

Doyle, ‘Yeah, but that is more likely to get bosses that will follow all the core’s orders or at least will do their job quietly. Being surrounded by the dungeon equivalent of a bunch of yes men isn’t exactly a good thing. In the long run, an awakened dungeon is going to need people to have other views or they’ll stagnate.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Not that we can say anything on the subject since you sort of skipped that step. Anyway, how far can your territory spread at this point? I’ve noticed that you’ve mostly kept it to the area around the town. Not that it matters one way or another, but I’ve been listening in on Ace and it sounds like he is going to send some people upriver to start sorting things out. I’m uncertain as to what exactly his goals are as he is leaving that up to the people he is sending, but Jim is going to be one of them.’

Doyle’s core dims for a moment, ‘Huh, I’m definitely not at the point that I could follow them all the way. My territory seems to need exponentially more effort to spread the farther it gets outside of my dungeon.’

Ally, ‘I figured as much. Oh well, I’m sure we can listen in when Jim gets around to reporting to Ace on what happened.’

Doyle nods, ‘So when do they leave?’

Ally points at a nearby screen, ‘Tomorrowish? They’re gathering supplies and are about ready, though they haven’t actually gotten a strict timeline for their actions. Ace is basically structuring it as a small group of adventurers doing a little looky loo around.’

Doyle, ‘Wouldn’t Jim’s position as the leader of the Adventurers Guild stop him from doing this? I would think the guild wouldn’t look too highly on their leaders screwing around too much with that kind of thing. Though at the very least, I would think the system would have something to say about it.’

Ally nods, ‘Guild leaders are restricted in various ways, mostly by the system. About the only real limits from the guilds side is that the leader can’t hold any other official office as over the years they’ve found that just leads to over positions squeezing into the guild leader position instead of the guild leader gaining power elsewhere.

‘On the other hand, Jim won’t really have to worry about that in the place up river. After all, it isn’t a quote unquote real town. In fact, I’ve listened to people coming from elsewhere and it sounds like no one else within a week or so of travel to Wolf’s Rest is an actual system recognized town. Guild leaders have a large amount of leeway when dealing with tutorial settlements.’

After that, the two of them chat a bit about what Jim actually plans to do. Though in the end nothing much comes of it and so Doyle settles in to let things play out. So early the next morning before the first boatload of people came in, Jim and his original team of Bill, Tess, Jeremy, Kellinger, and Kelly set out for the place upriver. Not by boat, but by foot, so they can show up without a big turnout.

On a hill just outside of town, Jim takes a final look back before leading his team towards the place upriver. They even made it there before the first boat reached Wolf’s Rest. A feat which Jim had on good word that the people actually in charge of the upriver settlement did not believe was possible.

After all, going down river by boat was more about making sure the boat didn’t run into anything instead of actually pushing the boat along. Suffice it to say, as Jim walked into the settlement, no one expected them. Not only that, but one on guard duty recognized them, though it likely helped that they circled around the ruined pre-system city and approached from a different direction.

As Jim entered the settlement, the guards complimented him on his leather motorcycle jacket, though Jim almost misses the comment as his attention has been drawn to a wood plank hung over the entrance. He holds it in and manages to make some small talk, but he really wanted to laugh at their hubris. Even pre-system, you couldn’t just plop down a few houses and call it a town. With the system? Not a chance this was going to fly for long.

Why does Jim know that? Well, he is the first warning. It wasn’t going to work. Not only was he likely only going to get an audience with the figurehead Ben, but the old guys who actually run things seem to believe life can go back to what it was pre-system if they just hold out long enough. Some of them apparently even believe that the military will be rolling into town any day now.

A silly belief, though Jim can’t really blame them. Even in Wolf’s Rest most of the people aren’t  willing to admit something that was obvious to him. The world had changed. Not in some mystical way, but literally. The land had shifted and while he wasn’t able to be certain; the horizon looked flatter.

Jim had brought this up before, but no one was quite willing to accept it. After all, the promise was that even if things had changed; it had all stayed the same. Not that any of the tutorial guides had ever made such a promise. The very fact these cities were located where they were should have been enough of a hint.

Even the so-called cities weren’t quite right. They were just way too close together. It felt more like someone had grabbed a bunch of cities and blobbed them. This was especially true if they had really been in their original country. After all, their country was known for the car culture because of how spread out everything was.

Jim shakes his head, there were way too many worries to worry about if he let himself get caught up in it. Right now he had a mission, that of delivering an unwanted message to someone who didn’t even have the authority to do something about it if they wanted to. Though even as he tried to stay focused, the settlement around him kept pulling at him.

This settlement had gotten lucky as most of the buildings were still solid. The two pre-system cities near Wolf’s Rest had more than just a few buildings that had collapsed even before the system had dropped them off. On the other hand, this difference had helped push his people to settle around the dungeon. Here, Jim could see ongoing efforts to use bags of pre-system concrete to fix up any damage and various other attempts at preserving the old.