Akhier

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Ally turns back to the map, ‘So how do you plan to place your monsters? Oh, and what is the plan for separating the goat farm from the main dungeon area?’

Doyle highlights the two connecting tunnels from the offscreen goat farm. ‘Notice how the tunnels don’t break through to the two large rooms? One way heavy stone doors go there. I have some plans for that and will use vines on the wall to hide it for the moment, as no one seems to be searching for hidden doors yet. Not that I care too much if adventurers find it, as I plan to abuse the fact that my goats are cheap. The goat farm is bigger than a huge room and will be packed with goats.’

‘Though I do plan to place the rest of my monsters first. Don’t want to spawn hundreds of goats only to have nothing in the actual dungeon. However, I don’t think there is anyone from Earth who can manage a room of that size full of goats. Anyway, that room does double duty. A farm for goats and a defense in case some group decides they want to kill us. Just order the goats out to swarm the enemy.’

Ally tilts her head, ‘huh, that is a splendid plan. But yeah, get the rest of the monsters down. A final defense isn’t very final if you don’t have a first defense.’

Doyle bobs the screen she is viewing, ‘plus the whole designing the environment thing. At the moment I have the rooms in place but it is all blank stone walls.’

Ally shrugs, ‘fair enough’, and she goes back to watching people stumble through the first floor. The town had upped the rate at which people entered the dungeon so she had a lot to watch.

Doyle notices this and nods to himself, ‘that should let me build the floor faster’.

Ally laughs, ‘true enough. From what I have overheard, they are shoving fresh groups in as soon as the last leaves.’

Doyle laughs as well and then takes a moment to switch off his mental communication with her. He hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud. ‘Welp, better be careful about talking to myself from now on. That or get rid of my lifelong habit of talking to myself when alone. Anyway, the entrance is an excellent place to start.’

He focuses on the floor’s entrance and does the first thing that comes to mind. Doyle moves the gate from his core room to the entrance. It wouldn’t stop anyone from getting to his core, but maybe they would get bored and turn back after all the empty rooms? One can always hope.

With the gate in place, Doyle sits back and considers the room. ‘I had a very basic room for floor one’s entrance. Do I want to do the same thing here?’ He glances at the old core room through the portal and shakes his core.

‘No, while I don’t think I will have enemies here so people have a chance to rest I won’t make it a soft room. In fact, is anyone on the first floor?’ There is a team but they are about to leave so Doyle leaves a view on them as he waits. The second they leave the dungeon he moves the gate in the old core room.

It had been floating in the center of the room like his core had been. Now it is up against the back wall. The gate still looks like a rough tear in space, but he will have to work on that at night when people aren’t entering.

What he can work on is the other end of the portal. If carved lines can change the first floor’s entrance gate, then it can work here as well. This time, he wants to shape it instead of following the natural lines. Doyle starts from the edges of the portal.

At the farthest spatial crack, he strikes a line across it. Then another line across the next. He works his way around the gate. Each line carefully struck. For the first floor a rough hole in reality worked because outside the gate was just floating in the air. Now that he has the portal against a wall, he wants a more door-like opening.

As each line goes in, reality ripples. When he started, each of the lines seemed random, but as more went down they connected. Around the gate he has carved a vaulted doorway into the wall and the cracks pull away from it. Doyle lays down the last mark and a thrum spreads out through the fabric of space.

The cracks pull apart and the edge of the gate expands outward to the edges of the carving. Then a grinding sound can be heard from the other side of the portal. Doyle shifts his view to the old core room and is surprised.

He had expected the portal’s shape to change, but it had gone beyond that. The grinding noise was from the lines he had drawn on the second floor being carved on the first floor. An interesting thing, seeing as he wasn't supposed to be able to change the first floor when people were in it. In fact, the system noticed this as well.

{System Error: Changes detected on inhabited dungeon floor...

Analyzing error...

Source: Conceptual Reinforcement used on dungeon portal

Error elevated to AI support...

System AI has determined no error present

Exception to restrictions on changing inhabited dungeon floor updated for dungeon designated “Doyle”

New Restriction: Changes to any portal requires all floors connected to said portal be empty first

System AI Decision: Error within allowed margins and no widespread changes needed}

Doyle reads the system message as it updates and laughs to himself, ‘fair enough. This probably isn’t the first time this has happened. Though maybe the first in this universe.’

He can only shrug and move on. There wasn’t much left he wanted to do in the room, but it still needed lights. On the first floor he had gone with a single light in big rooms and small lights for the hallways. Maybe later that could be changed, but for now it fits his current plants.

Doyle looks up at the ceiling and ponders on it some. ‘Even if I’m not going to change the basic design there I can mess around with it a little.’ Instead of just placing them on the ceiling, he carves out an inset area. The inset starts as a cylinder about as big around as a human head and it extends upward about a fist’s width. Above that the radius triples but the inset only goes about a fingers width deeper into the ceiling. Around the edges of that inner area he places enough lights that it illuminates the room as if it was twilight outside.

The indirect light creates an interesting look in the room below. Doyle doesn’t intend for the rest of the floor to be in twilight, but he had wanted to see what it would look like. With the light in place, Doyle carves out images of clouds on the ceiling. Once completed, the scene causes the light from the ceiling to shift and dim randomly as if clouds were passing over.

With the second floor entrance complete, Doyle moves on to the large room it connects to. He didn’t want to ruin the twilight of the previous room and takes time to consider what he has to work with. A look over his available materials when it hits him. Vines are perfect for it. He just has to string them up at the entrance.

‘Now what to do with the room itself?’ He doesn’t intend to leave any of the other rooms on this floor as bare stone like the entrance. The basic covering of dirt and clover goes down and he stops to ponder the room. In the end he fills the room with boulders, rabbits, and horned lizards. There isn’t any particular pattern to it. Doyle figures he will just end up sticking some goats in it. Though as an afterthought he sets a mint plant to grow behind one of the boulders so it isn’t visible unless looked for. Not hidden so much as out of the way. Doyle nods and places one of his light blobs on the ceiling.

The small room between the large room Doyle had just completed and the next is almost breezed over. He doesn’t even plan to put monsters in it, so he just throws down the dirt and clover. The only thing different from the others room is he puts the light in the north-west corner.

This brings him to the first split room. First thing he set out to do is improve the boulder blockade. At the moment he had placed down a few to denote where it would go. Now he really piled them on. In some places the boulders even touch the ceiling three meters up. After he has a good pile of them, Doyle fuses the boulders together. Connected up Doyle is then able to clear out the center. A perfect place for his lizards to live.

Out in the main area of the room, Doyle throws down the dirt and clover. He even places patches of it on top of the boulders that were closer to the floor. It looked nice, if not quite natural yet. Then he slaps the room’s light in the center over the last boulder. Doyle takes it all in, but it still feels empty and so more mint goes down. The rabbits wouldn’t like it, so for them he also places a sage bush down. Now on the second floor, he doesn’t feel the need to be too stingy with the herbs. As a last artistic touch, he crafts the walls to look like fully connected stalagmites and stalactites, then moves on.

He considers the passage to the goat farm but shrugs. It can wait for later. Instead, he turns to the first hallway. Honestly? There isn’t much he can do with it. The entire hallway is just a long runway for his axe beaks to run down. Doyle just coats it in dirt and then clovers. Then the walls are roughed up and he vaults the ceiling, giving it a nice rounded look.

Now though, he goes into the one trick he had thought of for this. With great care, Doyle carves arrows and lines along each wall. Each one blends in with the rough walls so as to not stick out unless looked for. Then with great flair he boldly carves simplistic representations of his axe beaks running at great speed towards where the adventurers would be entering. When finished, the only hint he gets that it might have worked is a slight air flow from one end to the other.

The next room he does take it easy on. Just mirroring the large room to the north. Though he places the boulders randomly, it ends up looking about the same. Then he repeats his laziness in the hallway that comes after it.

Now that those are taken care of, he doubles back. The huge rooms will need a lot of work, so he wants to devote the right amount of time to them. Before that, Doyle decides to finish up the goat farm. The space he has cleared out for it is an enormous half moon room. Of course the floor gets the classic dirt and clover make over and the ceiling has a basic light blob. To go with that, he places a number of plants for them to eat. Pepper, wheat, strawberries, mint, rosemary, lavender, and peppermint are all placed randomly. He even throws down a couple of olive trees and a lemon tree in case that catches their fancy.

At the center of the room goes a spike of salt to provide a salt lick. Though once he remembers he has salt, Doyle has to go back to the entrance for one last touch. Using the salt like it was glass, he covers the hole to the light, so some idiot doesn’t stick his head in the hole or some such.

Akhier

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