Doyle watches them leave and sighs. ‘Well, that’s taken care of. I have a few things I would like to tweak on my current floors, but first, making my third floor. Unless you think I should do something else first?’ And he nods to Ally.

Ally shrugs, ‘A third floor isn’t exactly the single most important thing at the moment. However, it shares that spot with a few other things so why not? Do you have a plan for it now?”

Doyle rolls his core back, ‘Well yes, but actually no. Both my current floors are linear. You fight through all the monsters and then you end up at my core. That’s more of a labyrinth than a maze. Now it isn’t a bad thing. Not enough space to really make a bunch of twisting corridors.’

‘With the third floor, the amount of space I have to use is much bigger. Just the square of space I have been limiting myself to will fit almost 30 small rooms across. On the second floor I made use of multiple levels, but in more of an afterthought. While I wanted to make a proper maze of the fourth floor for the wolves, I think number three will be the start.’

Ally nods, ‘You do have a bit of space to mess with. Of course you could start using that extra area for farming goats, but actual floor space works as well.” And she laughs.

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Fair enough, though that reminds me of something I wanted to do. At the moment, my current goat farm has an equal number of guy and girl goats. That isn’t exactly needed. I had it there for variety, but let’s change the ratio. One guy to every four girls. Being dungeon monsters I can keep their instincts in check so having multiple guys hasn’t been a problem but faster restocking is important.’

After he changes that one thing Doyle focuses on his core room once again. As he starts to form the third floor, it seems almost the same yet still different. The pool of energy harvested from sapient beings still sits at the center of his core, pulsing to an unheard tune. Now though, the soundless sound is closer to the surface. Not by much, Doyle isn’t even entirely sure if it is real and not his imagination, but there it is.

Doyle once again dives into the pool of power and towards the center. There he finds the same void which is at the same time immeasurably vast yet constrained to a single point in space. With a sustained push the void remains unchanged, yet his core is now inside of it. Once he can no longer press the void out further there comes the contraction.

Using the pool of energy outside of the void, Doyle presses down, condensing it all as far as he can. He can tell the pool is shrinking down, becoming smaller, and yet the void never changes. Then, as it reaches the point that he can’t press on it any harder, the pool of energy shivers. From the edges, he can feel the crystalline structure that had coated it liquify once again and join with the rest.

With a soundless explosion of potential, the liquid joins with the void and the infinite becomes reduced to finite. The outer edges of the void gain substance and the center most point detaches before reality can taint it. This last seed remains as the rest roars outward like the rushing rapids from a burst dam.

Then Doyle is once again in his core room. The torrent of liquid potential and immaterial void having stabilized another floor. On the edge he can see the true void between dimensions but also the second floor’s last room pressing down on the edges.

{Third floor dimensionally anchored

World Energy cap +2400 [Constitution(24) * 100]

Third floor spending limit set to 4200 [Previous floor’s limit(2200) + Intelligence(20) * 100]

Random monster package purchasable for 1000we

Monster level cap updated}

As Doyle looks over the message, Ally flies in through the portal and joins him. Once she has settled on his core though he has a question. ‘What happened to the random monster package? It doubled in price.’

Ally looks at the message and nods, ‘Okay, it looks like the price keeps doubling every time you used. Also, you only get a new random monster package if you use the last one. That means it will get to the point where you can’t just buy it every time you make a new floor. However, on a good note, the price only goes up when you do buy it. So if you didn’t buy it now, the price won’t jump to 2000 when you get the next floor.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Fair enough I guess. This is probably to keep things in check so later on a dungeon doesn’t have an endless list of useless summons. Of course, that is under the assumption it stays random. Would a fire focused dungeon still have a chance of getting water monsters?’

Ally laughs, ‘It says random! What do you think? Just give it a roll and we will see what you get. It might answer your question. Of course it might not. Once again, random!’

Doyle rolls his core to the side, ‘[System, I want to purchase the random monster package]’

{Selecting Random Monster…

Myconid Sprout Selected}

{Myconid Sprout (Lv3)

S[4] A[4] C[15] I[1] W[10] P[4]

Skills: Summon Paralysis Spore lv2

Description: The classic mushroom men found in any world’s darker corners. While it is possible for them to develop sapience, this is a racial feature which can take millennium to evolve. Even then the Myconid Sprout is patently incapable of having a soul and so are generally considered as fodder and pets to Myconid Adults. Any travelers should beware, while a single sprout is harmless you will never find just a single sprout. Their spores can cause the growth of not only normal fungus but new sprouts.

Ecology: water, dirt

Cost: World Energy[100]}

{Myconid Sprout gained at lv5

Ecology Updates...

Water gained at lv1

Dirt already exists in the database...

Dungeon Soil goes from lv5 to lv6}

Ally laughs, ‘Well that wasn’t how I was expecting you to gain water. For a planet that is supposedly mostly water you just couldn’t seem to get any sizable amount. You would have eventually once people started to need supplies to delve deeper, but still.’

Doyle sighs, ‘So what is with the cost? The stat line is horrible and yet the sprouts cost twice what a kobold does.’

Ally points to the description. ‘Notice how it mentions growing new sprouts? Myconid Sprouts should be a communal monster. You can’t summon just one of them. If your ants were a monster, they would be the same sort of thing. Not the queens, of course, but the same would be true for different types of Myconid.’

‘Also, since it doesn’t mention a specific number of sprouts, my guess is that stat line is for the smallest possible myconid you can summon. Mushroom monsters have this annoying quality that they can grow to ridiculous sizes and their stats will grow with them. One summon of sprouts will likely get you a random selection of sizes. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can get lucky and have a single sprout summoned with overpowered stats. My bet is each summon will net you at least ten of the critters.’

Doyle nods, ‘So what about the mushrooms it mentions them growing with their spores? I didn’t receive a mushroom entry in my database.’

Ally shrugs, ‘They aren’t technically real mushrooms. You get someone with an analysis spell to check them and the mushrooms will show up as myconid mushrooms instead of something like Amanita or Death cap. While they might grow to look like natural shrooms, that is just an affection they put on to blend in. Plus the paralysis isn’t a normal poison. It comes from the spores touching you, unlike how with most mushrooms you have to eat them.’

‘Now while it is interesting to dive into these info dumps. Really happy that the system is still feeding me them by the by. But I think you have a third floor do build. The founders outside have decided to keep people out for a while, but that won’t last forever. You should have the new floor finished before people come through again.’

Doyle had some more questions but had to agree with Ally’s point and so turned to the third floor. He wanted a more maze-like area but a normal maze would soon become boring so he had to figure out a way to make it interesting. The only constants would be where the entrance and exit were.

First he laid out a very basic branching maze. That got thrown out quick, though it reminded him of one handy ability he had. The ability to move around the rooms on a floor for free. With that, Doyle takes some time to play around with basic shapes to make the maze out of. A special bit of fun is that he has three layers to work with on this floor and so could throw in a bunch of up and down ramps. It was even possible to make it so that the old trick of following a wall wouldn’t work. Not that he planned to do that. The third floor is much too early for that.

But even with this it all comes back to needing to keep the maze exciting. Doyle could come in and change it once a week or so. With being able to move stuff around so easily, it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. The question is what happens when he has tens or hundreds of floors? He can’t exactly be changing all the maze floors at that point.

There should be a method of making this work. Probably related to automating the floor. As luck would have it though, he currently has enough wisdom to automate another floor. In fact, after he checks his stats Doyle is only one point away from hitting 30 and getting a third floor to automate.

For now he focuses on how to automate the shuffling of the floor. When he tried just doing multiple actions, the automation would just repeat all the actions in order. Doyle clears the automation and takes a step back and asks himself what exactly did he want from this floor?

A maze of tunnels stretched over three layers was the obvious first step. He also wanted to add some mining nodes. The people outside had started to work on crafting and with magic it wouldn’t be too hard to smelt the ore. Besides that, he wanted the entrance and core room to be at the same place on the center layer.

After he puzzles over it Doyle figures, he might have thought of a way. Off of the entrance room Doyle makes a small square bubble and creates a six-sided die. Though instead of numbers he puts the letters U, D, N, E, S, and W for each of the directions. This die will allow for a randomized map and he even has a plan for how it will work.

Starting at the core, he rolls a random direction. If the space is open, he moves a random unused room there and connects it up. However if the space isn’t open, Doyle rolls a new direction to try, ignoring invalid directions. If this check ever fails three times in a row, it backtracks to the previous room. Then just repeat the steps at the current room until the entire space is connected. One last pass is used to remove connections to short dead ends and the space will be ready. Now with the regular rooms placed, he just adds copper and tin deposits on opposite sides of the room so people would have to actually work for it.

Akhier

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