After some more thought, Doyle has an idea. Not quite a plan yet as he has to figure out if inter-floor portals will work right, but that will just take some testing. With that in mind, Doyle focuses on the sixth floor to set things up. The edges had stopped expanding except for the almost passive growth he has going on, leaving an empty sphere that can fit a 42 by 42 square in the center. Though it does look like there is almost enough space to fit another room in but that can wait.

With a bit of creation, Doyle makes a square stone platform the size of a small room and after a touch of territory control it continues to float where he left it. A bit away, he creates another similar platform. And it is at this point that Doyle realizes he hasn’t ever actually created a portal himself.

Before, it had always been a pre-set from the system. In fact, off floating in the upper region of the floor stands the portal to the fifth floor. Conveniently, the portal doesn’t allow the transfer of air from the previous floor or else the current vacuum would have caused havoc up there. Though that might have more to do with the fact that the portals aren’t actually locked to any other specific portal, instead requiring the user to choose.

Doyle takes a mental step back and considers the problem. He can already make portals in theory. All he needs is to figure out which skill or combination of skills that will allow it. Of course, the obvious answer is territory control. It is what lets him move stuff around and tell the stone platforms to not move around. But it could also be a matter of dungeon rules. In fact, depending on how you look at it, creation might be the answer if he has to literally make them.

After a closer look at the floor’s entrance portal Doyle crosses off the use of creation. From what he can feel, the portal is more like a hole instead of a doorway that was built into space. So control or rules it is. Though the more he looks at the entrance portal, the more he wants to facepalm as he has clearly not been using the two to their fullest.

Everything in the dungeon could have been done by him and those two skills along with creation and deconstruction are the core skills that every dungeon core gets. Sure, they all have their own starting point but even outside of the system those are the basic features of being a dungeon. And while Doyle doesn’t feel he has been under-using creation and deconstruction, the other two clearly are much more complex than he suspected.

Though in the end, all he can do is try and see what happens. For something as basic as the entrance of his dungeon, now that he thought about the problem, can’t be using multiple skills. With that in mind, Doyle guesses it has to be territory control. While maybe later on he can imitate a portal with rules, creation, or even deconstruction, the simplest way is to control how things work.

Enlightened Doyle wills the two edges of the platforms to be connected. And they are. A portal spanning the entire edge of both portals connects the two platforms into one. It can’t be seen through and feels like it will act more like the floor connecting portals, he succeeded. But it isn’t quite what he wants so now he has to take a closer look and change things.

Doyle focuses on the portal and took a glimpse at how it actually worked. The floor to floor portals were simple enough from what he had seen. Just holes directly to another place, but these can’t work that way. A single hole is worthless if there isn’t another space to connect it to. And yet the point-to-point portals are, in fact just a single hole! Quite unexpected as Doyle had guessed it would be a matter of two holes being connected except on the same floor.

After studying it a bit more, Doyle really wants to facepalm. He had even read a story before where a man who could speak to the dead and fought vampires used a similar manner of teleportation. By twisting space into a Mobius strip of sorts, a single hole can connect even the farthest points together. An interesting method though, Doyle suspects it would be out of reach for most and generally less useful as it relies on the complete control of the dimensional fabric. It is very doubtful if anyone else could even use this method within a dungeon besides the dungeon itself and even the least bit of spacial lockdown would prevent a connection from forming.

Though Doyle does admit it might be one of the more stable forms of gate if done in the dungeon manner. No matter how closely Doyle looks there isn’t a hint of power, control, or rules being used to maintain the connection. Rather, space itself is now just shaped in such a way so that the connection is there. Even if a mage practiced in space magic came along, they would only be able to disrupt the portal itself and once they stop, it would reform.

In fact, the only power use related to the portal is in making it act like one of the floor to floor portals. A simple act of will and the portal changes so that the blackness that blocked a person’s view goes away and you can just step through it like an open piece of ground. No more hiding behind the illusion of there being a difference between one side and the other.

And the best part is that after a bit more testing he figured out that he wasn’t too limited on the connections. He was able to make multiple areas connect and through rules decide which portal was open. All he had to do was place the connecting area the smallest of distance in front or behind the previous, so they don’t exactly overlap. Perfect for what has now sprawled out into a full-blown plan.

Doyle pauses, ‘Now what monsters to use for this? I’m thinking grassland with the occasional tree. Though, do I have the pattern for grass? I’ve been using clover for so long I kind of put that sort of thing to the back of my mind.’

Doyle checks his patterns. ‘Okay, I do have grass. A little low at level six, but then again a lot of my early stuff is still pretty low. I can tell they have progressed but they very much are a slow grind. It isn’t like I am delicately crafting every single blade of grass with an eye on improving them. Rather, the opposite, really. I probably get more experience to the patterns when I absorb the bodies as it lets my skill analyze what went wrong with them.

‘Now, back to the question of monsters. A grassland can limit me some but I have a decent selection, anyway. Kobolds, hmm, maybe a small group but I have been leaning heavily on them. And of course, like a hypocrite, I’m going to throw all the goats at this problem. Though for some variety and the fact the upgrade pack hit them, a few wooden goats would fit with the trees. Oh, and how could I forget? Since I’m adding actual grass for the first time, I have to use the grassen goats, if only for their lore.

‘Then we can add all the appropriate cattle in. Regular, dungeon, mad, longhorn, earthen, and herb. Though just one of the herb cattle as I would feel bad for adding what might be a troll style regenerator in a field of grass. And on top of that variety, a pack of wind wolves because a wide open field sounds like the perfect place to use them. Now I just need to set up the field.’

Doyle glances around the mostly empty space and gives the outer area a nice coating of dungeon stone before pressurizing the area with the standard air mix. For this floor, he has a plan to use the entire space and having a livable environment is a good start. After that, he starts to cut up the inner space into a number of levels with a ceiling height of about three times the usual. Even with that, he still has quite a bit of space to work with. Though he does place the top and bottom level with more normal ceiling heights, as he has different plans for them.

Doyle pauses, ‘Well that’s obvious now that I’ve thought about it.’ And then proceeds to reconfigure the space so that the levels are like a pixelated sphere, leaving space around the edge so that only the corners get close to the outer region. After that comes the clever bit. His plan was to use the cut off bits as farm rooms but a lot of the space would have been wasted. Either from there being more room he could have used on the floor proper or from small unconnected bits of farm.

Now his plan has a bit more magic in it. Or rather, a bit more dungeon logic. As after placing the levels, Doyle makes the gravity in the outer sphere region pull outward so the monsters can walk on the outside. Turning what might have been a very disconnected farming area into one giant field of its own. He can feel the gravity resisting him but that resistance dulls with time and he is sure that soon enough things will be locked into place.

Satisfied with the farm area Doyle turns back to the giant levels of stone. For his plan, he doesn’t really have to break it up anymore but it will make it easier for him to understand things. So after a bit of measuring, he divides the entire mess into medium sized rooms using thin sheets of glass. He had no particular reason for using glass, but it did look interesting, which was enough for him.

With the various rooms marked out Doyle goes directly to furnishing them. A decent layer of dirt goes down first and then the real art begins. Knee high grass with a couple patches of three meter tall grass to break line of sight goes in. With the tall grass Doyle takes extra care to make sure they don’t seem to be limited by the room or else things would end up looking like a grid and ruin the illusion.

After that are the trees. He just had the wood pattern upgraded and he wanted to see what that could do for him. Still a bit weird that he didn’t have a tree pattern yet but for some reason the system seemed against giving it to him. Though that might have to do with a quirk in wood both being a material and a plant or some such.

All that aside, Doyle begins crafting his first tree. On the second floor, it had mostly been oak-like trees reaching straight up towards the ceiling. That was all well and good when dealing with a forested area but now he wanted that classic look of a tree in the middle of a field. With that in mind, Doyle decides on a shorter tree, a thick trunk, and a wide canopy.

Now, an oak tree would fit that just fine as well, but Doyle wanted something a bit fancier. And what would be fancier than ebony? Sure, the outer bark of the tree isn’t itself black, it is a nice stately gray. But more importantly, if the town decided to use them it would really look amazing next to their bone theme. Though the fact they didn’t try to log the trees on the second floor was a bit odd. Since they aren’t living trees, the wood is ready to use after being cut down.

Akhier

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