And once the surviving member of the patrol, one of the bosses’ companions from the first floor, reached the town something else showed itself. For Doyle’s normal monsters, when they move around the other monsters just give way when needed. There was no thought to it, an automatic reaction. The kobold town was different.

When the kobolds on watch saw her coming, they opened the gate so it was ready when she got there. Normal enough, except that isn’t what they should have done. This wasn’t one of the ensouled kobolds. It was just a normal member of another patrol and how it should have reacted was to wait until she had reached the gate before opening it.

To preemptively open the gate requires forethought and the mental ability to think beyond themselves. To realize that she was heading towards the gate and would want through when she got there. A strange event that makes Doyle feel sick. On the previous floors, he was fine with everything dying over and over because it didn’t matter. The monsters had more in common with robots than animals even if they did have the natural behaviors down.

Doyle would have even been fine if only the kobolds that the boss had ensouled were acting like this. They would survive being killed. These normal kobolds, though? If they had actually developed a mind of their own, then this became a problem.

With a shake, Doyle refocuses on the kobold as she makes her way towards the boss. All around her, the various kobolds make way while going about their day-to-day tasks. Technically, they don’t have to do anything but at some point the pseudo-town had become a real town and Doyle’s stomach drops again. All around, the kobolds are playing with one another.

A quaver in his voice Doyle calls out to Ally, ‘Hey, I might have a small problem on the boss floor. Can you look at this? The boss, of course, has a soul and her path means twenty of the other kobolds have been ensouled by the boss, but why are all the kobolds acting like kobolds and not dungeon monsters?’

Ally sits up from her bed and pulls over one of the windows she had pushed to the side what felt like so long ago. A quick flick and it shows her the kobold town. Once there, she takes her time, telling Doyle to let her have some time to figure it out.

Worried, Doyle focuses back on Jim’s group. Though not much has changed for them except Jim has set up even more traps. In fact, it appears he is using this floor as an attempt to try out all the various traps he has been working on. A situation that before would have amused Doyle, but now worries him even more.

Then he hears it, from the town a noise made by something if you were charitable could be called an attempt at a horn rings out. Doyle looks over in time to see the gates open and two patrols leave at once, heading towards where Jim is. All Doyle can do is watch as with delvers on the floor he can’t give even the simplest command.

He tries despite having been told this would be the case, despite having experienced it before. Oh, did he try. But sadly, the delvers caused too much interference, completely blocking out his attempts to communicate with the kobolds. It is at this point that Doyle realizes that while the system recognizes the restriction, part of being a dungeon just means he won’t ever be able to get around this. It isn’t some system enforced bit of balancing.

So he watches, watches as things go quite differently. Forewarned is forearmed and the kobolds definitely know that there will be traps. They might not know what type of traps are now there but the knowledge they are there is enough. Despite having more kobolds, not a single one gets caught.

Jim might be decent at setting traps, but kobolds are naturals at it. Maybe if he had time to get it all right he would be able to sneak something by them but for a rushed job when the kobolds are being careful? A fool’s errand.

The traps do one thing for Jim’s group, though. It allows them to see what force they are now facing and they aren’t stupid. They heard how Ace’s group fared against a prepared patrol and here is double that, ready for the kill. Jim might be cursing about having to leave his traps behind but that doesn’t slow him down as his group retreats to the portal and out of the dungeon.

This brings Doyle a good bit of relief. One patrol was already destroyed and Ally hadn’t gotten back to him yet. Though thinking about her, he turns his attention back to the town. Not really in the mood to think about it too much Doyle focuses on respawning the kobolds. This, however, just brings his attention back to the problem.

The healer and one of the spear kobolds spawn in and clearly know what is up having been ensouled by the boss. The other 13 kobolds however stand around as if at attention, waiting for an order or the next delvers to arrive.

Freaked out Doyle turns away from the floor and sinks his attention into the sixth floor. Working on the small details and getting the grass to match up at the edge of the rooms. Doyle is so lost in this that it takes Ally yelling at him to get his attention.

With a huff, she explains her findings. ‘So I can see why you are worried. Since you obviously didn’t stay around after spawning in the new kobolds, you would have missed what happened with them. It took a while, but eventually the other kobolds interacted with them enough and they started to act like a natural kobold.

‘Now I can promise you one thing. They aren’t ensouled, gaining a soul, or even close to having any soul like qualities. I discovered something that I think most people have missed about kobolds, at least the variety you have in the dungeon. Not that I assume I’m the first to discover it. Though this might be the result of your boss’s soul and not a part of the bloodline you have access to.

‘Anyway, your kobolds are low key psychic. Not in the usual manner, though. Rather, the kobolds create a community around them with the other kobolds. Your normal kobolds aren’t smart. Rather, your ensouled kobolds are projecting themselves into them. It took me a lot of in-detail observation and I doubt they realize it themselves, but there are only 21 personalities in the kobold town. Each one a near perfect copy of either the boss or one of the 20 ensouled kobolds.

‘And you know what? I suspect the only reason I was able to notice this is because they are dungeon monsters. Out in the wild, each kobold would have a bit of their own personality just like animals do. I would be willing to bet that a wild kobold affected by one of the ensouled would end up as a mix of the wild kobold’s traits and the ensouled kobold. It is just that dungeon monsters are like a blank slate. Even if they act natural when delvers are around, your monsters act like mirror copies otherwise.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I don’t know exactly how to react to this. On one hand, continuing to use them as monsters isn’t a moral dilemma anymore. While creepy, they aren’t people, as it were. On the other hand, knowing the truth kind of takes away some of the magic.’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘Some of the magic? You’ve got psionic monsters on your fifth floor. If anything, there is more magic than ever.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Literal magic isn’t as magical as what had seemed to happen. At our level, magic is a solved thing. Maybe not by people at our level, but those true immortals know enough to make the system. That has to require some in depth knowledge of magic that borders on all knowing.

‘This, however? I have kobolds that act like real kobolds. As if they had soul kobolds. Instead, it is just a matter of copied material. Sure, it is a mind being copied or at the very least used as part of a template. But like I said, a known quantity.’

Ally nods, ‘I can definitely see that. But I feel this might be the better outcome for the floor itself. You have a few kobolds that have been ensouled and those few will be able to pass on their combat knowledge to the others. You can focus on just training the boss and her twenty companions instead of trying to get every kobold up to snuff.’

Doyle thinks about it for a moment. ‘Yeah, I can agree with that. Still would have been cool to have a true village in here.’

Ally shrugs, ‘You never know what the future may bring. The boss may advance her path again and gain more slots. In fact, going by how the kobold town has developed that or something similar is almost assured.’

Doyle pulls up an overhead view of the kobold village. ‘That would be nice. They seem to currently have things worked out so I can’t exactly go and make changes now.’

Ally laughs, ‘You can always make changes. The ensouled kobolds won’t mind and the normal kobolds will just react in the same way as their copy does.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I must admit, I’m probably making this a bigger matter than it needs to be. I have been a dungeon core for less than a year and the idea of having sapients just living in my body is odd.’

Ally nods, ‘I can see that. Though having a bunch of them this early on is weird as well. A normal dungeon would only have the boss and yet yours brought along family. Really just a strange circumstance as a whole. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on the kobold town for now in case anything changes.’

Doyle rolls his core back, ‘Thank you for that. I have tedious work to do on the sixth floor and I can’t exactly put as much attention on it as I should. Just the fact I have managed to keep the floors stocked is a near miracle as it is.’

Satisfied that the mystery of the kobolds is solved for the moment, Doyle turns back to the sixth floor but can’t quite manage to focus in on it. Instead, he felt an urge to check on the town and seeing as enough strange things had happened today, he decided to indulge the worry.

Doyle looks outward just in time to catch Jim talking to Ace about the boss floor. They had apparently already figured out that the floor changed though they didn’t know the timing. But that isn’t important enough to attract his attention. Still worried Doyle looks further outward, moving his viewpoint to the edge of his influence, a much expanded area since it was disconnected from his energy well.

Then he sees it. Off in the distance, a large group of people can just be seen cresting a hill. While Doyle doesn’t have a clear view of who they are, he has a guess. It honestly hadn’t been that long, but still felt like forever. It was the rest of the original people returning. Jan was finally back and Doyle suspected she wasn’t going to be happy.

Of course, Ace wasn’t going to just roll over and give her any position of power. But on the other hand, who knows what opportunities they might have found out there. Most people travel in small groups because with too many people you would just be attracting trouble. And here they are, with hundreds of people all gathered together. In fact, as Doyle watches he has a distinct feeling that there are more people in the group than had left.

Akhier

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