Jim raises his hand, “We’ve told him enough. Ben, what do you plan to do? If you want to leave town, we can help you leave without being noticed. Not even your current minders would know.”

Ben frowns while Jeremy laughs and tells him that, “Yes, we know about those watching you and the ones watching them. We even know of a number of third parties trying to fish in troubled water. Those are mostly from other towns, though there are a couple that seem local to your settlement.”

Ben snorts, “Congratulations, you found the obvious. Yes, I’m being watched. If I wanted to, I could ditch them.”

Jim raises an eye, “Yet you’ve moved your location at least once before? I don’t believe it. You might be able to avoid some of them, but you either didn’t avoid them all or you have a spy.”

Ben stomps the ground, “I won’t have you doubting my people. Everyone with me right now are people I implicitly trust!”

Jeremy smirks, “So the ones not here aren’t implicitly trusted? I count, what? Five visible people and seven hidden in the surrounding rooms?”

Ben freezes, but doesn’t confirm nor deny Jeremy’s assumption.

Jim sighs, “Do you want out or are you staying in this death trap?”

Later in Wolf’s Rest, Doyle notices Jim and his team returning with a few tagalongs while he is taking a break from analyzing the myconid’s skill selection. The problem wasn’t how many total skills there were, though there certainly were an absolute ton of the things. Rather, the problem was the variety among that selection.

The kobolds were easy enough to figure out since, at a basic level; they don’t have all that many truly different options. Yes, there were a ton of skills for basically every way you could think of to categorize weapons and spells, but in the end you just choose a skill based on what you’re arming them with. Myconids, on the other hand, could be specialized in so many interesting biological ways.

Whereas the kobolds could wield almost any weapon, the myconid skills specialized them physically. A myconid with sleep spores can’t switch to using paralysis spores and another with a skill that increases spore output will actually look different from one without. Having certain skills could even block them from gaining others.

That last idea wasn’t exactly new to Doyle, but the myconids really took it to the extreme. Though it definitely didn’t help that there weren’t any clearly defined rules to follow. It wasn’t like a myconid could only have two spore types or similar, but rather a limitation based on how they mixed and matched.

Doyle however was saved from an expensive mistake or two with the discovery of a testing system that in the adjustment screen. It didn’t do much, but it did allow him to mix and match skills to see if they worked together. Though this was limited to the currently purchasable skills. No peeking at secret skills and such.

Ally had been a great help at first with the subject as her general knowledge and common sense developed from living under the system for hundreds of years allowed her to sort out redundant and lower quality skills. Now though, it is all on Doyle to make the final choices based purely on how he feels about the skills. Yes, Ally did give some suggestions, but one of her biggest was that Doyle should pick skills that feel right to him, even if they don’t seem as “good” as others.

The system rewards you more for personal growth when offering paths and so being able to understand yourself and pick things that fit who you are is important. Even if one skill might be considered more powerful, getting a generic path will easily quell any benefits over the other skill after receiving a path tailored for it. Not that such knowledge is all that widespread, but having lived in a Fae Court for so long has some benefits when it comes to knowledge beyond the mortal sphere.

So after a considerable amount of consideration, Doyle has narrowed it down to a select few skills. Top of the list was Spore Magic and two derivatives of it, Healing Spores and Darkness Spores. The healing spores are an obvious enough choice and only get better when you look into it more. Doyle isn’t sure how it works, but the healing spores also cause a small amount of damage to any living creatures that aren’t at least partly fungal in nature.

Darkness spores, on the other hand, are pretty simple, at least at the low end. Maybe they do more later on, but for the moment each darkness spore creates a small radius of darkness around itself. So combine enough of them together and you’ve got quite an effective darkness spell.

On top of that, spell spores are a lot harder to counter via magic. Doyle wasn’t blind and had noticed that the more skilled the delvers had gotten at magic, the easier it had gotten from them to counter the kobold mages. Part of that was because they didn’t have the actual skill for their magic, instead gaining the ability to cast purely because they had mana and a wand. However, it was also because delvers can just outcast them.

It doesn’t matter how good of a fire spell you cast if the enemy can use two water spells worth of mana to smother it. The spell spores flip that situation on its head. Sure, each spore contains just the barest wisp of mana in it, but each spore can almost be seen as its own magic spell.

After those three relatively expensive skills, Doyle also bought a couple combat skills for them, Fungal Slam and Spore Grenade. Both are purely physical in nature. The slam skill for instance, is literally just the more generic slam skill except adjusted so that more spore gets knocked off when the myconid slams into something. Spore Grenade, on the other hand, involves an actual physical change where to start with a myconid will grow a small sack which is hidden under their cap. Said sack is, of course filled with spores and when thrown will violently explode creating a localized cloud of whatever type of spore was grown in it.

Though combat isn’t the only thing Doyle focused on, purchasing for them Fungal Farming and Fungal Construction. The first is simple enough being just the normal farming skill with a focus on growing fungus. And yes, there were an absolute ton of skills in there, which basically amounted to normal skill plus the word fungal.

Anyway, fungal construction actually breaks the mold a little bit, having more in common with what pre-system fantasy stories would consider an elven style. Instead of cutting a tree-like mushroom down to make stuff, the skill helps grow said mushrooms into the stuff instead. A big difference between growing a tree into a house and growing a mushroom into a house is that the fungal version is a lot more temporary. A grown chair of wood will last just as long as a normal chair while the fungus version lasts maybe a week, though closer to a day.

The upside is that the skill uses the astounding growth factor of mushrooms to make it reasonable. Yes, the myconids will have to remake all their smaller stuff every so often, but it will take a matter of moments to do. Even better, it completely removes any worry about what to do with broken things, as the fungal structure of the items will break down incredibly fast after it is past its prime.

Happy with his choices, Doyle purchases the skills for his myconids. The Spore magic skill costs two points, the two derivatives both cost a full point each, and the rest cost what he would guess is about a half point each. Though if he was going to be honest with himself, he hadn’t originally planned on getting fungal construction, but it was one of the cheaper skills to buy. So, after slotting in a number of other skills and having them all tick the cost over to an extra point, the construction skill was the best option that didn’t increase the cost.

Satisfied with his purchases, Doyle pulls up the kobold and myconid status panels just to see how they have changed with the addition of new skills.

{Kobold

S[4] A[7] C[4] I[6] W[6] P[6]

Max 3 Skills

Available Skills: Heavy Bash lv3, Improvise Trap lv3, Animal Handling lv1, Precise Stab lv1, Smooth Slash lv1, Forceful Bullet lv1, Accurate Arrow lv1, Combat Casting lv1

Cost: World Energy[50]}

{Myconid (Lv12)

S[25] A[15] C[40] I[15] W[10] P[6]

Max 4 skills

Required Skills: 1 Summon Spore skill

Available Skills: Spore Talk lv12, Teamwork lv10, Summon Paralysis Spore lv10, Summon Sleep Spore lv3, Spore Magic Lv1, Fungal Slam lv1, Spore Grenade lv1, Fungal Farming lv1, Fungal Construction lv1

Spore Magic: Healing Spores lv1, Darkness Spores lv1

Cost: World Energy[300]}

The kobolds panel was slightly interesting as it introduced the “max skills” sections, but otherwise looked the same plus the extra skills. Myconids, on the other hand, included all the most recent discoveries, the sub-section for sub-skills, the max skills, and most importantly the required skills. Doyle puts a heavy emphasis on that last one because it revealed more about how he can juggle the skills around than the others.

Sure, knowing you could fit four skills on a monster is useful, but knowing what is required to go in those slots and what he can change is just as, if not more important. Myconids have a great example of this because it tells Doyle they just need a summon spore skill. Ally had guessed earlier that they would need the paralysis spores.

The new addition to the status panel however revealed that it wasn’t specifically paralysis spores that were needed. Rather, any of the spore summoning skills was required. So if Doyle wanted to he could have a myconid with just sleep spores. Also, it points to there being a difference between summon spore skills and the magic spores from spore magic.

Doyle isn’t quite certain what the difference is at the moment, but maybe with further observation it will be revealed. For now, though, it was time to figure out the design for the tenth floor. A task he had been putting off much too long at this point.

The thing is, despite knowing full well that it isn’t the case and thank all the valid deities, higher powers, and every single true immortal out there, Mushroom monsters have a connection in his mind to a certain pre-system mythos. A bunch of stories where the void very much stares back at you with an uncaring eye. Though as he carefully puts more thought into it, he remembers that while adjacent to the void, most instances he can remember of fungal beings are at least partly material with just a smattering of extragalactic and extra-dimensional stuff thrown in.

So, while elder things are interesting. One, they aren’t in the myconid evolutionary line, and two; they aren’t directly related to the void even if the stories said they traveled through the void. That was just the void of space and not The Void. Though the idea of interdimensional invaders that aren’t True Immortals shows that every rule has an exception. That or there are fungal True Immortals out there looking to spread their kin far and wide.

Potential dimension ending fungal infections aside, Doyle feels safe enough playing with his myconids and so, after some consideration, decides to go with a cavern themed floor. Different from his previous uses of them, though. His other floors technically have their fair share of them and the fifth floor boss is technically one large cavern, but Doyle had lit it up and made it feel open.

For the tenth floor, it is going to be all about large damp tunnels leading into massive open caverns filled with stalactites and mites that while not completely dark, won’t be lit up.

Akhier

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