Akhier

Heyo! New month once again. Still wearing out my copy/paste key on my Ko-Fi to get everything up there. Would be done, but free time is an illusion. Mostly just saving them as drafts at this point because it is going to take a ton of pain to link everything up because you can't copy/paste a link. At least I haven't found a way and if you do know of a way, PM me. Because as it is, the fastest way I can figure out is the keyboard shortcut. Anyway, my Patreon isn't going anywhere so you can still head over there and read the next two chapters for free ( 243 & 244 ).

Doyle was about to move onto something else when it hit him. The inner circle was working like a seed crystal. While the roads encouraged people to build in certain areas, the design of the inner circle gave them a guide to follow without making it a law that people would chafe against. Though for some reason he suspects Ace wouldn’t put up with any spite houses or people following the letter of the law and not the spirit.

Not that there are too many choices for Wolf’s Rest when it comes to building style. You could claim that the houses in the second circle closely followed how the first circle did things. The reality of the situation is that even with magic, there are only so many ways to build a house when your materials are wood and bones.

Though with a closer look, Doyle can tell that at least to start the second circle tried to not use bones. After all, they don’t have access to bones big enough to provide any structural support. Except now that magic is a thing, stuff like scrimshaw takes on a whole new purpose.

Doyle can tell it isn’t like his conceptual reinforcement skill. Instead, those who work with the bones channel the power contained within the material itself to bring out effects. An interesting and yet completely opposite approach to Doyle’s skill.Though he can see the good and the bad between the two.

Conceptual reinforcement pulls more from the crafters’ beliefs and so while the material used in an item might make things easier, Doyle could grab a piece of pre-system lumber and turn it into a powerful artifact. The method used by crafters instead depends more heavily on the material used, or rather the power contained within the materials. Of course there is some limiting by skill level, but that works both ways so isn’t as important.

What is important is that traditional crafters can create things well beyond their skill by getting their hands on powerful materials. Even a crafter with low skill levels across the board could make a powerful dagger if they used the tip of a dragon’s rib to make it. The bigger limiting factor on what can be made tends to be on the side of if they can work the material at all. A new crafter that gets their hands on a piece of dragon bone is more likely to break all their tools than they are to leave even the smallest of marks on the bone.

Besides, even if they could, it would be a waste. Doyle was able to watch more than a few crafters ply their trade and he had noticed that unused power within the material would leak out after an item was finished. Better to work with materials around what your own level of skill can use with maybe a touch of difficulty for some growth.

Doyle pulls himself out of his thoughts. While not magical items, since they now have access to the bones of the sixth floor cattle any scrimshaw made will have a superb effect on any building it is incorporated with. This difference is quite visible as well, at least to anyone with even a minor amount of sensitivity to magic.

If a regular house is like a farm field with a river to one side, the scrimshaw is like adding irrigation ditches. Though comparing it to irrigation ditches isn’t quite appropriate. Doyle had noticed a few of the early houses had a few pieces of scrimshaw added on, but they didn’t do anything. So, like crafting an item, decorations that are incorporated into the structure need to be added while actually crafting the item for them to connect with the structure.

Not that those original houses were bad houses. In fact, despite their humble nature they would be considered quite comfy by pre-system standards. Compared to the houses constructed with scrimshaw included? There was no comparison.

A properly decorated house feels like home while those without are just a building. You would think such a simple difference wouldn’t matter all that much. Except early on, it was found that resting in a proper home provided a number of benefits including faster recovery from injuries as well as a bevy of vague effects such as the house not getting dirty as fast.

That last one oddly enough was the most obvious effect even for those without sensitivity towards mana. After a dusty day, the original houses all look dull with a fine coating of said dust. The decorated buildings, on the other hand have half as much dust hanging around. So everyone in town is very much aiming for one of the decorated houses.

Doyle couldn’t help but laugh at one of the effects of this. In most novels he had read, cheaper housing would be located closer to the outermost wall because it is less safe. In this case, though, all the original buildings had been built near the inner wall and so the situation has basically reversed. Though he could see that the buildings are slowly being taken down and reconstructed so this difference should be remedied quickly enough.

After all, the crafters had all leveled up their skills and so any new scrimshaw is going to be that much better than the old work. Doyle didn’t know how he felt about watching what is basically sped up gentrification. In the end, though, he mostly ignored it as it wasn’t like there was some kind of community built up around the houses. It was all too new.

That, however, left Doyle with some time on his hands. The tenth floor was almost finished, but he had one thing he wanted to do before truly finishing it by creating the boss. It hadn’t been obvious at first, but now that he knew he used time shenanigans to speed up the growth of stuff, it became clear. The fifth floor proper didn’t advance as fast as the other floors or even the farm.

This made sense as the boss is a fully sapient being that needs to be treated as such. The kobold boss is lucky since her path allowed her to create a few pseudo-sapient kobolds to chat with. Otherwise, it would be like a man stuck in a pen full of sheep. Sure, there are sheep to keep you company, but that doesn’t replace having another person to interact with.

So before Doyle goes soul fishing, he wants to let things advance at a faster speed first. Easy enough to do. He simply summons in every other monster for the floor and then ignores it after giving a few loose rules for the myconids to follow. That, however, left him with a good bit of time to fill.

For a few weeks, that involved carving the great sphere on the seventh floor. Doyle would have probably kept carving until he felt the tenth floor was ready, except he finished the borders. At this point, the entire stone sphere has been covered in broad strokes, delicate lines, and fanciful flourishes. All with the purpose of containing scene after scene of what has happened in and around the dungeon.

{World Heritage Site formed...

Special Location Paths unlocked}

That was interesting, though Doyle had somewhat expected something like the first part of the message. The second part also honestly comes naturally from the first. After all, he already knew about location paths. Though the fact it told him the new paths were available was new. Too bad it didn’t also tell him what it did. Still, since it did mention new paths, he decides to pull up the list right away.

{Points: 105

Class: Dungeon Core III 100/100, Awakened Dungeon Core II 10/10

Location: Kobold Community II 30/30

Completed: Goat Supremacy 20/20, Energy Well I 3/3, Commanding Subordinates 12/12, Ageless Queens 15/15, Earth’s First Home of the Limit Breakers I 1/1, Biomes Aplenty 5/5, Potion Dispensary 10/10, Elemental Animals 5/5, Cows for Milk 12/12, Vegetation Variety 20/20, Divine Border 1/1, Know Your Enemies 10/10, Pathfinder, [UNIQUE] 1/1, Community Driven 10/10, Monster Rancher 50/50, Community Builder 30/30, Extra Accommodations 75/75, Energy Well II 6/6

Started [1/3]: [TRINITY] 21/1000

Available: Awakened Dungeon Core III 10/100, Awakened Spatial Dungeon core I 0/1, Dungeon Core of Awakened Intent I 0/1, Heritage Dungeon Core I 0/1, Traditional Kobold Community I 0/15, Heritage Kobold Community I 0/15, Communities of Myriad Heritages I 0/15, Vine Warper 0/15, Kin Slayer 0/100, Voidborn 0/250, Axe Sharpener 0/5, Expansionist 0/30, Fire’s Flying 0/7, Deal Broker 0/10, All the Potions 0/60, Boss Builder 0/50, Engraver 0/5, Godly Negotiator 0/500, Heavenly Gate 0/350, Clan Head 0/25, Five Cornered Square Initiate 0/100, Raising The Floor 0/100, Into The Infinite 0/60, Floors Within Floors 0/10, Phrenic Friend 0/120, PsiBane I 0/200, PsiBoon I 0/200, Deep Rules 0/500, Time Will Wait 0/500, Monster Rancher II 0/100, Energy Well III 0/18}

Doyle’s core glows a little brighter as he notices the new location paths. He had long ago noticed that the location paths didn’t work like class paths. Even now, he has a couple of new class paths to choose from and the next rank is always available. Location paths, however, are not assured.

Even now, he doesn’t have the option to choose the third rank of Kobold Community. On the other hand, Doyle does now have three potential paths to choose from and maybe if he had gotten these options before making the tenth floor it would have been a tough choice.

Now though? The choice was obvious as while Doyle does love his kobolds, his second boss is going to be a myconid community. That meant the best choice was Communities of Myriad Heritages.

Not that the choice would have been between all three paths even if he didn’t have the myconids to consider. While the traditional kobold community path sounds nice and Doyle wasn’t one hundred percent certain, he believed it was a trap. The words almost felt greasy as he thought them.

So despite knowing what path he wanted, Doyle spent some time pondering on why it sets him off so much and yet the heritage option didn’t. Then he realized the difference. While both could represent something inherited from the past, he personally put different spins on the two words.

Tradition was a word many nasty people liked to throw around pre-system to justify archaic laws and nasty behavior. On the other hand, heritage was connected in his mind with things like heritage foods. Stuff like flavorful tomatoes and interesting apples.

They weren’t necessarily better like with the tomatoes, but they represented something preserved from the past with a positive spin. Sure, idiots talked about their heritage all the time, but Doyle didn’t hang around those people in the first place so the word didn’t connect to the nastier aspects to the same extent that “traditional” did.

At this point, some people would laugh and realize they were biased against one word over another for no good reason. Doyle however dug deeper as he remembered things he had learned about the system. In particular, how stats can be called different things from person to person. That represented the system being capable of personalizing the wording of things on an individual level or at the very least the translation was a lot more advanced.

Combine that with how personal paths were to start with, and that meant the wording of each path could have significant personal meaning. After all, even paths with the same name were already known to have different benefits from person to person. So since it was that personal, the words likely drew upon his own personal definitions and connections.

Yes, a path would always be positive, but that didn’t mean much when the same was true for everyone. If everyone took a path that gave +3 points to a stat, then even though taking a similar one that gives +1 points wouldn’t be a negative, it would be worse than everyone else. In this case, the tradition path would have represented stagnation in some capacity.

Any other dungeon might even heavily benefit from this as it would represent the communities becoming more predictable. Each member doing the same routine, following their traditional role. Doyle however wanted his monsters to have more freedom. Which, in an odd way was what heritage represented to him. The freedom to use both the present and the past.

Akhier

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