11 Coppers – Chapter 120

Akhier

Doyle laughs, ‘Even if for every hundred points of world energy I use on it, I save only a single point that is still better than nothing. It would also give me something to do with the excess regen when my pool is full.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Yeah, don’t do that. Either spend it on expanding your territory like you’ve been doing or let it dissipate. While the sudden glut of power you get from something like a person, dying will vanish before it can do any good, the excess from regen doesn’t. Because of how it comes to be, the excess will more easily permeate the monsters and loot in your dungeon.’

Doyle nods, ‘That would explain why not much loot has dropped. All my excess power has been going into expansion.’

Once again Ally shakes her head, ‘No, not really. While your excess power at the moment might have been enough to spawn one or two more drops, you aren’t exactly gaining all that much. There aren’t that many people delving. And don’t point towards how often people are in the dungeon. Those are all the same people. Remember, you aren’t gaining the power from nowhere. What you are taking in is whatever you can manage to scrap off of delvers.’

‘You could think of it like shearing sheep. It doesn’t matter how many times you shear one if you did so recently. They won’t have regrown much wool at that point. So yes, people are constantly using your dungeon, but you are only getting a fraction of the power off them that you would if they waited a day or so before re-entering. Hell, I bet the farmers at least on a subconscious level already realize they get less on subsequent trips. If you haven’t noticed, the farmers started to space out their trips more. Sure, they did not reduce how many trips they make, but now the same group doesn’t just jump in and out until they get tired.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Well it won’t be long before I’m flooded with new people. I wonder if the other settlement even knows about how much pre-system gear sucks. Those guys were all decked out in riot gear when they entered.’

Ally laughs, ‘I’m sure they will realize at some point. Either by being told or maybe running out of the stuff and having to try new gear. Not that designs like that are bad. You just need to use new materials to make it. Though of course gear personally made by highly skilled crafters will be better. But even in this magical future your world has been thrust into, mass production still works a treat when you need to supply masses of people. There are never enough people capable of getting a crafting skill high enough to support a community.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Can’t you just keep working on a skill to increase the level? Sure it might take a while but with that I don’t see why you couldn’t just throw anyone at a skill and have them grind it out to high levels.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Look at how your skill levels stagnated there for a little before you got new material to work with. Sure, getting new material is one way to break the bottleneck, but you can’t exactly go around providing massive amounts of new stuff to every crafter at a bottleneck. If a person isn’t talented at it, either in the regular sense of the word or psionically, they might take a whole year to go up a level once they hit a hundred. On the other hand, those with talent would realize they can do this one strange trick or change up this one small step, and they gain that same level over a weekend of frantic experimentation.’

Doyle rolls back and sighs, ‘So crafting either needs you to be really good at it or richly supported.’

Ally rolls her eyes, ‘As if that hasn’t always been the case. There are enough examples of this sort of thing in your world’s history. Artists being supported by patrons and such. It is just that at the end there, your governments were too focused on the wrong kind of equality. They came with good intentions, but instead of making the conditions better, they shackled everyone to test scores and the lowest in the group. Wanting everyone to have a certain level of knowledge once they leave school is a laudable goal. You need to focus on stuff people actually need to know.’

‘I can’t fully blame them though. Your world was going through an upheaval on the same scale as the system coming along, if on a slower time frame. After all, how can you teach kids to avoid the new scams when some of the teachers themselves fall for them. And what do you do with all those people who can’t find a job because automation was getting to where there isn’t any worthwhile work to do? Forcing people to do make work so they can afford to live would have eventually backfired.’

‘Mind you, I don’t know the solution for a non-magical world to that problem. You’re part of the solution magical realms have to the fact that one man can do the work of 100. Just spread tales of glory for those who can become a delver and boom, all those second sons and such are grabbing cheap sets of leather armor and a sword. Not only does their delving provide them with an income to live on, but it also winnows out the chaff. A little violent for your world’s pre-system sensibility, but here we are.’

Doyle laughs, ‘I guess that is a way to handle the problem. I do kind of wish. Wait a second. Look at the entrance, a full team of founders is entering the dungeon and they are all carrying giant backs of something or other.’

Ally looks at the display and nods, ‘That should be a collection of trash they plan to throw away. I do wonder why the founders bundled the trash up. It is a lot easier to just toss it through the portal before you begin a dive.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I don’t think they plan to dump it on the first floor. They might be looking to get it to the second or even third floor. That would be good because I have a feeling that after that death, one of the bags of holding is just about to pop. Here’s hoping they get it.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Someone will eventually. Especially since all four groups have them at the moment. You’re going to give them a bad idea for how often those things are going to drop.’

Doyle rolls to the side, ‘Not important, I want to see how they plan to fight with those bags of trash.’

Both of them quiet down and focus on the group as they reach the first goats. And promptly run past them. Of course Doyle has put no limit on how far the monsters can chase, so once they enter the sixth room just before the final goat room there is a sizable number of goats following behind them. That and a couple kobolds, but those two are following at a distance. After all, while the monsters aren’t going to purposefully attack each other, getting trampled by a stampede of goats isn’t going to hurt any less if they didn’t mean to.

Doyle almost expected them to try to run through the whole first floor, but they aren’t quite that brash. Instead, in that room they all toss the bags aside and charge into the goats already there. With a team composed of Ace, Sammy, Jack, Susan, Og, and Ruby the six goats don’t stand a chance and are taken out before the rest of the monsters can catch up.

Room cleared of the original inhabitants the group turns around and Ruby lets off a spell that is like a mix between silly string and a flame thrower. The spell doesn’t kill all the enemies as it is more focused on area denial, but it does cause the ones that make it to enter the room in dribs and drabs instead of all at once. This turns a deadly stampede into a shooting gallery as the rest of the team takes turns taking out the goats. Then last but not least the two dagger kobolds rush into the room only for Ruby to turn her spell on them, proving it is still quite deadly.

They collect their bags and head into the next room, though, leaving said bags in the hallway before they enter. There the fight doesn’t last much longer than the last room and after collecting their bags the group moves onto the kobolds but Doyle has turned away at this point.

He sighs, ‘So Ally, I think they might have outgrown my early floors already.’

Ally laughs, ‘Yeah, and I don’t see the second floor doing much more. Even the third floor is likely to just be a speed bump.’

Doyle sighs again, ‘And like a speed bump, it won’t be because of any difficulty to go over it. At least the randomized floor layout will cause them annoyance for a good long while.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Long as it delays them enough that you can get a fifth and sixth floor up and running it should be fine. The fifth floor will have the first boss, and those are always tricky in some way. Beyond that, with the sixth floor and your portal doors the shortcut option should open up for anyone who has beaten the boss.’

Doyle nods, ‘And it won’t matter too much that they can skip the earlier floors as while the size of a floor doesn’t feel like it is growing by much that isn’t really the case. The sixth floor will have almost as much space as the first through third floor added together. That doesn’t even count the 3d space, just the flat cross section. It won’t be long before I’ll have enough space that I could make a mini dungeon within a dungeon thing. Hell, I could even recreate the first four floors if I wanted. That would be hilarious.’

Ally agrees with him and they chat a bit about what to do with all that space while Ace’s party rams right through the second floor. They don’t even stop to deal with the monster train until the ramp room. From on top of the ramp, the magic users have no problem taking care of all monsters. So much so that the melee fighters don’t even need to get involved. The forest room is the only difficulty, and that has more to do with Susan really wanting to go harvest the herbs. Ace however vetoes it and they move onto the third floor.

If it wasn’t for the little burst of energy and his wood pattern ticking up four levels when they tossed the trash through the portal, Doyle would have likely missed the start. Not that there was much to miss. As Susan had already delved the days layout a little while following the outsiders, the group easily passed through the first few rooms.

The group’s first goal is the assassin vine that killed the guy. While the outsiders had killed it, they wanted to see if anything special was waiting for them. Not likely, as there was a quest involved when Sammy fought the special axebeak. As expected, nothing special dropped. Though either from the trash or the extra energy kicking about because of the death, the vine dropped 11 copper, the max amount possible from it.

Jack shakes his head and sighs, “Welp, this is apparently what that guy’s death is worth. Few pennies.”

Susan shrugs, “Take it as a lesson. The idiot treated the dungeon like it was safe or something. I’m sure with enough stats these first few floors will be practically impossible to die on. No one on the entire planet is even near that point. While we sped through the first two floors, we didn’t let our guard down. Plus, we should all be closer to level ten than we are five. I would be surprised if that guy was even level five.”

Akhier

Also if you want to read more, my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ) has two free chapters, two more chapters for only a dollar, and even more beyond that for the early access tiers.