Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Eight. A peek behind the curtain.

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Eight. A peek behind the curtain.

"Jess, you've got to see this!" Derrick announced as he burst into the spatially expanded tent that the Australians had borrowed from Dave and Amanda to use a base in their new valley.

Sheila followed him into the tent, a smile dancing across her face.

"What did you two find?" Jessica asked with a smile of her own. Those two had been dancing around each other for a couple of years, and it appeared that coming to Thayland had been the catalyst they'd needed to realize that they harbored romantic feelings for each other.

"I think it's a Dungeon!" Derrick was shuffling excitedly in place, inadvertently calling to mind the typical behavior of a blue heeler.

"Jog on, this place hasn't ever been settled," Jessica replied.

"No, I think it's like a natural Dungeon," Derrick explained, "there's a sinkhole towards the south-eastern corner of the valley, we found it by following a stream that falls into it."

"It's got to be fifty or sixty feet deep, and get this; we found monsters around the edge of it," Sheila added, "we were jumped by a sort of owl-raccoon crossbreed, and when we killed it, it dissipated, just like monsters in the Dungeon do."

Jessica leaned back in her chair. Dave had explained that any hole in the ground, if large enough, could become a Dungeon. "How strong was the monster?" She asked.

"One shot from an earth spike," Derrick replied with a shrug, "so not very, yeah?"

She nodded. Derrick had all of his skills capped, but he didn't have any affinity crystals, so his Control Earth spell was level nine. He could deal about six hundred points of damage with it, mitigated by the monster's defenses, so it was definitely below his level, probably a couple of levels even.

"We want to drop down there and check it out," Derrick said, "we might be able to use it to grind up a bit, I'd love to get to level ten without having to dick around in Harbordeep."

"I'd want to bring the whole group," Jessica mused, "it sounds like it's pretty low level, but I'd rather be safe than sorry."

"When is everyone due back?" Sheila asked.

"A couple of hours, it's getting on towards dark, so we'll table this for now and get everyone on board tomorrow morning," Jessica offered.

"Good enough," Sheila nudged Derrick with an elbow, "come on Blue, let's go back out and check the southwestern end."

Jessica watched as they headed out of the tent. If there was a Dungeon already here in the valley, they might be able to avoid Harbordeep. Bob was swimming in so many mana crystals that he seemed to forget that not everyone could just drop two hundred crystals to learn a new language and then spend a thousand crystals on Dungeon access and lodging.

While they had just enough crystals to go to Harbordeep, it would be awfully damn tight, and if they could manage to get Derrick up to where he could build their own...

She shook her head. The problem was that the first nine levels of the Dungeon would just be a net cost, as they wouldn't be able to pull any crystals out of there. Once they were able to pull people over from back home, they'd start seeing a return on their investment, but until then, they were just spending a pile of mana crystals.

If they weren't going to be building it so small, they wouldn't be able to do it all. They were aiming for their floors to be about a fifth the size of Bob's initial floors and stay that way until the twenty-sixth floor.

Jessica thought that they'd have the Australian government send in people to be trained as Curators, and then they could dig their own. She thought it was more than a little odd that Bob had just dug out that huge Dungeon for other people to use. She knew he hadn't been using his own mana crystals to do it, but it was his time and expertise that made it possible. If she hadn't met the man, she'd have thought he was getting some sort of kickback or something crook.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her laptop, opening it back up. She was collaborating with Amanda to write a manual for how the System worked.

Bob looked around the eighteenth floor of the Dungeon, tracking the flow of mana through the conduits. Everything looked good, although he had to admit that he was getting a little tired of building out these basic, boring floors.

Holmstead and Harbordeep both had Dungeons that might not work quite as efficiently as his but possessed the virtue of making delving the Dungeon feel like an adventure, rather than just spending a shift on a factory floor.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was building the most efficient Dungeon he could so that as many people as possible could be saved.

Rolling his neck, Bob moved closer to the entrance, then paused. If he set up the Gateway and went back up to the tavern, there would be someone up there. A lot of people, but more specifically, someone was looking for him. His shoulders were tensing up just considering what might be waiting for him up there.

He decided that a bit of non-system assisted spellcasting practice ought to provide a relaxing diversion.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated on feeling the mana the suffused his body, mapping out the pathways where it gathered and circulated.

Trebor sighed. 'Taken to that point, it's an unpleasant reality that those who rule will trend almost exclusively towards self-sufficiency above all else, which reflects in the societies they control. In contrast, the people of Earth, despite your many conflicts, have shown a remarkable degree of cooperation with each other, despite your own natural inclinations. It would appear that your advancements as a species are entirely due to extreme specialization.'

"Ok," Bob said, not wanting to interrupt Trebor when he was delivering information so concisely.

'When the System updates, the current paths will be removed, and each user will be required to either select or build a new path, following a guide. Affinities, as well as school and skill levels, will be retained, although the latter will depend on the allocation of their skill points,' Trebor finished.

"All the paths are going to disappear?" Bob asked incredulously. "Is the entire universe just going to get a bluescreen that says 'please rebuild yourself'?"

'That is a fair approximation,' Trebor replied. 'It will require an immense expenditure of energy, but yes, all users level one or higher will be impacted.'

"But we will be able to rebuild our paths?" Bob asked.

'Yes, rebuilding existing paths will be possible, although the new restrictions will prevent some of them from being recreated,' Trebor replied. 'As they are built, the System expects fewer and fewer people will build a path with the Guide Lines, choosing instead an offered path that meets their criteria.'

"I can see why you said that this wasn't going to be wildly popular," Bob muttered. "What are the restrictions on building a path?"

'Under the revised System, in an effort to encourage specialization and cooperation, advancing a skill or school past a threshold will require you to invest a skill point,' Trebor stated.

"So, for example, if I take the Magical School of Summoning, and the Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell, once I hit level five with the spell, I need to spend another skill point? Same thing with the school?" Bob's mind raced, considering the implications of that sort of change.

'Exactly,' Trebor responded, 'this will encourage people to work together, and the specialization will be further encouraged by offering an Affinity if it is increased to your maximum threshold.'

"That's a huge nerf," Bob muttered. He'd quickly done the math. Three points for the school, and at tier five, six points for the spell meant that the Path of the Endless Swarm should be safe, at least in terms of skills. The path would be restricted to choosing to have a few other skills at lower levels, or one more skill at a much higher level.

Even with reduced potency, healing would still be a no-brainer for most people.

'And it isn't the only one,' Trebor confirmed, 'although the remainder are minor in comparison.'

Being able to gain a natural affinity was a game-changer, but so was having to truly specialize. On the whole, he could see how it would help people advance. Maybe. "Trebor, can you gain that natural affinity if you reincarnate at level twenty-five, back down to zero, without tiering up?"

'Yes,' Trebor replied.

Bob nodded. That did make a difference. You could customize your affinities, gaining three natural ones, before tiering up, assuming you were a human without any natural affinities.

"What are the other nerfs?" Bob asked.

'The amount of experience necessary to advance will be adjusted, requiring more than it did previously, which is in conjunction with an increase in the number of mana crystals required to advance,' Trebor stated.

"Without sounding petulant, why?" Bob asked.

'The amount of mana that a user will need to circulate to accommodate the static amount of mana being reserved for the additional effects will necessitate the circulation of more mana to compensate,' Trebor replied.

Bob pulled a sleepy Monroe out of his inventory and into his lap, where he started to pet him.

"Nothing else is going to change, though, right?" He asked softly.

'Simply the users and the monsters,' Trebor said.

"How are the monsters going to change?"

'It has been determined that monsters are too challenging at the upper tiers and too weak at the lower tiers. This is a function of their skills, which differ from those you have significantly. Monsters will be converted to the Systems user skill base,' Trebor explained. 'This change will impact the frequency with which mana crystals coalesce, reducing it.'

"So to summarize," Bob began, "harder monsters dropping fewer crystals, levels requiring more of the now rarer crystals, school and spell levels requiring more experience, and all paths are gone, in exchange for new paths, new access to natural affinities, a GUI, and a help file."

'More or less,' Trebor replied.