Doyle watches as the last person retreats through the portal and nods. The boss fight wasn’t going to be cleared anytime soon. While the patrols won’t hold them for long, the monsters in the town should do a fine job. But that isn’t important at the moment. Just earlier, he had gathered enough sapient energy for his sixth floor. The siren song of building a new floor had called to him but he had wanted to see how people handled the boss floor before getting into it.

Though there is one other thing he has to do before starting on that. Doyle turns toward Ally’s room but pauses. He had complained about her spying on him and it didn’t feel right to just barge in. From the floor nearby, he picks up one of his practice cubes and knocks on the entrance.

From inside a confused Ally asks, ‘What’s with the knocking?’

Doyle fake coughs, ‘Well, I felt it would only be polite. I had a question and wanted to know if you would mind answering it for me?’

Doyle can just hear Ally mumbling to herself before she answers, ‘We’re still in this together. It’s about the only thing I managed to do alright.’

Doyle responds, ‘You helped with more than just questions and you did legitimately care about my wellbeing. That aside, though, I’m about to make my sixth floor and if I remember correctly that will open up the option for people who beat the boss an option to skip to it. Do they have to actually beat the boss or can someone stealthy like the Barrais sneak to the portal?’

Ally sounds a bit more upbeat. ‘So yes, once they beat a boss floor they can skip to the next floor when entering the dungeon. A couple things with that, though. The first is that since we don’t know when you will be getting your second boss, you could always put your next floor between the current fourth and fifth. This however only works while the boss floor is the last floor but it does let you put off worrying about them skipping for a bit longer. While I wouldn’t advise pushing the first boss much further back than the tenth floor, it isn’t the worst idea.’

‘As for sneaking past the boss? Technically, at the moment they could do that but once you have an actual floor after the boss, it isn’t an option anymore. Bosses are checkpoints and barriers for a number of things and a part of that is people can’t get through the entrance to the next floor without the boss being defeated. Also, once you have the next floor, you will gain the option to limit how many people can be on the floor at a time. By default, it will be on and set to six. Though later on you might want to make a raid boss and so up the numbers for that fight.’

Doyle notices something in what she just said. ‘Raid boss? What’s that?’

Ally laughs, ‘I’m sure you’ve wondered at how many boss floors you will get in the future. The answer is, of course it depends. Even for a path with the same name, some of the outcomes will be different so no one can give an exact number. With that in mind, it is possible to end up with more available bosses than you want to use. With five boss slots, you can make a raid boss. And the power isn’t just that of a boss times five. Raid bosses are unique creatures with strange rules that will restrict both you and the delvers.’

Doyle nods to himself, ‘That is interesting. Though I don’t think I will need anything like that in the near future. Anyway, how are you doing?’

Ally stays silent for a time and Doyle is about to say something when she finally answers. ‘I really was a bit of a brat. It’s funny, you know? I lived in a Fae court, looked around, and saw how everyone acted. Told myself many times as I watched the stupid drama play out that I was different. I wasn’t spoiled and I was going to go my own way. Yet here I was, given the closest to a clean break that is possible for me and I fall into doing similar things. Mind you, I was nowhere near as bad as the other. But that isn’t really saying much. The Fae courts are a wild mix of hidebound rules, lawyers and lawless chaos.’

Doyle sighs, ‘No matter how much a child might want to escape the shadow of their parents it can be quite hard. You just escaped from your gilded cage so it isn’t too weird that you fell back on something you understood for stability. What is important is that now that you know, to work on it. I won’t blame you for trying. Trauma isn’t something that you just fix. All we can do is continue to live our lives to the best of our abilities. Even if it seems that for every step forward you slide back two that just means there was more to it than you thought.’

Ally once again stays silent but this time Doyle can tell she doesn’t have anything else to say. Doyle puts the stone block back down and focuses on making a new floor. While the idea of continuing to push back the boss floor is interesting, having the fifth floor as a checkpoint seems like a decent plan as well. The first few floors are a decent enough bar for entry to weed out the ill equipped. Nevermind the fact that he would also be annoyed if it would take even longer for people to experience his kobold boss. She was everything he could hope for and her debut shouldn’t be pushed back any further.

Decision made Doyle focuses on the pool of power and repeats the steps that have gotten so familiar to him. Expand the power, shrink it down, form the new floor, and push back the void to have some space to work with.

{Sixth floor dimensionally anchored

World Energy cap +3700 [Constitution(37) * 100]

Sixth floor spending limit set to 13900 [Previous floor’s limit(10500) + Intelligence(34) * 100]

Monster level cap updated

Post Boss floor level range adjustment

Post Boss Monster Upgrade Pack (10000we)

Quintessence debt paid back by 5}

Right away Doyle notices the level range adjustment. That hadn’t been mentioned so he was a bit concerned about it but after a quick check things became clear to him. The sixth floor’s level range is 8 to 11. A bit of a jump, but it would make sense for the difficulty to get a bump after a boss. Especially when considering the kobold boss has a level of 13. He can’t even get a similarly leveled monster for a couple more floors.

Though, on the other hand, even if the high end was set to match the boss, it would be a bit much. Going from five to ten would be a doubling of the minimum level. Of course, depending on the stat growth of the monsters that might not be too much but it would definitely make using masses of kobolds harder. Though even the goats would be quite tough at that point.

Doyle gets a bit of a laugh out of it when he realizes that the weakest enemies would be the assassin vines which just manages to be in the top three most expensive monsters. Though speaking of monsters, the monster upgrade pack being offered costs a good portion of his world energy pool. While cost doesn’t have to mean it will be worth it, it also doesn’t mean it isn’t. The only annoyance is that he had just talked to Ally and doesn’t want to return so soon. In the end, he decides to buy it if only because the way it is described makes it sound like he will get more in the future.

{Post Boss Monster Upgrade Pack

Random Quantity: 3

Choosing Monsters...

Myconid Sprout (Lv3), Assassin Vine, Wooden Goat (Lv3)

Myconid Sprout (Lv3) variant Lesser Myconid (Lv6) gained at level 20

Assassin Vine gains Rapid Movement skill at level 1 and +5 Agility

Wooden Goat (Lv3) gains improved wood, Wooden Goat Pattern and Wood Pattern both increased to level 30}

{Lesser Myconid (Lv6)

S[10] A[4] C[20] I[3] W[10] P[4]

Skills: Summon Paralysis Spore lv2, Summon Sleep Spore lv2

Cost: World Energy[150]}

‘Huh’, Doyle looks at the monster upgrades and feels a bit sad that the pack can only be purchased after a boss floor. It even improved the assassin vine without increasing the cost or anything. Just directly gave it a skill for movement and more agility. Doyle can’t help but imagine the surprise the delvers will experience after coming across them next.

Besides that, though, the other two are interesting in their own right. Wooden goats gained a better wood option but not an increase to their endure skill. Instead, it increased the pattern levels for both the goat and wood in general. Quite helpful as wood had been languishing at level nine.

Though most interesting for Doyle is the myconid upgrade. Instead of messing with the pattern itself, he directly got a new pattern. And what a pattern it is. The lesser myconid is stronger, tougher, and interestingly enough smarter than the myconid sprout. While this can’t be the only way, the upgrade was apparently one of the ways to get ranked up versions of the myconid.

Doyle sighs after thinking that. While true, it depends on the upgrade pack randomly choosing the current end point of the myconid line and then not doing anything else to it. But at least the lesser myconid has a new interesting spore to inflict on the delvers and he can see right away how it would be more powerful.

Paralysis is nice but still allows the enemy to think and potentially cast spells or activate magic gear if that is an option. Sure, right now no one has thought activated safety equipment but with how useful it would be it is only a matter of time. Sleep, on the other hand, removes that possibility. It isn’t perfect, of course. Paralysis worked as long as the effect could manage. With sleep, all it takes is someone waking the others.

Satisfied with his purchase Doyle turns towards his newest floor. Going by the pattern the floor should be able to fit a square 42 small rooms by 42 small rooms plus a good amount of vertical space. The question is what to do with all that space. So far, his rooms have been ordinary. The boss floor is the oddest one of the bunch in actual layout, if only because of the giant dome. Everything else is just a bunch of jumbled rooms stacked together.

Most important though as with the creation of this floor something has started to dig at the back of his mind. This was supposed to be a strange cavern. While the cavern part is covered, he still hasn’t really gotten into the strangeness. Now though, the system isn’t going to be happy if Doyle creates just another series of rooms.

So of course the first thing that comes to mind is screwing with portals and such. Already having portals for the entrance and exit the next logical step is to start using them within the dungeon. Of course, that is with the understanding of not using it to cheat too much. While it might be possible, killing someone but slamming a portal shut on them isn’t exactly in line with what Doyle wants.

Still, if anything, portals would make a new maze level even more challenging. He could retrofit the older levels with this new bit of fun and completely change how deadly the maze is. No amount of wall following will succeed if the place did it right.