Dungeon’s Path

Ally laughs after she thinks of something, ‘Besides not wanting a clone army because your enemy might figure out how to hit them all with the same spell, there are a few other fun little quirks that can pop up if you try it. The most common one being that a hivemind forms. This is especially likely if you have certain clones with more smarts so they can be a leader. Galactic empires, no, not the one you're thinking of, have fallen to this as their entire armed force turns on them.

‘Even short bake clones with a quite limited lifespan can fall to this if there are methods to quickly spawn them. After a certain point, the hivemind will be able to exist as a completely ethereal mind construct that latches onto any new clones. So yeah, not that clone armies never work, you’re just the exception if they do.’

Doyle laughs, ‘I’m more interested in that ethereal mind thing than the clone army nonsense.’

Ally shrugs, ‘They fall under the same category as things like sapient AIs and such. The important part there being the sapient bit. So unless you’re making a boss hivemind, you’re not going to get all that far.’

Doyle’s core brightens up, ‘That sounds fun. I know you said that as a joke, but I’m thinking goat hivemind boss. I’ve already set my goats on the path of being as goat-like as possible, which denies them the whole “humanoid” nonsense so this could be interesting.’

Ally sighs, ‘While I do agree that it would be interesting. You have tried to keep the power level of your monsters down to a reasonable amount. In your dungeon, a goat hivemind boss would be a tad too powerful, especially if you have more than say, five goats for it to inhabit. Though I don’t even know if five goats is enough to start a hivemind. With rats, you generally need a full-blown swarm and at least five rats basically attached to one another to even begin to support a hivemind. Goats are more advanced, but they are still animals.’

Doyle’s core dims right back down. ‘Sigh, fair enough. It would be just a tad bit too crazy if I made an empty room full of hundreds of goats, all controlled by a single hivemind. Though if I ever need to hardstop a group and I have a boss slot open, well, I have a plan now, at least.’

Ally laughs, ‘That would certainly do it. Though maybe not an empty room. You would be asking for a fireball to take them out. No, make it big twisty corridors with smaller goat size holes so they can be attacked at any time from any angle and with as many goats as the hivemind wants. Besides, I can’t remember what it was, but I feel like you had something similar already.’

Doyle takes a moment to think about it, ‘Nothing comes to mind off the top of my head? After I finish playing with my wheat, I’ll have to take a look and comb through my status. There must be a ton of stuff in there that I’m forgetting. Haven’t forgotten the naming package though. That just costs a lot and it isn’t like I’m funneling all my world energy into it.’

Ally nods, ‘Well, have fun. If I can remember what it was, I’ll let you know. Though if it has held for this long, we probably aren’t on a timer over it.’

Doyle for the most part agrees with that and so turns back to his wheat. The current crop hadn’t quite matured yet so he spent the time waiting on checking any plants that stood out. Some of them were clearly inferior and so he culled them without waiting for them to finish growing. Others showed promise so they got marked with a red piece of string that Doyle would have an easy time finding again.

Because, while he wouldn’t mind searching through all the plants. Doyle wanted to get onto the next generation relatively quickly so he could see if this would raise the wheat pattern’s level. This meant there was some aggressive culling.

One of the aspects was that he didn’t wait for all of the wheat to finish growing. Instead, once all but about ten percent was fully matured, he removed the wheat that hadn’t finished growing as long as it wasn’t part of the marked group. From there, he started lopping off even more, each time removing an amount equal to the first.

The tallest wheat was first to go. All that really mattered was the grains so the extra stem wasn’t needed after all. Though Doyle wasn’t going to go for micro-wheat. In his mind, the perfect wheat should still be wheat-like. So if all it did was grow a couple centimeters of stem before the grain, it wasn’t exactly wheat anymore, at least in his opinion.

After that, he removed double the amount, half of it from those that drooped the most and those that dropped the least. Doyle wanted amber waves of grain, not a bunch of straight up and down spikes or completely bent over plants. There needed to be just enough give that they would bend in the wind's direction, but not so much that they ended up lying flat. If only because in a real situation, getting bent over too much could lead to the grain ending up in moist dirt and rotting.

For the final bit of culling, Doyle removed another part equal to the first and let the system randomly cull them. A little disappointing that the system wasn’t able to just pick out the best ones for him, but he could understand. This was, after all supposed to be him working on his patterns. Would kind of defeat the purpose if the system handed him the answer.

So with the total amount of wheat reduced by half, Doyle begins to skim over the still large amount of plants, removing any that obviously look wrong. Sure, there might be nothing bad about them, but part of this is that Doyle does want something to use in his dungeon and not just spawning the end result. So while there might be plants with better wheat that ended up looking wonky, they weren’t going to make it.

Still, even being super critical doesn’t cut out enough wheat. After all, most of the wheat just looks like wheat. It isn’t like he has manipulated the stuff too much at this point. Though as Doyle look at the wheat that is left, he can’t help but mentally shrug. Sure, there is a lot, but it isn’t like he was growing a proper field of the stuff. It was all spaced out enough that what was left only numbered a couple hundred plants.

At this point, Doyle decides he had removed enough. Before he had planned to cull it down to the low tens of plants, but since the next batch he plans to plant will be bigger, this should be enough. Besides, you can be too aggressive when doing this. If he had reduced it enough, then the pattern level might not change at all as he cycles through basically just some imaginary perfection. That would, of course be a far way off, but even now some instinct in him is ringing, warning him that there is no perfection.

This causes Doyle to pause for a moment. After all, for something like the simple idea of aiming for perfection to cause such an instant reaction from his instincts means it is a big deal for dungeons. Though as he takes a moment to consider the issue, he realizes why. A combination of a dungeon’s ability to get trapped in the details and how they don’t have some sort of innate understanding of what anything is.

If Doyle had wanted to, he could have easily gotten down and examined every single grain of wheat that had been grown and it wouldn’t have felt like any time passing at all. He also had some idea of what “wheat” is supposed to look like, something other dungeons would not have. It would be too easy for an unawakened dungeon to get stuck on perfecting a piece of wheat yet going in circles. Maybe the instinct will fade once he gets a few more floors under his belt, maybe not. For now, though, Doyle turns back to his fields.

Since he plans to use all of them that are left, it is time to harvest. An act made supremely easy as he can deconstruct an entire plant, roots and all, with only a thought. He does try to play around with it like he did with creation, but he has a different feel from the skill. Instead of it feeling like he was using a complex tool with just the default settings, Universal Deconstruction instead feels like he is using a very simple tool.

The only problem with it is that, in its simplicity, the tool outputs too much information. With each use of the skill, he is force fed everything about what was being deconstructed. Even as a dungeon, he wasn’t able to handle it and so most of that information is lost. There is simply too much to absorb. What the skill feels like it is doing is allowing him to capture more of that ocean of information, as well as making sure to grab some of the more useful bits.

So knowing it doesn’t matter if he goes carefully over each plant or grabs them all at once, Doyle zaps the whole field. That taken care of, he goes and checks the pattern level of his wheat. Which hasn’t budged. Not the expected outcome, but also not not the expected outcome.

Doyle had to admit to himself, a single generation of wheat isn’t going to change things up too much. So he goes to create another batch, except this time creation feels different. Not in a “same thing but I notice more” type of way, but rather in a “there literally are just more options now” sort of way.

With sugar, while he could create the various shapes he came up with, it all just fell under sugar. The wheat, however, had a different feel. This was a sort of nebulous thing where while it didn’t have some specific mental label, Doyle could tell that he could create generic wheat seeds, the original wheat seeds, or a mix of the wheat seeds from the recent crop. In fact, he could even off to the side feel the rejected wheat seeds. They were just sort of there, sort of not. As if he could create them if he wanted to, but if he didn’t they would end up fading away.

An interesting feature which was likely meant to keep living patterns organized without forcing anything specific. Though Doyle could also see it coming up with something like sugar as well. After all, what Doyle currently has to work with is basically just table sugar. Later on, he will probably end up gaining less refined forms of sugar and while patterns are fun, the system has to draw the line somewhere.

So with this newfound quirk of his skill, Doyle plants a much larger crop of wheat. The first time didn’t yield any levels, but he was willing to let it ride for five or so generations just to see. It isn’t like it was going to take him years to get there after all. Besides, it would be silly if he could improve them that quickly. Sugar was easy enough because it was just perfecting the shape. A living plant, on the other hand, has so much more to it than what it looks like. You could have an apple that looked perfect only for the fruit to taste bland and be incredibly mealy.

Still, while this was important, he didn’t need to focus on it quite so much. His plants would grow in the background and Doyle could focus on other things, only occasionally popping in to check on them.