Dungeon’s Path

Doyle nods, ‘Well, that’s nice. Now, I did ask for it to some extent, but how does this help me?’

Ally smiles, ‘It doesn’t, at least not directly. You have already gone down the path of an even build to some extent. However, it does teach an important aspect about the stats. They aren’t some simple thing but rather concepts.

‘No, let me say that correctly. They are Concepts, with a capital C! And each of them has the capability to show many different aspects with only a core feature being truly unique to any one stat. For Strength that is to strengthen your body. No other stat can do that.’

Ally checks the panel showing the party, ‘I’m going to be quick since it looks like they are about to start again. While you, as a being, are somewhat locked in on what concepts each stat will be bringing to the forefront, that is not true for your monsters. Through intent, you can guide how each stat changes them for the species, variant, and even on an individual level for the special ones.

‘Your goats have a lot of constitution and you can decide if that means they end up regenerating damage at absurd speeds or if it means stuff like poisons and various special effects are basically stopped dead. Through paths, you will shape them. As for why I am telling you now? I didn’t know about it before we got on the subject. My skill Tutor must have leveled up and I was able to notice something such that I could help you learn this lesson.

‘So one last thing, you’ve already started the process with your goats. The path that had you choose between whether you ended up with normal goats or goat-like humanoids had two effects and explains why animals and plants can have high Intelligence yet still be basically the same. By choosing to stick with quote unquote normal goats, you’ve guided their Intelligence stat towards more animalistic forms of thinking.

‘On the other hand, you also placed some minor guidance on all of their body stats. Strength will focus on their body becoming the peak of what it means to be a goat. Agility will focus on their legendary ability to climb and jump around. Constitution will likely end up more general so as to prevent changes to their body such as through poison or damage. But that is the end of what my skill just force fed me and Jim seems ready to move on.’

And Ally wasn’t wrong about that. The party was rested and Jim got everyone to double check their gear so not a single piece of armor was out of place.

Then the only thing standing in their way was figuring out how to stand. Doyle had tried to make the transition between the floor being down and the wall being down as smooth as possible and maybe sometime in the future he could redo it even better. Right now, though, he was basically just throwing large areas of gravity at the problem without any finesse.

The axebeaks that charged in from the ceiling had been in here for a while and so knew the quirks. Besides that, momentum was still a thing so their act of charging through the transition area helped. Jim and his party were taking a much more cautious approach to things and so got a bit hung up.

Zach was the first through. Sure, the others called it cheating when he used magic to make a wooden harness so he wouldn’t fall all over himself, but it worked, which was all that mattered. Though it was a bit tacky when he started to play around, jumping back and forth. Sure, he wasn’t laughing at them. The act really was fun when you didn’t have to worry about falling. Still, it didn’t really feel like that to the others.

Well, besides Susan. She might have never gotten to experience shifting gravities before, but her training to always be balanced helped a lot. So after Zach showed there wasn’t any harm in the crossing, she walked right up onto the window, across the glass, and onto the ceiling. She didn’t mind being on the glass, but the appearance of just standing over the void was a little off putting.

This experience was shared across the whole group as no one besides Zach stayed all that long on the window and even he was only there because he trusted his wooden supports. Once on the ceiling though, all sense of discomfort went away, mostly because it honestly just looked like the floor below. Doyle didn’t go all in on making the area look like a ceiling.

Though when they go through the stairs to the next room, Susan gets a bit of a shock when the gravity suddenly flips again. Good thing it was her who went in front because she managed to save herself from falling over with a bit of fancy footwork. Then they entered the next room.

Jim looked around and shook his head, “Well, I don’t see the way forward.”

Sammy shrugs, “I’m going to guess this room has something to do with that checkerboard pattern on the ground. Up till now, the rooms have either been all clover, all grass, or an even mix of the stuff.”

Jim sighs, “At least the walls of the area look the same. I still don’t trust that glass, but there isn’t much I can do about it right now, anyway. Now Zach, you like to live a little dangerously, anchor yourself here and go check out if anything happens when you enter one of the other squares.”

Zach gives a half-hearted laugh, “Well, I guess I deserve that. Still, I want you all to hold on to the vine as well. At least if it gets yanked out of the ground, you would end up wherever I do.”

Susan rolls her eyes, “The point of you doing this is so that we aren’t in danger either.”

Jim shakes his head again, “No, if he does get pulled somewhere we have a better chance of surviving together.”

Zach raises an eyebrow, “Then why am I going through alone?”

Jim shrugs, “Bait? Honestly, though, we can’t all enter at exactly the same time safely. Having the entire group spread out across the edge there would be even more dangerous.”

Doctor raises his hand, “Why are we assuming that crossing the edges will do anything at all?”

Sammy looks at Jim who nods for him to answer. Sammy licks her lips and glares at the border, “I’ma tank, clear and simple. That, however, doesn’t mean I haven’t picked up an interesting thing here and there. I won’t say how, but I do have a bit of a danger sense. It isn’t enough to highlight a hidden enemy or even tell me what type of danger. However, what it can do is give a slight nudge towards when a new area is going to be dangerous and that line right there.”

She points at the edge in front of them, “Has a sense of danger. Not the squares around it, but that specific piece of dirt and plants feels more dangerous.”

Jim nods, but then frowns as he takes a closer look at the corner. “Are you sure you don’t feel anything from the squares next to it? Don’t look at the squares, close your eyes and try to feel if the squares connected to that square are dangerous.”

Sammy frowns and does as he suggested. Though it doesn’t take long for her frown to deepen and her eyes to open again. “The square to the left of the one in front feels dangerous, but only from the square in front?”

Jim squints his eyes, “The dungeon has thrown us another curve ball. If my guess is right, the checkerboard pattern actually represents different rooms and there are invisible portals or some such involved.”

Jay scratches his head, “Why would you assume that?”

Jim holds up one finger, “First, if you look really careful the corners have almost a line in the air with the two sides of it not matching up.” He holds up a second finger, “And second, we already know the dungeon is playing around with spatial manipulation. We have the storage bag and now just the floor before there was a minor amount of spatial warping.

“So here we are, on the next floor with windows that look out on a sky that appears to go on forever and a nearly invisible line in the air. At this point, I have to assume something is going on there. Hell, the sixth floor likely had something strange happening as well, because it is much too early for seemingly infinite floors.”

Jay nods, “Fair enough, now what does that mean for our exploration of this floor?”

Jim shrugs, “Not much, honestly. Sure, we have to be more careful so we don’t get split up, but I’m sure if anything there will be some fun benefits from having such obvious spatial anomalies hanging around. Now let’s stop dragging our feet. Zach, you up for checking out an unknown spatial disturbance?”

Zach rolls his eyes and whips up a new wooden harness before stepping over the line. A quick look to the left and he steps right back. “Welp, I don’t know what it is, but there are four grass bumps to the left and I figure something is hiding behind them.”

Jim rubs his temple, “That or they are those grass goat things we just two floors ago.”

Zach blinks a couple of times, “Huh, yeah, I guess they could be that as well.”

Susan smirks, “That does seem somewhat likely. So, I say we just go and smack them around. The goats in here are pretty tough, but they’re still goats.”

Jim nods, “We just have to be careful about crossing between squares. The fourth floor and all those wolves were tough enough when we first fought them. I would hate to end up aggroing a hundred strong herd of goats just because we kept stumbling into them.

“Sammy and Jay, of course you two are in front. I want Zach right behind you this time, though. Zach, if they seem to start to be pulled somewhere or some other odd spatial nonsense, your job is to anchor them while lassoing the rest of us. Also, if those grass bumps aren’t standing up and clearly goats, you get to pull aggro through a bunch of wooden spikes.

“Susan, I know you want to get in there and mix it up, but for this first fight I want you to stick to Doctor. We already have one potential ambush monster and I don’t want Doctor to fall to another unseen threat. As for you, Doctor, I don’t want you running off willy-nilly. Try and stick to Susan. If you really have to run off, make sure to tell her so she can keep up?

“As for me, I’m going to move between you all and try to keep a lookout for any other dangers. With how this room seems to work, any misstep could suddenly expose us to more threats. I don’t fully know how this room is set up as things don’t seem to line up, but I hope there is some sense to the madness. Now let’s move out.”

The party re-organizes themselves and as one moves into the next square, most turning to face the direction the grass bumps were in while Jim glances around in all directions.

At first they can’t see any goats, in fact, they can’t even see the grass bumps that Zach had seen. Then, from out of nowhere, a group of four grassen goats being ridden by kobolds in leather gear and wielding bronze tipped spears. Seeing that Jim whips his head around before giving an all clear as he didn’t see any other enemies.

Hearing that the rest of the group form up a defense focused on the one direction instead of trying to protect from all directions.