NOVEL SIMPLE Maybe The Rules Were There For A Reason – Chapter 265
Doyle sighs, ‘Well, you aren’t wrong. I did consider adding a couple of void kobolds to the fifth floor. Though even if I don’t end up doing that, I’m certainly going to have a couple go there for a little.’
Ally nods, ‘You basically have to. Who knows if the monument will end up reacting to them or not? While I don’t see a direct copy of them on the thing, I see some winged kobolds that might be related.
‘After all, space is the perfect place for wings when not depending on mystical powers. The size you would need their wings to be in regular gravity is silly and so usually in those situations, you need magic. Space, on the other hand, doesn’t even require them to have all that much stamina as most “flight” is really more about slight movements to propel themselves around.’
Doyle, ‘So do you think the elder assassin vine or the myconids sprouts will evolve in the room?’
Ally shakes her head, ‘They don’t really have anything to adapt to. This is especially true for the vine. It works off of dragging itself around with pneumatics. There aren’t any muscles that need to be modified to prevent strength loss. No bones that need to be worried about losing strength.
“They’re basically already perfectly adapted to being in space. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could survive in space if they didn’t have to worry about the cold. This is especially true for the much tougher elder vines.”
Doyle, ‘Fair enough. I’m sure we’re missing something about plants and mushrooms growing in space, but that is what magic is for. Anyway, I’ve decided.
‘I’ll replace the normal kobolds in the Zero-G room with void kobolds and I will place one female void Kobold on the fifth floor. I don’t mind giving people a sneak peek of the later levels, but I want their first experience with the eye beams to be on mass.’
Ally, ‘That isn’t exactly fair.’
Doyle, ‘As if it is fair that they can just go and tell everyone about my dangers. This gives me a bit of a chance at payback. While I’m sure there will be videos of this encounter later on. It very much feels like one of those, “you have to see it to believe it”, sort of things.’
Ally shrugs, ‘I can certainly see that being the case. Oh, and before I forget, another thing about the inherited thing that just showed up in my searches. If you, for instance, managed to manually evolve a goat into a wooden goat, it would gain the inherited trait.
‘Though no, you don’t get a refund on any adjustment points you might have used to unlock things. They do, however, end up with skill slots unlocked equal to whichever had more. Which is nice, all things considered.’
Doyle sighs, ‘I’m going to start integrating the voibolds. Not that I can exactly add them to the Zero-G room at the moment. Well, I could? But those teams are still hitting it over and over. I want more of a break between it being delved so things don’t end up half done. Not like they can stay there all that long.’
Doyle was wrong about that. The five teams ended up camped out there for three whole days. This would normally not be a problem as time had started to flow strangely to him. Not literally this time, but rather the fact that he can focus on something and end up done before realizing it.
Except, in this case, Doyle doesn’t really have much else to distract himself with and is sort of focused on the teams. So once those three days are up, he is more than eager to place his latest and greatest. They did fine.
If Doyle was honest with himself, he had over hyped himself on it. In fact, they did amazing compared to normal kobolds. Their 3D movement gives them a unique feel for the area around them on top of the movement assistance.
So with the voibolds in place, Doyle turns back to the...
And the teams are back. This time with two more full teams of delvers and a team of logistics on top of the previous five. They’re also loaded down with enough special equipment and extra supplies that Doyle was mostly certain the first group had been waiting for this.
Good thing the voibolds were now in place. While it wouldn’t stop them. Doyle hoped that the change might chase them off. Then things get worse.
It seems that previously they had been taking it one at a time more for fun and practice. Now, with their entire group gathered, they plan to send three teams at a time. Doyle was not having this! The question was, what could he do?
A lot. The answer is a lot. Since he overheard their intentions, he had some time to prepare. Of course, he also has to be prepared in case they do decide to just send only one team in. That meant not just moving things around, but including a method to reverse things right away.
As luck would have it, he now has a certain ant queen now. She still isn’t quite up to being a spy master for him, but the ants can be used to pass simple messages. In this case, he had the eighth floor ant queen hang out with the kobolds in the Zero-G room.
Crawl one way? They should disperse. Crawl the other way? Get ready to alpha strike as the enemy is about to enter the room.
While this might seem aggressive, it is basically the more Doyle trying to chase them away. Why, though? Well, outside of the dungeon, there are certain events happening.
Jim sighed. He had hoped that when something went wrong first, Ace would be the one responsible for cleaning it up. He really wanted to know where these idiots got the courage to break the guild rules?
It isn’t like you can’t set up a raid on a dungeon. Jim had actually considered one for the next boss fight. Yet here these idiots are, sitting on the seventh floor and he couldn’t do a thing about it as they technically hadn’t raided that floor or the next.
Jim was ready, though. People seem to forget that the dungeon complex isn’t some solid block. Well, they’ll feel the pain. All that needs to happen is for them to make the first move and break the rules.
Jim sighed again. He got the alert. They just sent a half raid into the eighth floor.
Down on the eighth floor, six mages use magic to wipe the first room’s monsters. As it happens, a lady laughs, “See what I mean! The guild will thank us once we return with a bunch of bags. Why should the town have a monopoly on them?”
A guy nods, “I don’t know if their relationship is quite that adversarial, but whatever. Break the rules? Heh, haven’t they ever read any post apocalypse story? Might make a right!”
Of course, as they’re crowing about their “accomplishments”, things are going wrong behind them. For the first time, Jim is able to use his authority as the planet’s top guild master.
A team of twenty adventurers, led by a couple from the inner circle, walks through the entrance portal, except they don’t show up on the first floor. Instead, half appear at the entrance of the seventh floor and the other half at the exit of the seventh floor.
From there, each side sends out a scout to find the exact location of the four parties that remained on the floor. It wasn’t hard, of course, not like they tried to hide or even bothered to set up a guard detail.
Once located, it was just a matter of surrounding them while guarding the portals so they can’t get away. Then it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Of course, when they saw it was only about ten people attacking them, they resisted.
Well, most of them did. The logistics team retreated to the exit to warn the delving team. They got captured in record time, as they aren’t exactly combat focused. Then the rest followed, as Jim had prepared the team with more than enough capture mages.
Once everything was wrapped up, Jim’s team gathered them all up and left the dungeon. This caused just a bit of consternation among the delvers waiting in line, but Jim was able to calm the situation easily enough. After all, the system did mark them as rules breakers now that they were caught red-handed.
Back in the dungeon, Doyle is only slightly weirded out about how they were able to skip right to the seventh floor. He had read the contract after all. Thankfully, the ability can’t be abused and they aren’t able to do it on what the system considers an active floor.
That term, “active floor” has all kinds of text to define what it means, but Doyle hasn’t seen anything too out there. It basically meant that while the Guild can go in and capture any group trying to camp out on a floor to escape justice. They aren’t going to be able to interfere with active delving.
That was for him to handle. Which is what is about to happen. The half raid had made decent time, being able to do their own alpha strike in each room. Too bad the loot drops were turned off for them. Kind of defeats the purpose of the unauthorized raid.
Not that they noticed, as after the first few times they had harvested all the loot that was ready or nearly so. Plus, it isn’t like the non-loot drops were shut off. They still got goat chops, feathers, and so on.
Now, they’re about to enter the tunnel to the Zero-G room and a certain ant moves. Oh, and it isn’t like the kobolds are restricted to the room or anything. So, as the three teams make it about two-thirds of the way through the connecting passage, they get ambushed.
Ten stellar beams slice through the forward guards and peppers the back rows where it gets through. This is actually more than Doyle had been expecting, as four of the ten mages still had wands to be healers. Except, they don’t need a wand for stellar magic and so can pull double duty. A fact that Doyle notes down to limit later. While a good surprise, the eighth floor isn’t when he wants to reveal that surprise.
Back to the fight. The six tanks that had taken the lead were hurt, but not taken out of the fight yet. It was a few of the back line that got unlucky, as the tanks hadn’t had time to use any kind of blocking skill. One of the mages even got unlucky with a beam slash across the neck, killing them instantly, as they weren’t wearing any protection there.
To say they panicked would be an understatement. Half the surviving mages in the back, including the healer they had managed to scrounge up from somewhere, all decided to skedaddle. Though they are soon joined by the non-mage back row as well.
After all, they weren’t there to fight like this. They were scouts and bow users who only wanted to fight from a distance. Having return fire that isn’t being countered by the mages? That’s dangerous!
In the end, because of how badly the half raid reacted, Doyle doesn’t even get to see the other voibolds fight. The stellar mages are more than able to clean up the remaining nine enemies. As for those who retreated?
Well, their plan was to meet up with those they had left on the seventh floor. Except they weren’t there anymore, and the floor had repopulated. This meant they walked through the gate and right into a giant gathering of myconids that hung around the floor’s exit portal. The nine were still in disarray, so they didn’t even question this as they backed up, right through the portal and out of the dungeon.
As they leave, they’re met with Jim standing there, tapping his foot. The healer babbles out some kind of warning about the dungeon turning feral or some nonsense.
Jim shakes his head as his team of ten comes out of hidden doors on each side of the passage and captures them. “You broke the rules. Did you think they were there just to hold you back? They limit the dungeon just as much as they limit us.”
