Dungeon’s Path

Akhier

Goodness gracious, we're already into the third month of the year. I don't know how but the fact February ends early always seems to sneak up on me. Almost missed posting last month's Patreon exclusive short story, Mr. Pawdles, a quick little tale of a cat having to keep his human alive after everything starts developing super powers. Anyway, still chugging away at writing chapters. Though my rent is apparently going to go up by ~$100 this year. Which still means the rent is going to be cheaper by ~$200 for the area because I've been in this place for years now. Someday I'll probably end up having to move somewhere cheaper because no one should have their rent raise by that much in a year.

There was one more thing Jim had learned, but he held back on it. You might even call it crucial information. The problem wasn’t the non-disclosure he signed with the guild. Rather, he felt the information wasn’t something that should be shared, even with Ace. See, the adventurers guild wasn’t a universal organization. It wasn’t even an organization that just covered everywhere this system was implemented.

The adventurers guild was multiversal in scale. Jim didn’t know what this meant except that it scared him. This entire universe was changed at a very core level by a mistake from a single True Immortal and the guild he just joined had to be backed by a similar being. His main receptionist, Frink, wasn’t even from this universe. Hell, she wasn’t even originally from a universe with a system.

Jim didn’t know what to do with this info. In fact, he didn’t know if he should do anything with it. Frink said it was up to him but Jim was going to sit on this little tidbit for a while longer. Definitely until after he was able to dig into it more. He knew that this was important and that he probably should tell Ace, but a primal part of him wouldn’t let it go. That part which had him alone out in the forest was holding him back.

This was a problem. Jim knew this was a problem. There was a reason he hadn’t wanted this position in the first place. But the others were depending on him, Ace believed in him. Jim could only sigh as he watched the first citizens trickle into the guild.

Doyle was also watching these first few people. The adventurers guild was of particular interest to him and while he wasn’t able to see the backrooms, the public areas were perfectly visible. Then absolutely nothing interesting happened. Sure, a bunch of people created teams but except for hearing a bunch of questions being answered by the fact that more details would be coming, Doyle was soon bored.

So when the first true team entered his dungeon he was easily distracted. Not that it would have taken much, but a system message was more than enough.

{First Guild Approved Team Detected

Adventurers Guild Contract available}

From there Doyle, of course, had to crack open the contract. This was a mistake. This was an enormous mistake. Whoever the guild got as a lawyer was clearly well versed in the normal way people handled such things, as in by at most skimming the contract and then signing off on it on a whim.

That wasn’t going to work, they made sure of it. As soon as Doyle opened up the contract to take a quick look, he was locked in. It wasn’t even the system doing it. The contract itself was forcing Doyle to read it and wouldn’t let him stop until he understood exactly what it said.

Not the easiest thing when it seemed whoever wrote the contract must have created words specifically for it. Good thing the contract came with definitions, right? Well, yes, because it allowed him to understand it and thus finish reading the contract. The only problem was the fact that it seemed that every word he had to look up had at least a couple terms in it that also needed to be looked up. It was definition pop ups all the way down.

The worst part, though? The contract basically boiled down to a handful of simple rules that if they weren’t followed, the guild would make things uncomfortable. Good news, this would only make it so guild members would avoid him and such. Which while it might sound bad as it looked like basically everyone that planned to delve was partying up, wasn’t too terrible at the moment. The guild might provide party creation services but that didn’t require joining the guild.

In fact, as far as Doyle could tell only Jim was currently a guild member. To actually join the guild required a lot more than the various fantasy novels made it out to be. Even Jim wasn’t technically qualified yet to join, only getting in on a technicality. After all, you can’t have a guild head that isn’t actually a part of the guild. Still, just Jim alone being a part of the guild would make a ton of problems for Doyle if he didn’t agree to the contract.

A good thing then that Doyle was fine with agreeing to the contract. The three main terms basically just reinforced the system based stuff, going much deeper into what was and wasn’t allowed. Even better? It put a limit on guild members and what they can and can’t do about his very existence. Not that anyone on the planet right could do much about even a newborn dungeon, but that wouldn’t hold in the future.

The biggest catch of the whole contract? It required him to give guild members preferential treatment. Not an easier time, mind you. Oh now, it seems they know exactly how bad of an idea that would be. Rather, it required members to be rewarded before and above non-members.

In theory, Doyle doesn’t really care about this. If anything, pushing people towards being guild members would be better for him. The actual problem is that to put into place such a system is going to require most of his Wisdom to go towards making those loot rules and delay further automation of his floors. The only upside was that the guild provided very specific rules that could be slotted into place.

Of course those required loot rules would cost 40 points of Wisdom. Well, the basic rules cost 40 points. If Doyle wanted to go further, there basically wasn’t an upper limit. There were even optional rules. An endless point sink that Doyle could see himself spending literal years on optimizing once he has enough Wisdom.

Anyway, Doyle technically has enough for those basic rules. His Wisdom was 59 points at the moment after all. It’s just that he doesn’t want to get rid of his two loot rules and to keep the automation of the first floor. Later floors aren’t visited as frequently, but the first floor is constantly farmed and has most of his instances. Those ten Wisdom points basically took care of 90% of the upkeep and Doyle wasn’t willing to drop them.

So there Doyle was, a single point of Wisdom away from being able to sign the contract. Good thing he had a few path points hanging around or Jim would have had a bit of trouble during his regular dives. Of course, the question was, where should he put his points? His normal method of just choosing whatever sounds useful isn’t exactly going to gift him a point in Wisdom despite the fact it had worked last time.

This led to a good bit of time spent on calling up his various paths and trying to figure out what would be most likely to give him some more Wisdom. Worse yet, there wasn’t even a variant class path for him to bet on and the thousand point cost for Dungeon Core IV was a little too pricey. The problem with this was that most of his Wisdom had come from his class path.

In fact, since per a level wouldn’t work the only path that had given him Wisdom was specifically Dungeon Core III. The only other source, in fact, was the runes on his cliff. Though if he did extend it to per a level, a few more things popped. Even then, it was mostly just the kobold related paths and the one god related path.

With that in mind, Doyle was only able to look over his paths and pick out the most likely options. This ended up whittling the choices down to five paths. Community Driven, Community Builder, Godly Negotiator, Heavenly Gate, and Clan Head. Each of them had about equal chances of providing a point of Wisdom as far as Doyle was concerned and so he started to whittle them down.

First to go was Godly Negotiator. He kind of wanted it even if he would prefer to never have to deal with gods again. After all, since he didn’t want to deal with them, anything that would make it easier would be welcome when he was forced to do so again. The problem at the moment was it cost 500 points. If he was going to start on another expensive path, he would go for the gate path. Though he dropped that one as well, 350 points wasn’t much better.

That left the paths Doyle figured were directly related to his kobolds. To be driven by, build up, or create a leader. Whether they meant to improve him directly or the communities was a question that he didn’t know the answer to. So with a mental shrug Doyle decided to settle on the only path that could be completed right away, Community Driven costing only ten points.

‘[System, put ten points into the Community Driven path, please.]’

{10 points applied to Community Driven...

1/10 - Monsters in a community gain +5 Constitution, +5 Wisdom, and +5 Destiny

4/10 - Monsters in a community gain physical skills appropriate for their roles, You have earned +10 Constitution

7/10 - Monsters in a community gain mental skills appropriate for their roles, You have earned +10 Wisdom

10/10 - Path complete, Sapient monsters in a community gain soul skills appropriate for their roles, You have earned +10 Destiny}

Doyle laughs as his bet paid off. Besides that, the path also gave skills to his monsters. A new thing, but Doyle had a decent understanding of this. His kobold town was the first time that his monsters would need more skills than what they came with. A bit of a shame that it was limited to monsters in a community but Doyle was sure he could work around it. Plus, as he had already pointed out, most monsters don’t really need more than their normal skills.

More importantly though, since all he had needed was a single point of Wisdom, the path provided well more than that. So after making sure all his wisdom was freed up besides the first floor and his two loot rules, Doyle confirms that he accepts the contract. Then, just like the contract said, a new combined loot rule was created and instantly used up most of his spare wisdom.

Of course he was still short a single Wisdom point away from being able to automate another floor, but Doyle was fine with that. Not that he had any other choice, what with only a single path point left. So without any other loot rules that Doyle felt like implementing he could only settle back and wait for Jim to enter the dungeon once again.

Well, not wait. Doyle has enough tasks to use up his time. So he knocks on Ally’s door to get her to keep an eye out for Jim. So much stuff to do and despite having all the time in the world, it isn’t like others will let him idle around for that long.

Akhier

Thank you for reading the chapter, I hope you enjoyed it! Please rate, favorite and share the novel. That will help me a lot.

Also if you want to read more, my Patreon ( 186 and 187 ) has two free chapters, two more chapters for only a dollar, and even more beyond that for the early access tiers.