Just Kobolds – Chapter 393

Ally orders the elder kobold to do a few stretches and jump around, getting a feel for how it can move. ‘Well, at least they aren’t unathletic. The Agility from their theoretical time as a kobold gives them base human level athletic ability, maybe a touch more. However, I feel this might be a good chance to really lean into runes and power use in general.’

Doyle pops down a male elder, ‘Well, we can manage some magic if need be. Though this guy looks even pudgier. I guess it makes some sense as the female kobolds are more easily attuned to Qi. Though it could also be my personal bias affecting things.’

Ally nods, ‘There is always that angle. Though in this case, I would certainly side with the Mana/Qi divide. They do different things and Qi is renowned for maintaining the body. The only resource that does better is those which manage to unlock stamina as a resource to actually manipulate and not get sucked into certain skills and abilities.’

Doyle, ‘Anyway, how would I incorporate the runes? Like, I can just carve a bunch of them on the floor. Hades, I will probably do that to a certain extent anyway when I do my intent carving.’

Ally points at the male kobold, ‘Buy them a skill to draw and use runes. It will likely be a bit more costly than the other skills you’ve bought, power use skills tend to be, but then they’ll start incorporating them into traps and such.

‘This will help not only us, but also the town. It won’t be much, they aren’t truly creative as they’re both dungeon monsters and non-sapient, but we don’t need that. Instead, we want them to just pull all the random runes we don’t know about and use them. It isn’t like the skill will pull from what you know—’

Doyle, ‘Wait, they aren’t limited to my personal knowledge?’

Ally, ‘—alone. And no, they aren’t limited by your knowledge. Just consider a normal dungeon, how would their monsters ever use magic? In fact, look at your kobolds, they’ve been casting magic since the start. You certainly didn’t know how to cast magic at the start.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Huh, I guess it makes sense, but doesn’t that mean I could improve all of my patterns based on crafted items by having high-level kobolds work on them?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘I’m pretty certain we’ve already covered this? Though we’re coming at it from a different angle this time. While the sapient monsters can help, they can’t advance.

‘Maybe I explained it badly? As the monsters are being created whole cloth with the skill, the system starts them with some basics. This can get you more runes and basic spells. On the other hand, your monsters that can craft will be pulling directly from your own patterns.

‘Does that mean it is possible to get new weapon patterns and such? Sure, but it won’t improve pre-existing patterns. Also, the system pulls from the local Akashic record. This works super well with you having unlocked the local rune system. After all, even if it was before magic, the Akashic record still has it all and so the kobolds can pull directly from the source.’

Doyle, ‘So I shouldn’t get my hopes up of my kobolds pulling some kobold specific weapon patterns out of thin air?’

Ally nods, ‘I’m afraid so.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘Well, while interesting, they wouldn’t do me too much good.’

They fall into silence for a bit, before Ally thinks of something. ‘Actually, it might not be completely hopeless. While you don’t have any hooks into the kobold Akashic record, we do have the monument. I’m sure they can pull something off of that.

‘At the very least, the system will have been pulling from it to learn more. Extradimensional items always have things to learn from them. Maybe not the most useful, but for a system, every bit of information is important.’

Doyle, ‘And these kobold elders, plus the fifth floor boss, are the most likely to get me access to those things.’

Ally, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say the elders are some key or anything. And the boss? Maybe if we had made her with crafting skills in mind? Though I will admit, the elders are more adept at crafting and so what they make is most likely to provide you with a pattern.’

Doyle, ‘What’s the catch?’

Ally shrugs, ‘You can’t order them to make things you don’t have the pattern for. Well, you can, in the sense that if you didn’t have a pattern for a sword, you could get them to make something which looks like a sword. But telling them to make something you don’t know of at all will result in them not being able to follow the orders.

‘Non-sapient monsters are not creative, no matter what it might sometimes look like. They’re all instincts and a healthy dose of your personal expectations for them. Though even the sapient monsters won’t be much better, though they could beat away at the task. It just wouldn’t lead to uncovering a pre-existing pattern. Well, it might already exist, but your pattern wouldn’t be created using that pattern as the base. Like how so many places end up making swords despite never meeting one another.’

Doyle, ‘So what, I just set them to make stuff for themselves and hope?’

Ally nods, ‘And cycle in new crafters as often as possible. After all, this is about drawing out knowledge from the system and not hooking into a genetic pool of knowledge like with racial languages. You’re basically playing a gacha with this. I personally advise you just set the elders up to craft stuff for the kobolds and ignore them. Natural delving based turnover will slowly work on it. Don’t expect anything before the world opens up to the rest of the universe, though.’

Doyle, ‘Eh, I have the time. I can wait. That or someone will bring me new stuff, eventually. I’m sure there are some sapient kobolds out there which will visit at some point.’

Ally gets a look on her face, ‘Eh, maybe? But I wouldn’t count on it. While beasts that gain a soul don’t particularly mind stuff like killing their unenlightened kin, those like the kobolds tend to have similar dislikes to it as humans do of killing humans. They’ll do it and some almost crave it, but those types aren’t coming to a dungeon way out here for it.’

Doyle, ‘Eugh, yeah, I don’t want to deal with that nonsense. Let whatever world they come from deal with that mess through their legal system.’

Ally laughs, ‘Except for the fact that exile is how some of those places deal with it?’

Doyle sighs, ‘Except for that, of course. Are they against capital punishment or just into inflicting their pain on others? Because I’m not exactly for either. Though I guess it would be more possible to actually figure out the full story, I still wouldn’t trust a bureaucracy with the power over life and death.’

Ally shrugs, ‘With stuff like kobolds, since sapient members are so rare they’re against death and would like it if they went out and had kids. While a sapient kobold and a non sapient kobold doesn’t have the best chance of having a kid that is born with a soul, the chance is there. At the same time, they aren’t going to force and so letting them wander around outside is the best chance.’

 Doyle, ‘Well that’s stupid. I guess the non-violent examples wouldn’t be a problem, but those out to kill their fellow kobolds? Recipe for disaster.’

Ally, ‘Oh, they don’t give this punishment to the strong or capable. They aren’t that stupid. This is the kind of thing which happens to third son’s of nobility and what not. So fifty-fifty that bribes are involved.’

Doyle nods, ‘As it ever was. Though with the system, I have to guess that pure power has more sway than I’m used to.’

Ally laughs, ‘Most certainly! Though we should get back to designing the floor. Now that we have an idea of how this is going to go, how do you want the kobold settlements to be laid out? If they’re going to be playing with runes and smithing, that will require certain things from their villages.’

Doyle, ‘Well, runes are the answer to a magiforge capable of smelting mithril without dungeon cheats. So that needs to be in place. And I’m guessing that mithril is an excellent material to fill runes in with? And what’s that called when you do that?’

Ally frowns, ‘I’m not rightly sure what it’s called? Feels like there should be a word for it, but I’m blanking on it.’

Doyle nods, ‘Same, and I feel like this is going to be one of those things that bothers me.’

Ally sighs, ‘I’ll search around on the web a bit later on to try and find the answer. Anyway, yes, mithril is a great material for making magic runes. Not all runes have to be magic of course, but those that do gain some benefits. Oh, and instead of engraving the runes, you can just make the rune itself.’

Doyle, ‘What benefits?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Well, the Mana flows through the rune faster, smoother, and with greater throughput. Maybe not at the same time, but those are what benefits the most. Beyond that, it depends on the rune itself. Oh, and various alloys of mithril will emphasize what quality is front and center.

‘Even if what normally happens is that a bit of mithril is added to another metal, instead of making an alloy that has a significant portion of mithril. Not that you can’t or that it is too rare. Rather, just a bit of mithril added to a metal makes it more receptive to enchantments and runes without compromising the original metal or alloy.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can see that. Now, let’s fill the floor with plants and such, then I’ll figure out a monster balance I want.’

Ally, ‘You could probably get away with just kobolds and critters. I don’t even know if you would need goats.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘I could, but that seems lacking in variety. Any particular reason for that suggestion?’

Ally, ‘This is the seventeenth floor and you’re planning on having a boss on twenty. After that, though, you plan to make the floors a bit more repetitive. It might be a good idea to get the people in the mindset that each new floor isn’t going to be some wild divergence.

‘So, what if from 17 to 19, you slowly add more to each floor? This one is only kobolds, while 18 can add in goats, and 19 has some wolves. Wrap it all up on 20 with everything available. Then you can do basically the same thing with the next five floors and start a repeating pattern. One where each floor is less of a singular unit and instead a connected flow.’

Doyle, ‘But I wouldn’t be keeping the terrain the same for the twenty and under?’

Ally nods, ‘And I’m not asking you to. Rather, the monster variety is what these floors focus on. Sure, you’ve championed your kobolds a good bit already, but now you can build each set of floors up around their own monster. Kobolds have that already, so giving the other monsters a chance to shine wouldn’t hurt.’

Doyle, ‘That could work? Except I would need to hit the featured monster up with some boosts after this. I’d say only the goats are equal to my kobolds.’

Ally sighs, ‘I guess it never really hit home when I was studying, but dungeons can easily fall into being one trick ponies. If you just had kobolds, goats, and assassin vines plus direct variants, the amount of paths you have would be more than enough to keep them top tier. As it is, we’re spreading our focus out over a ton of categories.’

Doyle, ‘And as with every other time we bring this up, all we can do is promise that we’ll keep an eye out for any of my future paths that seem more general.’