Doyle nods, ‘that is good to know. For the near future, we can easily avoid it. Plus it is cheap enough I can pick it up whenever I need to.’

Ally shrugs, ‘don’t assume it will stay cheap. It might be one of those paths that scales quickly like the class paths. Maybe the points needed double every time you take it?’

Doyle’s core shifts back and forth, ‘eh, true enough. It doesn’t matter too much at the moment, though. I am still sitting here in the middle of a void that needs filling. Let me run my idea by you.’

Ally pauses, ‘I would be more comfortable if the portal from the last level didn’t dump right out into the core room. Tell me what you plan to do and I will weigh in after.’

Doyle brightens, ‘So the small rooms tend not to do much in slowing down enemies. This is fine for the first floor, as it is honestly more of a soup kitchen for the town outside at this point. I want my second floor to at least prove more of a barrier to those who can beat the kobold room. Since I have over double the energy limit on this floor as I did the last, I want a couple huge rooms.’

‘Important to this is that the second floor has enough space for it. We had small, medium, and large rooms so going by that pattern the huge room is 12 small rooms wide. The floor size is 24 to a side which lets me fit two of them perfectly.’

Ally raises her hand and Doyle nods at her. She lowers her hand and asks, ‘what about all the extra space you have? I mostly ignored it on the first floor, but you have a sphere of space to use. Other dungeons tend to make floors flat because they are building one floor on another. Your dimensional shenanigans makes that not the case for you. Hell, even if you limited it to a 2d plane you still have a circle to work with, not a sphere.’

Doyle coughs, ‘well, hmm. I do plan to use that later on. In fact, for the huge rooms I plan to have the terrain more hilly than a three meter height would allow. I must admit though that an enormous part of me doing it like this is so I can display it on an easy-to-understand grid. Also, something I just thought of right this moment! That extra space leaves me room to do non-adventurer related things later on. For instance, I can use the edges as a space for people to dig mines into for ore. It also provides places for me to have a breeding area so later levels don’t depend on me spawning stuff. Though now that I think about it, would that work? How would that interact with my point limit?’

Ally claps, ‘That is easy enough to answer! Anything native to your dungeon that has levels has to be paid for. From the newborn baby goat to the eldest kobold, you have to pay for them. You don’t even get a discount if their level is lower than the floor’s minimum. Though they do mature to the floor’s minimum, so that’s nice.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘ah, best used for later levels then. Even with a couple thousand energy to use on the floor, that doesn’t leave me space for a kobold village to feed the floor. Maybe a goat farm. Anyway, I want two huge rooms to the right of my core. That will take up half the floor. Those rooms will be extra hilly and hide a bunch of herbs.’

‘The entrance will be in the upper left like on floor one. To the right of it a large room. Below those along the left side another pair of large rooms. Connect the upper one to the large room on the right by way of a medium room. Maybe stretch it a little so it is wider. To the right side of the left two large rooms add in another really long hallway like from floor one. In fact, add another below that to connect the lowest large room to the huge rooms on the right.’

‘Though now that I think about it the large rooms are a bit too open in some ways. Mostly in how they let people just walk across them. I can throw some terrain to break up openness a little. The huge rooms will have enough terrain to make up for it. Yeah, that sounds about right. Though I will mention that the long hallways are for the axe beaks before you judge them. Those things seem to like to charge straight towards their enemies and I figure giving them some room to get up to speed isn’t a terrible plan.’

Ally stretches out and squints, “hmm”, ‘That could work. The two large rooms would be a marvelous place to put most of your goats. It would let you have that goat breeding farm you wanted off to the left.’

Doyle brightens up, ‘Ooh yes! That works doubly well. The assassin vine kills a horned rabbit every once in a while, but the axe beaks will hunt them more aggressively. Of course I will have the horned rabbits hopping around. Plus the horned lizards. Wait a second. Are these just normal horned lizards? Like, the ones with spiky scales or is it horned as in like my rabbits?’

Ally shrugs, ‘I have no clue. My bet would be on the normal one just because reptiles tend to grow in power a lot faster and a horn might put it over the critter limit. Pull up its stats and check what the preview shows.’

Doyle nods, ‘that’s a good idea. Why try and guess when the answer is literally just a thought away? [System, show me and Ally the preview of the horned lizards].’

In front of them both, a window opens up with an image of the lizard and answers their question. It is the boring option, though with a slight twist. The lizard on display is a classic horned lizard with its squat round body that has given it the nickname of horned toad.

Different from expected is the size and color. Horned lizards tend to be small, hold in the palm of your hand small. This lizard however is quite large. In fact, going by the reference it is likely a smidge bigger than the rabbits. As for the color? The main body is still a sandy brown, though maybe darker. The lizard’s limbs and spikes however shift over to a deep forest green.

Ally tilts her head, ‘it looks odd, but I can see how the color would blend in. The axe beak’s description mentioned living in the valleys between mountains. This coloration sort of reminds me of some sparse grass growing on a patch of dirt. Not by much, but likely enough to fool the idiotic axe beaks. For everything else they have those giant spikes of theirs.’

Doyle agrees that, ‘yeah, those spikes are big enough to warn off most predators. The axe beaks are probably one of the few that can eat them in their natural habitat. Anyway, before I get too distracted by the lizard, I should start actually laying out the floor.’

Ally nods, ‘true that. I will monitor the first floor in case anything happens.’

Doyle sighs, ‘it will probably take me a good long while. I plan to make full use of my concept skill.’

Ally shrugs, ‘take all the time you need. There isn’t really anything else to do.’ Then she flies back into her room and watches the displays for the first floor.

After Doyle sees her off, he turns back to his second floor. The first thing he focuses on is the skeleton of the floor. He can fill in the details later but the sooner he has the blank rooms out the sooner he can move the portal out of his core room.

A few hours pass as Doyle creates room after room. The only limit is the speed of his creation skill. This makes it dead obvious when the skill levels up. Once right at the start and a second time bringing it to level 11 when he is almost done.

Besides that, his basic room pattern adds on the huge room. Though unlike with the other patterns, it didn’t create another collection under it. Instead, the pattern just removed all mention of room sizes. Doyle’s best guess is that once he has other room types, they will combine. Still, he was happy with the basic layout of the level.

This seemed like a wonderful break point. So he decides to show off what he has done. ‘Hey Ally, I have the blank rooms all set out. Want to take a look at it?’

In her room Ally stretches out and yawns, ‘Sounds like a plan. The adventurers have been boring today. No one has even attempted the big goat room. I think the founders out there have gotten more restrictive till they can get some oaths about the energy well stuff.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I don’t blame them. It hasn’t even been what, a month, since the whole end of the world thing? Then I go and throw a new curve ball at them.’

Ally shrugs, ‘honestly, I am impressed they realized the implications of it right away. Those who haven’t grown up with the system don’t always understand the importance of such things. A single plus one can seem to lack luster even at lower levels, but the boost it gives you long term is critical. Especially when you consider that even with nothing fancy, most humans under the system can live to one hundred years old easily. But all that aside, show me what you got!’

With a chuckle, Doyle opens up another screen in her room that displays a top-down view of the second floor.

Ally whistles, ‘ooh nice. I can see what you meant with those two large rooms. With the difficult terrain there you can force adventurers to either go the long way around or tempt fate. I assume those are boulders stacked up? Because that is brilliant! The goats will be able to climb all over it easily, and anyone that wants to shortcut will have to deal with them on their own terrain. And I guess those tunnels off to the left of those rooms lead to the goat farm?’

Doyle nods despite Ally not being in the room to see him. ‘Yes, exactly. Also, the two long hallways are for the axe beaks and the large room just before will feed prey to them. By doing it that way and ordering the birds to stay at the far side they should get some training in on charging. And the boulders will provide a place for the horned lizards to live.’

Ally smiles, ‘you’re right. I almost forgot about the lizards. Though I do have to ask about that huge room before the core. There isn’t anything that would stop people from just following the wall and avoiding whatever is in the room. After you went through the effort to prevent that with the large rooms, I guess you have a plan?’

Doyle chuckles, ‘Since it worked so well on the first floor, I plan to have a kobold community there. With the terrain I plan to put down, adventurers won’t be able to just snipe them and the extra space will let them cause more havoc. It wasn’t obvious at first, but believe it or not, kobolds aren’t the best in a straight up fight. The ones that did the best in that last fight where the mages because they could stand back. I figure a sizable room will let them really show their worth.’

Ally traces the outline of the room with her finger. ‘Hmm, that is true for the moment. However, you shouldn’t get stuck in that thought process. While the most common view of kobolds is sneaky trap makers that isn’t the end all be all of their species. They might not be the spawn of dragons, but kobolds have a primal heritage. The fact there aren’t that many monotremes left around doesn’t mean they are weak.’