Ally double checks the patterns but can only shrug. ‘Just use creation with the intent of making a tree. You should be able to throw up a good oak or two with no trouble.’

Doyle sat still for a moment. ‘Okay. Not much else I can do about it at the moment anyway. Plus creation has a bit of that intent based nonsense going on anyway.’

Ready to try, he shifts his view back to the last huge room. No obvious place to begin, so he starts small. In the area at the bottom of the wooden platform, Doyle focuses and activates creation.

‘And a tree pops into existence! Not really though, it can’t ever be that easy.’ Doyle thinks to himself. Before him is a block of wood in the shape of a tree. Even the leaves are made of wood. If he had seen something like this on the internet, he would have been impressed by the maker’s woodworking skill. Since he had created it with no genuine effort it had little value to him, so with a moment of thought he deconstructs it.

‘Okay, now what did I do wrong? It feels like I am doing this nearly right. I thought of an oak tree and tried to infuse that into my creation skill. What came out was close, oh so close. It wasn’t even a copy of the tree I imagined, but an entirely new shape.’

Doyle shakes himself and then tries again. He thinks of an oak tree and activates creation. Another wooden tree takes shape and he deconstructs this failure as well. ‘I don’t have a bark or leaf material, so what is wrong? Actually, can I make leaves and what not?’

A good question, that. To answer it, Doyle tries to create a single leaf. ‘Wait that worked? Why can I make a leaf when doing just that, but my trees have wood for leaves? How about bark?’ One use of creation to make a section of oak bark later and Doyle is more confused than ever.

‘Do I have to make my trees bit by bit? That doesn’t make sense at all, especially since that would really be a tree. It would be the same sort of thing as when I was fumbling around, coating my walls with a fancy stone facade. Is this another one of those let my instincts do it situations?’

He didn’t have a better idea at the moment, so that is what he tries to do. It doesn’t work. There is progress, though. Instead of a tree made only of wood, he makes one made only of bark. Not really a step forward, but at least a step to the side instead of backwards.

Though since he managed to change the material used, Doyle attempts a tree made of leaves. This works but was more important is a sudden rush of information that flows into his mind. Something had changed and Doyle now knew what he had been doing wrong. First though, he wanted to know where this info came from. ‘Hey Ally, I just had a bunch of info put into my mind. What’s up with that?’

Ally raises an eyebrow, ‘congratulations then. What you just experienced is a skill level where you didn’t already know everything it offered. If you bring up your character sheet you probably hit some milestone. In fact, why don’t you bring up your skill list so we can check how you have been advancing since you started making the second floor?’

Doyle groans, ‘I forgot that skills would give an info dump. But yeah, lets [see how I have done with my skills].’

{Skills: Territory Control lv10 > 15, Dungeon Rules lv9 > 13, Universal Deconstruction lv8, Dungeon Pattern Database lv15, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv11 > 20, Conceptual Reinforcement lv2 > 12}

Ally taps the projected screen. ‘Yep, right there. Your creation skill hit level twenty. The rest of the skills have been leveling, but besides conceptual reinforcement it advanced the most. My bet is whatever you were trying to do was beyond your skill, but you were going in the right direction. That always helps with leveling a skill. What did it teach you anyway? You were just trying to make a tree, right?’

‘Yep, just trees’, Doyle sighs. ‘Apparently living creations actually need special handling. Monsters I got by making because of the shortcut that the database is. Since I don’t have a template for an oak tree that doesn’t fly. The trick is simple enough though. I just have to imagine the living creation growing up. With an oak tree that means starting with an acorn.’

‘Not that when I create it, the thing goes through growing up. Apparently by doing it mentally, I can skip that step. When I make stuff from a template, it runs a simulation of growth near instantly. With trees I don’t get that so it will probably take a few minutes to create one just because of the detail I need to go into.’

Ally bites her thumb. ‘Hmm, that is annoying. Do you think you will get a tree template from this at least?’

Doyle scoffs, ‘as if it was that easy. Even after I create the tree it isn’t really a tree. You can think of it as more of a living sculpture. If a limb gets knocked off, or the leaves burned off, the missing bits will grow back. Actually, this is a pleasant thing for me. Even if a tree gets destroyed, as long as there is a single bit of root still stuck in the ground, it will grow back. Not having to worry about regrowing a forest if someone gets a little too loose with their fireballs will definitely help.’

‘They aren’t trees though. My oaks will never grow a single acorn. Extra branches won’t grow. In fact, even if I put in seasons, the leaves won’t turn brown and come off when it gets cold. To get a tree pattern I would need to deconstruct an actual tree.’

‘I can’t even abuse this to spawn animals I don’t have a pattern for. Sure, I could create the body of a cat, but it would soon die. The brain won’t ever fire off a single neuron, even if I include that as a starting state in my mental model. Quite annoying.’

Ally laughs at the last bit. ‘Deconstructing things likely does more than just take it apart. You’ll just have to level it up and find out!’

Doyle sighs and rolls back his core. ‘Always more grinding to do. Though I should get back to my tree planting.’

Ally nods, ‘sounds like a plan. We are about halfway through the day after you started on the floor and I bet those founders will find out soon enough. If I was them, I would send a competent group to check on what we have been up to.’

Doyle shifts around for a moment, then settles down. ‘I don’t like the idea of someone who can make it through my kobolds getting into my second floor when there is nothing there. Not that I can do much about it, so back to the grindstone with me. Be back around if something else stumps me.’

With his answer Doyle heads back to the huge room to populate it with trees. The recent knowledge from his skill allows him to not only place trees but have more control over it. While his previous attempts technically made a tree, those trees had varied by quite a lot. Now with Doyle imagining the tree’s growth from seed, they come out exactly how he wants. His mind isn’t quite at the level of imagining it down to every single leaf. But the branches are all where he wants them if he bothers to be that specific.

He even has a plan for how to place the trees. The wood platform is high enough that an inventive adventurer could skip the room. To prevent that, Doyle covers an eight by eight square with densely placed trees that reach the ceiling. With that area covering the tunnel to the core room, even someone with the ability to fly would have an arduous time.

For the rest of the room, however, Doyle goes with much shorter trees placed sparsely around. While he could have kept the heavy tree cover there was another purpose for this area. He wanted the adventurers to see the cliff that separates the room as well as the relative bounty of herbs he plans to place up there.

Though thinking of it reminds him to actually do so. First thing is to remove a few trees from the plateau, and in their place Doyle makes four olive trees and a lemon tree. The two olive trees in the previous room are nice, but he wants to provide a bit more for those outside. After that Doyle isn’t too sure what to place. Eventually he gives up trying to figure it out and decides to try something else more inventive.

‘[Dungeon rule, store the following list of plants. Sage, pepper, mint, tea, peppermint, strawberry, and wheat. Populate the plateau with from four to ten plants, one of which must be within sight of the wood platform and the rest out of sight. For each plant to be placed randomly select which one from the stored list. Prevent more than half the plants to be of a single type.]’

The rule in place a handful of plants pop up all over the plateau including a small plot of wheat. It seems that when he was making the list, his concept of what the wheat should be had transferred over.

‘Well, that is convenient enough. I hadn’t thought of it, but a single stalk of wheat would not have been that useful. With the rule in place and the forest grown, I should be able to start placing my monsters. Though I feel like I am forgetting something. Wait, I didn’t carve anything in either of the huge rooms!’

‘That just will not do. Though speaking of the skill, so far on the second floor I have strayed from what the skill is best at. Conceptual reinforcement is meant to reinforce what already exists. However, so far I have used it to change the shape of a door and speed up some birds. Now how to use it?’

Doyle looks through the two huge rooms and stacks his stone cubes absentmindedly. ‘I think I have it for the huge ramp room. I placed those boulders to hide my monsters behind and I can take it a step further with this.’

The first thing he does to the boulders isn’t actually carving them. Instead, Doyle creates a depression in the back of the boulders. This would provide a space for his monsters to hide without any fancy skill being needed. Now though, he is ready to carve.

First, he begins with a stroke down each side of a boulder and another across the top to create a rectangular space. Within that space Doyle carves out a scene, one he had doodled many times before back in school. The illusion of a 3d space, a room extending back into the boulder. Within this room he scratches out shading to make it appear as if in deep shadows. A simple picture, yes, but it got the point across that he wanted. More space for his monsters to hide in, which was in a deeper shadow than would be possible otherwise.

As Doyle draws back from the work, he can see the shadows darken and the cubby deepens. Honestly? He wasn’t expecting it to work that well. He had just wanted space to provide a better hiding place in general without actual physical changes. Not that Doyle was going to complain. Though it made applying it to some of the other boulders much more important.

In the end Doyle applied this change to three other boulders spread out along both ridges. While he could have done it to all the boulders, he felt it was better to space them out so as to surprise others. Though speaking of surprise he adds one last trick. A simple dungeon rule that moves the boulders around so adventurers can never be sure which could hide more than it should.