It took three more attempts on the boss floor before Doyle was able to start on his seventh floor. A bit off from his expectations but that is because the Founders changed their goal on the fifth floor. Instead of each dive being a proper attempt to conquer the floor, they instead started to try and feel out how the various enemies responded.

The first attempt by the town at actual strategy instead of depending entirely on tactics. To be fair to them, they didn’t need to strategize on the previous floors. They could just roll on through and curb stomp the enemies. Even the wolves were more of a matter of learning a gimmick instead of needing an actual plan. After all, there isn’t much thought behind “kill it before its friends arrive”. If the rest of the dungeon hadn’t been so segmented by room, they likely wouldn’t have had so much trouble on their first attempt.

The change worries Doyle as his sixth floor is technically just smoke and mirrors. Sure, it would take something special to break through the portals but he doesn’t put it past them. But overall, that just means he needs to fix that with his seventh floor and he has the right material to do it. The dungeons version of Applied Phlebotinum, Strange Dungeon Stone. Capable of doing almost anything but so gosh darn expensive.

From how Doyle understands it, other dungeons that aren’t based on twisting space into a pretzel would use it to make portals and such. He, of course, doesn’t need it for that, but that just leaves everything else. Over the last week various experiments had been done and the main problem was obvious but also the incredible uses.

A simple enough example is that he wasn’t yet able to temp control an area such that magma would stay molten. The SDS was more than capable of putting out heat in any direction he desired such that stone didn’t stay solid for long. Try to have more than about a square plate with sides a meter long and a floor’s passive energy use spikes like mad. Worse, it counts all the SDS on the floor so he can’t just have a bunch of small hotplates spread around to keep a magma pool liquid.

That did however mean that certain effects would over-perform on a cost basis. A small marble of the stuff set to continually suck in air could, in theory, reduce any sized space to a vacuum if given long enough. Sure, if someone created a bunch of air it would take just as long to clear the area but it provides some fun uses. And with those limitations in mind, Doyle reached into himself once again and pulled out the power, sunk into the void, and established a new floor.

{Seventh floor dimensionally anchored

World Energy cap +3700 [Constitution(37) * 100]

Seventh floor spending limit set to 17300 [Previous floor’s limit(13900) + Intelligence(34) * 100]

Monster level cap updated

Classic Mystic Energy Storage pack 50000we

Quintessence debt paid back by 5}

Seeing the strange pack being offered Doyle turns to Ally to ask her about it only to find her in the core room with him. ‘So, uh, do you need something? You’ve never exactly been one to leave your room.’

Ally shrugs, ‘I noticed the change in scenery. Been a while since your last floor. Though I guess it was inevitable things would slow down. You can’t exactly be making a new floor every few days.’

Doyle nods his core, ‘True enough. While the cost to make a new floor isn’t rising fast, it isn’t the easiest to get the human sourced world energy. At least not as easy as I thought it would be. Seems that it only counts energy gotten by damaging someone and not just the general exertion in the dungeon. And even then, not all injuries are worth the same. Anyway, with the new floor I was offered the classic mystic energy storage pack for 50k world energy. A bit pricey, but the name interests me.’

Ally smiles, ‘As it should. While 50k is expensive, the system should allow you to slowly pay it overtime instead of requiring a lump sum, especially seeing as you can’t actually have that much world energy right now, anyway.

‘But yeah, what it is talking about is stuff like mana crystals, spirit stones, karma stars, monster cores, bloodstones, and the odd lotus that stores prana. You likely won’t get everything but If I had to guess the system is likely to just give you what people currently use on earth right now. With that in mind, the likely ones will be for mana, qi, monster, and life. Though depending on how close some of the eastern locations actually were to certain practices, you might net something for prana.’

Doyle dims, ‘Why does monster get its own category and what is prana specifically? I heard of it in reference to Buddhism and Yoga but there it just means something like life force or breath in general.’

Ally nods, ‘Monster is simple enough and has more to do with that being the polite term. Non-sapient monsters aren’t going to be picky and only absorb mana from the air, or some such. Sure, a few species will be picky but that is the exception. The so-called monster energy is a melting pot of every other energy available in the area.

‘Mind you, it is a unique energy type. You can’t just mash all the various energies together and expect it to work. But on the other hand, most people will look at it as more of a degraded or corrupted version of world energy. Your world is too new to the mystical powers for natural monsters to have cores yet so dungeons will likely be the only course for the next few decades.

‘This is important because while they are hard to use for training. The cores make excellent power sources for general purpose magic items that aren’t enchanted. Want a magic lighter? Only the rich will go through the trouble of getting the body made as a masterwork so it can be enchanted. No, the way common people manage it is runes and a core to draw energy from. As long as the core isn’t used up, it will be able to slowly recharge off of whatever energy is around you.’

Doyle coughs, an entirely false construct seeing as he doesn’t even breathe, but it gets Ally’s attention. ‘This is interesting and for cores alone the pack would be worth it. The various uses might even be why the pack was offered in the first place. But you’ve not gotten to my second question. While I don’t have much else to do for the immediate future as the seventh floor fills out, but I do have other things to do.’

Ally nods, ‘Got into my info dump mode again. Anyway, both prana and qi when they coexist on a world will claim that their side is the source of the other. The reality of it is something they seem to have a hard time understanding despite a supposed focus on the balance of things and yin yang. I won’t go and say one is the yin to the other’s yang but only because that would imply things about their relationship that just aren’t there.

‘Sure, there are some generalities to the two that I can mention. Qi tends toward the physical while prana is more spiritual. They both require a bunch of meditation to gather properly. And taken to the extreme both have terrible outcomes. Unfettered qi is a nightmare of power hungry, self centered, individualism. Unbound prana results in neglect and a sameness that ends in becoming one with the universe except what you actually become a part of is a prana fueled afterlife.

‘But those are just the extremes. In moderation, you have martial artists and monks, wise teachers and preachers, and of course protectors and defenders. Qi and prana, two sides of the same coin and yet eternally separate. Your world should definitely have qi but I will be interested to see if prana is around as another generalization is that young worlds tend towards qi, while the older ones end up favoring prana. Even before the system came, your world would count as quite young and post system? Well, civilization has been set back quite a bit.’

Doyle nods, ‘That is interesting. I have to wonder if any surprise powers will pop up when I buy the pack.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Chances of you not getting something unique is nearly zero. Those things I listed are just the common ones that you can find on basically every world barring special circumstances. Every place will have its own unique quirks. Well, not unique per se, but most certainly rare. Hard to get anything truly new under the sun when you start taking into account the void and how even true immortals traveling at mind breaking speeds can’t reach the end.

‘Not that it will be useful. Despite how games like to portray it, rare does not equal powerful. You’re just as likely to have a couple versions of mana, but not. Mana is an omnipresent power because of how general it is. You can have fire mana, you can have divine mana, and if you really want, you can have anti-mana. But in the end, it all is covered by mana.

‘An example of what you might get is a mana mimic that only works with fire. You would think that something so specialized would be powerful but it isn’t. Mana is a transcendent power in most universes, which means it can take any of its aspects to normal immortality. Even if the specialized copy cat can reach that far it will never surpass mana.’

Doyle coughs again, ‘I think you might be a bit wordy after not being able to talk as much. While normally I would be up for listening, the floor has filled out and I want to play. I have a rough idea of how to play with the new floor but nothing is finalized.’

Ally laughs, ‘You aren’t wrong about that. Before coming here, I had no one to really talk to. Well no, talk at, I had no one to talk at. Even the maids would leave if I tried to talk their ears off. Thankfully you don’t have ears to worry about losing.’

Doyle chuckles, ‘I can see it now. You really get going and the sides of my crystal just fall to the ground and shatter. But yeah, maybe later. As time passes an urge to get going builds. Feels like another instinct I wasn’t aware of is kicking in. Would make sense as well. Don’t want a dungeon to make a floor and then leave it empty. Even if this isn’t a natural part of being a dungeon, the system is doing its part instead.’

They go back and forth a couple more times but soon enough Doyle is focused on the vast area he now has to play with. An area that can easily fit a square of his small rooms with 45 to a side. Seeing as each room is about three meters to a side, that means there is 135 and change meters to play with.

This isn’t actually all that much space though when taken as a flat area. About a fifth bigger than a ball field. Not that Doyle would swear by that. He wasn’t the most sports minded of people. But he could fix things so there was a lot more usable space. Not as much as the sixth floor, but that floor cheats for it. Though the answer comes from there.