The only problem with Doyle wanting to use the sound of a hurdy-gurdy was he didn’t have one. As luck would have it, though he had at one point got excessively interested in them and their history. So while he couldn’t make a perfect copy, what he could make would get the sound he wanted. And it isn’t like he would be personally playing the thing. Rather, the sound would mostly be automated and more of a constant drone instead of music.

Doyle takes a dive into his memory to dredge up the workings. The simple shape of it was easy to remember. Like a string instrument that lost most of the neck, and a hand crank at the bottom. Then you stick a box on the front with some key things sticking out of it and a wheel below that.

It was the wheel that mattered and took way longer than Doyle wanted to admit to remember that it was resin covered. Well, rosin covered but all that means is a solid form of resin from pine trees and similar. That was a deep rabbit hole from the past. Anyway, the rosined wheel acts like the bow of a violin. This is actually what causes the creepy droning sound it can make. Unlike a bow that has to be drawn back and forth causing stops in the sound, the wheel just spins. Maybe faster, maybe slower, but never stopping.

Of course, there are other things involved such as the empty space inside that allows it to resonate, plus presumably other noise affecting bits and pieces. But Doyle feels he can ignore most of that stuff for now. In fact, he can ignore the keys as well. All there needs to be is the strings, wheel, and resonating chamber. None of which are of any difficulty for him. Even the wheel spinning is made easy through the use of strange dungeon stone.

Since all he wants is a spinning motion, the stone will be quite efficient, spinning on practically no energy. With that planned out all that is left to test some things. The strings are made with goat gut creating the classic catgut cord. Yes, the name is catgut and yes they were usually made with goat guts. Then the rest of the body is wood. Not one specific type, but rather a variety to get different sounds out of them. Though for the rosen, Doyle uses simple pine sap with the volatile liquids removed. And for the wheel’s size? He varies that as well.

The only problem from all his experiments with the pseudo hurdy-gurdies that he made is there are too many for the floor. While there is a decent amount of space to play with, sound can travel quite the distance. Then it hits him. While it can travel a large distance, he happens to have a bunch of fog on the floor already that messes with sound. With a small tweak, any noise made by his hurdy-gurdies will now fall off quite quickly past five or so meters depending on the thickness of the fog. Though even the thinnest amount of fog will still cut the noise off soon enough.

That solved, Doyle begins to place them all over the floor, using the variability of the drop off to create interesting effects. The planned overlap causing strange shifting areas where you can hear multiple of them fading in and out with the fog. As Doyle takes a mental step back from the floor to observe, he has to laugh. While he wouldn’t ever want to use zombies, a floor like this would be perfect for them. Strange moaning instruments, odd structures, and an omnipresent fog covering the area? Just the recipe for an old fashioned horror movie. Though he admits to himself that the actual structure of the area lends itself more to lovecraftian nightmares.

As he thinks of that, Doyle shifts over to the next part, the monsters. As it is, most of his current creatures don’t really fit and that is a problem. He could flood the floor with kobolds but that doesn’t feel right. After taking a step back and thinking over his options again, though a few stand out. Of course, the kobolds, but also the assassin vines, lesser shadow wolves, and the myconids.

In fact, the lesser shadow wolves and the myconids fit the floor supremely well, at least in his mind. Though for the wolves Doyle does need to finish one other step, the lighting. With all the fog on the floor, he is going to need quite a bit more than any previous floor. Maybe even more than all the other floors combined if he wants it to be even half lit. The only problem is making sure that when the fog is thin it doesn’t look like high noon. An easy enough thing for him to fix luckily as he has to place even more lights but make them all dimmer than usual. Or rather, just use less of his magical LEDs in each light blob.

Lights out of the way and the floor is even more perfect for the lesser shadow wolves than Doyle had expected. With the odd geometries and strange spaces, the light casts shadows that seem to almost shift despite nothing moving. The very way the light has to travel through some areas warping rays into curves and angles.

As Doyle preens over his work, an idea wriggles into his mind. Every single floor up until now has had kobolds on it. Does he really want to become so predictable? Even his goats aren’t on every floor.

Doyle shakes his core, of all the floors this one screams kobolds because of the structures. Every other floor was more of a natural setting. Now that he has finally made a place with actual sapient style structures, it was the perfect time to not use them. At least for the first few dives, the lack of kobolds should really confuse the delvers.

Though this does create another problem for him. The only magical support is going to be the lesser shadow wolves and they are quite limited in what they can do. The magic they do uses more instinct than spell. But the more Doyle looks at the floor the he is okay with it.

If he seriously tried to put together an all star caster team for the floor, it would cause a massive difficulty spike. Maybe not as much as the fourth to fifth floor but already building off of the heightened difficulty, it would be a problem. So sticking with just a few magical wolves should be enough.

However, before bothering to place any monsters, Doyle decides to work on the farm because he has a plan for the myconids. And of course, what better place for the farm than the giant solid sphere in the middle of the floor? So after a little work said sphere has had a number of rooms hollowed out and a proper farm zone put in place. While the previous floor could handle not having such a thing, everything on this floor is going to be expensive. But first, the test.

Doyle places down a couple spawns of myconid sprouts and observes them grow. This was honestly a bit like watching grass grow, but much faster and something about being a dungeon core made it interesting. Not exciting or even enjoyable. Rather, just not boring or a drag. Doyle feels like he could watch them grow until the end of time and as long as nothing interrupts him the time would seem to pass without notice.

Odd dungeon quirks aside, Doyle is happy with the results. With more than enough points on the floor, each of the sprouts happily grew up into a lesser myconid. And beyond that, the sprouts and the lesser myconids all released spores that soon enough grew into normal mushrooms and then more myconid sprouts.

Better yet, the home grown sprouts all started at the smallest size and Doyle was able to pause their growth at whatever stage he wanted. This means he is no longer held back by the randomness of the sprout spawn. No more will he spawn in some only to have a few big sprouts when he wants a swarm of them. Now as long as he has some kind of farm area for them he can custom design the 100 point groups.

The only catch is that 100 point group thing. Because even though he can make a single sprout worth single digit points, that one sprout will still cost 100 points. That means while he can have less than 100 points worth of sprouts, it will still cost the full amount. Worse yet, if the sprouts separate by too much, they end up counting as multiple groups, so he can’t just have a bunch of lonely sprouts spread through a floor for the cost of one swarm.

Though when Doyle takes a closer look, the identification of them as a swarm begins to have more meaning. Each swarm of sprouts has an actual connection to one another. It isn’t magically but rather some strange pseudo power like intangible nerves stretched through the air. As one sprout gets close enough, it will have a connection snap into place. The only limit Doyle can see is that every creature in the swarm has to be within a certain distance of the rest of the swarm or it can’t join. A sprout could be literally touching another but not connected, as another sprout in the swarm is just that little bit too far away.

Satisfied with the limits on the sprouts Doyle begins to fill out the floors loadout. Oh, who am I kidding? Doyle gets distracted. With the realization of how the sprouts work, Doyle tries to test the limits of this. It takes a ton of points but luckily he could cut down on actual points spent by spawning sprouts and allowing them to grow into lesser myconids.

And once he had a large collection of the lesser myconids, Doyle tries to start a swarm of them as well. This doesn’t work, sort of. They cannot form a swarm but they did cause another interesting change. When about six of the lesser myconids get a little too close together, unnaturally close as they avoid getting that close without outside urging, they meld.

What they don’t do is form the next stage in myconid growth. Doyle tried to grow one already but they seem to get stuck, probably a level limit. This abomination, however, is different. Well, not an actual abomination, rather, the System calls it a Lesser Myconid Troop Guard.

{Lesser Myconid Troop Guard (Lv9)

S[20] A[3] C[60] I[3] W[3] P[12]

Skills: Physical Damage Resistance Lv6, Poison Lv4 Grapple Lv3

Cost: World Energy[600]}

It didn’t have a description but from looking at how it fought a dungeon wolf Doyle set against it for testing the purpose was clear. When the lesser myconids start to meld into one, all of their gills fall off, covering a large area in spores from which more than the usual number of sprouts managed to form. Then the mushroom flesh almost seemed to liquify and puff up while mixing until one solid color, shaped like a starfish except with mushroom stalks for legs.

This extra spongy flesh seemed to be the key to the physical damage resistance. Because while the wolf was able to take a bite out of it, the flesh quickly sponged back out and filled in the space. From there, the guard didn’t even need to do anything as that flesh was where its poison was located and so the wolf ended up semi paralyzed.

Doyle despawned the wolf so as to not cause undue suffering but could tell that without treatment it would be dead. So, the next wolf was told to not munch on it. This meant the guard was able to make use of its grapple skill. As the wolf clawed at the guard, it in turn wrapped its legs around the wolf. Once under control, the guard used one of the legs to tear a chunk of its own flesh out and stuffed it into the wolf’s mouth. While this didn’t seem like the most effective method of combat to Doyle, it seemed like something that would work quite well against normal monsters out in the wild.