Dungeon’s Path
Might Have Worked – Chapter 300

After chatting a bit more with Ally, Doyle goes off on his own to try some things. The easiest being whether he really can’t make angel equivalents on his own. While it would take a while for Ally to get any information from the two deities they were friends with. He had a couple ideas to play with in the meantime.

Most of which failed. Not that Doyle had expected anything different. After all, his very first attempt was to pile up some rocks and try to shove power into them. If that worked, then there was something wrong with the world, as far as Doyle would be concerned.

Of course not that such a thing can’t work. Doyle was just as equally certain that somewhere out there, at least a few people could manage such a thing. The difference being them having the skills and paths to make it work. There might even be some deities who can make the lowest rank angels in such a manner.

After all, a lot of classic golem stories are literally just a figure of clay or mud in the shape of a man with the right magic applied to them. Though it also revealed another thing Doyle lacked. The right magic.

Sure, maybe a golemancer or whatever they’re called could turn a statue into a stone golem with a single spell. Except Doyle doesn’t have that spell. He wasn’t going to look for it either as he placed a lot of doubt on whether it would actually be that easy.

Because just as some older stories made the creation of a golem seem simple enough. Once you got into RPGs and such, the actual process seemed to balloon in cost and needed material. Not that it stopped Doyle from trying all kinds of partway attempts.

Whether it was something as simple as writing the word truth on a clay man or making a hyper realistic stone statue, Doyle tried so many different methods. In fact, the whole truth thing almost worked. The clay man shuddered, which was the closest he had gotten.

Doyle even suspected that if he knew how to write the word in the traditional language, it might have worked. Now, it wouldn’t have been an angel, most certainly. Also, it wouldn’t have worked because it was in that language and thus “the correct” language or anything.

Rather, Doyle suspected that it had almost worked because of his Conceptual Reinforcement skill. Because of his knowledge of the original myths and legends in relation to his world, there was more conceptual force behind such a thing. In turn, using the original language’s way to write truth would have worked because he would have been able to put more of the concept into it than just writing the word truth. After all, in his language you couldn’t erase part of the word truth to make the word death like you could in the original.

Though in the end, Doyle admitted he would have likely only ended up with a gimmick golem. After all, while maybe not everyone knows the classic golem story, it isn’t a forgotten myth either. So the second someone familiar with it came along, a golem made in that style would become simple to defeat.

Doyle, however, could see those outside trying to figure out how to make them. After all, while having such a glaring weakness on their foreheads makes for a bad battle bot. It, in turn, makes for a very useful domestic servant, which fits the story pretty well. After all, if anything goes wrong with the golem, you just turn it off.

In theory, they aren’t even completely useless to Doyle. While at the moment such a golem would of course be pointless. Later floors might see them becoming useful npcs for a fake town or some such. It opens up potential for so many annoying things to face the delvers with such as escort quests and defending against a siege.

Not only that, but Doyle can feel that there should be a better way to make a golem like that. After all, the myth likely came from somewhere. He just needed to find out what the seed of it was out in the wider universe.

They’re not angels, though. At least, Doyle doesn’t think they qualify. Not even Ally knew what set angels apart from golems and people. After all, on the low end, you could have a literal ball of light whose only defense is to shine a flashlight in your face. Then at the top you have apex sapients with power beyond most mortals.

Yet none of that is unique, except the system very specifically sets them aside as angels. Though as Doyle tinkers with replicating them, he begins to piece things together.

If Doyle is right, he technically already had “angels” as it were. While deities aren’t as capable as dungeon cores. They are similarly natural to the multiverse. So what if angels are to deities what dungeon monsters are to dungeon cores?

Of course, deities clearly have more free rein in creating them and having the go out and affect the world. Doyle’s control of his monsters being restricted to his dungeon. Except, it isn’t like a deity can just send their angels to whatever dimension they like. So maybe the number of dimensions a deity is worshiped in might be similarly as limiting as dungeon cores are to their floors.

That and with how much bigger a dimension is? Of course, a deity would have a larger number of angels they can field. After all, when Doyle gets to the point of floors the size of a planet? The number of monsters on said floors might be even greater than the number of angels a lower deity gets.

Still no closer to custom monsters than before. Except the golem idea isn’t the worst. Not the classic golem, though, but the rpg golem.

Those later iterations were actually weaker than the classic. What with the classic being indestructible to anything besides their creator and the removal of the word? The rpg golem replaces the very specific weakness, instead turning them into normal monsters, if generally more magic resistant.

As for why Doyle decided to focus on golems after all his angel tests? It was because of two factors. The first was material cost.

In most rpgs Doyle had read, the creation of a golem required massive investment of funds for things like giant blocks of granite and what have you. A cost that Doyle can easily sidestep, what with being a dungeon and having the ability to easily create such things out of nowhere. Sure, the materials also generally include stuff like rare oils and powders which he doesn’t have. However, it is magic so he figures he can replace them with other stuff he already has.

As for the second reason? The creation of a golem required the crafting of their body. The classic example is having to carve a stone golem from a giant granite block. And here Doyle is with his endless carving practice and the skill Conceptual Reinforcement which would likely improve the final product.

Of course, if every time a golem gets destroyed, Doyle has to re-carve the thing. It certainly won’t be worth it. What he is instead betting on is that after making a few he will get the monster pattern for it. At least something like a “statue pattern” so he can skip the time-consuming step. That, or more unlikely, maybe the golems won’t count towards his monster points.

The last bit is honestly a coin flip to Doyle. After all, the reason monsters are limited on a floor isn’t because of some artificial system based mechanic. Rather, the points represent how much passive power draw he can support. If a monster ever becomes fully real? They don’t count against that number if they are provided with what they need to live.

Doyle could see it going either way with golems. Using normal summoned material would likely make them like any other monster. If instead he for instance, spawned a giant block of granite as fully realized loot, he might be able to make a golem that starts out as fully real.

There is also the possibility that because a golem runs on magic, they never stop needing to take up monster points. Though this thought drags his attention away to something to do with the points. Farm zones. Doyle has been using them for a while and never realized that they don’t make sense.

How can the farm zones make it so that the monsters cost only a tenth of the upkeep? After all, it isn’t like the restriction is system based and the farm is simply a thing put in place to make better self sustaining floors. Why did they need fewer points?

This question ended up taking a week and change to find the answer to. Even asking Ally didn’t help as the system only said what a farm zone did, not how or why. Though in the end, Doyle found the answer.

It was simple, really. A farm zone was simply meant as a place to grow monsters and not meant for them to fight. With information like that, it wouldn’t be hard to think such a space should actually require more power, not less. After all, growth always takes more than just sustaining something.

However, this is where another quirk with how dungeons spawn monsters comes into play. Up until now, Doyle had been thinking of monster creation like blowing up a balloon. An outer surface of solid reality with a bunch of dungeon matter bulking up the rest of it.

This isn’t wrong, after all, there is a reason you only get a few steaks when killing one of the cows on the sixth floor. The reality of the cow is condensed down into that steak and all the dungeon matter that would vanish if you tried to remove it, goes away. Such a sharp reduction in mass shows just how close the balloon analogy is to reality.

There is more to it than just that. Though, after some thought, Doyle was able to fit it within the same balloon analogy. The major change was that the regular monsters are not regular air filled balloons, but rather water balloons.

So, while the water still runs out when you pop the balloon, the water gives it more heft. On the other hand, the monsters in the farm are just air filled balloons. And while that air is a lot easier to maintain and costs a lot less to fill, you aren’t going to do much if you toss one at something.

Though admittedly, this is where the analogy breaks down. A farm animal is supremely vulnerable to damage. Then the moment they enter the dungeon proper? The rush of extra power strengthens them to the point of being as combat capable as a normal member of their species.

An interesting discovery, but more than that, Doyle thinks this discovery will actually help with the creation of a golem. After all, his original reason for looking into it was because he realized how much less power a monster in a farm zone needed for upkeep. Now, he wasn’t going to claim the only reason he failed to create a golem earlier was not stuffing it with enough power.

What he was willing to bet, though, was that the act of creating a golem should be a lot cheaper to do within a farm zone. That was, in a way, the purpose of said zones. To make the creation of new monsters easier so he didn’t have to keep spawning new monsters.

Though that last bit suddenly lit a light bulb in his mind. While Doyle was certainly going to carve up some of his own golems. What if he used a farm zone to allow his kobolds to carve up their own golems?