[D'sP] Shifting Soul - Chapter 503 (Patreon)

Doyle, of course, doesn't just leave it at one test. After all, you never know what hidden modifiers there might be. There wasn’t, but there might have been.

Though he did figure out that territory control wasn’t limited to his influence. Rather, it applies to all territory he controls. Sort of in the name. Except what counts as being in his control has a few rules behind it. At the moment? He has only managed to control un-influenced territory when it was fully surrounded by his influence.

This was discovered during a test of whether he could make gaps in said influence. Which worked, but also doesn’t have much point. Doing so does not add to how far he can extend his influence.

The best Doyle can guess is that things are judged by the farthest point his territory extends outward from the center. A little odd when it already uses volume to judge things, but he doesn’t exactly get a say in how it works. At least not yet. Who knows what future paths might do.

All that matters to Doyle for the moment, is that Territory Control went from lv102 to lv115 bringing his path points to 125. Enough for the path. ‘[System, 120 points to Actualized Status Reorganization.]’

}

120 points applied to Actualized Status Reorganization...

20/120 - To question how the system organized your status? The weak don’t need to and once strong enough, most don’t care. Yet here you are, so feel the burn.

}

Doyle’s core lets out a flash of darkness and light. No, not strobes of light with sections of not projecting light. Rather, in this new magical world darkness is an actual thing beyond just a lack of light. A wave of energy that counters photons.

Not anti-photons though, as Doyle remembers one time reading that photons and anti-photons are actually the same particle. Which is odd, but that’s science for you.

No, this is a magical opposition like how water and fire or air and earth are opposites. And all of this is going through his mind to distract himself from the now familiar pain. The pain of having his soul shell reorganize itself.

As a structure a bit sideways to the normal three dimensions, well four with time, that people are used to, it doesn’t work like what you’d expect. Each “level”, whether under a system that organizes them for you or the free-form advancement for those who do without, can hold an infinite amount of skills.

The reason the system Doyle is under limits skills is because those are major skills developed to the point of supernatural effectiveness. Those have more metaphysical weight to them and so their presence takes up “space” like just knowing how to walk doesn’t. This is why there’s no limit on how many patterns you can know. They don’t count as much as the skill that holds them.

And at the moment, his skills are being moved, especially the stuff connected to the database skill. Doyle isn’t sure how they’re being moved, but boy! Can he feel that it’s happening.

{

40/120 - The status isn’t some sacred thing. Yet it is also a direct transcription of Who You Are. To change it is to change yourself in a way most can’t even comprehend.

}

The pain changes as the shifting skills begin to move in a new direction. Not as in starting to move left after having moved right. Rather, it was as if it started moving upward, except it had already been moving in all the traditional directions and then some.

{

60/120 - Growing pains are a natural part of life. But is it actually pain? Or does your mind simply interpret it as pain?

}

And things once again begin to shift in another unknown direction. Through it all, Doyle can think of a single response to that last bit. It most certainly is pain! Oh sure, maybe it is mental anguish over the change or some other nonsense, but mental pain is still pain!

{

80/120 - You’ve drawn in paths from beyond. Experienced souls in the void. Glimpsed at the edge of the infinite. Now you look inward.

}

Doyle gets tunnel-vision for the messages. Using them to maintain a hold on what is going on. Because now? What his soul shell was doing could hardly be described as movement, being so far beyond normal dimensional movement. Really brings up the question of how much of this the system is controlling and how much is his soul naturally rearranging itself after the system catalyzed the change.

{

100/120 - Earned +50 Intelligence and Destiny, Your soul shell has been hardened to the third level.

}

Doyle’s thoughts freeze up. After so many strange messages, it felt stranger that this time it was normal. Well, mostly normal. The second reward there was strange.

{

120/120 - You are your status and while you can’t change yourself on a whim, how you portray that to the world is more fluid, Your understanding of self has adjusted the path [TRINITY]

}

Doyle almost falls asleep from relaxing after the sensation of his soul shifting recedes. Though he doesn’t quite manage it both because as a dungeon core, he doesn’t sleep and because now he can tell that the souls is always moving, if only a little.

Also, once again the second reward is strange. What did it mean the Path was adjusted? Especially since that was the Path he had already started and so should have been locked in place. ‘System, show me my started Paths.’

{

Started [1/3]: [TRINITY] 110/900

}

Doyle’s core leans forward and dims. It had cost a thousand points before. Obviously the 110 points from before wasn’t changed, but what would reducing the total cost by 100 points do to the rewards?

Would each point now have more rewards? Or did this change simply mean the path would complete sooner at the cost of receiving 100 points less in rewards. And if that is the case, does it take it off the top or bottom? Because Doyle wouldn’t mind if the rewards for 111 to 210 were gone, but 901 to 1000 would be painful.

Not that where you got the rewards on the path seem to necessarily change how big, the reward is. Though Doyle had noticed a tendency for the actual abilities to come later on.

But that isn’t important right now. The second to last reward. While it might sound surface level. “How you portray that to the world”, would seem to indicate it was simply a cosmetic change. Except that strips it of context.

The previous part specifically calls out not being able to change oneself on a whim, and the “portray” part modifies it. Besides, this wasn’t the “make your status look pretty” path. It’s in the name, the path is about actualizing a change to one’s status. To not simply portray it, but to make an actual change.

Doyle pulls up his database skill to check on the patterns and is witness to chaos. Now, this isn’t some “nothing yet everything” where he saw “behind the code” or some other nonsense. It was more like alphabet soup. All the patterns, all at once.

And, like with alphabet soup, Doyle can swirl a metaphorical spoon through it and jumble it all up. He sighs and thinks to himself, ‘This is going to take a while,’ and sets about trying to organize things.

This takes a while. So long, that he paused well before it’s finished to take a step back and judge how things are coming. And it’s a bit of a mess.

{

bricks lv99, vines lv99, shrubbery lv62, grass lv54, vial lv34, quartz synced polymer lv32, wooden hinged box of preservation lv21, cart lv20, clothes lv11, seaweed lv1, weapon patterns lv50, armor patterns lv10, herb patterns lv52, tree (earth [-20lv]) lv77, strange dungeon stone lv62, charcoal lv58, standard air mix lv56, clay lv55, glass lv50, water lv42, dungeon soil lv42, cloth lv27, leather lv12, wax lv6, volcanic rock lv4, sugar lv70, herb patterns lv55, wheat lv48, sunflower lv42, olive lv40, salt lv32, bread lv16, lemon lv14, strawberry lv14, ant lv99, kobold lv98, brown bear lv34, axebeak lv30, razer fox lv24, insects lv23, horned rabbits lv17, permafrost lynx lv17, horned lizard lv13, squirrel lv12, wolf lv36, cattle lv42, assassin vine lv46, shrieker lv27, violet fungus lv26, udoroot lv21 myconid lv70, golem lv33, goat lv97

Alchemy Patterns lv27: Moota’s coagulant, minor cure all, pauper’s fix

Gem Patterns lv95: quartz polymer

Trap Patterns lv27: kobold traps, mineshaft traps

Metal Patterns: iron (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv43, copper (earth, water, air, and fire [-5lv]; crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv31, tin (earth, water, air, and fire [-5lv]; crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv29, gold (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, silver (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, mithril (lv20) lv20, lead (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv17

Mystic Energy Storage Patterns: sealed quartz mana cable lv99, quartz mana cable lv99, mana stone lv30, spirit stone lv30, monster stone lv30, psicrystal lv30, karma star lv30, luck stone lv30, elementally energized crystal lv30, prana lotus lv30, bloodstone lv30

Array Patterns lv21: simple world energy gathering array for individuals [lv14] lv21, tiny area right angle gravity array [lv1] lv3

Enchantments lv21: Preservation [lv12], Unbreaking [lv10, 12, 20], Sharpness [lv10, 20], Impact [lv10, 20], Piercing [lv10, 20], Magical Efficiency [lv10, 20]

}

Besides re-separating out a couple sub-tables, most of the work went into merging patterns. Similar to what Doyle had done already with the myconid pattern, except even broader. An example of this being the entire table of weapon patterns being collapsed into a single pattern called weapon patterns.

However, there was three patterns that didn’t nearly collapse down and four sub-tables that didn’t lend themselves to the collapsing. A particular thorn in Doyle’s side being the metal patterns. Because not only are each of the metals important, but they also have individual elements they can be imbued with.

In other words, a real mess that couldn’t just be collapsed down. At least with the potions sub-table, now called alchemy patterns as there are things like weapon oils, there were only three special cases.

Then there was the fact that it wasn’t sorting by level anymore. A relatively minor detail, but Doyle felt it looked bad having it all mixed up. To him it honestly looked like he was cutting and pasting in pieces from elsewhere.

Doyle also wasn’t quite sure what to do with the arrays and enchants. There were only a few of each. He could even just have them as individual patterns, floating free. Except it felt important to keep them together.

This was partly because they had a slightly nonstandard presentation. Instead of pattern levels for each array and enchant, there was a level for those categories in general and then versions of each for different levels of effectiveness. It worked, but mixing them in with other patterns had the chance to get confusing.

And while Doyle would love to standardize the level variance into a single pattern. That wasn’t how it works. The effective level isn’t based on the skill with which you draw an array or the quality of an enchantment. The two are more like writing. As long as your handwriting isn’t so bad others can’t read it, writing “See Spot run.” will be the same printed or in cursive, sloppy or neat.

With arrays, the difference is more obvious. Each new level of effectiveness was like adding more words or changing out words. So, “See Spot run.” becomes “See Spot charge at you!”.

Not that there aren’t benefits to a higher quality low-level array. Smoother lines, higher quality medium for said lines, and so on can all have effects on the final result. One of the biggest being that the arrays will be more efficient.

Which, while useful, might not seem the biggest benefit. Except efficiency is a big part of how many of an array or enchant can fit. There is only so much energy in an area to run an array. A masterwork item can only handle so much power flowing through it.

Thicker Influence - Chapter 502

Figuring Out Monster Patterns - Chapter 504