[D'sP] Kinda Hard To Monitor - Chapter 508 (Patreon)

Doyle considers the two methods of attunement. ‘So, obviously pressure isn’t an option straight up. Though making some use of the principal isn’t the worst idea. Similar to the “flow of Mana through an ocean” thing.’

Ally, ‘Well, it couldn’t hurt. Especially since this needs to be earth-attuned, which means the Mana has to be moving.’

Doyle, ‘Well, it doesn’t have to have to. I’ve got portals. I can make a perpetual landslide.’

Ally, ‘That could work, but I feel you’ll get a much better quality of attuned Mana if you’re simply cycling Mana through solid stone.’

Doyle nods his core, ‘I can see that. Though given how you described things, I doubt I’ll ever have a lot of the stuff. Seems like it would be rare, even at the high end.’

Ally shrugs, ‘At least in this dimension? You don’t get larger deposits of attuned powers. Rather, you get about the same amount, but of a higher quality.’

Doyle, ‘Would just cycling the Mana increase the quality? Like, you said it picks up the attunement, so would it continue to compound?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Not by much. The limit in quality will be based on the method through which it was created. Pressure depends on quantity to increase the quality, so that small human-sized amount of fire-attuned Mana at the center is going to be some of the highest quality in the solar system.

‘On the other hand, flow will depend on the quality. So, just cycling Mana through regular stone? That will cap out because of the stone.’

Doyle, ‘How would the wind canyon have a higher quality wind?’

Ally, ‘It doesn’t have to the air that is of higher quality. The wind, the canyon, and the Mana involved can all help improve things.’

Doyle, ‘The wind? Isn’t that just air by a different name?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Nope. For instance, a canyon shaped in such a way as to create howling winds that can stun a person? Or on the extreme end, even create natural wind blades? That doesn’t have to be because the air being used is of a higher quality. The fact that the wind can have supernatural effects is a sign of quality.

‘Oh, and we’re going to be cheating quite a bit when it comes to the quality of attunement. Your dungeon ability to speed up time will be vital to get anything worthwhile. Because while the height of quality regular stone can get you isn’t going to be anything to write home about? It takes time for the attunement to reach there.’

Doyle, ‘Wait, that’s basically what I asked you.’

Ally, ‘Yes, but no. While your stated question was if leaving it be would improve the attunement, what you intended with that question? It wasn’t “will it reach the quality cap of the stone you are using”. No, you meant it in the sense of, “can I just keep it cycling and improve the attunement ad infinitum”.’

Doyle, ‘Ok, fair, that is about what I meant.’

Ally shrugs, ‘And to be fair, I could have explained it better. Now, do you have an idea to try out or are we going to hash things out some more?’

Doyle, ‘Yeah, I think I got something to try.’

Ally nods, ‘Then you can get to work on that. I’ll do a little snooping to see if anything pops up.’

Doyle turns his attention to deep under floor 21, at the heart of the mountain he had built. Because he wasn’t lying, he did have a plan.

From the sound of it, attunement was a separate thing from the power being attuned. Oh, sure, the Mana would become attuned, but whatever was causing it to do so seemed disconnected from the obvious. There were more than enough fantasy stories where entire regions would be aspected. How a massive volcano would make kilometers around it into a desert as it spread fire Qi.

Here, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Rather, attuned Mana is rare.

Doyle pauses, the Mana is rare, but he has a bunch of attuned metals and such? How does that work? ‘Hey Ally, quick question that just came up. How does attuned materials work? Like, I can’t make crystal-attuned Mana, but I can easily pump out crystal-attuned iron?’

Ally, ‘Oh, yeah, we didn’t exactly cover that, did we? Long story short, attuned materials are more like how a mage attunes stuff. You shove Mana through some crystal-attuned iron and you’ll get a burst of crystal Mana that loses the attunement within moments. Attuned powers are special because they’re stable, not because of the attunement itself.’

Doyle nods, ‘Thanks, that answered what I needed.’

And it did. Or rather, Doyle had a good guess as to what was happening. Mainly that attuned materials weren’t so much attuned themselves, as they were structured in such a way as to imbue temporary attunement. Useful, and why a fire-attuned sword isn’t constantly on fire.

More importantly for this effort, it also meant he didn’t have to bother with earth tin and copper. Well, maybe they would help? But given what he just learned? They were as likely to cause problems, depending on how the unstable attunement stacked with the stable. Though he was tempted to send the Mana through ore deposits, but decided against it. Not wanting to worry about the metal aspect.

So now ready, Doyle begins to rearrange the stone down in the root of the mounting. More specifically, since the quality of the stone matters, he was replacing everything in the area he was going to set up the attunement zone. Or whatever he decides to call it.

Not that he has higher quality stone, but rather, he has more targeted stone. Doyle had used a cheap filler for most of the area. It was basically the mutt of stones. As if you took a sample of a bunch of common rocks and mixed them together. Cheap and easy to fill an area with.

Except Doyle doesn’t want cheap now. He wants quality. So all the fill stone was pulled out and replaced with solid granite. He was tempted to use marble, but that was swankier than Doyle wanted. Granite was quality, at least by pre-system standards.

The replacement was simple enough. It simply took time. Doyle would have loved to just remove the entire area and then spawn in a single plug of stone to replace it. A shame that he is limited on how much he could remove and create at one time. It kind of made him wonder how long Flisle took to make his later floors.

Then again, Flisle kind of cheats. After all, he isn’t filling the floor. Instead, having a bunch of floating islands. Still, those were pretty big and so would take a while, even then. Though maybe he has a path for it? Doyle did feel the max he could create was increasing, but it certainly was not matching the growth in floor size.

Doyle steps back and sighs to himself. The granite was in place. This left one more physical step to take care of before he moved on to getting the Mana moving.

Doyle focused in and began to engrave symbols through the stone. He wasn’t giving it a full engraving. Rather, there was a focus on applying earth symbology. Simplistic mountain representations and what not.

Once he decided to stop, Doyle had to admit, it looked quite sparse. Except his goal had not been to fill the space. He wasn’t even sure if they would help, but they couldn’t hurt as far as he could figure.

That settled, Doyle began to compress the Mana. Before attempting to set up a flow, he wanted it to be properly dense. Doyle figured it might be harder to get the Mana moving, but less likely of it stopping than if he set it up and then increased the density. Which seeing as the movement part was the new thing, he figured making sure it didn’t get messed up was the best plan.

As for how to get it moving? Well, Doyle already knew how to increase the density and air movement worked via density, so maybe that could help?

It didn’t. Doyle tried a few different methods, but Mana and world energy seemed resistant to following common-sense pre-system rules. Which, fair enough. While not a Truth, supernatural powers tended to be anti-entropic. Except when it was hyper-entropic. After all, if magic wasn’t allowed to break the rules, what was the point?

Though that left the question of how Mana moved in nature? So he decided to ask. ‘Ally, how does world energy and such move around in nature? It doesn’t seem to react to things like diffusion.’

Ally yawns and looks up from a screen she is reading. ‘What was that?’

Doyle, ‘How does world energy move in nature?’

Ally, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a good question. I wish I had a good answer. In places with life? It develops into a flow. They go by a lot of names, you’d probably be most familiar with calling them leylines or dragon veins.

‘As for when there isn’t life around? It either continues an existing flow or settles down into stagnation.’

Doyle, ‘Well, that isn’t exactly the most helpful?’

Ally, ‘I didn’t say it would. My suggestion? Just keep poking it. I know that small flows are possible in special locations and you are a location.’

Doyle rolls back, ‘Heh, I guess poking at it is the best I can do for now.’

Well, less poking and more changing the variables. If life could cause Mana to move, how much was needed? Obviously more than a bear. Though that might be distance-related. After all, this is located in the mountain’s roots while the bear is up above.

Doyle doesn’t believe distance would matter, though. After all, leylines and such traditionally are deep underground except in special locations where they surface. So whatever it is about life that causes powers to flow, it wasn’t those lives being right next to where the flow is happening.

The only caveat is that Doyle doesn’t want to spawn monsters yet. So instead, he lays down a bunch of critters. Insects, horned rabbits, lizards. And well, yeah, that’s about it. There’s probably other stuff, but this is what he remembered off the top of his head and they worked well enough.

The horned rabbits would happily live in the little gardens of greenery. Those lizards make a home around the larger chunks of rock upon which they can sun themselves. And lastly, the insects are just scattered around to find their own equilibrium.

This addition of life, it uh, it sorta worked. A flow did start, which was a win. However, Doyle found it impossible to actually direct, let alone control. And so curious about this, especially when the floor had plant life beforehand yet no movement, he goes and takes a peek at the previous floors.

Of them, only floors five, ten, and twenty, the boss floors, have any movement. And even then, it’s less a flow and more like ripples on a pond. Which really does bring up the question of why some rabbits was enough to make Mana flow.

Doyle tried adding more critters to previous floors, but that didn’t do anything.

Doyle turns once more to Ally, ‘Do you know if there’s anything special about a dungeon’s 21st floor, the first floor after the third boss, or basically anything about the floor that would explain what I just observed?’ And he goes into some detail about the specifics of the floor on 21, the ripples on the boss floors, and a complete lack of movement otherwise.

Ally doesn’t have anything off the top of her head so she takes a day to search around. However, even after that, she isn’t sure. ‘Like, there are dungeons whose later floors have a flow and dungeons who never have a detectable flow? Though those tend to the shallow, more stunted dungeons. I can’t even say if it is possible to develop a flow on an earlier floor that didn’t have it before.’

Doyle, ‘Surely people are keeping track of the development of at least some dungeons? It shouldn’t be too hard to check for a flow on a few occasions, see if a flow pops up where it wasn’t before?’

Ally, ‘Oh, I don’t mean they haven’t done that. In the high-end regions of this universe, there are more than enough Sages, Techmeisters, Tenured Professors, Mindmasters, and so on who have bent the highest levels of mortal magic and science towards analyzing dungeons.

‘The problem with monitoring Mana flows and other similar phenomena? Remember, when someone enters a dungeon, their presence disturbs everything so much that the dungeon can’t alter things. So the only flows they’re going to detect are the sturdiest.

‘Take your example of a pond and how the boss floors have a ripple. No one is detecting that. The presence of someone trying to monitor such things is like throwing handfuls of gravel at the area being monitored.’

Doyle, ‘And of course I’m the only native awakened dungeon. So even if another dungeon has the answer, they’re not from this universe and so their answer most likely isn’t correct.’

Ally nods, ‘Exactly.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I’m going to have to give up on this and figure out some other way to imbue earth-iness into my bear.’

Fortune Attunement - Chapter 507

Failure And Fighting - Chapter 509