Dungeon’s Path
Magic Doesn’t Fix Who You Are – Chapter 309

With the addition of Tess’s fledgling healing magic, the teams of Ace and Jim can progress in beating the tenth floor without pushing. They were worried about how she would handle the floor. It would be perfectly reasonable for her to have some form of negative reaction.

Whether that was to shut down or go berserk, they expected the worst. Now, not to say that when she first returned, there wasn’t some stuff for her to work through. However, while she certainly wasn’t 100%, Tess worked through those things slowly and could properly rejoin the effort.

Tess had a fire burning inside her, and after her vision quest had been reborn. While she wasn’t going to forget the past, this was like a new life and she wasn’t going to squander it. Though she was definitely more in the tradition of healing sorcerer instead of medical wizard, as it were.

Doctor and Tess worked together to try and get her up to speed on how bodies worked and ways to better target healing. They really did try, both of them. Tess just wasn’t one for that kind of thing.

Her healing spells worked based on burning away foreign contaminants and at the same time returning the damage to a pristine state. On the other hand, Doctor’s spells worked with the body and tended to take effect over periods of time instead of righting things in a flash. A good example to display the differences is how they heal a wound with an arrow still lodged in the person.

Now, of course, the more efficient way to handle this no matter who is doing it, is to first remove the arrow, but that isn’t always possible. With Doctor’s magic, the wound will heal from inside to out and as it does so, it will push the arrow out. While quite efficient, it still causes some damage to heal the rest as the arrow isn’t going to come out cleanly.

Tess’s magic is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. It’s flashy and over in a moment. The magic basically disintegrates the arrow in the wound and at the same time puts everything right. Of course, if her magic isn’t able to fully destroy the arrow it will still be stuck in there. Though her magic will have smoothed any sharp points, dangerous edges, and rough spots so it causes less irritation.

And in the dungeon, Doyle is quite satisfied with this. While it does make it so they can progress faster, they are producing more cruft for him to process. Whereas before, they were extra careful not to get hurt, with Tess the focus has changed to faster take downs of the various monsters.

Not that they are slacking off when it comes to defense. Tess disabuse them of that, right quick. There would be no trading of wounds under her watch.

Still, in their drive to finish fights faster, they are putting in more effort and so soon after Tess returned to delving, Doyle had gathered enough sapient energy to build his next floor. Though he didn’t jump into it right away. He had been letting something else slide for a while now and to make the next floor as good as possible.

Suffice it to say, Ally was less than happy when she realized Doyle had been putting off taking care of his paths. ‘What do you mean you’ve not even looked at it?’

Doyle tilted back and dimmed, ‘It’s, it’s just a thing I guess? Something from being human that apparently stuck around. I’m alright with keeping on top of things for the most part, right until I’m not. I guess it was when I suddenly got that level up without having a chance to do anything?

‘This happened a lot to me in the past, especially with stuff like social media and chat groups. I’m keeping up with things only for me to go away for a while. Then I come back to tens or hundreds of unread replies and it becomes so hard for me to even open them up to check.’

Ally nods, ‘Yeah, becoming another race doesn’t “fix” people. You’re still you and that’s perfectly fine. Sure, missing an arm? That will be fixed, no problem.

‘But who you are? The quirks that make you, you? Sure, there will be stuff caused by messed up brain chemistry that after there is time to adjust, might end up less wonky.

‘However, that’s all stuff that can be handled with the correct healing magic or at least managed with regular medicine. The person you are because of or despite all that? Not going to go away. A man who has lived their life with a limp won’t suddenly start walking without one if you fix his leg.’

Doyle grumbles, ‘I wasn’t ever one to look to get “fixed”, though there were certainly cases of people much worse than me who it would be nice if we could help. Still, shouldn’t magic be able to handle this kind of thing? I mean, sure, mind control and stuff isn’t cool in this dimension, but that can’t be a universal rule or there’d be no point to make note of it.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Even with magic that can literally change your mind, there isn’t some easy fix. If everything that was you, was in your brain, you wouldn’t be sapient. Part of what makes each person unique is their soul. So no matter how much someone messes with a person’s brain, it won’t be able to truly change any underlying stuff.

‘All stuff like that does is hide the problem. It’s like covering a nasty hole in the wall with a picture. Out of sight, out of mind! Except the house still has a hole in it, even if others can’t see it anymore.’

Doyle sighs, ‘You would think that with magic, there would be a magical solution.’

Ally, ‘You’re looking for miraculous, not magical. Though not even deities can mess around like what you’re thinking of. Maybe a True Immortal could manage it. Maybe not even then. After all, this is dealing with the soul.’

Doyle, ‘Well, I guess I better look at what I’ve gained. I don’t think I’ve touched it since before the eleventh floor.’

{Skills [6/10 Class, 3/5+1 General]: Territory Control lv99, Dungeon Rules lv83, Universal Deconstruction lv99, Dungeon Pattern Database lv53, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv99, Conceptual Reinforcement lv99, Biosphere Balancing lv75, Psychology lv84, Village Planner lv39}

{Points:143

Class: Dungeon Core III 100/100, Awakened Dungeon Core II 10/10

Location [2/1 I]: Heritage Kobold Community I 15/15, Communities of Myriad Heritages I 15/15

Completed: Goat Supremacy 20/20, Energy Well I 3/3, Commanding Subordinates 12/12, Ageless Queens 15/15, Earth’s First Home of the Limit Breakers I 1/1, Biomes Aplenty 5/5, Potion Dispensary 10/10, Elemental Animals 5/5, Cows for Milk 12/12, Vegetation Variety 20/20, Divine Border 1/1, Know Your Enemies 10/10, Pathfinder, [UNIQUE] 1/1, Community Driven 10/10, Monster Rancher 50/50, Community Builder 30/30, Extra Accommodations 75/75, Energy Well II 6/6, Kobold Community II 30/30, Engraver 5/5, Boss Builder 50/50, Energy Well III 18/18

Started [2/3]: [TRINITY] 31/1000, Monster Rancher II 30/100

Available: Awakened Dungeon Core III 10/100, Awakened Spatial Dungeon core I 0/1, Dungeon Core of Awakened Intent I 0/1, Axe Sharpener 0/5, Fire’s Flying 0/7, All the Potions 0/60, Clan Head 0/25, Five Cornered Square Initiate 0/100, Raising The Floor 0/100, Into The Infinite 0/60, Floors Within Floors 0/10, Phrenic Friend 0/120, PsiBane I 0/200, PsiBoon I 0/200, Deep Rules 0/500, Time Will Wait 0/500, Voidborn Expansionist 0/330, KinBane 0/120, Godly Diplomat 0/600, Heavenly Gatekeeper 0/1005, Mural Mayhem 0/20, Elemental Animals (Aquatic) 0/5, Swarm Tactics 0/10, Golem Crafter 0/60}

Doyle, ‘Okay, what’s up with the 99s and I’m pretty certain I’m missing some paths.’

Ally inspects the paths. ‘Huh, I wasn’t expecting it this early. It looks like you’ve traveled far enough that some previous paths have changed. For example, it looks like the “heavenly gate” and “gatekeeper” paths merged into “heavenly gatekeeper”.

‘It looks like you also have a modified path up for grabs. The “elemental animals” path that specifies aquatic likely showed up because you made an aquatic area. I wouldn’t take it though. While not a negative, you could see it as a trap of sorts.

‘While I’m not 100% certain. I’m willing to bet that if you take it, the path will convert your higher chance at animals taking on elemental evolutions and turn it into a greater chance of doing that for water. I suspect you aren’t looking to focus on water animals.’

Doyle, ‘Eugh, nothing against water, loved to swim, but there is a reason water dungeons have a bad name. Humans aren’t exactly designed for it and that’s my client base. Anyway, let’s circle back to the 99s. What’s with that?’

Ally shrugged, ‘You’re missing something. As in, they all likely need some sort of realization to advance and it isn’t something that the system can just shove into your brain. Not entirely certain why the conceptual reinforcement is there? Might just be that it stopped at level 99 and it isn’t stuck. Though the other dungeon skills will likely stop at 99 as well.’

Doyle, ‘What in the world can’t the system inform someone about? There are people outside who have gone from no knowledge of magic to wizards.’

Ally, ‘I think I mentioned skill bottlenecks before? Maybe not. Anyway, I definitely talked about how skills are a part of your soul. Now, most bits and bobs that deal with skills can just be thrown on top. 

‘However, there are certain aspects of a skill that hook in deeper and the system has a hard time with that. I guess that technically the system could give you the knowledge? It just wouldn’t be worth the energy expenditure and so it waits for you to lay the foundation for it to build on.

‘Now, even among awakened dungeon cores, none would have be awake at this stage of development, so I can’t confirm anything. However, basically all dungeons plateau in skill for long periods of time and I’m going to guess this is the first. That means you will probably want to look into filling your other skill slots, because your dungeon specific skills aren’t going anywhere.’

Doyle, ‘Do you know what the difference is after they start growing again? As in the dungeons. After the first pause, what is different? I might figure something out if I know what they have become capable of doing.’

Ally shrugs, ‘If it was that easy, I would have mentioned it with the rest. What is new, is different for every dungeon. They’ll just have been missing something, only to suddenly have it. A fun example was a dungeon that could only make hallways.

‘It took a couple centuries, but eventually it figured out how to make rooms and suddenly it was progressing again. A worse problem with this is that ignorance isn’t just a you thing. Any being directly connected to you will also suffer from this issue. That includes me, so even if I go and look through all the things you should be able to do, my eyes will just slide right over the answer.

‘The good news is that this doesn’t stop you from advancing. In fact, since you’ve already gotten a second class path, you won’t even be behind most dungeons when it comes to skills. That is, as long as we find more skills that fit your class path.’

Doyle, ‘So as a dungeon I’m missing something key and until I figure it out, my dungeon skills won’t advance? How will that work with my database skill?’

Ally, ‘Well, seeing as it is the lowest skill you have besides your most recently acquired one, probably not much for a while. Also, I suspect that the actual patterns won’t cap, just the actual skill’s level. Besides, this doesn’t stop you from growing your dungeon. Some of the biggest dungeons out there fall under this limitation.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough, I guess you don’t need a master architect to keep building houses. You just need one when you’re trying something out there and new.’