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[D'sP] Permafrost - Chapter 474
🕑 Added 2025-09-26 09:23:18 +0000 UTCOver the next few weeks, Doyle plays around with his new monsters. This netted the brown bear pattern a few levels. Though in the end, he sticks with just having them on the third floor for now. Not that it didn’t drive Jim a little crazy with him receiving reports of bears popping up seemingly randomly across the floors.
And honestly, Doyle could have kept at it for a good while longer if not for an important change. The second portal was finally attracting beasts on its own. Now, it wasn’t pulling in bears or anything.
A couple lone wolves, both quite hungry, had shown up separately. Another squirrel entered, but this one didn’t leave. On top of that, there must have been a burrow of rabbits nearby as some elderly bunnies filtered in.
Not that something showed up every day, mind you. More like every other or even every third day. The big catches? Doyle got one over that time period. Some sort of Lynx showed up and it wasn’t a normal beast.
{
Permafrost Lynx pattern acquired at lv17
}
{
Permafrost Lynx
S[8+2] A[10] C[6+2] I[7] W[5] P[5]
Max Skills: 2
Available Skills: Stone Claw lv5, Frost Bite lv5
Cost: World Energy[60]
}
Ally, after seeing the new pattern, clapped, ‘Congratulations on your first dual-element monster!’
Doyle, ‘I’m pretty certain I’ve other monsters that have more than one element. I think?’
Ally shakes her head, ‘I don’t think you do? Though I could be wrong.’
Doyle, ‘Yeah, I’m not seeing anything? Maybe the Ashen Cattle with fire and earth? Wood? Fire and something.’
Ally shrugs, ‘That’s a close one, I guess. Though I think there, the name comes from what it looks like instead of a connection to ash itself. Anyway, the lynx clearly is of both Ice and Earth. Visible not only from the name, but also the two skills it has.’
Doyle, ‘Cool, I guess. Is there anything particularly special about it? Because I don’t really have a place to put I right now. Everything is either temperate or hot.’
Ally shrugs, ‘Oh, there isn’t anything too special about having multiple elements. One of those tradeoffs, similar to the divide on how to handle class paths. The purity of following one path or the versatility of multiple.
‘Though permafrost itself can end up going down the path of the truth of “Frozen Earth”. After all, what is rock if not frozen lava? So if combined correctly, permafrost can become quite powerful, and the duality combined into a purer whole. Sort of like combining fire and ice to make temperature.’
Doyle can’t help but admit that does sound interesting, but in the end there still isn’t a good place to put the cat. Which if Jim knew, he would have been quite relieved. Just the bears showing up had caused him enough trouble.
Though the relative weakness of his bears and any new monsters he might get that aren’t counted as goats or kobolds did send Doyle down another rabbit hole. How strong does Strength make you? Which, while Doyle couldn’t actually look at the status of his delvers, didn’t mean he couldn’t learn through other means.
The most common of which is that a shocking number of people had a habit of talking about their statuses while delving. Either because they trust their team or for a few, because they tended to read their status under their breath. Which maybe others couldn’t hear, though that is doubtful with how the very stats they’re checking can boost a person’s abilities. But Doyle certainly could.
So, as more time passes a Doyle fully focuses on watching his delvers. Well, after he asked Ally. And in theory, she knew the answer.
Ally, “But only in theory. The reality of things is that what ten Strength for humans on this planet means differs from what it might mean on a planet where civilization hasn’t formed yet and is completely different from what it means for a Fae.”
And she wasn’t wrong. While 10 Strength, in theory, is the starting average adult strength of a human in this universe. The reality of things is that “average” means little over the entire population of a universe where some humans might develop in a high-gravity planet and start with a magnitude more strength. While at the opposite end, a race of high-tech humans might have self-selected themselves into barely being able to even support their own bodies, instead depending on advanced technology to manage.
And it certainly didn’t help that Strength seemed to improved the body in a less than predictable fashion. While most of the time, the growth seemed to follow a logarithmic curve, everyone seemed to have their own points where growth would surge again. Admittedly, the most common points were at ten and one hundred.
Though Doyle only learned about the point at ten from listening in on how kids were growing, hitting ten at puberty. Oh, and he already knew that hitting a single point of Strength was magical in effect as it took whatever bodily power was there before and finally set it to the system’s standards.
And throughout all of this, there was one thing that helped Doyle and Ally figure out what the local average was. The fact that despite everything else, gym bros managed to survive the apocalypse. In fact, there was a fully equipped gym just outside of the inner circle’s walls.
This revealed a few things. For one, while a person’s weight did have some effect on how much they could bench press, it wasn’t as much as used to be the case. And this was across all humans. Especially if a person trained or did physical labor at all.
So, how much could a normal person bench press at 10 Strength? About the weight of the average adult man. If you weighed less than that, you might lift a little less and if you weighed more, you could bench press somewhat more. But much to the chagrin of the gym bros, being a burly guy didn’t mean being stronger than others anymore.
While being malnourished would negatively affect a person’s physical power, that was more of a debuff than an inherent weakness. And if a person went hard on training? Not normal lifting weights in the gym training either, but intense training and actual combat. That person could push their physical power quite a bit further and yet stay compact.
Not that Doyle didn’t know some of the last part. He could already mess around with what “Strength” meant for his monsters. Though how training worked was slightly different.
As Ally put it, each point of Strength had a bit of wiggle room in the same way that a kitchen scale might read a pinch of salt as being one gram, when it is actually a little more or less. Except, each point of Strength is measured separately, and so the difference can add up.
Doyle just found this to be overall annoying. It made the specifics of a stat more wishy-washy the higher the stat was.
Ally nodded when he grumbled about it. ‘Yep, at the high end sometimes you don’t care if they have ten or fifty more points in a stat. There are even some systems out there that simplify magnitudes of power by shifting the decimal place once you advance enough.
‘Which has an elegance of its own, I must admit. Though it doesn’t quite provide that feeling of “number go up”, this system provides. After all, going from 9.9 Strength to 1.0 Strength can feel disappointing. Especially if this isn’t your first advancement and under our system the number would actually be 1000 Strength.’
Which, fair enough. Though Doyle honestly didn’t care one way or another, probably because he no longer had a human body, so Strength didn’t equally being able to lift crazy amounts of weight.
Not that he couldn’t already lift simply fantastical amounts of weight. It just didn’t feel as primal when you’re basically doing it via telekinesis. Especially if you consider the weight of the dungeon as part of his weight. Because that really screws with the weight to lift ratio. Being able to juggle trucks like they were toy cars isn’t as impressive when your own weight compares to mountains.
Much more impressive for a human to be able to bench press a ton at around 90 Strength. The limit on practical ability to lift out in the field tends to be more based on the structural integrity of the ground and what your lifting. Though as Doyle watched carefully, not even that fully limited them.
Ally nodded and explained when Doyle pointed it out. ‘Yeah, I think I mentioned this previously, but you don’t really get it until you see it in action. By regular physics, you couldn’t lift that tree up by the branch because the branch would break. You wouldn’t be able to do so because you’d first move your own body and likely also sink into the ground.
‘However, part of Strength, especially the higher you go, is metaphysical. Your pre-system super hero comics ended up explaining this with concepts like touch-tk where when in contact with something, the hero spreads a field around the object allow them to lift buildings despite the fact it really should crumble or have a small section break off in their hands.
‘This isn’t quite the same since touch telekinesis is its own thing. Though the idea is the same. By being strong enough, your very strength transcends the physical.’
Ally flies up off her seat and twirls midair. ‘Flight is on the table for everyone after a certain point because eventually, all stats allow it. Get strong enough and your very steps will press the air into platforms you can stand on. Be wise enough and convince the world to support you. Or, the fun option, be lucky enough and through chance things will line up such that you just happen to move through the air for some reason or another.
‘The same is true for teleportation. Magic can manage it first, then technology. However, beyond a certain point, raw stats are enough. So strong you walk through space itself. Smart enough to figure out the exact way to move yourself elsewhere without moving. Charming enough that where you want to be wants you there so much it pulls you there.’
Ally shrugs, ‘Of course, there isn’t a set point for being able to do those things and techniques can manage it early. A sword cultivator type can slice open space well before raw Strength can do so. Which is handy as most people don’t want to wait for one of their stats to hit the thousands at the minimum before being able to do so. It is simply that using raw ability tends to be less resource intensive than using magic or sword techniques.’
Doyle, ‘Well, that’s cool. Except it doesn’t feel like getting thousands of points in a stat is all that hard. I’m going to easily hit that point and there are people with over a hundred in a stat with only twenty or so levels.’
Ally, ‘Five digits, not four. Though some might manage it with high four digits. And that’s just the minimum. We’re talking people having a thousand levels under their belt to get to teleportation, not a hundred.’
Doyle, ‘That still doesn’t feel like much. After all, it isn’t like some pre-system games where each subsequent level costs a ton more experience to hit.’
Ally, ‘The problem with growth tends to be world-based because levels are a representation of how dense your power is. If you’re in a low-Mana world, it is hard for Mages to level up past a certain point simply because it is hard for them to pack more Mana into themselves.
‘Not that a high-Mana world makes the lower levels easier. The local power density is more of a soft-cap on your level. And yeah, very few places in the universe have the energy density to support those who want to level up to 1,000. In fact, most such places are within dungeons. After all, the world energy gets denser with each floor.’
Comments
Akhier Dragonheart
The other portal is far enough away that the two portals have a significant difference between when the sun sets at each
SerpentiCat
Actually, are Doyle's entrances on the same continent / in the same part of the planet or far away enough for large difference in pre system species to be available in the areas around each of his entrances? I don't know how far Doyle's territory around the outside of his first entrance stretches but if it's even just somewhat close to the forest it might be worth sending at least one kobold gathering team to gather stuff they aren't familiar with and figure out how big the difference is. Heck it still might be worth it for the different plants that can develop under magic and other energies influence. Like back during the first community collapse event, Ally can cast an under illusion on them and lead them through the town in the early morning before many people wake up and start filling the streets or late evening when streets empty. Getting through both gates might be problematic depending on when they are open and closed but there must be a way to sneak through somehow. As long as Ally can hold the illusion on the kobolds until they enter the forest without her leaving Doyle's territory, and they are made to return to that same place only at specific time that's best to return at for Ally to pick them up, this should be doable.
SerpentiCat
" So strong you walk through space itself. " Yeah, this doesn't work in my mind. Though this does: "So strong you push through space itself."
