Doyle turns back to his status, ‘Welp, now I can focus on making the thirteenth floor. Time to finally figure out what my new monster even looks like.’

To get to that step quicker, Doyle doesn’t even wait for the 13th floor’s main expansion to finish. Instead, after a quick check of the new floor’s stats.

{Thirteenth floor dimensionally anchored

World Energy cap +9,700 [Constitution(97) * 100]

thirteenth floor spending limit set to 61,320 [Previous floor’s limit(51,240) + Intelligence(84) * 120]

Monster level cap updated

Quintessence debt paid back by 5}

Doyle went and threw together a small room and summoned his unnamed avian.

First impressions? At first glance, it looked like a raven or a crow, except bigger. In fact, judging by the size, it would compare to a raven similar to how a raven would measure up against a crow. Not quite a doubling, but almost.

Not only that, but it weighed too much. Something like an Eagle of comparable wing span would weigh at least half as much. In fact, a number of features like how birds usually have hollow bones are missing. To replace all that physical fine tuning evolution had forced birds to go through, there was magic.

While not able to hover motionlessly, magic allowed the monster to fly like any other bird. And it wasn’t just boring magic that offset weight or forced the air to hold it up. Each feather had a small fiber of magically attuned material.

Alone, each feather could only cause a miniscule change in how air flowed over it. Together, their effects multiplied with one another until as a whole, they allowed the much too heavy bird monster to fly. More than that, it pointed towards a foreign world that developed from the start with magic.

The strange dance of magic around the monster represented a place where birds evolved, but the complexity to make them fly was shared across not only the physical, but the magical as well. Wherever these monsters came from, were there any creatures that could fly without magic? Or was this sort of thing restricted to what the system would refer to as monsters?

Either way, these would make fine monsters for his new floor. Though maybe if they had taken after eagles instead of ravens, they would blend into the environment better. Shiny black feathers are not the most stealthy, at least compared to more earthy colors.

Then again, ravens make it work, so who is he to complain? Though just settling on calling them raven-like is a bit sloppy. As the system had mentioned, the birds were going to fit right in with the hexape golems, what with being hexapods themselves.

Tucked away under the main wings are a small pair of wings which seem to pull double duty. While in the air, it can flap them to cause a sudden and magical change in direction. If not in flight, though, the ends uncurl to reveal a delicate pair of graspers with pseudo-opposable thumbs.

Not only that, but the rest of the body has a restrained quality to it which points towards being more humanoid in shape. The beak is squatter and while still strong enough to crack nuts, is clearly not meant for poking stuff. The legs and claws have shifted so they can walk around instead of just waddle or hop. That and more make the monster take on a certain quality.

They weren’t quite in the uncanny valley, but certainly a valley close by. Even the basic structure of their face leaned towards a certain look. Though Doyle could tell that their species was further away from sapience than the kobolds or myconids.

Those two had a history of sapience behind them and it tended to be more of a question of when, not if, a community of them will have a member gain a soul. Of course, gaining a single sapient isn’t really that important in the long run. Rather, it is a question of if that one can kick-start others into sapience.

After all, anything can become sapient in the right circumstances. So if an individual sapient isn’t able to pass down their gift, it is at best a shot in the arm for that sapient’s group. All greater meaning being lost without the extra depth a sapient’s free will provides.

Of course, for this bird to be in the system means it got noticed and didn’t have time to develop, so likely failed to go anywhere. Not that Doyle is quite certain how he seems to know all this. It seems that dungeon instincts have a lot more depth to them than he thought.

Some might want to blame it on the system, but Doyle can tell it isn’t. Instead, it was more of a bubbling up of knowledge gained from having multiple similar patterns. Strange, but overall, not too helpful at this specific moment.

What was helpful was the information gained from expanding the small room and putting the bird through its paces. Those smaller wings allowed for some impressive mid-air maneuvers. Beyond that, they could let off an emergency attack of sorts.

While the sudden burst of air they could release wasn’t exactly deadly, it wasn’t going to be pain-free either. A shame that after a single use, the smaller pair of wings will have exhausted their magic reserves. Though seeing as this feature was likely developed to fight off other flyers, if the monster still needed them after that attack, they had likely already lost.

Of course, as dungeon monsters, a “last resort” type of attack really means “every damn encounter” if Doyle doesn’t put a limit on the use. And after some consideration, he doesn’t. While a powerful gust of wind is going to be, well, powerful when combined with a cliff.

In the end, it would likely be deadlier if the monsters held it back. Not just in the dungeon, though, which is what made up Doyle’s mind. Wildlife is mutating and evolving at a rapid pace and if Doyle’s dungeon doesn’t start stocking animals, but magical, it isn’t going to do a good job preparing people for nature.

Of course, stuff like his kobolds can already use magic, but they’re kobolds and people don’t know what to expect out of them. The real problem will come from animals that still look like animals and yet have some ace-in-the-hole ability. A regular snake can be dangerous, one that bursts into flames after it wraps around you? An unforeseen nightmare.

Though as Doyle thinks of that, he marks it down as a future monster idea to look into. While giant constrictor snakes are dangerous, the system stats mean only the new delvers and the weakest back liners won’t at least be able to resist. In fact, Doyle is half certain that a Strength focused tank might not even be crushable by a normal constrictor.

Then again, even a normal constrictor is probably getting a strength boost at this point, so who knows? Not Doyle, that’s for certain. Having been found so quickly, he had a less than stellar view of how things are shaking out in nature right now.

Doyle shakes his core and turns to his other new thing for the floor, mithril. A magical metal, sometimes seen as magical silver, other times as a completely new metal. Except if he remembers correctly, it isn’t actually magical by default.

Rather, its main property is that magic flows through it really easily, like how a copper wire can carry electricity without all copper being electrified. Now, that Guild lady had suggested against giving a spellcaster boss a wand with a mithril core and Doyle wasn’t considering it at the moment.

Instead, he was thinking of his new avian monsters and their extra magical smaller wings. It would take some work and probably require the kobolds’ help, but some sort of accessory they could have on those wings might be useful. Plus, it would be a good way to reveal the existence of mithril, as well as protect the tiny ore deposit he plans to add to the floor.

Though since mithril isn’t magical, that does raise the question of just what it is. The matter would be so much simpler if mithril was silver, but with magic added. No need to adjust the periodic table or anything. That, however, didn’t seem to be the case.

Now, Doyle didn’t exactly have an electron microscope and his ability to sense things wasn’t quite at that level either. Still, going by the light weight of the metal, mithril wasn’t far down the table in some magical plateau of stability. In fact, now that he was examining the metal so closely, he would compare it more to aluminum than he would silver.

Well, except for the feel. Doyle hadn’t handled many precious metals as a human, but real silver coins did show up occasionally in the tills. There was just something. Satisfying. About silver and presumably gold. A smoothness that he enjoyed.

From how Ally described it, mithril took that to another level. Still, that left the question of just what is mithril? It isn’t a pre-system metal, but magical. It isn’t some special element from farther down the table. That leaves what? An element using new sub-atomic particles or some such?

Doyle just isn’t set up to figure that sort of thing out. Even Ally didn’t know, though that came more from not knowing how things worked without magic. Now, there was likely some periodic table for post-magic elements.

However, the system seemed to be limiting access to such information, even for someone like Ally. That or such information is being kept secret for some reason. Doyle, however didn’t believe that second one when such a thing as a universe wide web existed.

While the saying about secrets wanting to be free works, less than one would assume. For things as basic as mithril, someone will have found out and spread it. After all, to keep a secret you need everyone in the know to remain silent. To have a secret spread, you just need one person who finds the secret to pass it on.

Doyle pauses as he considers the fact that honest to goodness mithril was now basic to him. He hadn’t even been able to spawn the stuff for an entire day yet. Still, material things, especially raw materials have little meaning to him outside of the first sample.

Now, he was sure that there was more than enough stuff out there that he couldn’t replicate. Even with his ability to manipulate quintessence, he wasn’t all powerful. Besides, certain things seemed to form not from the actual parts involved, but the meaning behind it and Doyle could only do so much with that.

Doyle sighs, for now all he needed to focus on was making the thirteenth floor both decent to delve, while also making it a roadblock for those who wish him harm. The basic design he had figured out needed changing. Before, he had settled on a spiral mountain design.

That, however, had the potential for people to just climb the sides. Not the worst, especially with the birds around to handle such efforts. Still, he didn’t want to give up the basic design of a path with a wall on one side and a drop to the other.

Oh, and a jungle on the side with the drop. Somewhere for the birds to hide and hexapes to climb. So instead of a mountain that spiraled upwards, Doyle decided on an s-bend heavy path. Of course, that still leaves the issue with climbers.

That was easy enough to fix with a small bit of looping. He just needed to wait for the floor to finish its rapid expansion. So, in the meantime, he considers the monsters to use.

Goats, of course, they’re sort of his thing. That and while mountain goats aren’t actually goats, the idea of goats climbing stuff isn’t new. Maybe some kobolds? Doyle thinks on it for a moment before deciding to limit it to that and the two new monsters. Even then, the kobolds are going to just have an encampment at the mithril ore.