Doyle pauses as he tries to think of something else to add. Maybe a random assassin vine in the jungle? Besides that, there wasn’t really much need for other monsters. Well, an extra tribe of kobolds in the jungle couldn’t hurt, but that would depend on available points when the time came.

Though speaking of tribes, what kind of family structure does his new bird monsters have? Or rather, what size flock is most effective? Doyle could just throw all of them in one big murder of pseudo-ravens, but that would really murder people.

No, he wanted to break them up into small groupings so that the floor’s challenge isn’t about avoiding the giant flock of birds. Of course, with some ideas percolating in the back of his mind, it doesn’t matter where they are. All the groups will be able to join one another quite easily.

Of course, no matter what he did, the birds were going to be quite deadly. There was a reason they started at level 20. While they might cost just as much as a kobold, the birds have over five times the base stat total.

Comparing a base kobold to a base pseudo-raven shows the extreme gulf between the two. Even mentally, the birds beat out the kobolds. Despite that, the kobolds are the ones closer to being sapient by over a magnitude.

Why? Because of how the stats are specialized. Doyle took a look at the bird and those mental stats are all focused on things like manipulation of air magic to fly and not even as a conscious effort. Of course, not that humans and kobolds don’t have similar focuses.

So much work goes into pattern recognition and being able to notice faces, however those mental stats also have a focus on more general things. The birds are hard-wired and even with more points in the mental stats, it will just be growing the capabilities to fly and such. Sapients and near sapients like the kobolds, however, are able to shift what those stats are doing.

If instead of stats, this was a skill-based system, the birds gain a lot of skill levels, but they’re all already invested in flight. Humans, on the other hand, get fewer skill levels, but they can choose to get better at whatever they want. Sure, some still go to things like recognizing a friend’s face, but not even that is as locked down as it could be.

Doyle shakes his head, the birds had clearly been on their way towards sapience, but had taken a wrong turn. There were basically two methods he had learned of to gain a soul. Either you needed low enough stats with the right specializations to allow a baby to gain a soul or you needed a mountain of stats such that there was extra to handle a soul.

Of course, Doyle didn’t know the history of these birds. Maybe they had been slowly bringing down their stat totals and minimum level. Maybe they were descendants of a golden crow or some other mythical beast such that with growth they could get a soul of their own.

Either way, they were in an awkward position for it. Not that this mattered too much to Doyle. After all, he wasn’t planning on having a colony of sapient birds just hanging around.

Though it did open up a certain path, he could take. Well, “path” is a bit of a charged word with the system and all. Still, it might be an actual Path. Scratch that, Doyle was certain it was a Path or at least there were Paths related to his idea.

As for the idea? Well, he can already modify a stats specialty and it seems that part of sapience comes from those specialties. With that in mind, all it would in theory take, is to alter those specialties and it would boost the chance of a monster gaining a soul.

Which, as a dungeon in the Void would only be beneficial. While grabbing a boss soul has a more targeted improvement to his void defenses. A natural ensoulment should provide the same sort of boost it does to natural dimensions. At the least, though, it shouldn’t hurt.

Also, dungeons can’t create beings that are born sapient. However, such beings can be born within a dungeon, even if it is much harder and gets worse with time. In theory, that means he could have naturally sapient kobolds as long as they are born instead of created.

The biggest problem is making sure a non-sapient kobold would be having sapient children. Like, it obviously happens, but those are rare instances. Most should come from either a parent who gained sapience or had been born that way as well.

Despite the stat component, Doyle had just figured out. Being sapient wasn’t purely a genetic thing. After all, non-organic beings can gain sapience as well. In fact, as far as Doyle can tell, literally anything can gain sapience.

From the smallest particle to an entire dimension! It is just that how likely those things are depends on many factors and the more extreme forms have a many magnitudes harder time of it. About the only generalization is that having a mind to start with helps.

Doyle shakes his core and focuses back on the thirteenth floor. He had spent a good bit of time pondering this and so the main expansion phase was finished. That meant it was finally time to start on the floor proper, except during his pondering, he had redesigned the floor just a little bit.

He was still locked in on the original idea of a road with a cliff on one side and a wall on the other. Same with the inclusion of a jungle at the bottom of the cliff. What had changed was how he would manipulate the floor to make it work.

It gave his original idea of a mountain with the path spiraling upwards new life. Though instead of wasting so much space on an actual mountain, it would all be a facade. Also, Doyle wasn’t going to stop people from trying to climb the cliff, it just wasn’t going to be worth the time.

It all came down to how things would be connected. The basic section of the road was like a piece of paper folded into fourths accordion style and then fixing each fold at a right angle. With that, the top most section is held flat and represents the road.

Then the other three sections are a cliff, jungle, and finally another cliff. Now, the parts aren’t equal in size. The cliff face next to the jungle is a few stories high so that the jungle trees mostly top out right below the road above.

Now, at this point in the description, some might wonder about the road. Wasn’t it supposed to have a wall opposite the cliff? Sure, that could be easily fixed by moving the extra cliff below the jungle up, except then you’re stuck with an empty space on top. Doyle had a much more malicious answer to the problem.

See, normally someone climbing up a steep bit of mountain to the path above is expecting to skip a good bit of path in doing so. But what if that supposed straight line was actually the longer path? Now, normally this would be the case unless there was a ladder just down the path or something.

Except Doyle can cheat! See, that missing wall is going to be connected to the next road section. Not just any piece of the next section, either. It is going to be hooked up to the bottom of the cliff face under the jungle.

That means following the road might be only a few meters. If instead they try to climb their way to success? They’ll travel the same distance after having to climb a few stories of cliff face!

Of course, if they want they can climb down to the jungle and then travel there instead. To some degree that might even be easier. After all, the birds would have a harder time flying in that area.

Oh sure, in a normal jungle there is actually a decent amount of open space. The classic overgrown jungle is only seen at the edges and in old movies. Except, this is just a thin strip of jungle and so it is all edge. So if someone wants to trade unfettered bird attacks for trying to tromp through a jungle? Well, that’s their choice to make.

Though as Doyle began to put it together, something didn’t fit right. He took a mental step back and observed the few sections he had already put into place. At first, nothing stood out, but then as he mentally continued the work, it became obvious.

To continue this way would result in a cylindrical tower, not a mountain. Each section being connected directly to the next does not allow for a mountain shape to form. Instead, Doyle needs to use longer sections to start and slowly reduce them in size.

There will be some overlap between sections, except now if someone maps the area without climbing the cliffs? It will actually have a more cone-like shape. Though to really sell it, Doyle also makes the latter sections just a bit steeper.

That leaves working on the jungle. Because as much as he has been referring to it as such, it is still a barren strip of land. Left that way because the next step wasn’t going to be easy.

For whatever reason, he was missing trees. Doyle had the pattern for wood, bark, leaves, and whatever else you would expect to get from a tree. Just not a tree itself, which is very frustrating.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that a dungeon can get along fine without trees, he would suspect it was the cause of his bottleneck. But no, it was just a strange quirk that somehow hadn’t been fixed yet. It isn’t like he hasn’t absorbed fresh wood at this point.

Cheap spears, practically made from green wood, have become popular with the sixth floor farmers. After all, a set spear with a boar stop does wonders against an enemy that likes to charge. Now, if they weren’t cheap, they might not be quite as popular as the cattle have a nasty habit of breaking the things.

Except they are cheap. In fact, a carpenter crafting them in Wolf’s Rest is seen in the same way as a blacksmith smithing nails. A beginners task, meant to provide ample and never ending practice.

Not that all spears made in town are of such low quality. In fact, the closer Doyle looks at the situation, the more it seems the opposite is true. While many of the dungeon farmers start out using cheap spears. And to be honest, continue to use them.

The fact that a large number of people learn to use the spear over other weapons has caused them to gain prominence. So yes, there are people new to woodworking turning out easily replaced spears. However, the more skilled crafters have also turned their attention to the weapon.

If Doyle had to guess, the town is well on its way to gaining a master craftsman. That sort of thing was inevitable, but if someone decides to choose a class path devoted to spear making? That time will be pushed forward by quite a bit.

Not by the end of the year, though. No matter how many benefits people from newly assimilated worlds get to kick-start things. There is a very real bottleneck when it comes to crafting skills.

Even those who had previously devoted their entire lives to such pursuits might still take a couple years to manage it. A masterwork item by definition requires magic to be present, even if it is not inherently magic itself. The work simply requires something very few crafting traditions manage to hold on to.

A certain spirituality had rarely seen pre-system and mostly from overseas. Stuff like the crafting of the finest traditional calligraphy ink blocks. Things steeped in traditions older than the country he had lived in. Kept around not because they were useful, but rather because of the respect for the quality and traditions.