Doyle looks out over the empty floor. It is true there isn't a way to know a delver's Strength score. Nevermind the fact that knowing it wouldn't do much, anyway. Though maybe if he did something like how a rubber band works? The only problem with that idea being that he certainly doesn't have fine enough control of gravity.

Even just having multiple bands of increasing gravity is a bit beyond him right now. While having a few areas with different downs or strengths of gravity is perfectly fine, a floor can only sustain so many, let alone any attempt at making a gradient. Which sort of points towards what Doyle is using not being true gravity.

After all, you go up far enough and gravity from the planet doesn't just suddenly shut off. There is a reason satellites orbit the planet. They are still trapped within the gravity well, but are traveling fast enough to resist and that doesn't even get into the fake gravity you get by spinning things.

Doyle pauses and then turns to Ally, 'Hey, is gravity different when magic is involved?'

Ally shrugs, 'Gravity as your world understood it is technically the baseline. It is just that any amount of supernatural power instantly warps things. Now, things aren't as bad as in some dimensions. There isn't a standard gravity that applies to everything past an arbitrary size.

'However, that only accounts for an area's original size. In a similar way to how your dungeon only appears to be as big as your first floor from the outside, when more is added to an area because of magical saturation the experienced mass stays the same.'

Doyle rolls back and his core dims, 'The planet is going to get bigger.'

Ally, 'Has. The planet has gotten bigger. Not by much, there are just some areas that had enough significance even pre-magic that after the arrival of magic they expanded. Places like those giant freshwater lakes or the tallest mountains. Not that you could necessarily recognize them on a map anymore.

'The system did take advantage of the entire planet literally coming apart at the most basic level to reorganize things a little bit. You could still squint at a map and point out continents, but the smaller features are shuffled.'

Doyle, 'Fair enough, but if increased magic makes a place bigger, isn't the planet gaining magic at quite the rate?'

Ally, 'Eh, the planet will probably ra-', *ack* Ally seemingly starts to choke on nothing for a moment.

Doyle, 'Uh, Ally? Do you need help?'

Ally shakes her head and gestures for him to wait as she gets her "voice" back. Quite an odd thing as they're speaking telepathically. Though she does recover finally.

Ally rubs her throat before speaking up. 'Welp, can't tell you that. And why does my throat hurt? Sure, I prefer this over a headache, but I wasn't exactly using my throat to talk.'

Doyle, 'Why did this cause such a reaction? I can easily add two and two together here.'

Ally nods, 'And that's the problem. By the time the system decided to warn me, you had enough info already so it added a bit more punishment to my restrictions. I can't wait until this planet gets opened up to the wider universe. At least then I won't have to tiptoe around so carefully. It isn't like there is some master list of forbidden subjects or anything.

'After all, everything until that last bit was perfectly fine to teach. Honestly, even that next bit might have been fine. That is, if I had taught it to someone who hadn't already been informed of the other things.'

Doyle, 'That sucks.'

Ally shrugs, 'Well, there is a reason the information gained during the tutorial is so spotty. Each trainer has their own understanding of what is and is not allowed. And worse? They're not wrong.

'I mean, technically the system isn't inconsistent. It is just that you can end up accidentally teaching someone disallowed knowledge from so many different angles that it feels like it. It would be like being told to teach basic math, but to not teach someone about the tens place. Whether you accidentally lead someone to asking about five plus five, three times four, or what happens when you keep adding one to the result; you've strayed into an area you aren't allowed to teach.

'Then, on top of that all, you add the fact that this is for all of everything and different people will be able to pick up different things. There are reasons some tutorial guides read a literal script they pass by the system first. All because whoever made the system wants to give newly integrated worlds a chance to find their own way.

'Which sucks because that is an honorable goal! I do not begrudge you, your chance to figure things out on your own. It just makes the job of anyone that has to deal directly with newly integrated people so much harder. Those people manning the various system shops? Either there as a punishment, trained specifically to service newly integrated worlds, or secretly super competent and high level.'

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Doyle nods, 'And you got thrust into this all? Do you at least have training on handling this sort of thing? I have to assume a bunch of new dungeons pop up on newly integrated worlds.'

Ally, 'Yes, but no. I did get the training. However, the training was focused on handling an unawakened dungeon that got into a situation that forced the system to give them a fairy. Not on chatting about how the basic laws of reality now work to someone who honestly has more education on the subject than most of those already integrated.'

Doyle dims his core, 'So I understand if you can't answer, but what you just said sounds bad. While I do have a good bit of schooling, the basics of gravity isn't exactly college level stuff.'

Ally, 'Eh, people aren't being restricted from learning that type of stuff? It is just that you have a much harder time keeping kids in school when they can literally grab a sword and earn a living. So, most civilizations out there focus more on the vital stuff first, which includes learning about the system.

'That pushes back anything beyond the fact that gravity is what pulls you down, to more specialized lessons. This is especially true when you consider the fact even basic fact are no longer as consistent as without magic. To learn about stuff like that, you're either a scholar, scientist, or a caster of some sort that uses gravity.'

Doyle dipped his core down and sighed, 'So knowledge, while available, is more compartmentalized. I don't even know why I expected it to be different. With how the soul memory nonsense worked, there had to be a reason so many fantasy stories, even at the end, tended to have a less knowledgeable general populace. If I was just another person, this feels like something I would try to fight against.'

Ally raises an eyebrow, 'And you aren't because you're a core?'

Doyle nods, 'Some would call me a hypocrite, but since I'm not stuck in the same boat as my planet's people I'm not all that motivated to bother. It would require me to turn my dungeon into a library or school of sorts and I'd rather they just think of me as a dungeon.'

Ally, 'Fair enough. Though at some point you might want to examine your thoughts a bit. Natural immortals, of which fae royalty and dungeon cores are just a couple of examples of, tend to have looser connections to their race.'

Doyle, 'I doubt that is much of a problem for me. After all, remember why I ended up as a dungeon core in the first place. Anyway, I think this chat has given me enough ideas to create the fourteenth floor.'

Ally smiles, 'Glad I could help. Though after you're done, you should probably check on your Paths again.'

Doyle nods, 'Fair enough.'

Then he turns to the floor and begins to mold the space. Doyle doesn't need to do anything too fancy as he wants a more open floor design. Well, open except for the giant mycelium stalks to both break the line of sight and provide a way to get from one side to the other. He even went with normal sides instead of making some sort of infinite cavern.

There was one trick he added. The cave was shaped like a flattened egg. If you've ever had one of those holiday candies that are shaped like an egg, it was like two of those put together on the flat side. Though the tip was a bit more pointed.

That was where the entrance was. More specifically, that was where Both entrances were. Doyle placed two of them, one on top and the other at the bottom, and which would be used was random per run. As a nicety, he even made it so both would be active. That way, it didn't matter which side of the floor you were standing on, you could easily retreat.

The random entrances were just an appetizer. Doyle had the most fun with the exits. Not two or three, but ten. Spaced along the other side were five locations with mirrored exits, top and bottom. With those ten? Yeah, he wasn't going to be kind and have them all be active. They weren't even going to be random per a run.

No, those ten exits? A random gate would be active and it would change once an hour. Though he was kind enough, or some might say he was cruel enough, to set it so as long as a delver had eyes on the exit, it wouldn't move. Doyle even gave a little leeway so you didn't lose it by blinking or having your vision covered for a moment.

Of course, once the giant mushroom stalks were put in, trying to keep an eye on an exit unless you were basically already there was going to be hard. Oh, and Doyle wasn't kind enough to allow someone to wait at one of the spots till the exit showed up. If someone is waiting next to an empty portal frame, the portal will not show up there. However, if you turned your back on the active exit for too long, it would still move away. Though Doyle made sure that if anything caused what outcome should happen to be confused, it just wouldn't move and raise an alert to him about it.

Well, not an actual alert as for some reason that didn't seem to be an option. At least not yet. Rather, he made a more active use of the friendly neighborhood ants. If the exit portal ever attempts to move and fails, an entrance and exit portal would open in the ant nest he would be placing in the floor and ants would be sent through those portals.

As for why an entrance and exit? Simple enough, Doyle placed both because inhabitants of his dungeon have a hard time getting his attention on an active floor. With ants going both up and down a floor, chances are that one of those locations would be free of delvers.

Of course, at the moment there isn't a next floor. Rather, the "exit" portals lead to the core room, which is kept physically separate from the rest of the floor. Those portals are just enough so as to count as being accessible. That is, as long as at least one is open. As Doyle is a little paranoid about this, he makes it so that the current exit portal stays open until it confirmed the new exit portal to be open. No reason to add on to his debt.

Doyle mentally cringed. He really needed to work on actively paying that off and buying stuff like the ability to name stuff. But that would have to wait until he wasn't using all his world energy on creating a new floor. If he was to be honest, when Wolf's Rest took care of the system cultists would have been the best time, what with the sudden infusion of power.

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