Eternal Dungeon POV

It was time to get started on the fifth floor. I was a little disappointed that I would be making it while adventurers hadn’t even reached my fourth yet, but I wanted to stay ahead of things. Besides, a group was actively completing the quest to unlock the fourth floor and I would likely see the first raid in a day or two once they were ready. I had to tamp down on my excitement for the raid team to focus on making this floor.

I started out the same as I always did, spatial expansion. I needed the space to be larger so that it would feel like a proper world to explore, exploration was always one of my favorite things to do in an adventure. Getting to see new places, new biomes, new creatures, was always a blast.

I wanted the space to be several miles in diameter with a ceiling high enough to disguise it with a cloud layer. I had done similar things on the fourth floor in order to make the space seem more open than it actually was, the giant red sun in the sky also helped.

Once the space was large enough I began to fill it in with soil and formed large sheer cliffs around the edge of the area to disguise the dungeon walls. I only filled about one third of the floor with soil leaving most of the space open. I didn’t think I needed a proper drainage layer because this floor was going to be flooded, but I put one in anyways. I could always just overfill it or take it out if necessary.

With the basic layers down over the dungeon stone I moved on to forming the artificial sun and weather system. I still didn’t have all the affinities needed to make the artificial star on my own, so I was forced to continue using the system blueprint. I could technically use as many system blueprints as I wanted which would let me do just about anything, however I wanted to discover and create the things on my own. I only made an exception for the artificial sun and weather because without it my floors would be boring enclosed spaces as opposed to vibrant worlds.

I copied out the blueprint and watched as the yellow star formed. I knew from my fourth floor that I had some slight control over the output of the star. Until I had the proper affinities my manipulations were limited. I decided to make the temperature for this floor rather temperate, trusting in humidity to make people miserable. After all, humidity can make a temperature feel way higher than it actually is.

Next I built up the weather system. I started by adding a whole lot of water to the floor, so much that 85% of the floor was underwater. I left only a few higher sections as actual land, and it was soggy land at that. Once my flooding was complete I built up a sustainable cloud layer and ensured that constant rainstorms would replenish the water level.

I spent several hours experimenting with different variations on the weather. Sometimes the water was too much and it ended up more ocean than swamp. Other times the water level got too low and made the area too much like the second floor. After getting the weather and humidity just right, ensuring that the water level was good, I moved on to shaping the terrain.

I decided to make the terrain have its highest point at the entrance with the area getting lower the further from the entrance you traveled. This meant that the area furthest from the entrance to the floor resembled deep coastal waters, with the lowest point having a depth of 40 feet. I also added a little variance by creating sporadic high spots which would end up as islands. In the shallowest regions the islands would even link up during lower tides.

Speaking of, I made sure to create a good mix of brackish water so that I could emulate the coastal marsh environment for the floor. I also modified part of the weather system to add tidal forces, although I had to cheat using what amounted to magical plumbing. With that in place I now needed to get some flora added before my land got eroded away by the water.

I currently lacked any actual plant life suited for a coastal mangrove, which was the biome I was going for. I needed some mangrove trees, obviously, but I also needed the wide array of supporting plant life that made the biome possible. Reeds, grasses, floating plants, clinging vines, all of which needed to have adaptations to higher salt conditions.

I started by sending several plant species I had available through time accelerated adaptation in my experimentation chambers. I had to make a specialized type of chamber that would slowly introduce the coastal environmental factors at a rate that the flora could keep up with. Thankfully mana made all things easier and creatures were able to adapt faster by utilizing it. This also meant that I would likely be left with several magical plant variants along with the more mundane ones.

I wanted to run the animals through adaptation cycles at the same time for efficiency's sake, but I was worried that adding animals would destabilize the conditions too much early on. I did however really want some carnivorous plants. I added a couple of creatures I already had the blueprints for, however I locked them so they wouldn’t evolve or adapt. This will hopefully give me a good baseline of carnivorous plants without too much risk to my experiment.

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I kept myself busy for the many hours of real time it took for my time accelerated adaptation chambers to finish. In the end I was left with a whole lot of plants none of which were mundane. Some of the Lesser ranked ones looked mundane, however it seems that every plant had adapted to the conditions by using mana. The coastal mangrove marsh that I intended to make would have high concentrations of water, wyld and earth mana. So all of the flora were able to utilize at least one of those mana types to survive in brackish waters.

The Wyld adapted ones appeared to deal with the salt content through pure biology, however that biology was supercharged by the Wyld mana making it far more effective than it should be. The Water adapted ones were simply capable of generating their own water supply or diluting the salt content enough to be tolerable. The Earth adapted ones seemed to just not care about the salt and could survive no matter how much mineral buildup there was on or inside them.

I found the whole thing fascinating and examined each individual plant as I started moving them onto the fifth floor. There were several varieties of mangrove trees which would all do well as the baseline plant for my mangrove forest. There were also dozens of gorgeous water lilies that used their mana to create various cosmetic effects, such as glowing or giving off occasional sparks of flame.

One of the most interesting plants were the predatory ones which would make excellent environmental traps for the biome. There were three primary types: Flytraps, Pitchers, and Sundews. Each one had a different primary hunting method.

Flytraps snapped their traps shut with lightning quick speed and would either kill the prey through the trap shutting or by dissolving them with acid, some even had poisonous spines so that even if its prey escaped it would still die near its roots.

Pitchers used tall walls covered in special mucus that made it incredibly slippery, luring things with bait to fall inside them where they would be dissolved by acid that would flood into the chamber. They also had trapdoor-like leaves that would close off the entry hole after a prey fell in to stop escape and overcrowding. It also stopped excess water from pooling inside.

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Sundews were some of my favorites, they were stick traps. Usually a system of flexible leaves or vines that were covered in a substance that looked like dew drops, but were in fact glue traps. A creature that got stuck would trigger a biological response in the plant that would cause it to slowly wrap the rest of the leaf around it, the end result being a prey filled burrito that could be flooded with acid to digest it.

Of course each of the predatory variants had different types from different evolutionary strains. Some of my favorites being: A five foot lilypad which was secretly a flytrap that would snap shut on anything seeking refuge from the water; An aether affinity pitcher plant that was large enough to fit a cow into and created a folded space within itself that made escape almost impossible; And an earth affinity sundew that slowly petrified its victims. All of them were amazing plants and they made my excitement at being in a magical world grow even larger.

With the flora ready I made sure to reabsorb each of them to gain the blueprints before copying them over onto my new floor. I quickly filled the floor with the hundreds of plant species that had been evolved by my experimentation chambers. I spent several hours doing nothing but meticulously placing plants in different setups until I was satisfied with the look of the floor. It would likely change once the plants started to naturally grow and shift the landscape but I hoped that having a good starting point would make the end result maintain some of the beauty.

‘With the flora now in place I worked on the time acceleration enchantment for the entire floor. I planned on letting the dungeon creatures adapt on the floor itself as opposed to inside a controlled environment because the animals of this world appeared to be faster at adapting. I suspected that this had something to do with them having either partial or fully unlocked systems, which would aid them in directing their growth in the way most beneficial for them.

It took a little under an hour to enchant the entire room with the proper time acceleration enchantment. I could’ve used a shortcut and just used active spellwork instead of enchantment to accelerate it, like I did in my other floors. However I wanted to experiment with permanent enchantments in preparation for some of my future plans.

With my time acceleration in place it was time to add in some fauna to the floor. I was going to stick with a beastial floor for this one as opposed to the more intelligent creatures I put onto the third and fourth floors. I could of course always make this floor centered around one primary monster as I did previously, however I wanted this floor to be more like an untamed wilderness.

In addition I still needed more superior perks to enhance the potency of my orcs and goblins, if I added another species on top of that it would take me even longer to get them up to par. Having the increased potency from Aspect of All made the creatures qualitatively better than ones without as many potency increases. This meant that my fourth floor technically had weaker monsters than my third, something I compensated for with levels, ranks, and quantity.

Once I reached level 7 and received my next superior perk I would be able to bring the floor up to where it should properly be. Of course I could always try and just supercharge a creature with mana so that it matched a creature of a higher potency. However potency was a difference in quality not quantity, although it could be compensated for by using quantity it was an imperfect method that got worse the higher a creature's rank and level became.

Of course at the moment the potency mattered little since my creatures were already strong enough to perform their duties, however in the future I would need stronger creatures to counter the potency of the skills and spells that sapients had access to. Since they had a wider array of powers available to them that could be leveled separately from their class level it made sapients some of the strongest creatures in their rank/level range.

At lower levels this mattered very little since everything would still have the same mortal weaknesses. A surprise blow to the brain or heart would kill anything and the only defense against it was having a high enough mana density to block your foes strikes. The only way to increase your mana density was to either go through a rank up or a tier up. The tiers were split by every hundred levels, a level 100 and a level 101 would have a large jump in power due to the mana density difference. The best mana density increases came from having a higher rank though, rank always gave the most overall power increase.

With my mind set on a wild and untamed mangrove I started making and adding animals to the floor. I wanted to avoid already evolved creatures in the hopes that I could get new evolutionary lines from the unique environment. This meant I would need a long period of time acceleration to help all the mundane and lesser creatures reach appropriate ranks. The levels could be achieved by just feeding them extra mana, but if I tried to force evolve them their evolutions would be influenced by the mana I use. While I have nothing against that, I want to see what the result of a more natural evolution process will be.

I find mundane or lesser variants for every creature I can think of that lived within coastal mangroves back on earth. There were quite a few saltwater fish species that used them as sanctuaries for their young, as well as things like crocodiles and arboreal cats. In some places there were even monkeys that lived within the trees. Birds obviously, they were pretty much everywhere that trees could grow.

I filled up the floor with the various specimens I had. Luckily the offering altar had resulted in a lot of free blueprints from people wanting coins. One of the first things they brought in were mundane and lesser creatures either as corpses or in cages.

With my floor populated I activated the enchantments and watched as the time acceleration activated. It cost far less mana to upkeep than the normal way I time accelerated. This was good considering how much time I invested into enchanting the entire room with a time acceleration enchantment while also making sure it didn’t interfere with the spatial enchantment. They were both aether magic so it actually wasn’t as difficult as it could’ve been, but enchanting an entire space the size of a small city is never easy.

My other floors were practically finished as soon as I was done with them or after a short bout of time acceleration. However this floor would take me several sessions of time accelerating, followed by adding and changing things, followed by more time acceleration. With my first fifth floor session now complete, I was going to wait a week or two in real time before checking back in. I would take my time shaping this floor naturally.

Satisfied with my work so far I turned my attention away from the fifth floor and towards the fourth. It appeared that the first raiding party was getting ready to venture onto the new floor and would be the first ones to do so.

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Several miles North of the Eternal Dungeon

“Did they take the bait?” I asked my lieutenant as we observed our forward force from within a concealed barrier.

“It appears so boss. The Brahm family is readying themselves to pursue and crush the forward force you sent” He responded.

“Good, ready the men. We’ll make a dash for the dungeon before they know what’s happening” I said with a grin, I was definitely going to get paid well for this.

“Uhh, what about the guild outpost boss? Isn’t the local Guildmaster currently there?” My lieutenant says with slight hesitation.

“Don’t worry about him, myself and the captains can keep the old dog occupied while you take the men into the dungeon.” I reassured the man patting him on the back, I couldn’t have him getting cold feet right before the mission.

“Of course boss, I have total faith in you and the captains!” He said with a smile before walking into the camp to follow my previous orders.

Good. I needed these idiots to finish this job properly. My real men were either preparing to help me delay the guild or had already retreated to the rendezvous point. The only reason I promoted this liutenant was to keep him docile and unsuspecting while he completed his suicide mission.

Soon I would be rolling in enough gold to outfit a small army and then I would finally take my vengeance on the other Bandit Lords, the sexist bastards that they are. I couldn’t wait to destroy them all one by one. A vicious grin spread across my face and I had to quickly suppress it before anyone else saw, no need to frighten my underlings with my bloodlust.

“Time to finish this job”