Herald was perched on a tree on the third floor. I turned my gaze towards him and said,

"Herald, I will be giving you your first assignment, a quest of sorts. You will travel south towards the vast temperate steppe and retrieve five bison for me. Do you understand?"

Herald held a confused yet inquisitive look.

"Creator, where is south, and what's a bison?"

I had forgotten this crow doesn't possess any form of common sense. Well, I suppose being taught and raised in a cave wouldn't help with that.

"I shall assign three of my surveillance bats to guide you south; they should direct you towards a herd of bison; you must subjugate them. understood?"

"Yes, creator"

With Herald departing from the dungeon and flying off into the distance with three 'friends' as he likes to call them, in tow, I must now begin working on the third some more. I began to sculpt a golden chalice. It had intricate markings on it that depicted the hero Gilgamesh's quest for immortality. In the golden chalice, I picked the finest and ripest grapes from the bountiful gardens and squeezed them into the fine cup. I began to subtly imbue it with death mana, intending to age it to ferment it into the strongest wine I could muster.

With the wine done, I could sense the intoxicating fragrance and the beautifully vivid purple color it had taken on. With the wine done fermenting, I blasted it with as much life mana as possible. Over the next day, the wine was embraced by the sweet, jovial life mana imbued upon it. With the imbuements done, the wine could be considered water from the fountain of life. Giving the oldest bat in the swarm a drop seemed to reinvigorate it; it seemed younger, more youthful, and stronger too, perhaps more fertile as well.

When I was just finished brewing the wine, it seemed Herald had come back with only three bison. Did it fail its quest? It shouldn't have been too hard to acquire five; perhaps I had overestimated his capabilities. However, I noticed something amiss. Herald was shaking; his eyes were stricken by fear. I asked,

"What happened?"

Herald was speaking incoherently,

"Two-legged people... smell bad... Many of them"

I was confused yet alarmed.

"Calm yourself, Herald... Allow me to peer into your memory of the event."

As Herald relented, I began to perform a lobotomy on him and began to view the happenings of the past few days. His memories were filled with my tutelage, talking with the bats, and the journey south. Focusing on the journey, it seemed to have meaningless conversations with itself and the bats that accompanied him. After two days, it reached the vast steppe and began to subjugate the bison as instructed; however, when it was just about to subjugate the fourth bison, the bats screamed. They urged Herald to run to retreat as something was moving towards them something foul.

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On the horizon, a horde, nay, an army of decrepit, rotting corpses was approaching with haste. Their smell was foul, their groans were unsettling, and the view was unsightly; some wore battered tunics, others rusted plates of armor. They wielded a variety of armaments, from crude kitchen knives to spears and swords. It is as though someone had mustered the strength of an entire city, from the humblest peasant to the most steadfast warrior. Leading this army of undead was a man, or perhaps the vestiges of one, as he too was undead. He wore a lusterless pitch-black robe; he wielded a staff made of carved bone with a skull atop it; it seemed to glow with a deathly aura; and imbedded within his forehead was a Tenebrous black gem, split in two, resembling the broken moon. Around the army of death, the grass began to decay and rot, and the color of the sky and the ground began to dull as a hazy black mist encompassed the army. The bison near them began to vomit and run away; others that were too close simply died for no reason, only to rise once more and join the endless horde.

As the army headed south, Herald and his entourage of bats and bison retreated towards the north with haste, barely escaping the notice of the deathly army. The tireless army continued south, marching towards the settlement of humans. Huh, that's certainly a bad sign; perhaps the undead might besiege the city. But that's not any of my concern; firstly, I have no obligation towards helping either side, and secondly, I couldn't help even if I wanted to. I have no creatures or monsters strong enough to brave the journey south and battle either an army of living or undead.

This is a sign that I have to bolster my defenses. I ordered ten surveillance bats to circle the edges of the Highlands and immediately report back if there was any suspicious activity. I send three bats to shadow the undead army until they reach their destination. With my flanks guarded, I begin working on the guardian of the third. I take a bison and enlarge its horns and shorten its fur. I sculpt its flesh and bone to resemble a bull. After it had the aesthetic I was going for, I began to make it stronger. unlike the basilisks, whom I'd enlarge because of their pitiful original form. The bison were already formidable beasts; they didn't need to be bigger; they needed to be stronger.

So I densely packed every nook and cranny of its body with the strongest muscles I could muster. After hours of enhancing its body, the bull now had muscles stronger than steel yet flexible as rubber and bones tougher than iron. A sword strike wouldn't even scratch its skin, let alone tear into its flesh. Now I begin to imbue the bull with its magics I first imbue its core with pure radiant light mana, enough so that even when it wasn't channeling mana, it would glow lightly.

Then I attempted something I had never done before I grafted an enchantment onto living flesh. I enchanted his body with even more light mana, intending that when activated, it would emit a pure radiant light that would blind and purify any being who would bask in the light. The body seemed to reject the enchantment at first, yet it slowly accepted it. If this was Caecus I enchanted, I suspect he would've collapsed into a blubbering mass of flesh and bone.

It seemed enchantments on the flesh were costly and needed a proper base for it to flourish. As the bull of heaven was immensely strong and resilient and possessed an affinity for light mana, it was a good base for this particular enchantment. Now that the third floor was completed, it possessed a unique environment, monsters to defend it, and a floor guardian to guard the entrance to the next floor. Once the third was completed, it seemed a lone human had entered my territory. He was panting and looked distressed as he walked silently throughout the dense highland forest. A human, what shall I do with it?