With the latest bout of intruders, my Level had gone up by one rank increasing my Mana and Essence holding capacity. Despite this, my DEF and Intelligence still remained at the same rank. Compared to the information packets received from the system, killing my intruders seemed to fill up my KR rather slowly. However since I did not know how to swindle the system into giving me another packet, I would probably have to fill it up the hard way.

I also knew that there would not be any change in the DEF without increasing the number of my floors, despite this it was discouraging to see that the Level up did not even have a single percentage increase in the STBC. Since I still felt like my highest priority was my Core DEF, I would have to at least build ten more floors as soon as possible to rank up.

I decided to build my next floor as soon as possible, however this time I had to be smart about it. The longer I took to build my floor, the more would I waste the new influx of Pure Mana I would receive from converting the floorspace into mana. So this time I had to plan out exactly what I wanted and then, somehow prevent the excess mana from escaping before completing my next floor.

Thoughts about the pros and cons of certain actions, and how to get the maximum benefit while utilising the least amount of mana kept flitting through my mind. Did my thought processes change slightly after absorbing those humans, or is this the result of higher KR? I wondered idly even as I started planning my next floor.

Since my previous floor did not withstand its initial intention of fooling the world's realm organisms, especially sapient ones as I had hoped I might as well change my plan. I decided I might as well give up the idea of fooling them into thinking I am part of the outside world, from my second floor onwards. This in turn gave me the freedom for more variations in my floor plan. I decided I wanted to slowly transition into different landscapes, rather than an abrupt change, mostly because most of my creation menu was still filled predominantly with creatures from my immediate surrounding, despite me having unlocked new creatures.

After deciding what I wanted for my next floor, I got to work with its creation. From my small circular third room I was currently located in, I started drilling a small hole downwards with a radius of only two centimetres and a length of a hundred seventy metres. I needed the hole because I had found out that despite being able to sense their structure, I could not exert my influence through solid objects unless I filled them with my mana, which would take a longer time than exerting my influence directly through the air. However, I had to keep the hole small to save mana, since following the same theory mana had a more difficult time passing through solids than gases.

Once I felt that the floor was deep enough, I started spreading my mana through the soil to convert the earth into mana. Why does it always take an eternity to convert matter into mana, it is so much faster to convert mana to matter. I grumbled as I slowly built a huge cavern which was required for my second floor. After I was finished I had a humongous room which was four kilometres in length and breadth and a hundred fifty metres in height. The pure mana from the conversion was currently trapped in this room with only a tiny portion of it being continuously lost through the two centimetre radius tunnel which connected it to the first floor.

Let us not make it too easy. I thought as I decided to split the room into three different parts with each part having a different elevation. Thus the initial part of the room was hundred fifty metres from the floor after which the room dropped sharply for twenty five metres with the second part being a hundred seventy five metres from the ground and the third part following a similar method was two hundred metres from the ground. The drops formed two cliffs of twenty five metres each which would flow into my subsequent plans for the room.

Once the initial layout for the room was finalised I started with a rocky hill hundred metres tall around my current mana vent tunnel. This would be the entrance after I was done with the floor. Once I was done with my initial hill, I started making hills of different sizes and shapes all over my second floor. The initial part of the floor had hills ranging from twenty to sixty metres, the second part had forty to eighty metre tall hills and the final third part of the room had hills ranging from the height of fifty metres to one hundred metres.

After I was done with the hills, I started planting unusually tall trees in the valleys or even on the slope of the hills all over the floors. For this I especially chose trees like douglas firs, cottonwood, oaks, sycamore and redwood. After a few extra injections of mana the trees were able to grow especially tall, all of them ranging from a height of forty five to even a hundred twenty metres.

With the hills and trees out of the way, I was now trying to make something that I had only seen in the memory of the humans, a tightrope bridge. I already knew how to make the necessary parts, as I had received a blueprint for the rope from the drawstrings and carry bags of the deceased humans and the planks could be modified from the blueprint of the trees. But I would have to experiment slightly to get the structural integrity of the bridge right. For this I made a bridge similar to the image from my KR in between two hills at a height of only one metre. I also created a wild boar, an animal which looked similar to the pigs humans raised but with tusks, which was a new animal I had received since my level up. The animal I created had a weight of one hundred twenty kilograms, which I assumed was enough to test the integrity of the bridge, and thus commanded it to walk the tightrope. After multiple failures where my boar crashed to the ground bringing the bridge down with it, I learned the technique to make the bridge more stable and able to carry more weight. Just to be sure I made a few more boars and told them to walk the plank at the same time, when I saw that the bridge held I happily went on to the next phase of my plan.

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After destroying my experimental bridge, I went back to my entrance, which was currently the opening of the mana vent eighty metres up on the initial hundred metre tall hill and would form a cave here in the future. From there I made steep one metre tall stairs to the rope bridge I made, with two ropes on each side as handholds and which was wide enough for one person to walk on, connecting the entrance hill to the tip of a nearby hill which was sixty metres tall. From there I made three rope bridges in three different directions, two connecting to two trees - a redwood and douglas fir each, while the third connected to another hill. From there on out I started making a network of rope bridges of differing heights, ranging from as low as twenty metres to as high as sixty metres, till I had a network of interconnected rope bridges all over the first part of my second floor. The differing heights of the bridges would force the intruders to climb up and down different trees and hills to get to the different bridges. Finally at the cliff drop between the initial two parts of the room I only left one rope bridge connecting a redwood tree from the first part with a eighty metre tall mountain in the second part. Since these trees were difficult to climb, this left most people with the choice of either braving the twenty five metre climb down the steep cliff, or finding the correct path of bridges to reach the specific bridge connecting the tree to the second level. I will plant blood succking vines halfway up the cliffs later, and purple sleepers further down on the small outcroppings, to further encourage people to use the bridges. This floor will take care of all the people who try to conquer me with numbers. Hah, as if a big entrance can be a hindrance to me.

I repeated the previous process of a tightrope maze with the second and third parts of the room. Again I only left a single bridge to connect the second part to the third part. After I was done with the bridge network, I needed to do something to dissuade intruders from walking on the ground. Despite the bridges providing a much easier and straightforward path, there might be people who do not mind taking three times more time to take the safer path of trekking through hills and valleys to reach the other side of the floor and use the bridges only when they reach the cliffs..

On that note, I made the bottom half of the hills more treacherous, and the tree trunks more sleek and hard to climb, so that intruders would have a had time getting to the ground, and if the did get to the ground, they would be hard pressed to climb back up to the tightrope bridges.

To make it harder for such people, I took the information I found in Gunther’s memories, where he set up traps to hunt animals. I covered the floor with four metre deep pitfall traps with wooden spikes at the bottom of the pit. Then I covered the pitfalls with a thin layer, so that they would look no different from the surrounding ground. I also planted my newest plant monster, the ‘Soul eater’, a one metre tall shrub with flat dark green almost black leaves and white translucent flowers, all over the floor. This monster, unlike the previous two, was able to move. Despite its preference to grow at a fixed location, it could move to different places to root itself, if it felt threatened or if the place had more prey. The advantage of this monster was that it could suck the soul out of its prey within a certain radius though only one at a time, killing it instantly. Ha ha ha, let me see now, how you are going to save people with your dumb healing potions.

Of course I also planted normal underbush and grasses, as well as the other two plant monsters on normal ground and told a few Soul Eaters to wait at the bottom of the cliffs just in case. I then started populating the floor with insects, rodents and other small mammals and reptiles all of them with extra doses of mana to make them a size bigger and better than the previous floor. In this floor I shall concentrate on wood and wind variants as they contributed most in the previous attack and this floor seems to be especially suited for them.

To keep up with the theme, I used environmental manipulation to start strong and weak airflows throughout the floor. This led to movements in the air current, which were sometimes a light breeze, while at other times were strong enough to gusts of wind to knock intruders down from the rope bridges into their death.

Since my level was higher I could make creatures up to E rank. Though I decided to stick to upper limits of F-Rank and lower E-Rank creatures for now. Obviously for animals I wanted to finally use my Lynx blueprint. Since the lynx was adapted to hilly forested terrain, it would be a fine addition for this floor. Especially after I modified its legs to make it even more suitable and comfortable for the hilly terrain. I thought. The other three defenders I chose for this floor were all three new animals I received with the level up. One was the wild Boar which I already used to test the rope bridge. The Boar with its stocky build, bristly hair, and long, upward-curving tusks would defend the ground along with the Soul eaters. I will give only the wild boar an earth variation in this floor, as it seemed unusually suited for this variation.

The second were Madrills. Madrills were monkeys with fierce looks and large, prominent canine teeth. The male mandrill has an unusual coloration: blue face and lips, black hairless body, white chest, and orange buttocks. The female mandrill is slightly smaller than the male and lacks his facial markings. They weighed up to fifty kilograms and measured up to seventy centimetres without the tail. They will be the perfect protectors for the ropeways, especially with the wood variation. I decided.

Lastly was the Harpy eagle which were large, powerful raptors with a wingspan of about two metres. They have dark black to grey feathers on their upperparts and a white belly. Their legs are feathered, and large, strong talons. They have distinctive crests of dark feathers on their heads, which give them a "crowned" appearance. They could build their nest in the trees and outcroppings. With a further injection of mana and wind variation, it would become the top predator in this floor, and a capable protector.

After creating all my new defenders, I also created a few of the previous creatures for this floor to increase its diversity. After creating light and water, which turned into streams and twenty five metre high waterfalls at the cliffs, my second floor was almost complete. Now I just have to finish the cave for the entrance and build a spiral staircase into the first floor, and the second floor can be opened.