Looking around my first floor, I felt good. It seemed to be much more beautiful and diverse than at the beginning when I opened my entrance to the world. Different types of trees, such as pines, firs, spruces, cedars and hemlocks started from my entrance and extended all over my floor. The vegetation thinned out at places like the top of my two rocky hills, and the valley in between. Grasses, ferns, moss and lichen covered the floor everywhere. I also placed shrubs such as blueberry bushes and labrador tea, at strategic locations all over to deter anybody from having a straight line access to the rear of my cavern.

Seeing that the moss was slippery, I covered the edge of the brook with it, since any intruder would have to cross it to reach the rear of the cavern. Since the purple sleepers did not seem to differentiate between friend and foes, I only planted them in large numbers in the kill zone valley, the clearing in my second chamber and the thicket of pine trees on top of the low hill in the middle. I also planted fireweed wherever I planted them to hide them. Fireweed was also planted throughout the cavern without the sleepers, so that prey would first get used to them and deem them as harmless.

As the blood sucking vines seemed less reactive, they covered the whole cliffs at the rear, and the steep slopes towards the killzone and the walls of the corridor. I also planted a few of them around the clearing in the second chamber, and in a few random locations throughout the cavern, as hidden as possible for extra security.

Looking all over the place I felt that there did not seem to be any difference with the outside world. Since, it looks exactly the same as the world realm outside, all organisms reaching here should not be suspecting a thing when entering my domain. I can then eat them without them being any wiser…. Giggle….I will become strong so so fast. (cue baby laughter)

Since all my vegetation seemed complete. I moved forward to populating my floor a bit more. You guys, spread out throughout the floor. You can Eat, Grow and Reproduce in this domain. Make this your home and protect me in times of need. My Mana will help you grow and reproduce three times faster in my domain. I spoke to all my existing critters in a commanding, all-knowing voice, the things I gleaned from my inherent knowledge.

Hmm, something seems wrong. Reproduce? I went through my knowledge about reproduction, most of the species seem to need two genders for this process to happen. Looking at my creatures, most of them seem to be only of the Female variety.!! Oops, hehehe. You guys go and make your nests. The males are too aggressive, so I totally planned to make them after you guys were feeling at home. It was definitely not because I did not realise that I had to make two genders. Most of them fell for my ruse and started spreading out throughout the floor to pick their own territory. Only Foxxy gave me a dubious look, but still left without saying anything. Pheeew, almost ruined my image, in front of my creations.

Now then, it seems I need to make more creatures. Hmm, there still seems to be an Owl and a Fox which have not come back from the outside world yet. I wonder what happened and where they are.

Since I was feeling much better with my current safety precaution, I decided to continue experimenting with the creation process. As I had water now, I decided to start with the trout, my biggest failure. Since I already knew that adding extra mana to a body part usually leads to mutation of that particular body part to become stronger and more efficient. I decided to inject much more mana than required to the whole blueprint, to see what would happen. I started injecting more and more mana into the blueprint, till there came a phase where I could not inject anymore mana. The said trout was formed with one and half of its original length, worm like pattern on its back, small sharp teeth in its mouth and extra large fins.

Congratulations! Mutation successful. Brook trout mutated to Great Brook trout.

Okay the mutation just changed from minor to normal mutation. I should try with tainted mana. This time I will make the whole creature in tainted mana. Maybe that will give me results. I decided, since my first idea was a bit of a disappointment. Taking the trout blueprint I started pumping blue tainted mana into the blueprint. When I injected enough water mana into the blueprint to make a trout, the exact amount of pure mana started getting sucked out of me, while the blue mana in the blueprint started converging together, making a small core the the size of the pebble in the heart along with pathways throughout the body, while the pure mana made the outer surface of the body. The end result was a shimmering blue trout almost translucent in water which was slightly larger than a normal trout with glassy teeth in its mouth. Wow, I think I created my first Animal with elemental inclination. I thought excitedly.

Congratulations! Elemental mutation successful. Brook trout (normal) changed into Brook trout (Water variant).

Show me what you have got. I told the glassy trout. Upon my command, it began to swim through the water at twice the speed of the normal trout, and before I started assuming that this was the only thing that it could do, it suddenly jumped out of the brook and spit an arrow made out of water at a tree along the shore. The arrow pierced halfway along the tree trunk before coming to a halt. Wow, Elemental variants seem to be much cooler than their normal counterparts. However they are so damn expensive. They cost twice the mana of a normal animal, half of which is tasty tainted mana. Also I should not have used the blue water mana for the creation process, I have much less of it than wind, wood and earth mana. Well it is not like I could use it for anything else than eating for now. Still I will stick to the elements I have an abundance of, after I finish my experimentation of course. I wonder whether I can create tainted mana of the elements I have a scarcity of? Well, whatever, another thing to experiment with for later.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

So now, should I move on to the next animal or make trouts of different elemental inclination first? Let me start with the latter. Thus resolved, I started to make a trout with wood, metal, wind,earth and fire mana. The first two variants seemed to move quickly in water even better than the normal trouts, though not as fluently as the water variant. The wood variant seems to be able to influence the plant growth in a certain radius around it, while the metal variant seemed to be doing something, though I was not yet sure exactly what. As for the wind variant it was of a smaller and slimmer build, with abnormally large fins and was able to glide through the air whenever it jumped out of the brook, which made up for its slow pace when in the water. It too was able to throw projectiles of air when it was airborne, slightly similar to its water variant sibling. The biggest disappointments were however the earth and fire variants, out of which the fire variant died within half an hour of being released into the water, while the earth variant just seemed to be content lying still on the brook bed without any movement. When commanded to show me its ability, it sluggishly made the surrounding earth move a tiny bit before lying motionless again. It also did not seem to be able to survive for long.

Seeing this I started wondering why some of the variants were fine or even thriving, while others seemed to almost be on the verge of death. Seeing that the most energetic was the water variant, did it depend on the living environment? So the water variant is fine because it lives in water, does that mean that wood and metal complement water and hence do not face any restrictions but even receive a boost in the water. However, fire seems to be totally incompatible with water and earth does not appear to be doing much better. So this basically means that earth and fire restrict water? Hmm yeah that makes a bit sense I guess, since water puts out fire and everything. But then what is up with wind? It seems to be able to survive fine in water, but its abilities become only prominent when it is airborne. This seems a bit complicated. I have a vague feeling that I know something about this interaction between different elements. But…. I am not sure. A vague image seemed to flash by in my mind. But it was gone before I could fully grasp what it was about. However, I got the feeling that I would fully understand its meaning, if I continued to experiment with different elemental variants.

Thus, after making a few dozen normal trouts with mana mutations and genders and releasing them along with their elemental brethren into the brook, I moved on to my next creature. Should I make a lynx first or experiment with my current creatures? I remembered how strong and fast the big predator was. It put up a good fight, despite it being at a disadvantage of being in a fight of one against dozens of my creatures. I reminisced on how strong, fast and agile that creature had been. Yes, I would like one of those, especially to guard the way to my core. Oh, I should probably also change my core location from my chamber room and make a small room just for my core, and the lynx can guard the clearing in the chamber. Perfect.

Having determined what I wanted to do, I first made a small spherical room with one and half metre radius at the rear of the chamber I was currently floating in the middle of. Once the room was finished, my core started to automatically float slowly into the innermost room of my dungeon without any prompt of my own. Hmm, it might be because my core is the stabiliser of the void passage, that it automatically finds the innermost room which is closest to the void realm. Anyway it is convenient for me, now that I don't have to think about how to get a floating crystal from one room to another. Now then, onwards to the Lynx.

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Status Screen

Name :

(Unnamed)

Age :

16 days

Class:

Void Creature

Species:

Dungeon Core

Level :

G

Experience :

77/100

INT (Intelligence):

F

DEF (Defence):

G

KR (Knowledge Repartoir):

88/100

STBC (Stability of Core):

10.00%

Mana Pool:

45/1500

Essence:

345/900

A/M Conversion:

2.5 M/sec.

Essence Regen.:

0.25 E/sec.

Abilities: Creation and Design, Spawn and Control Monsters, Trap Generation, Resource Management, Environmental Manipulation

Extra Ability: Mutation and Evolution, Artistic Conception (Passive), Disease and Healing, Guidance (Dungeon Creature)

Titles: Contractor