I don't start my third floor right away because I want to give the mana a bit of time to fill up. I plan to continue increasing the variety of monsters delvers face on each floor, at least for now. To do that I need world energy to buy the patterns. On top of that the rooms still fill rather small to me. Plus, there's no real hurry because Clyde's group is the only one to even attempt the second floor so far and they didn't get anywhere near the boss.

Thinking that I look towards the first-floor boss and realize that someone is attempting to fight it. It's one of the first parties to start delving regularly aside from Clyde's party. The party's tank is trying to hold back the dire rat. The dire rat's agility isn't making that easy though. The fighter and mage, a fire mage this time, are trying to deal with the comparatively small helper. They keep getting distracted by having to dodge the dire rat's attacks and as a result keep missing their target. Eventually, the moment comes when the dire rat manages to get past the tank at the same time the fighter and mage are dealing with the level 5 helper.

They finally manage to kill the helper only to turn around just in time for the dire rat to tackle the mage. This is followed a few seconds later by the tank tackling the dire rat, or at least trying to. He does manage to succeed in pushing the dire rat off of her before it had a chance to bite down anywhere. Not that its claws hadn't already done significant damage. The dire rat is momentarily dazed from being tackled allowing the tank and fighter to team up on it. It charges the tank upset that someone would dare attempt to dominate it like that. The tank for his part simply raises his shield and well ... tanks the hit. At the same time the fighter runs up behind the dire rat with a diagonal slash. The dire rat senses it and moves out of the way, though not entirely in time. There is now a huge gash in the dire rat's shoulder drastically reducing its speed.

The dire rat turns to fact the fighter allowing the tank to get a swing in. Once again, the dire rat attempts to dodge but being slowed down the dodge attempt is even less effective this time leading to another huge gash, this time in the dire rat's side. Now having the clear upper hand, it doesn't take them long to finish off the dire rat and claim the loot. Meanwhile the party's healer is attempting to treat their mage. The trouble is that her insides are now partially on the outside. The bleeding has mostly been stopped. Putting her back together though, especially without losing any more blood is beyond what the healer can do. She's already lost to much blood as it is. To make matters worse she can't be moved since any unnecessary movement could rupture one of her internal organs which at the moment aren't as internal as they should be.

The one silver lining in all this is that I can see the experience points or promotion energy or whatever it's called increasing within the healer at a rapid rate as he tries desperately to keep the mage alive and heal her. After what to them must feel like an eternity the fighter pipes up. "The monsters and boss shouldn't respawn as long as we don't leave this floor. I'm going to go out and see if any higher-level healers are willing to come help. With any luck maybe at least one of the instructors that have started to bring in rookies is in the outpost at this very moment."

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As he left the healer was still trying to gently put her insides back where they were supposed to be. Not really the best idea with his healing magic being as low as it was but I couldn't exactly tell him that. Fortunately, she was smart enough to not panic even though it looked like she wanted to. Seeing your guts spilled out isn't exactly a calming experience after all. Staying calm kept her heart rate down and kept any potential blood lose to a minimum. A few minutes later, though it probably felt like hours to them, the fighter returned with one of the instructors. Between the two healers they were able to get her put back together, and the instructor even used a high-level regeneration spell to close the wound and make sure the mages inside ... remained inside.

With that little distraction over with I decide that my first-floor boss is exactly the right challenge level. I also noticed to my surprise that the effort he put into keeping the mage alive gave me a lot of mana. Specifically, it gave me a lot of whatever that energy is that gets automatically turned into mana. Not as much as I would have gotten if the mage died but that would be trading a lifetime of food for a single buffet. The good news is unlike the first group that actually lost a member they don't seem to be blaming me. I do hope they return as I need people to delve deeper and they are just strong enough to do it.

In the meantime, I have just enough mana saved up to exchange for enough world energy to set up my third-floor entryway and pick out a few interesting blueprints. I plan to use more wolves and skeletons on the third floor. On top of that I plan to introduce dire rats as an ordinary encounter. As for what new monster to add I briefly wonder what sapient races exist in this world. Wouldn't want to create kobolds only for the sapient kobolds that exist in this world to take offense for example. To my shock the system actually replied in the form of a pop-up.

Sapient races in hosts current realm include Humans Elves

Dwarves

Beast kin

Subcategories

Cat kin

Fox kin

Wolf kin

Rabbit kin

Raccoon kin

Squirrel Kin

I quickly closed the window once it started to go into sub-subcategories of beast kin. I got the information I needed though. From what I could tell all the beast kin were some type of mammal or another. That's perfect because I do plan to introduce another dungeon crawling staple in the form of goblins. While I don't plan to make all the rooms larger than the ones on the second floor there will be a few and I think a small goblin village would fit perfectly. I plan to limit their intelligence for now as I want them to be more bestial than sapient.

I also pick up a few tree patterns including something called Jujube. The goblins need some place to hide their village after all not to mention the material to build it since I don't have the goblin village blueprint.