Three weeks went by and I learned a few things and improved upon a number of others.

Firstly, I figured out how to level up! It turns out I just needed to have a full mana bank and I’d be able to spend it to level up. In doing so, I managed to raise my mana capacity to 300 and my recharge rate to 12 per day, and on top of that unlocked the Terraforming Lv1 skill, which allowed me to clear rocks at the cost of mana and removed the fee on water summoning! I still would’ve had to pay the fee had I not gotten what I now know as Wet Thoughts attribute.

I didn’t spend any mana on clearing the big landslide yet, the tiny door we had was enough for now. Instead, I focused my efforts on creating a tiny moat around the room. Now the room was split down the middle where my fish and kelp would lay. Within, they also got some upgrades.

The kelp that the slime had landed on had grown back better than before, turning into a cool kelp.

[Cool kelp: Somewhat uncommon kelp that grows in cool climates. It’s ice and healing properties are above the common kelp. When applied fresh and wet it works as an effective burn heal.]

By now, the cool kelp had outgrown most of the other kelp in a 4:1 split. They also had a [Fire Resist Lv5] skill which easily outmatched any other skill in the dungeon. I’m pretty sure that had to do with the [Winter Lover] effect, as resist fire skills were classified under ice or water skills, both of which received passive buffs in my walls.

Those buffs also affected the fish. Some of the fish had grown into spiterfish after some time splashing both intruders and my curious clothling.

[Spitterfish: A small fish with a tendency to spit water at passersby. While generally harmless to beings not made out of fire, when left unchecked they may evolve into more dangerous magic users]

That one got me excited. The concept of magic was already cool, and combined with the ice affinity everyone was getting, I was excited to see where they’d go next. I wasn’t so hyped about how they eat however, as it was similar to a fly where they’d puke on a kelp and then eat the puke. It was gross but with only 10 of my 50 fish acting this way, I’d ignore it so long as they kept the worse stuff out.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Speaking of worse stuff. The hole didn’t disappear, and by now we had at least one or three visitors coming in each day, the most common of the bunch were fire slimes. They were super weak to the fire debuff effect. The moment they entered into my cavern, they would shrivel up and turn into smaller grey slimes and would be too slow to even escape. By that point, it would be up to my clothling to push it into the water for my fish to finish or for them to finish it off themselves by hitting it with a rock.

The other common visitor was something called a sizzle salamander. I hadn’t gotten any more information on it other than the name, but it was basically just an aggressive salamander with hotter skin. They would barge into the dungeon before immediately drooping. They would still attempt to attack my clothling though, so they weren’t harmless. But we figured out the best way to deal with them would be to throw rocks at them from the other side of the moat.

The practice had granted my clothling the [Throwing Lv2] skill. Apparently learning skills quickly were clothling’s specialty as they were pretty weak physically when compared to other monsters. Already mine had both [Fire Resist Lv3] and [Jumping Lv1] from whenever it would try to leap over the moat, which also earned it [Swimming Lv2] due to how often it failed at doing so. So far it has done an impressive job fending off monsters.

I also learned what [Winter Lover] meant for me as a dungeon. Fire based monsters cost twice as much to summon. The fire slime that required 68 points, now costs 136 points. Add to that the fact that they give less points overall, and it looks like I’m not getting fire slimes or sizzle salamanders anytime soon. Not that I'd want them anyway. Although it didn’t seem to apply to either of their regular forms though, regular slimes and salamanders were on the table if I wanted them. Plus, the mana they gave me was unaffected.

With all the mana coming in from the monsters, I had my first design idea. I would take the concept of an igloo, but in reverse. Igloos worked by basically having a dip where all the cold air would stay, and then packing ice in tightly enough that the warmth people generated would have a hard time escaping the upper area. My idea would be the reverse, with a pocket in the ceiling for the warm air to filter into while the rest of the cavern stayed nice and cool.

I’d describe what I did exactly but I basically just made a dent in the ceiling. It did seem to cool the room down a bit though. Afterwards, I was left with a bit of mana, so I cleared some of the area behind my orb and scotched it back a little bit. I decided to wait a bit longer before I started opening up the door to the dungeon to level up at least somewhat beforehand.

So I chilled.