DC

He smiles. “Already on the tenth floor? Awesome.”

I redirect him. “Explain!”

He nods, “Well, after the tenth floor, every five floors, the amount of space a dungeon is allowed to have is doubled. Nobody is quite sure why that happens but there is a legend that the warrior god was tired of slow expansion for his disciples, so he lent a portion of his power to dungeons.”

I smile. “Well, that's perfect.”

Gairy continues to speak after I leave, but I don't listen. Something about how, most dungeons don't use all that space, and just level up their mobs, but… I don't care!

For the tenth floor, I actually just decided to make it the same as the ninth floor, but bigger, and I connect it to the ninth floor.

At the end of the river on the ninth floor I add a waterfall dropping into the tenth floor. I also add little passageways inside of some of the trees. Inside some of the sentient trees too, so a Bull shaman can tame a tree, and have their own little guarded passageway down.

As well as three tiny, narrow staircases, cut into the side of the floor, for the goblins, rats, and moles to use.

Now that I have that all built and the bulls know of their existence, and have a solid hold set up, I finally build the passageways from the seventh floor, into this floor. I built three different passageways into this floor, one for each race. The goblins get something right by their village. The moles get something right by their village, and the rats get something right by their city.

This might have been a mistake as immediately a portion of the rats, nearly a third of the population, started a rebellion, and fled into the ninth floor. Sadly the majority of them were massacred by the bulls.

The bulls were weaker than the mole people, dumber than both, and less populous than the rats. Despite all of this they held their own just fine, their shamans taming powerful trees, and beasts who defended them, all while they used devastating hit, and run tactics.

The Goblins appeared through their gateway. All of them mounted on a Stallhorn, and they spotted the enemy rats, swarming a fleeing Bull shaman, all the while casting spells back at them. Trees rising from the ground, throwing rats to, and fro.

The goblins see this magic with awe in their eyes, and they charge forward to assist the mage, in hopes he will teach them.

The Stallhorns plow into the backs of the rats, piercing spines, with their horns, and trampling skulls underfoot.

When they enter the melee they begin to buck, and dance back, and fath, slamming hooves into faces, and slicing horns back, and forth. The goblins on their backs hoot, holler, and swing their spears like clubs, the rough hewn stone tips, slicing many throats before eventually breaking on bone, but they do not notice, and just use them like clubs.

They devastate the rat lines, who run, and disappear off to somewhere else.

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The goblins slowly approach the bull shaman, and they begin to converse. The grunting bull language is unable to communicate with the guttural goblin language.

But using their body language they begin to work a sort of treaty out. The Bulls will allow the goblins safe expansion into their territory, and coexistence, as well as teaching the goblins some magic. But they will also engage in a military alliance should the rats decide to come back.

All the while they negotiate below their feet the rats have already begun to carve shallow tunnels. Occasionally hitting the roots of the treants above them, who then wreak havoc, and collapse that tunnel.

The moles have only just begun to expand, as they mostly lack the numbers to turn away from the rats, and go elsewhere. The remaining rats are still maintaining a regular bombardment of the moles. They have begun sending guards armed with muskets, who fire towards the enemy moles. Most of the moles are unharmed but occasionally one bullet slips through, and they are forced to retreat so that they can heal.

This repeats many times over. The rats attack, the moles wipe out a ton, before one is injured, and they must retreat, as they can’t afford to lose any of their number.

Now for the real tenth floor that adventurers can access…

I want to do an ocean floor, but I don't really have any ocean creatures yet. I guess i'll just tuck that away for later.

I decide to make the entire floor another underground cavern. I've already made one, but this one will be different. It will be a mushroom forest. I fill the whole thing with mushrooms that I supersized, and made bio-luminescent.

I cover the floor with moss, lichen, and thin patchy layers of slime and algae, as the whole thing, has a slight trickle of water running through it, and it's oppressively humid. So humid, that it rises to the ceiling of the cavern, where it condenses, and falls back down, draping the entire cavern in a perpetual state of a trickle of rain.

I really like this so I contemplate making an EV floor, just like this. In fact I'm totally gonna, on the eleventh floor.

For the boss, I do the same thing I did to the trees, but with the mushrooms, and create something terrifying similar, but different. I actually had to get rid of it, because the spores it released when interacting with living beings turned them into like; fungus zombies.

I killed the thing and filled the entire cavern with white hot flames. Not the main cavern, because it was just in the boss room, but the entire thing turned into a red hot drippy mess of lava. Hopefully no spores would spread.

I decide to populate the boss room after I populate it with regular monsters. I decide to do another goblin thing, as it seems like a sort of goblin vibe to have an underground mushroom forest. Most of the goblins are D-5 or D-7.

The goblins are a little bit weaker than the average mob in this area, but their tendency to work together made them more dangerous. I put some frogs in there as well, and made them bigger, and stronger. The frogs were about the size of a small pony, but plenty dangerous, with a poisonous saliva, so if it breaks your skin, it will poison you.

Occasionally an exceptional goblin would hop on top of these giant frogs, and ride them around. I called these ones Rogue Goblins, and I only added one every 10 days, and they were stronger than the rest of them by a decent bit, and would drop very good loot.

Milo

Me and Tom trott along through the grass before breaking through back into the town.

Tom swivels his head solemnly overviewing the village. He nods once again solemnly. “Do I have somewhere to stay?”

I shrug at him. “Find a tavern, or somewhere. Or just stay in a tent. You'll start getting your pay soon, and that should be enough to find a place to stay. Housing isn't too expensive, and worst case you live in the tiny little village being raised inside the dungeon. I heard the price of living there is non-existent, because food is abundant, and nobody owns the land so you can build anywhere you want for free.”

He shrugs noncommittally. “Ok.”

I once again spur my horse forward, and we begin the walk towards Gertrudes office.