The anti-dragon redesign of his defenses wound up coming out rather simplistic.

Vines became a more common design element, covering a lot of ceilings, designed to be easy to break free via the boomslangs’ vine control ability.

Dragons might be too tough for almost any nets he could create, but the goal of the vine-nets wasn’t to entangle them, not at first. They were simply meant to fall on them and wrap around a part of their body, any part. Horn, leg, wing, whatever. Not enough to really trouble the invader, just enough to stay stuck.

And from there, the snakes along for the ride would expand the vines from there, first completely surrounding the dragon and finally expanding the vines from there to start restricting it, biting the creature all the while. Until eventually, the dragon would either be wrapped up in a massive ball of foliage, barely able to move, or it would be forced to burn off the net.

Except that the invading dragons would be plant matter masquerading as dragon flesh, therefore being more vulnerable to fire than they otherwise might have been. Once enough plant matter got on them, they’d be checkmated.

There was also simply a massive number of extra creatures at his disposal.

His Command Limit no longer equaled “as many creatures at your Rank as you can summon at once with your mana pool”, but there was a different gain. Creatures below his rank had half the impact on his command limit, so while the raw points at his disposal had only increased by fifty percent, the number of E-Rank creatures he could use had tripled.

So, more defenders was the obvious addition.

And finally, his T-rex pattern was also upgraded to E-Rank with Draconic Physiology. Fire power to use against plant creatures, fire resistance to be somewhat protected from breath attacks, and one more fringe benefit. Arms.

The short limbs of the Tyrannosaurus were the subject of much controversy, tiny arms often meemed about. Thomas was only vaguely aware of some theories that these limbs served a small function to help pin prey when the dinosaur was looming over a target.

Either way, that issue was removed.

Massive, three-clawed arms hung from the new T-rex’s torso, long enough to reach the tip of its nose and muscular to the point where they could probably punch through solid rock even without E-Rank stats.

In the wild, they likely hadn’t developed these limbs since they already had massive food requirements due to their size and worked perfectly well as they were.

But in the Dungeon, where Thomas needed fighting machines?

His new draconic tyrants were exactly what he needed.

So, a few more of those in his Dungeon.

Furthermore, he decided to burrow his core room deeper, enough to create two more rooms between the hall of three giant sloths under Mammal Hall and his core room, putting him into what would have been called “basement level four” in a regular building.

Possibly even enough to survive a nuclear strike, as long as it wasn’t dropped right on top of him.

Hell, even then, he might survive. The museum would definitely come down on top of him, but shockwaves went the path of least resistance, which would mean sweeping away everything to the side of the blast, rather than focusing on traveling deeper into the ground.

Was there such a thing as a bunker-buster nuke? A missile meant to punch deep into the ground before detonating … yeah, Thomas burrowed just a little deeper, until he was at level negative 8.

This had the dual benefits of insulating him from any messes that occurred upstairs and ensuring that he had rooms far enough from invaders that he could populate them even while he was being invaded.

He’d properly fill them later, for now, a whole bunch of seriously dangerous creatures should be enough.

In the meanwhile, he had other fish to fry.

The geology section.

Finally.

To start with, he started messing with the stairs that lead to the second floor, through the hollow, spherical, sculpture.

He wound up removing the stairs entirely, and creating new ones, that wound through the room, even transitioning into a flat walkway in places, until it finally threaded through the sculpture and proceeded to the second floor.

A pointless delaying tactic … until he added a whole bunch of vines. And then, filled them with snakes.

With that done, he moved on to designing the second floor.

That was when things got mean.

His idea?

A narrow maze of pathways led over a pool with a hippo in it. Already dangerous, but not exceedingly so, since it couldn’t launch itself out the way, say, a crocodile could. You needed to end up in the water to be in any danger. And even if you did somehow wind up inside, you’d still have a chance to get out.

Unless you hurt the hippo. If that happened you. Were. Screwed.

After all, these things bled the blood of a Tatzelwyrm, a dragon so toxic that even radioactive waste looked harmless by comparison.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Essentially, the first time you wound up in the water, you’d be fine if you managed to get away from the hippo. But if you wounded it during your escape, the water would start to turn toxic.

The same went for killing the hippo from outside the water. Assuming you even managed it, considering how thoroughly water fouled the trajectory of bullets fired into it while also slowing them down immensely.

There were ways around the mess, like luring the hippo over into one corner while someone crossed, and once someone was on the other side, they could do the luring, to make sure that the hippo was elsewhere if someone fell down.

At the end of the day, though, this was just a few beams the width of a human hand leading across the water. A normal human could walk across those just fine, let alone a supernaturally empowered superhuman. Right now, the only complicating factor was nerves, which the delvers may or may not be suffering from.

What about something to knock them off, projectiles, maybe?

Not to mention that there were a few other tricks he could pull off with that. Namely, he had an idea for what he wanted his next champion to be, one he could send out and use as an ambassador with the humans as well.

And when creating a champion, he didn’t just want a good, solid, suitable species, but also a particularly outstanding variant of that species.

So, spider monkeys with a solid supply of rocks?

Nah, that seemed too simple.

A narrow path across the water just screamed to be filled with something that could leap out to snap at unwary delvers.

What about … oh, yes, dwarf crocodiles. They were only around one and a half meters long and he had the pattern.

How about making this a game, then?

His new concept scraped most of the original idea, but he was far happier with it.

A murky water pit, with a couple of hippos and a bunch of crocodiles inside.

The only way across, two metal gantries, each only twenty centimeters across. And water from the pit would also slosh quite a ways on either end of the gantries. There’d be a grate to keep the crocodiles in, however, because the main point would be to expose people to the water no matter what.

Delvers would have to make their way across, defending themselves from the crocodiles, yet if they hurt a hippo, not only would falling in be dangerous as hell, but should the injured creature bleed enough, even stepping into the water would be dangerous.

And to make it more “fun”, Thomas made two entire corridors just like that, half the second floor, with five consecutive pools inside, each with varying ratios of hippos to crocs.

There was just one small issue. If the hippo poisoned the water, it’d kill the crocs as well.

A toxin immunity would be easy enough to create. But it was too simple.

Another option would be to give the hippo power to the crocodiles, but that would cost him the little “game” of only killing the crocodiles.

He wound up searching through his collected powers and finding something. The ability to absorb toxins and convert them to a temporary power boost.

Thomas sighed. He really should have searched that thing before. His earlier attitude of “if it’s useful, I would have seen it used and know about it” clearly had some issues.

But he still had an extra problem. He’d never used the crocodile pattern, and it would need to be F-Rank for him to give it a power.

Thomas sighed, and doubled the number of crocodiles in the pools. For now, they’d only serve to knock people into the water.

Finally, he made sure to carve a channel from the water pools to the seventh sub-level. It would normally be sealed, but he could open them at will.

He’d once seen a car be crushed by four tons of water getting dumped out of an excavator’s shovel, four meters up.

This would be over a thousand tons, starting its journey almost a hundred meters above its destination. And even if an invader was tough enough to tank that kind of blow, would they be able to stop themselves from being pushed around, straight into a wall of spikes?

In other words, this would be the ultimate sucker punch to obliterate unsuspecting invaders.

And as for the monkeys he hadn’t wound up emplacing, he found a new place for them. Replacing the snakes in the main hall, while also adding a whole bunch of trees with nuts to be used as projectiles. Attacks from all directions, a near-infinite supply of projectiles, would make that place annoying, but not quite deadly enou- … oh, that was a good idea.

Thomas just removed the railings on all stairs. Even before the monkeys reached F-Rank and gained powers, constant bombardment was liable to make invaders less aware of where they were putting their feet and falling off.

And to make that actually dangerous, he added another pool to the ground and filled it with hippos.

From there, he returned his attention to the second floor, beyond the pools and walkways.

Honestly, he decided to just be lazy and turn that section into what the main hall used to be, vegetation and snakes. Doable if you were cautious, but carelessness would easily get you killed.

From there, you kept going until you returned to the start, only separated from the stairs by a wall. There, delvers would head down to the first floor, but not by way of stairs or even a ladder. No, one would have to jump, into a pool … infested with sharks.

Pajama catsharks, to be precise.

They were not only adorable, named for their blue-striped hide, but tough as nails. They were only as long as an adult’s arm, but had skin almost two millimeters thick and tough as all get out. Defenses of that degree were necessary, as they lived in coral reefs and often went through narrow passages which would rip an ordinary shark to shreds.

In fact, trying to get through that skin with a scalpel would literally require one to repeatedly scrape away at a specific section, essentially sawing one’s way through. And that was when operating on a shark, having it mostly out of the water.

Trying to hurt one while swimming? That would be tough.

There was also a very interesting fact about pajama catsharks, their defensive move of “donuting”. When attacked by a larger predator, they’d roll into a ball, biting their own tail, essentially turning into a donut, too large to swallow whole and due to their tough skin, almost impossible to devour piecemeal.

Not to mention that once a delver got out of the initial landing zone, one would be swimming through a coral reef. Plenty of hiding places, sharp edges, and even a few whip corals. The latter weren’t exactly dangerous, but stung like hell if they hit bare skin.

Of course, the sharks would just be regular sharks for now, so Thomas added a pool to the roof too, for the wyvern to drop creatures into for the sharks to kill and level up with.

This second water level would cover most of the first floor, until the final section, where Thomas lowered the ceiling for the last ten meters. That way, one would have to dive continuously, without being able to surface to breathe, finally emerging into a section he’d modeled after an ancient temple, Indiana Jones style. Crumbling ancient stone and vines, with draconic raptors and a single dragon rex greeting any that arrived.

He didn’t want to waste any champions on that area, he needed them to be between him and invaders, but a mass of powerful monsters ready to greet delvers with a wave of fire as they emerged from holding their breath for quite a while … that should be enough.

In the temple, they’d also finally find the ladder needed to get back onto the second floor and leave, so once one dropped down, one needed to finish the section or else be trapped.

Although … if someone were to surrender, he might be able to bargain with them.

You know, “I’ll give you the ladder, you’ll give me stuff”. Perhaps if he could get his hands on some magical contracts?

He added a small island to the center of the first floor, and painted a sign on the wall that explained that the ladder would be provided at the end, but a bargain with Daedalus the Dungeon Architect would bring it earlier.

Oh, this section would be nasty.

Now if only there were people to go through it. Where was everyone? Hiding from Alaxia, just like most of the monsters out there?