Because his attempts to cultivate his father’s technique failed so far, Gorm started to think about his existence as a dungeon core. Or to be exact, dungeon core oak. For the first time since he fused with the oak and the mana crystal, he tried to come to terms with his body and form of existence.

Despite spending over 600 years as a core he never tried to feel what it felt like to be one. Now that he finally tried, he discovered parts of himself he never knew existed. Apart from undiscovered places in his five floors and strange new animals and monsters, Gorm discovered that he couldn’t comprehend the forest cavity.

He instinctively knew everything about his floors, now that he tried to really understand them. He even knew everything that had ever happened there and what was currently happening. It was a weird feeling, that Gorm was unable to describe if someone ever asked him about it. Because the feeling of being omnipotent inside his dungeon disturbed him, Gorm lessened the amount of perception he distributed through the floors. Now he only knew roughly what was happening on the floors.

Gorm focused the freed perception on the forest cavity to reinforce his ongoing investigations of the room. Despite having the bulk of his perception and mental strength focused on this one task, he still didn’t understand the cavity. Gorm wasn’t even sure if he was able to perceive its entirety. Let alone explore its secrets.

It felt like a mysterious force was trying to divert his attention from discovering anything. And despite Gorms big efforts, he couldn’t even find out from what exactly it was diverting him. Frustrated he stopped his probing, for now, and focused on his core room.

There were only two things out of the ordinary about the core room. The first was the mysterious runes and holes on all of its surfaces. But he already knew they were the core part of the formation that spanned all over the mountain. It at least seemed like it was the core.

The second thing was his core, or more exactly his core oak. He always saw it as a natural part of who he was now, but as his floors had shown, there was always more to it than just being there. So Gorm diffused his perception into the core oak.

After a short time, he felt himself like he never did before. Nature was completely in tune with him. Gorm was sure that this new feeling would help him in the future. But he wanted to experience this state for a bit longer, so he pushed all thoughts aside and even let the control over his perception slip.

Unbeknownst to Gorm years went by. And while his core room was completely peaceful, the rest of the dungeon experienced great changes.

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In the beginning, everything was calm, nothing changes, or at least nothing anyone would notice. But as time went on, Sek stated to feel something, he was still unsure what exactly was changing, he only knew that he liked whatever was. Next was Melia, but she didn’t really think about it, the only feeling she had, was that Gorm was making things so she felt better. So she didn’t see any reason to be alarmed.

After that, the changes got more apparent. Especially on the first floor, the already almost perfect ecosystem got further perfected. Missing insects, animals and plants started to appear. And that was only after the microorganisms had been supplemented with those that were missing to perfect the floor.

But no one, except for Sek and Melia, noticed these changes. Melia still seemed to find that nothing unusual was happening. She only liked staying on the first floor more. Sek, on the other hand, was progressively getting more and more shocked.

How was it possible for such a perfect floor to exist? How was it possible that nature was almost perfectly represented in something artificial? Something like this wasn’t impossible, but Sek had never heard about a dungeon core that achieved something like this despite being unable to interact with the outside and not having thousands of years of time. But the change didn’t wait for Sek to comprehend what was happening, it even sped up.

After the first floor got perfected the second floor started to go through the same process. And after the second floor was perfect the third followed.

Finally, it finished on the fifth floor. Sek hoped that, now that Gorm had finished whatever he was doing, he would exit his seclusion and answer his questions.

His wish didn’t get fulfilled.

A sixth floor started to appear, then a seventh, an eighth and finally a ninth. The floors were barren, nothing more than lifeless caves and tunnels. Not even water could be found there. Thankfully no tenth floor was being created, otherwise, Gorms plans would become obsolete.

With the creation of the ninth floor, the sixth floor started to expand again. When it reached similar proportions as the floors before it, the expansion continued on the seventh floor.

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The eighth and ninth floor expansion was different. All floors before them were ring-shaped. But the eighth floor was the first floor underneath the large cavity. So it was many times bigger than the floors above it.

On the eighth floor, despite its shape changing, the layout didn’t change. It was still comprised out of a mix of huge rooms and tunnels. It was only on a much larger scale.

But the ninth floor was different, it was only one huge room and it was way higher than any floor before it. There were a lot of mountains and caves in the room, but the mountains above a certain height all had a more or less flat top.

It looked quite bizarre. Just when Sek was wondering what was going on, he had observed the entire process, from perfecting the old floors to the creation of the new ones, water started to gush out of every spring on every floor.

The huge flood sloshed through the entire dungeon. It created new rivers and lakes on the floors without or only few of them. When it reached the sixth floor it already had torn various plants and animals with it.

Like the flood had a mind of its own it released some of it on its way through the sixth floor. Before it continued through the seventh and eighth floor. On the eighth floor, it let go of the last of the materials it had torn with it before it continued into the ninth floor.

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Sek watched the water pouring out of holes in the ceiling of the ninth floor and decided to inspect the other floors. He wanted to find out what the damages in the dungeon were. And how the new floors were doing.

Sek went to the first floor first. And like he thought there weren’t any real damages. The only things that were really damaged were the dams and their other structures of the Beaver clan. But Beabea and some of the other sapient beavers were already planning how to rebuild, repair and most importantly improve their infrastructure. They were even glad that their old buildings got destroyed.

Only Melia was unhappy. Because the next floor war was due in only one week and every available beaver had to help rebuild their defenses. Even Melias personal beaver playmate had to work.

“Sek what are you doing? Do you know why Gorm would destroy the houses of the beavers? Why did Beabea need little Bea? He is so small; how can he help with anything?” Melia bombarded Sek with questions.

“I don’t know, Gorm went in seclusion. He didn’t tell me about his plans. Didn’t you feel that the floors were getting closer and closer to nature?” Sek answered.

Melia looked at him with big eyes. “Oh! I thought Gorm was doing that on purpose. To make me more comfortable when I’m playing with my friends.”

Sek sighed, he knew that Melia was naïve and only acted as if she was already a grown up, but he had hoped that with her age of a few thousand years she would at least think on her own when something so unusual happened. “I don’t think so. If the beavers won’t play with you, why don’t you go swimming? You normally swim all the time.”

“No! The water is muddy and dirty. I don’t want to swim when the water is dirty.” Melia seemed offended by even the thought that she would swim in muddy water. “I’m bored. Sek show me around the dungeon! I’ve never been to another floor than the first.”

“Ok. Follow me, I originally wanted to inspect the other floors.” Sek could only give in, He knew Melia good enough to know that he had to do so no matter what.

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Melia wasn’t impressed by the next few floors. But Sek was surprised. He couldn’t find any obvious damages due to the flood. The only thing that really changed was the distribution of water.

Most existing rivers got a bit wider and deeper and in general, there was more water on all floors. The water could also flow from the first to the fifth floor now. Sek thought that that was good because it made the dungeon more of a natural whole. Melia liked it because she could theoretically let herself float through the entire dungeon. And she wouldn’t listen to anything Sek had to say against it. Like the waterfalls that connected the floors for example.

When they reached one of the entrances to the sixth floor Sek warned Melia that the following floors weren’t complete yet.

But when they stepped foot in the sixth floor they found themselves in a steppe, not unlike the one they just came from. After careful investigation, they discovered that the fifth and sixth floor worked more like one floor on two levels than two different floors. Their connections were mostly in rooms that had had one half on the fifth and the other half on the sixth floor. The only thing that was really different, was that the sixth floor had fewer resources and was a bit more barren. But because the floors were so interwoven, that wasn’t that obvious. It would be interesting to see how the inhabitants worked with this situation.

The seventh floor was almost exactly like the second floor but had more resources and less light. Melia didn’t like this floor because it was too dark, so Sek had to move on. He would come back later to investigate it in detail. He felt like there was more to it than they had seen on the surface.

On the eighth floor the found the same ecosystems as on the first floor, or so they thought. They soon discovered that besides the ecosystems from the first floor there were also expansive normal forests. This instantly made it Melia's new favorite floor.

The floor seemed normal enough on the surface but after exploring it in depth, Sek discovered that it was made up of a lot of natural choke points and every room was defendable with relative ease. If defenses were built many rooms would become fortress which was even more easily defended.

Sek liked this floor because it was a good defense against invaders, whilst still seeming natural. If the inhabitants of this floor were as intelligent and talented as those in the old floors and the situation was like it was in every floor, except for the first, Gorm would gain a formidable and well-trained defense force.

Now that he had seen the eighth floor, Sek was curious what the ninth floor was like. He left Melia behind, no one was allowed to hurt her so he wasn’t worried about her. And even if something wanted to hurt her, nothing on the new floors had evolved past being a monster.