The ninth floor was completely different from all floors above. When Sek saw it for the first time, he was stunned by how different it was. What confused him was that this floor didn’t look like it would do a good job defending from intruders. Sek felt that this was strange. The eighth floor was like a fortress that guarded the floors above. But the ninth floor was one, open floor.

Now that he had seen that all newly created floors were already finished, Sek had high hopes for the last floor. When he stepped in the ninth floor he was astonished. As far as the eyes could reach there was water. Which was only interrupted by few, different sized islands.

When he started to inspect the floor, he discovered that only a few of the biggest islands were inhabited. Most islands only had vegetation and some insects on it. This circumstance seemed strange to Sek at first, but soon he discovered that the water was teeming with life. Despite being only a freshwater lake, it already had some very dangerous animals swimming around.

This was the first floor where Gorm hadn’t only provided the basic types of animals. Some of the stronger predators had bloodlines. It seemed like Gorm wanted to make the waters a deadly trap for intruders.

Despite only providing basic bloodlines, Sek could already see how dangerous the ninth floor would become, especially in the water. The old floors already had some of the more basic bloodlines appearing. If this was an indication for the development of the bloodlines in the dungeon, the basic bloodlines of the ninth floor would need only a few short decades before intermediate bloodlines would appear.

Most animals with intermediate bloodlines would become sapient when they reached adulthood. So it made sense to leave most of the islands open. It wouldn’t take long before the first water dwellers would become humanoid beasts and leave the water in search for a place to gather resources.

The only thing that still puzzled Sek was how Gorm would connect to the tenth floor, and how he would secure said connection.

With that in mind, he reexamined the floor. When he almost gave up, due to not finding anything, he remembered an island that seemed strange. It was by far the biggest island but was also the least populated. Or so it seemed.

Hurrying to said island Sek discovered that it wasn’t the least populated, it had by far the densest population. But the population didn’t consist of anything that Sek normally considered as such. The inhabitants were almost exclusively ants.

All kinds of ants were fighting for territory and resources. Sek could observe that the vegetation on this island was growing a lot faster than anywhere else. He also spotted some ants that were sitting on a leaf that was floating away from the island. As soon as they were roughly 500 meters away from the shore, they suddenly died. It seemed like they couldn’t leave the island.

Sek was certain that this island had something to do with the connection to the tenth floor. But he didn’t know what, so he could only wait until Gorm exited his seclusion.

Unbeknownst to Sek the change, he thought finished, continued.

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With the first nine floors finished whatever energy it was, that was responsible for expanding, changing and perfecting the dungeon, shifted the laws that governed the dungeon.

At first, extremely small ice and fire stones started to appear all over the floors, then water stones came into existence. And after that, some wind stones got created. With time all elemental stones were scattered over the floors.

This change wasn’t too extreme but it almost immediately got apparent that something had changed. Until this point, there was always a more or less constant temperature, but now it started to fall or rise to match the natural circumstances in the individual ecosystems.

Sometime later the inhabitants of the first floor noticed a breeze and a little later it started to storm and then rain. These phenomena were new to everyone, so they started to panic. After almost an entire day it finally stopped and the first floor returned to its usual calm.

A few months went by and weather and temperature changes were already normal on all the floors. But then, after a series of storms, the temperature continued to drop.

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Keeper was swarmed by concerned animals every day for the last few weeks, ever since the temperature started to drop the number of concerned animals started to increase. And since he would help with their normal problems they thought he could help them with this problem too. But Keeper was almost as clueless as them.

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The only thing he knew, was that this change was happening on every floor albeit on different rates. So he wasn’t really able to help anyone, but he still tried to calm everyone down. Keeper knew that the only person who could know what was happening was Seker.

Keeper kept searching for him, but couldn’t find him. He was starting to believe that Sek and Gorm had abandoned him, but he knew that Melia was still playing with the beavers every day.

When he was thinking about the beavers he discovered that the beavers weren’t particularly bothered by the weather and temperature changes. Melia had probably told them what they were.

After thinking about it for a bit he felt incredibly stupid. He knew that despite being naïve and playful, Melia was an old and powerful being. She even knew about the outside world.

Once Keeper remembered this, he went on his way to the first floor. When he arrived there the beaver guards were eyeing him suspiciously, but let him enter the floor. Keeper knew that that was only the case because they felt that he was way more powerful than him and they would probably tell their superiors about him. But that was exactly what he wanted.

Soon a group of humanoid beavers appeared in front of him barring his way. Keeper could immediately recognize Beabea. Despite his changed form he still had the same feeling as before, more importantly, he felt the protection of Gorm on him.

“Hello Keeper, I haven’t seen you in a long time. I hope you are well.” Keeper himself hadn’t changed much, he only grew bigger and stronger after he evolved into a beast. So it came to no surprise to him that Beabea recognized him.

“Greetings! I’m good. I’m only a bit concerned due to the sinking temperature. I’m here to ask Melia for an explanation.” Keeper answered. He immediately told them why he was visiting, because he knew that the beaver clan didn’t like intruders and he didn’t like being on the first floor. It always remembered him of the time of his life he was the least proud of.

“Ah! I knew you would come to visit Melia about that. I bet you searched for Seker and didn’t find him. Melia told us that he is currently studying how the weather and seasons got introduced to the dungeon. Oh, have you heard about the new floors? It seems that the eighth and ninth floor are quite special. Seker even demanded from us to send one of our best constructors to the eighth floor to construct fortifications and teach the beaver clans there.” As usual, Beabea couldn’t stop talking. Keeper knew that was only the case because he felt he was worthy of his respect. Normally Beabea would only talk the bare minimum possible.

“So that’s it! If Seker has something to study he won’t bother with anyone except form Gorm and Melia. What are these seasons you were talking about? Are they what’s responsible for the temperature and weather changes?” Keeper ignored the unnecessary things and went straight to the things he found important, but after seeing Beabea's face he added, “I already visited all the new floors, I had to spread the Sanctuary over the new floors. But on the ninth floor, I didn’t make a lot of progress. I sent the first humanoid fish, she’s a trout, to establish a headquarter on one of the uninhabited islands. Which isn’t that easy, because there the water is dangerous. They have a few dozen beasts already.”

Beabea's lineaments relaxed after hearing Keeper talk about the new floors. To Keeper, it almost seemed like he was hoping to talk to him some more. But he had no time to talk with Beabea, he had to calm the animals all over the dungeon down. “As much as I like talking with you, Beabea. I don’t have time now. I promise to visit again after I can calm the situation down.”

“Yes they are, but on what exactly seasons are, you better talk to Melia. I’ll let you off this time, but you better keep your promise!” Beabea didn’t seem too fond of letting him go. But after a few more exchanges Keeper could finally go and find Melia.

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It was snowing and the normally life teeming floors were peaceful. The few animals that went outside did so very reluctant and had no nerve to start trouble. Even the few exceptions that thrived in the snowy climate tried their best to not anger anybody.

The only floor that wasn’t cold and snowy, was the tenth floor. While being a bit colder than before, the Winter only manifested itself in storms and a slight drop in temperature.

This made it so that a lot of the powerful clan heads went there with their families. At first, they just went to the first island they could find, but they discovered that the islands were very dangerous, but what was more dangerous was swimming in the water to find an island for themselves.

Soon they only went to the island that the Sanctuary occupied. It was one of the biggest and due to the effort of Keeper's organization, it was also the best developed and guarded.

Keeper found this development positive. The tourism, that was what Sek called this phenomenon, could help to drive the development of the island forward. With those many different clans involved, Keeper finally had enough manpower to build the fortifications he so desperately needed to be able to defend the island from the aggressive water dwellers.

Since Keeper got the explanation what seasons were from Melia, he had taught how to build a shelter to keep warm and storage for food. Without this, almost half of the population would have died.

When Sek finally came by after stopping his investigations, the first snow had already fallen. After a conversation about the implications of seasons, Keeper had shown him how he made the different animals winter proof. When Sek saw this he was quite excited.

Until that point, most of the animals lived nomadic lives and even most of the clans would change locations frequently. Clans like the beaver clan were exceptions. But with the shelters build, this would probably change. The clans would start to expend a lot of manpower and resources to build a headquarter. And to not lose what they build they would have to defend it and with that, they couldn’t leave. This would make it way more interesting in the future. If enough time passed, it was possible that they would have a similar development to the humans on the outside.

But because they didn’t have any influences Sek hoped to study the formation of a civilization. Despite only being interested in nature and similar things normally Sek found himself exited on the prospect of something like this. So much so that he hoped Gorm would wait a hundred years or more until he opened himself to the world.