While Mordecai had been working on the sea floor path and their inhabitants, Kazue had been busy working on the towns.

It was a little odd working on the first town. Previously, the towns she had set up had been further away from the transition between zones but now she was working rather close to the invisible demarcation. It didn't help that the transition area was becoming larger and fuzzier, making it harder for one to know for sure which zone one was in at times.

This proximity also meant that boss fights with the swampland's dragons were quite visible from town.

When she'd commented on it to Mordecai, he'd pointed out that the other option was to make more closed transition areas like the stairwells they'd used in their early zones. Kazue much preferred their current setup, even if it didn't come with a method to make it easy to force people into the sewer path if needed.

In the future, she did want to connect these towns to the sewer path in order to spin off more stories for their delvers. Kazue knew many of them didn't care about the narratives she was creating for these zones, but they made her happy so she wanted to expand on them. But those plans were on hold until the Trionean soldiers had finished their training and gone home.

So for now she was creating mostly empty docks for sea-worthy ships along with dry docks for ships in various stages of construction or repair. The seaside town was also given a minimal amount of other buildings to flesh out a small settlement, with plenty of room for the town to grow by manually constructing future buildings. Besides, they didn't have enough available inhabitants to staff a bigger town yet anyway.

This was part of her narrative for the noncombatants; there would be various ways for them to contribute to the construction or repair of ships or the town itself in order to earn passage across the ocean to the distant island with the barely visible plume of smoke from its volcanic core.

Not that they had actual magma going yet. At this point, the island was only superficially volcanic.

This was not the only way forward for the noncombatants, however. Offset from the town was a cove hidden by a combination of rising cliff walls and dense vegetation. It was here that one could potentially meet and speak with inhabitants local to the zone and work out deals for safe passage.

What exactly those deals would entail Kazue left up to the inhabitants in question. The only hard rule Kazue put here was that any escorted group was to be left alone, though other inhabitants were allowed to put on a little bit of a show by looking menacing in the distance. It did help that the route leading from the cove and deep into the ocean water skirted the outer edges of the airy water enchantment, keeping such escorted groups away from the fighting.

It was all designed to look and feel more dangerous than it actually was.

She had two reasons for creating this alternative path. The most important one to her was that she wanted everyone to be able to see the magnificent vistas under the water, which were likely to become even more elaborate and vivid as time went on and everything had time to grow, multiply, and spread out.

The other reason was simply an acknowledgment that not every non-combat delver was going to have the time to spend putting in the requisite amount of effort into assisting with the building and repair of ships to earn passage. Simply paying their way forward wouldn't quite do either.

Instead, they had to barter with the inhabitants, and it had to be something that suited the inhabitants they were bartering with. Kazue and Mordecai didn't particularly care about the exact barter, and it could be anything from items to knowledge to some service the person could perform.

Her scenario development wasn't quite done yet, there were more hooks to set.

For one thing, the ships served a hybrid role. Not only could one work to repair or build a ship, one could work on the ship during the voyage to earn passage, though that would not be enough if one wanted to get any rewards from crossing the zone.

Also, up to three delving combat groups could sign on as protectors for a given voyage, in order to rotate shifts. Naturally, any ships that were guarded would come under assault several times a day, at least twice each shift, and it would take a minimum of three days to cross the simulated great distance to the island.

This was rather slow, even taking into account that the ship would be tacking against the small amount of wind the entire way. All the space that Kazue had managed to claim combined with the spatial compression only provided the zone with about a dozen miles of length and breadth. That would be two to three hours for most sailing vessels.

Illusion magic came into play heavily here, making the town behind them visually shrink faster than their actual distance would cause. Kazue was also able to use a bit of their faerie power here, enchanting the ships to travel only a small real distance for any given amount of apparent distance traveled.

It was the exact opposite type of enchantment one would want on a ship traveling a real ocean.

Once those ways of crossing the ocean were added to the underwater combat path, Kazue started adding her story elements to motivate groups.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The 'locals' would have tales and rumors to spread, all of them true to some extent. Or at least, made 'true' by virtue of the appropriate treasures being created for the purpose.

There was a ship that had been lost at sea carrying a small cargo of weapons and armors made of exotic metals, amongst other treasures. This rumor also came in a more challenging variant, where the ship was at a deeper section of their mini ocean that was far away from their airy water enchantments.

A merchant's cargo had been mysteriously ransacked and looted one night, with the trail of wreckage leading to the sea and the enchanted path that let one breathe under the water.

The natural hot springs of the distant volcanic island were blessed with magical healing properties and the onsens there were staffed by beautiful men and women. Both parts of this were true, though there was a strong emphasis that the positions were strictly volunteer and not an expected duty. While the job description was not terribly demanding, it did include specifically looking casually appealing in either elegant, beautiful outfits or lightweight ones, and some positions included giving massages.

Being on display like that was not something everyone would be okay with, so only those usagisune who wanted to have shifts there would have them.

Not that they were going to be the only potential staff, but that was part of what Kazue, Moriko, and Mordecai were going to be working on together later.

Kazue also created some potential stories with a bit more drama. A delver might be told a tale of woe where someone had been kidnapped for any of several dozen reasons. Of course, the in-story truth of the matter might vary. The target in question might need rescuing, they might have already rescued themselves by the time the delvers arrive, they might have decided this was a much better life and might resist being rescued, they might be a runaway, or other such variants.

She did have an ever-growing collection of books to draw upon after all.

To spice things up, Kazue also included an option for delvers to play the role of 'victim' in this scenario, for proper rewards of course. This was generally going to be non-combat delvers, but Kazue also foresaw the possibility of people wanting to use this as an opportunity to play out romantic roles involving a heroic rescuer.

In an entirely different style of story, Kazue had the seven pirate ratlings to work with. She didn't need to have the same sort of outlines for this lot. Instead, she handed them excerpts from various stories involving pirates acting in dramatic, and melodramatic ways along with some complete books and plays.

Then she created templates to act as different sorts of settings for them. Ship wreckage to litter across a section of the airy water path; a pirate's lair to place at the end of the path; drifting wreckage on the top of the ocean sufficient to support the ratlings who would appear to be in need of rescuing; a small, stealthy pirate ship designed for sneaky night-time boarding; and a brightly colored and dramatic pirate ship for daylight challenges.

More would be added over time, she was certain there would be plenty of suggestions.

The onsen was going to start small for now. After all, there would only be so many groups who would be able to make it this far. But there was plenty of room on the island for the complex to grow and they could always expand the island itself if needed.

It was also not free. One could either pay upfront or take on a debt. That debt defaulted to reducing the rewards that the delver might be presented with later, but it could also be worked off or otherwise bargained for.

The onsen was fairly expensive, but it was rather lavish too.

While the guest rooms for those who cleared the dungeon were still available, and for now were not too far away, the facilities at the onsen were much more appealing and luxurious if one could afford them. When the next zone down is eventually built, Kazue was going to make sure to have a basic camping area of some sort there, for those who do not want to pay for the onsen.

Kazue consulted every book and person who had any sort of ideas for available services and locations for the setting and did her best to include them all as options. She also had one thing not found elsewhere: a clay dragon that could breathe steam infused with tea that had various sorts of healing (or intoxicating) properties.

Cimbu's personalized services were amongst the most expensive available.

He also made for a wonderful, looming presence if needed.

Once both she and Mordecai were done with their primary creation process for this zone, it was time to sweep through and make any needed adjustments.

Their new floating jellyfish slimes were introduced into the sewers as well, along with creating a subsection of the warrens designed with partitioned entrances to keep the seawater from draining into the sewers, though the process did deliberately allow a tiny bit of briny water to slowly seep down.

The sewer inhabitants were easily upgraded to be able to live in salt water, and the ocean inhabitants had already been upgraded with flight and air breathing. Now they had even more interesting combinations available.

There wasn't much to do with their raid bosses, though Mordecai did make sure to at least give Zushi the ability to breathe and move underwater, just in case. Enki and Cimbu didn't need to breathe and Enki was dense enough to walk along the sea bottom unhindered. Sarcomaag still had the ability to grow one of his mushroom trees anywhere and was able to adapt to the cold saltwater without much issue. Still, if Zushi needed to fight underwater, the state of his fur when he got out was going to be, um, well, it would probably be best to not laugh about it in his presence.

Kazue also took this time to review some of her puzzles and rewards, as she had a lot more to work with now. Her changes were not very visible in most places, but the new materials gave her some ideas to add fun touches, such as in the crystal caves with the rhythm and harmony games.

Previously, the rewards had explicitly not included any of the crystals. As they had been built with their base mana pool instead of their dedicated rewards pool, the crystals would collapse back into mana if taken outside of the dungeon's territory.

Kazue removed that restriction and instead posted new instructions. Crystals that were not part of the puzzle could be extracted from the walls, but they were highly prone to breaking during any sort of mining or excavation attempt. Great care would need to be taken with no guarantee of success.

The crystals would not be particularly valuable normally, but Kazue could now coat them with an invisibly thin sheen of their new metals, giving them spectacular appearances without increasing their material value.

Increasing rewards this way helped keep up with the effectively deeper zones caused by the surface growth.

After she and Mordecai finished making balancing tweaks like that and implementing some new signs and policies to make sure people knew about the possibility of the dungeon gleaning knowledge from their minds, it was time for a sweeping change.

The proper introduction of new fey into the dungeon, possibly as inhabitants.