Finally ready, well it hadn’t been that long, just five days to finish up the tier one floors. Valens had also gotten the pixie template from the monsters Magnus had been keeping. He had been skeptical at first if two dozen would-be enough creatures to get a template from but it had worked out in the end. Pixies were actually a lot simpler at least biologically than other creatures as they were made out of pure mana. When looking at them they were only glowing balls of light with small glimmering wings tacked onto them.

After he had figured out the template Valens had set about testing out the pixies, sending out around fifty of the things into the dungeon to test the creatures out. He probably should have done the same thing with Sora before making her a boss but he hadn’t. The little things were quite the dangerous fighters, to be honest, it might just be because of the low tier but being spell casters gave the pixies an unfair advantage. Mainly that they were ranged combatants while everything else was still stuck using melee combat.

The pixies were fascinating creatures, they were so unlike any other monster that Valens had come across. One aspect that the core had found fascinating was the various affinities that the creatures had. It wasn’t something the core could control, as far as he could tell at least, but each of the pixies he created had an affinity for one of the base elements being earth, fire, water, or wind. Magnus had mentioned other elements like dark, and light is possible but so far he hadn’t seen those affinities manifest themselves yet.

The core had had a great time watching how the different affinities manifested creating pixies with completely different fighting styles. Granted they were all still pretty straight forward but that was to be expected with tier one creatures. The earth pixies were mainly focused on bludgeoning damage as they flung slightly sharpened rocks around, this worked most of the time but they tended to have a hard time fighting anything that could dodge their attacks, which wasn’t that difficult, they were slow. The air pixies had the complete opposite problem, their attacks were quite blades of wind, the problem was that they didn’t hit that hard at all. Valens’ least favorite type of pixie right now was definitely the fire pixies. Their attacks were fast and they did a respectable amount of damage but their fighting style was just too uncontrollable. One of the stupid things had burned down an entire floor, the pixie didn’t even benefit from the disaster either as it had managed to burn itself to ashes as well. That had been when Valens had found out that beings were not immune to the magic that they used, which was a topic Magnus had explained for hours when he had brought it up. All in all the fire pixies were just too uncontrollable for Valens’ liking.

Water pixies were by far the core’s favorite pixie type right now, you would think that throwing water at things wouldn’t be that effective but what the water pixies did was completely different. When they attacked the water that they used became an arc that cut things like a blade instead of splashing ineffectively against a target. The wind pixies used a similar idea with their wind blades but the water pixies were far stronger. They did a lot more damage with their water blades and they were also quite a bit faster than the earth pixies. Granted they didn’t hit quite as hard as the earth pixies and weren’t as fast as the wind pixies but overall the water pixies were far and away the most successful pixie variant.

Now the pixies, in general, were quite impressive and Valens was having a great time watching them throughout his dungeon but they had one rather major problem, numbers. Fae-type creatures didn’t reproduce like normal animals, they were created from pure mana usually in places called mana springs. Magnus had mentioned that some of the stronger dungeons could act as mana springs for the surrounding area but that wasn’t relevant for the core’s current situation. If Valens wanted to keep a fair number of pixies in his dungeon he was going to need to make all of them by hand.

That was not going to happen. Maybe he was just being lazy after having his food chain set up for so long, but Valens didn’t want to be constantly making new pixies. So unfortunately the pixies wouldn’t become a common monster in his dungeon, he’d leave the ones that were still alive to wander around, maybe they would survive, maybe not, regardless it was time to choose his boss.

So Magnus, what do you think of the water pixie on the eighth floor? That particular pixie had been doing quite well and had even managed to reach level six in the short time it had been alive.

You’re going to have to be a little more specific Valens there are five water pixies on that floor. The drake scratched his head flipping another page of his book.

Taking a second look at the floor Valens noticed that there were quite a few other water pixies around the floor. The one that keeps hunting the wolves and goblins. The others are just wandering around taking out rabbits.

Okay, I see it. That one seems about as good as any other pixie to me. It's really your choice Valens, not mine. Magnus drummed his claws against the enlarged core room’s floor looking thoughtful. The core had finally gotten around to expanding the core room and the drake was now able to take his full size, which was about the size of a small house. It was a rather impressive change but Valens was curious how the drake’s book was changing. The thing was now size appropriate for the drake which was enormous, he was going to ask about it at some point but he needed to get his boss finalized.

Focusing on the connection to his monster Valens willed the bridge between them to widen. Pain raced through the core and he lost his grip on the pixie as he reeled back, Valens noted with no small amount of alarm that there was a rather sizable crack on his core.

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Valens are you alright, what happened? The drake looked generally alarmed hovering over the core like a worried mother hen. Valens painfully described his attempt to create a new boss, his pain fading as the jagged scar in his core slowly closed up. A slightly more calm Magnus nodded along and was looking a little guilty. So I might have forgotten to mention that you need to completely finish the tenth floor and start on the eleventh before you can make a new boss.

That's a dumb rule. Why is that a thing? Valens was feeling cranky as a mostly sedentary rock; he didn’t get hurt that often and it had put him in a bad mood.

It's because you need to temper your core. The power of the first ten floors will refine your physical structure and strengthen it allowing for another boss to be created.

That sounds suitably mystical and annoying enough to be accurate. The core knew he was being unreasonable, it wasn’t that much more trouble to start the eleventh floor but it was still annoying and his core was still aching. Grumbling Valens sank his core room below the tenth floor and carefully pinched off his aura creating another floor.

I have an eleventh floor now. When is this tempering going to happen, don’t tell me Magnus left some important details out again. Looking around the new floor which was just the core room at this point Valens felt like he was having a hard time breathing like someone was standing on his chest. Which was ridiculous, he didn’t need to breathe in the first place. As he had grown more powerful, Valens’ core had grown larger but now it was shrinking. Crushed under the weight of the first ten floors' aura, the dungeon core shifted on a fundamental level as the power of his dungeon forced it to become stronger.

Eventually, Valens caught his breath as his core reached about the size of a grape, looking around the core felt great now. He felt stronger than he had just minutes ago, his aura also felt more robust, details that he never noticed before stuck out like sore thumbs. Rocks seemed to have different grains even if they had created them all based on the same template, fascinating.

Feeling better? Magnus was still keeping a close eye on the core but he seemed a lot more relaxed now.

Yes sorry about before Magnus. He had been a little unreasonable to the drake. I think I’ll try again on creating that boss, I should be fine now, right?

Yes, you’re good to go, sorry about forgetting to explain how it worked.

It's alright it all worked out. Next time he was doing something important he was going to have to get a full explanation from the drake. Valens considered the rocks around him carefully, there was something off about them. Hey Magnus, is there such a thing as different kinds of rocks?

Magnus blinked then burst out in surprised chuckles. The gaps in your knowledge are so odd sometimes, yes different types of rock are a thing but it doesn’t matter for you too much. It’ll all get reinforced with mana to become stronger than steel, eventually.

Alright then. Maybe he could figure out how to intentionally create a specific kind of rock later for now he had a boss to create. Taking a hold of the bond to his water pixie once more, he willed the bond to widen and deepen. This time there was no pain, just the sudden influx of thoughts and emotions from the new boss. It was quite a bit more playful than Sora had been even in the beginning, he would almost have called the little pixie flighty.

Right second boss created, now can I put the boss room wherever I want or are there any limits? Valens thought it would make a lot of sense to force people to run through the bosses one after another, but he didn’t know if that was possible or not.

Technically the boss itself can be anywhere in the dungeon but the boss rooms will only activate every ten floors except for your final boss room. That was a bit disappointing but the core had been expecting something along those lines.

Valens moved on to crafting the boss room at the end of the tenth floor and binding the new pixie boss to the room. Interestingly the room created a mini forest for the pixie to fight in and based on what he had seen so far it would be a nightmare trying to find the tiny faekin. The glowing ball of light might stick out but it was also quite fast and small. Next, the core returned his focus to the eleventh floor and began expanding it outwards, he was pleased to note that his aura growth was far faster than when he had been a tier-one core.

Magnus, how long do you think it will take to get a tier two ecosystem set up? I have the monster lizard pattern from you and Sora, but that's about it for right now.

Quite a few creatures are on the threshold to evolve so they should be making their way down to the eleventh floor soon but it might be a while before you get another tier two template. Stronger creatures get increasingly more complicated and it would be best to focus on getting a stable population of tier two creatures, by the time you accomplish that you should probably have the template.

That was a bit disappointing. He had been hoping for some new templates to play with but he supposed he would be getting basically what he wanted without having to put in the work to make the creatures. When it gets large enough I’ll populate the eleventh floor with the tier two lizards as well as the tier one ecosystem from the first floors. It's just going to be a forest biome again but I might switch things up for the twelfth floor. I have some ideas I want to try out.

Magnus nodded agreeable, yawning while settling down beneath the core for a nap. Back to work then Valens, the walls of the dungeon began expanding out once more as tiny shoots of plants began to show new growth on the latest floor.