Katherine Pov

In the year since the children had joined her very little had happened, Leto and her kept hunting to feed the children and working hard to level up. Katherine had made it to level twenty two by now and Leto wasn't far behind at level eighteen.

His low level worked in his favor on this floor, the bigger the gap between levels the greater experience he would receive. Her leveling had slowed down due to helping Leto but she didn't mind very much.

These children would leave here before she did. She guessed in a decade or so they would leave to start their own lives. They didn't have the same life span as her and she didn't know how to start them on the path to Godhood.

Leto was different though and she was pretty sure he knew it too. When the children had first arrived she had used her identify skill on all of them and they came back as pure humans except for Leto, he's half dragon.

She's not sure what a dragon is but from looking at Leto for a whole year she knows they are strong and magically inclined. He picked up the fireball skill in just a few hours after she started teaching him and don't even get her started on his grow plant skill.

He covered a radius of seven feet! She felt inclined to take him home with her to be her warrior but she was still unsure if he would come with her. She had her doubts though. He was very attached to the other children.

After using her grow plant skill for so long it was finally a medium level skill and she was filled with pride. Her grow radius covered ten feet now and she now had a new skill she had been working hard to level up. It was low Harvester.

It helped her to choose the best of the low level herbs and plants she was looking at. She was excited to level it up so she could recognize higher quality plants and herbs at a glance. Her identify skill was amazing but it didn't tell her the quality of what she was identifying.

She had never asked Leto about his skills but she was pretty sure he had a dual dagger skill and a footwork skill. He always moved at just the right time. She would never ask him to teach her though. She was supposed to be teaching him not the other way around.

She had spent a year and a half or so in the dungeon and she found it very homey here even though some of the monsters were rather aggressive. Some days she wanted to go explore the third floor but she couldn't bear to leave these children without someone to take care of them. Leto might be thirteen now but he wasn't even old enough to get married so she wouldn't leave him in charge of seven children.

She hummed as she made the batter for her honey cake, the emu egg she had gotten was big enough for breakfast and then some. So she had put a small amount aside and mixed it with honey and whipped it good. She pulled out some of the wheat flower she had painstakingly hand grinded over the last year and sprinkled it in until the batter began to thicken.

She put the pot on the stove over indirect heat. She used her spatula to make sure the cake didn't stick to the pot too badly. Once she was confident it was brown on the bottom she braced herself and used the spatula and her hand to flip the pancake batter type cake and failed disastrously but she didn't give up hope, she flipped the whole thing so it could finish browning on the other side.

The longer she stared at it the uglier it became and she almost started crying. She used her spatula to check it a couple of times before taking it off the stove to let it cool. She pulled out the dagger she got when she killed the lioness a few months ago and started to cut up the strawberries and put them in a bowl with a little honey to sweeten them up.

Even if the cake was bad the honeyed strawberries would make it tasty. She hoped. Once the cake had cooled she cut it up as best she could and filled the bowls with cake and honeyed strawberries for all eight of the children and asked the three girls to help her carry them over to the boys.

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They looked excited enough so she had some hope left that it would taste ok. It turned out to be not bad. If she made it again it the future she would use a different pot, if she had access to another pot. The honeyed strawberries saved it really. It was dry and not very sweet but they still ate it all.

Next year two of the boys would be old enough to activate their systems so she would start teaching them to handle daggers now. It would be awful if they panicked and hurt themselves. She went out and hunted a few stray lions until she got two more daggers, one for each of them.

Then she explained the basics of how to hold a dagger and the do's and do not's when using one. She made it very clear that a dagger could hurt monsters and people alike and you shouldn't point it at innocent folks. They nodded and walked away with their daggers.

The other two boys looked at her expectantly and she told them when they were older she would give them one too. They were still young so they had more than a few years before that. She had started staying up late to fight some of the nocturnal monsters on this floor, she still stayed away from the honey badger but she had fought a few more hyenas and a bunch of owls.

Some times she brought Leto out with her to get the hang of it but she always made sure to call it an early night so he could still get plenty of sleep. It wouldn't be much longer before she tried her luck against the honey badger though. It was the only monster on this floor that she hadn't defeated.

Lilith Pov

After such a long time of seeing just storm clouds, i'm happy to see the sun on my ninth floor. I run my senses over the floor and I realize that this floor has so much more going on than I realized. The mangroves were only like eight feet deep. So there wasn't much to see but the coral reef is one hundred feet deep and packed to the brim with stuff to see.

I'm relieved to see that at some point during the rain storm over one thousand different types of corals and dozens of clams I can't pronounce the name to have grown along the floor and I won't have to do all that myself. Thank the system! I just need to fill up this giant fish tank to the best of my ability.

I take a look around ready to set up my altar when I realize there's not a speck of dry land on this entire floor except where the stairs from the eighth floor come out of. I want to face palm myself... How are the delvers supposed to stay on this floor?!

I ask the system what my best option is now that there's no going back the most I can do is extend this beachfront for another fifty feet. I am not going to raise a damn island or continent on my ninth floor. The system suggests I buy a boat pattern and make that my safe zone, or make wooden huts on stilts that people must get to using canoes or boats.

The boat safe zone isn't a real option to me. That would make this floor way too easy to conquer, but the little huts on stilts are a viable option to me. They could still have all the commodities from the cabins but surrounded by water. I made ten huts that spanned across the entire floor.

They weren't very close to one another but that's ok. Enjoy the independence. The system makes them safe zones so I don't even have to worry about the wood deteriorating and sinking. That would suck. I make sure to add fishing poles to all the huts so they have a chance to catch stuff even if they don't go under water.

I ask the system for the types of ships I can choose from and regret it immediately because I don't know a damn thing about ships. I look at the cost of the ships and grimace. They are all so expensive! Right now I only have a measly one thousand dp and half of that is my allowance to buy monsters for this floor.

I really want to pout but I can't, because the trap door that won't open unless you defeat both of my guardians in the pyramid is worth it to me. I decide to put a pin in buying a boat and make myself my own hut at the furthest end of the floor. Actually scratch that. I'm going to make myself a mansion.

If you make it across this huge expanse of salt water you should be rewarded with a little luxury. I shake off the stupid thoughts and make a simple hut where I can float about until my visitors move to the third floor. I finally feel the pain of not being in an easy access location. I have no dp to do fun things. I pull up my notifications and find it looks different than before.

[Congratulations on choosing your ninth ecosystem. This ecosystem is incompatible with your current location, the Coral Reef is a delicate ecosystem and can not be separated on a whim therefore you have access to all the monsters on this floor, but you also have the responsibility to use all the monsters provided to you.]

Well that's weird but the monster list is even weirder!

[Starfish, Sea turtles, Fish, Dolphins, Crabs, Sharks, Seahorses and Whales.]

But when I click on each option it opens up another list of options! For example, when I click on crabs it shows me Boxer crabs, Coral crabs, Reef King crabs, Arrow crabs, Ruby crabs and Emerald crabs. There's a huge list for fish and shark options too! This is going to take so much time. I'm just so happy I don't have to plant all the corals. Well at least I won't have to worry about staying busy.