Aby was focused on the eleventh floor, as a surprising amount of change had occurred there in the short time of its existence. Firstly, the kobold tribe was progressing well, especially with the addition of harpoons to their previous arsenal, if one could call daggers by that term, and some of the members were showing interesting changes overall. For instance, the kobold warrior.
Despite being initially the shortest of the trio, the warrior was now a towering three and a third meters tall, and horrifically well built for this frame. Aby was uncertain of exactly what was happening, though it felt it would likely be similar to the natural evolutions that a fair portion of its creatures went through, so it watched with interest rather than trying to interfere. He was finding himself becoming less and less attached to the tribe, and instead would spend much of his time wandering the sandy shores. By this point he was unable to even stand to his full height and needed to crouch and even crawl in some of the shorter areas, something that he was surprisingly good at, actually, and at times he seemed better suited to crawling than he did walking to begin with.
The kobold was also growing more savage in its fighting. Where originally he would at least use a shield in order to fight, as time progressed that rapidly changed to biting, kicking, clawing, and using his ever-growing tail as a meaty club. This, along with the growing distance with the tribe as a whole meant that he was included less and less in whatever activities they found themselves involved in.
On the topic of the tribe, more specifically the shaman, one of the wisps Aby had created had done something new, and he found the shaman to be the cause of this. Despite being opposing elements, the shaman had done something with the wisp, causing it to apparently die, and yet have the shaman call upon it at will. Aby found this fascinating, and despite being a weak fire elemental, whilst the shaman was decently accomplished in water, the shaman now had a small amount of fire added to its spells, or in more basic terms, it could create and manipulate small amounts of steam, or raise the heat of the water it was manipulating. On its own, this wasn’t much, but it raised the possibility for new fighting styles and evolutions in the future.
The remainder of the kobolds, the chief-mother included, showed very little physical changes, but were growing smarter as time progressed, something Aby always welcomed in its creatures. They were better able to communicate with one another, thanks to their use of Sela to teach them whatever she could of language, and were starting to determine their own ways of fighting, both as individuals and in formation, to improve it. While not something exciting like the shaman opening up new possibilities in its magic development, nor suspenseful like the wait to find out what the warrior was slowly becoming, the increasing intelligence of one creature was a good sign that the same could happen to the rest, even if it was much slower.
Beyond the tribe, the floor itself had shown some interesting changes. The amount of burrowing, digging, and crawling creatures throughout both the eleventh and twelfth floors meant that the sands themselves shifted and changed. It was interesting to watch how the creatures on the floor interacted with one another due to this, the creatures that tended towards the land constantly tried to spread the sand out further, in order to increase their territory further, while the opposite held for those creatures which were submerged. Many of the greater parrotfish took up residence here, too, the large amounts of dead coral feeding them as they produced ever more sand.
This continual dispute within its halls was interesting to it in much the same way that the ninth floor managed to use baitfish as their own form of hierarchy. It demonstrated an intelligence among the simple fish and crustaceans that seemed hard to believe, and despite the fact that they could and occasionally would outright kill one-another, this seemed to be the main form of interaction on these floors.
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It watched the continual spread of land and water passively, how it became something akin to the ebb and flow of the tides on actual shores and coasts, while the bulk of its attention turned to the wyrm. After the dungeon had cleared out, it came across one of the Undines and simply swallowed it whole, after which it had coiled itself into the outcropping designed for it, refusing to move. Aby had confirmed that everything was alright, and nothing harmful had happened, but the core was unsure of exactly what was happening. The lustrous blue of her scales had dimmed, and her piercing near-gold eyes had faded. She remained unmoving up until now, which was what drew Abys focus.
The skin on her head seemed to split vertically, and Aby started to panic some, not wanting one of its most highly evolved creatures to leave without a template. However, that panic turned to surprise as the core watched that split push open, and the royal blue scales emerge once more. The wyrm continued pushing her way out, revealing that her size had increased yet again, though now there were some new changes. The scales themselves were now much more metallic in appearance, and were trimmed with a deep black. Her hood had become more prominent, even when not flared out, and the ribbed texture now ended in small horns that emerged from this hood. Her cheeks were more puffed out to better accommodate the newly increased size of the venom glands she carried, and her fangs increased in both length and girth.
As the rest of her body forced its way out of the molting skin, she began to show off the rest of the changes to her body. No longer was the length of it a solid blue, now intricate patterns of a void-like black rand down her entire body, symbols that were hard to even make out, much less understand, were seemingly tattooed into her very being. Aby checked out the information of the now eleven meter in length snake, and found that she had become a wyrm, without the prefix lesser. She shook herself loose from the last of her molted skin, then used her tail to flick it out of her den.
Aby found out that the wyrm was now an A ranked threat, despite having become more evolved, she was still so young that little had changed besides length. Aby also wondered what brought this on, it hadn’t been prompted to evolve her, and yet the change was sudden. The elemental Undine was obviously the cause, yet nothing else had went through a change like this, the closest was the shaman and her wisp. Aby was very curious as to whether this could be replicated, and found that the wyvern wouldn’t touch the Undines, but happily did something similar with yet another wisp, but showed no visible changes afterward, and refused to do it again, something Aby wouldn’t force. Aby decided to watch the wyvern more closely, though, and hopefully something would change.
Both the star and Carmine interacted strangely with the elementals, too. The brittle star vehemently disliked them, chasing off any that it saw within its halls, even trying to crush them should they not move swiftly enough. Carmine, on the other hand, appeared terrified. Her first encounter was also on the fifth floor, where she had been playing with the brittle star happily, trying to coax Sela into doing the same. An undine had flowed down into the halls from the fourth floor and Carmine screamed, trying desperately to avoid this, pulling a dazed Sela close to her and using the brittle star for protection. The star, of course, was also displeased and chased the interloper away, but Aby found the entire exchange slightly comical, until it realized Sela was still unconscious.
This prompted a frantic response, trying to wake up the Nereid in vain for nearly a day before she stirred once again. She seemed fine, but had a nightmarish headache plaguing her, one that didn’t wear off until she had eaten, and quite a lot too. While Aby was pleased that whatever had happened wasn’t permanent, it was still upset at Carmine for that, but since Aby couldn’t order Carmine to simply not speak, something that would render her useless, it had decided to letSela figure out something to do in response, which she seemed pleased about.
Aby turned its attention away from them after that, and then realized that the molted skin of the wyrm was still there, and had an idea about something it could try to use it for, based off of what those mermen were wearing.