I walked Luna back to the main dungeon and a meeting was set up to discuss what happened.

She had already informed everyone about the notification that I had received and sent to her, so they have some idea of what was going on but they like to discuss things.

Luna, “As I mentioned earlier today, the dungeon received a notification that its resistance to expansion was considered detrimental to its survival so it was penalized to force it to expand.

Now we don’t know how often it will make him expand but it seems to have varied degrees of effect depending upon where his outer edges are.

It has led to a few new rooms which don’t have enough light right now to make use of but it seems like it has planted some plants that will help with that over time.

Until then we will have to use lanterns or take a torch to light your way if you go to those areas.”

Samson, “Do we need to worry about the dungeon collapsing?

Because I don’t know who all experienced it last night but the walls in my room definitely cracked and started leaking stuff, even though everything is fixed now I don’t feel comfortable with what happened.”

Well neither do I!

Luna, “Well I highly doubt that the dungeon was very comfortable with it suddenly getting damaged all over the place including its core room!”

Jasper, “I can understand his concern about the ceiling possibly falling down onto him, but I definitely think Luna has a point, I don’t think the dungeon will intentionally damage itself.

It’s just trying to survive and for a dungeon that means expanding itself and making monsters to protect itself, we just happen to have jumped into the mix and it’s been willing to try and provide us with the best living conditions it can.

So rather then complain about it bleeding on you and your stuff why don’t you come up with something to help fix the problem that caused it to happen in the first place!”

Dave, “Boys stop your bickering, first then let’s see about working something out we know it’s getting close to making its breeder, so we should focus on getting the animals to turn into monsters, since just keeping them in the dungeon might not be enough.

We have their cages scattered around but I think we might want to try reserving a room with a higher mana density for them to try and make them change sooner rather than later, even better if we can feed them mana grass and have it mixed in their water.”

Luna, “I think we can do that if we rotate which plants we harvest from since I think the dungeon just planted a bunch more.

Also I think we can use my old room since the dungeon seems to have made me a new room and already moved all my stuff, without asking me I might add.

No, I’m not really upset about it I was just taken by surprise.”

I was concerned that I might have upset Luna but she quickly reassured me that it was alright to avoid a misunderstanding.

I am so glad that I seem to be able to pay more attention again after so long of feeling like I wasn’t all there.

I go ahead and I modify her room for the animals that I hadn’t noticed until now, there’s a doe with her fawns, a few rabbits and squirrels, a raccoon, a muskrat, a chipmunk and a mouse….

So I expand her room to make a small stable for the deer and then I make a bunch of small cubby spaces for the rest having the medium size animals along the bottom and the smaller ones over them and I prepare doors that have open spaces in them that are just a little bit too small for any of the animals to escape from.

I rejoin the conversation even as I continued working on the room conversion process.

Rimmy, “Then let’s get started on infusing some water with the mana grass and see which of the animals will eat the grass as is once we are done here and move them to their new room.”

Tom, “I have another question, Luna, everyone has been noticing that the dungeon hasn’t been paying much attention and sometimes it takes more than one person to get its attention for things like refilling the water catches in the kitchen in particular, is that something that will still be a problem now that it’s expanded itself?”

I apologize I didn’t mean to ignore anyone, but now that my mind is clear I don’t think that it’s going to be a problem anymore.

I do my best to communicate my intentions to Luna who conveys it well.

Luna, “I don’t think it will be a problem anymore since it seems expanding helped it recover from that.”

The Hunter, “Well if everything is better now than let’s get everyone back in here and start working on what needs to be done rather then standing around and chatting all day.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He walked outside to retrieve his family and everyone else from the temporary shelter outside, and Harvey followed after to help as well.

The others acted a little out of sorts for a moment before they also headed to get things done.

Dave, Greg, Tom and Rimmy gathered and transported the animals to their new location, while Luna and Rocky gathered the mana grass and assisted Samson, Tim and Jasper with tearing it up and adding it to the animals food and water supply.

I later tried to get Luna’s help to see if I could register the animals as inhabitants of some sort which seems to have worked granted they were registered as dungeon livestock which Luna said it made sense.

We figured out that non-sapient creatures don’t really have a say in getting registered unlike the sapient ones so far who have to give their consent, which might have something to do with the difference in assignment when registered to my dungeon.

Luna talks to me about the things that she believes I have missed while I was out of it, starting with what was up with the guys earlier.

Apparently they are competing for the girls attentions because of something called the Winter Festival, which is a celebration that happens every winter that is often held in part to mark the middle of the season as well as to give young people a good opportunity to find a partner.

Although the Winter Festival lasts for a week normally and is marked with all sorts of activities each day from food cooking and eating competitions one day to puppet shows and plays followed by games and sports then there is the singing and instrumental music which would compete for who would perform on the last days big event, the winter dance!

This year is going to be different as the camps are separate from each other there won’t be many of the activities and therefore there will only be a few events done in each camp reducing it to just a couple of days.

Our camp being the smallest by far we will have the least amount of things to do so the dance and the food will be the biggest things happening and everyone will just do a talent show for entertaining the children.

Even though the Winter Festival is still a good ways off the guys are apparently already looking forward to it and possibly getting a girlfriend or maybe a fiancée if things go well.

Luna even mentioned that they already checked with her and made sure that she really wasn’t going to be available as an option before they started focusing more on Coaley and Tammy.

Tammy seems to be the favorite but because she is still having a hard time being around men she still runs off from their attempts and she takes a long time to recover from the stress of the interaction.

Coaley also recognizes that she’s their second choice but she doesn’t complain and is rather happy about the attention after having been neglected, and she doesn’t care if her family doesn’t approve since they aren’t here they don’t have a say.

Even Greg seems to occasionally put himself up for offer to the available young ladies, but he’s mindful that he’s only a few years younger than any of their fathers so he doesn’t push for it like the guys closer in age to them.

The children on another note don’t seem to care as much as they seem like they plan on dancing with each other without restrictions as the pairings are not as important and they seem to just want to see who can dance the most or the best.

I don’t know what a dance really is all about but I know how to take a hint since it’s related to getting paired up with a partner and forming a relationship I think that means that Luna and I will be considered as partners so I should find out more.

I might not be able to ask people normally but I can watch my inhabitants and listen to whatever they say about the dance.

Rocky plans to dance with all the girls near his age and he receives some direction from his father Rimmy.

From completing the girls outfit and looks to getting them snacks and drinks when taking a break from dancing.

I resent not being able to talk, but I can easily get Luna something to eat or drink!

For some of the other guys they seem to practice asking the girls to dance or talking about what a nice night it is and if they might want to spend some more time together and such before they go to bed and I listen in elsewhere.

The Hunter and his wife hold each other and rock back and forth in circles for their children to mimic.

While the Woofer’s play music with tap shoes, tambourines and a jawharp, as the mother leads her children in song.

Dave and Greg seem to be making trinkets and practicing talents that might be entertaining for the children.

I have decided that I definitely want to prepare for and participate as much as I possibly can with the winter festivities.

I was already planning on upgrading all of my inhabitants living quarters when I have to expand myself again, so adding a large room to hold the dance in shouldn’t be too much trouble.

I also try absorbing the snow and ice from the surface above my dungeon and acquiring a new ice resource which interestingly enough, transfers to my water resources reservoir as it melts…

I still don’t understand where the resources are actually being stored but it seems like there isn’t any way to control the temperature and prevent the ice from melting.

Regardless I’m eager to see what new plants have been unlocked with access to the ice resource, and I am pleased to find new elemental varieties of plants that I have already.

Frost moss is the ice variety of moist moss and it cost about twice as much in mana but luckily it only cost one unit of ice similar to how the moist moss required one unit of water.

So I decided to plant them in the ice boxes Luna and I had made as they should improve them by keeping the inside environment colder than before.

There was also a frost fern variety similarly to the fire fern which also produces a little bit of a frosty glow similar to the warm glow of the fire fern so I planted a few of these as well to play around with later as I stick them in the hallway to the river for now since I don’t want to freeze my inhabitants and I don’t have anywhere more reasonable aside from outside which would be bad if the glow gave us away.

Another one was a vine variety called the chill vine that similarly to the scorching vine it uses its ice elements to freeze out competing plants from its environment.

So, I planted just one in the place I had previously kept the scorching vine before putting it in the space beneath the little pond I recently made.

I see that there’s a new divide between the mundane plants and beginner elemental and mana plants, so I’m assuming that there are more advanced plants that will be unlocked later when I level up.

I’m looking forward to my level up even with the threat of increased penalties which I can’t really shake off.

I’m at least comforted by the fact that I just have to finish acquiring enough biomass and by then I will be recovered enough in the mana department to make the breeder that will reduce the penalties by one at least right away.

The night carries on and everyone eventually drifted off to sleep including Luna and Tammy who had stayed up late talking to me mostly checking on how I was doing and making sure that I would wake them up if anything happened.

I promise and I wait through the night for morning and looking forward to everyone else waking up.