While the incursion was a great looming threat it did increase my options for the immediate future. Without needing to shield or protect my monsters I could send them out to tend to my garden. If three small flowers could be considered a garden.
And I could send them to hunt and forage, grass and small insects were not worth very much mana to a dungeon but the amounts ten goblins, 6 slimes, and 4 rats could gather added up rapidly.
The goblins set to work ensuring the land immediately around the dungeon and hill had its grass cut down and thrown into the entrance, where with a flex of will it dissolved into particles of light. With the grass cut to a more manageable height the flowers could be safely planted into the fertile soil of the plains.
Even if the mountains were long gone the minerals they had left behind remained.
The dungeon’s attention left the goblins, they had enough knowledge to handle a basic task like that without supervision. Instead turning towards its rats and slimes, The prairie was full of small critters, be it rabbits hiding in burrows, other mundane rats and mice, or the snakes that hunted both.
Insects weren’t worth mentioning in terms of mana, but the small critters? Each one could be worth one or two points of mana, depending on its level and how strong it was.
Slimes would pour into a dens entrance, flowing down the tunnels and catching the creatures as they tried to flee. Once inside the slime they would be taken back to the dungeon. Killing something outside the dungeon wouldn’t actually give the dungeon any mana even if it was its creatures doing the killing.
The rats on the other hand had significantly more trouble getting into the burrows, they were proficient diggers but they were far too large, instead the dungeon set them to hunting the snakes and foxes, the weak venom from a snake and the teeth and claws of a fox had little effect on the sturdy rats, and they were similarly dragged still struggling into the dungeon.
Killing all the wildlife around itself was a poor short term solution though, and wasn’t at all feasible in the longer term. So some of the creatures were spared, mainly breeding pairs of rabbits and one pair of foxes.
Making and adding a population of rapidly breeding magical rabbits would be devastating to the ecosystem, so similarly enhanced predators needed to be introduced.
First though, the rabbits. Taking some of the mana the dungeon had gotten from killing their fellows it began weaving the mana throughout the tiny creatures, focusing on their fur and legs, as well as their various reproductive systems. Turning the fur into a far more durable pelt that kept its camouflaging patterns and increased the rabbits strength and bone durability, as well as doubling their reproductive cycles and increasing their size and weight.
Essentially turning them into the rabbit version of its own giant rats. Stronger, larger, and more durable.
The foxes needed a more thorough modification though, they got all the same changes as the rabbits, but also received changes to their mindsets, they would instinctively guard the rabbits dens and ensure their numbers stayed under control.
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A touch of earth attuned mana made the foxes even more durable, and gave their flesh and fur a faint rocky appearance and texture, and the foxes were done.
With that the 10 rabbits and 2 foxes were grabbed by a few of the stronger goblins and put outside the dungeon, where they sprinted off.
That would probably pay off later, the foxes and rabbits would both grow in numbers and strength as time went on, and their population would rapidly bloom forcing the mundane creatures to seek out less competitive areas.
Plants would change naturally once mana became more abundant.
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Turning my attention away from the creatures I had just unleashed onto the helpless ecosystem I focused once again on the flowers my goblins had planted, only two goblin’s were guarding and tending to them as the rest were foraging but already I could already see some life returning to the flowers, faint puffs of mana wafting from them.
Those faint puffs were already flowing up and into the mana current heading into my dungeon, only visible due to its pure aspect and comparably greater potency than the rest of the surrounding mana. The rest of the mana from the plains was more plant and life aspected, with only faint traces of earth, stone, and water.
Pure mana could usually only be found in a dungeon's core and depths or deep within the earth, as the world naturally tainted the mana around it with its flavors. But some plants, animals, or geographical features could produce it. These were prized as anyone could consume pure mana, it was universal. But for any other type you had to already have that mana aspect. A fire mage could not restore their mana with an air aspected mana potion.
That universal absorption meant that everything living would passively absorb pure mana, growing stronger and quicker the longer they were exposed. Already the grass around the flowers was beginning to show this, new blades were visibly growing.
The goblins needed to trim the grass back every hour or so, otherwise it could begin to smother the flowers. This would only become more of a problem as the flowers regained their full health and started truly pumping out mana. The passive flow of mana had already increased by a full point, still 4 points short of awakening the fifth floor boss.
Sure I could have woken it with the bursts of mana I got from the plants and animals I had consumed, but that was better spent revitalizing my traps and puzzles. The broken stone throughout my first few floors healed, the pit traps that had given way with time were rebuilt, the wooden stakes replaced, arrows were remade and the dust that everything had become was reclaimed into what little mana was left within.
Eventually everything except for the torches and boss monsters, as well as the few mana using traps, were as new as they had ever been. Ready to face off against whatever the world could throw at it. The floors would probably fail against anything but the weakest of an incursion’s creatures, but they were ready.
Well that wasn’t quite true, even crippled as I was, I was still a one hundred floor dungeon. Even just walking to my core would take months for the average creature, and that was discounting them getting lost or having to navigate an essentially dead dungeon. Even with a map to my core it would take an invader months to get to me, and without mana to operate my own locked doors they would need to be fairly strong to break through.
A puzzle door might open once you solved it, but that was only if the dungeon actually had enough mana to do so. And even if I had mana unlike most other dungeons I don’t actually need to follow those rules. Perks of being so strong.
So no, defenseless wasn’t quite the right word, harmless would probably be better to describe my current situation. Nothing could kill me without months of effort, but I wouldn’t be able to kill them either. Not without spending mana I didn’t yet have.
A shift of my attention back towards the garden, where a goblin was plucking out the mana rich grass. I was working on that though.