Dear Diary,

It seems I've been making good progress with my dungeon and I've completed a lot of system quests. Every time I complete one I unlock a new critter to utilize in my dungeon. I now have more than five different types, but I don't know if I will use them any time soon. I'm not exactly very knowledgeable about how to build a proper habitat, even if I do want to make my dungeon more realistic.

I used to work on designing graphics for video games, before I reincarnated into this world. Part of that included designing plants and animals to make the games seem more realistic. However, there is a huge difference between the way a forest is populated in a video game versus real life. There are likely hundreds, if not thousands of different living things in every forest, ocean, etc. There's no way I could recreate a real habitat in my dungeon, though, as I'm too limited in my resources. I need the spawners for monsters and the little bit of space left for assigning critters in nowhere near enough to make my dungeon feel truly alive.

Plants can easily be added to every room and only costs a small amount of mana. The system is kind enough to reset the rooms when the dungeon is empty of non-dungeon entities, which includes spawning in new plants. Both plant life and animals are living things, but the dungeon doesn't treat them as nearly the same thing. Even if most critters aren't sentient enough to be aware of what is happening to them, I can't bring myself to just let them die. I want to give them the same opportunities to respawn and live long lives, just like my monsters. Maybe that isn't very realistic, but, I guess, even someone more logical might not want to constantly spend their mana on new critters to populate their dungeon.

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In other news, tributes have stopped being as interesting lately. I used to get new things all of the time, but I'm mostly receiving the same things nowadays. The dungeon system really prioritizes variety over the value systems those outside of the dungeon have, though, so it's been a bit disappointing. I wouldn't mind so much if I was being brought garbage by the barrel full, but no one seems interested in taking me up on that offer. It's a real shame since it seems like a real cheat code for this world to be able to do away with pollution and garbage in such a way.

I hope this won't impact my ability to unlock the next floor. Now that I've completed the boss room and filled half of the dungeon with rooms and hallways, I'll need to start working on gathering enough resources to unlock the next floor. I can, technically, continue working on the first floor for as long as I want, but a new floor means new opportunities. I've gotten used to stepping forward to protect the dungeon, but I'm sure there is a limit to what I can handle. If I can get something stronger than slimes than I won't have to worry so much.

-Violet