Their skin continued to get tighter and tighter as their sub-dimension grew. This continued for a couple of minutes as the dimension grew. Once the growing pains that came with the growth stopped, the child went through the portal to see the changes.

Their dimension grew in size, an additional 10 metres in height and width, but that was not the only change. Along with their dimension growing, their portal grew to 40 centimetres wide and 30 centimetres tall.

When they gained their sub-dimension, all the materials in the dimension were ice. But now there were a few thin veins of the deep black stone with silver flecks throughout the ice, and there was a small pocket with the soil that they created.

The stone veins and the pocket of soil gave the child an idea for their second floor.

The small pocket of soil was about one metre in size, with soil around two inches deep. Half a metre above the pocket was one of the smaller veins of the rock, so they could potentially use it in the room creation.

If I could use the soil pocket as the middle point and create four rooms connected to the pocket. The pocket can be used to grow the bearded bushes and be a good point to halt any purely aquatic danger to their core.

With this in mind, the child started to shape oval rooms two metres long and one metre wide. They made each room two and a half metres tall, with each room’s floor tilting upwards to meet the soil pocket. Their goal for the rooms was to have two metres underwater, with half a metre for air. They also increased the height of the soil pocket to just under half a metre. The rooms and the soil area had the non-water part of the rooms connected to each other.

They took most of the ice they dug out during the room creation and started creating these rock-like formations. Not too big or small, just enough to give the rooms some height variations for the ice corals they want to populate the room with. The rest of the leftover ice became pressurized ice pebbles.

The child quickly made passageways connecting to the other rooms to help them fill up with water. Once they were happy with the rooms, the child built a 30-centimetre by 30-centimetre tunnel connecting through the portal into the last room of the first floor. They even widened the tunnel from the last room to the portal to increase in size.

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As the water flowed through their portal into the sub-dimension and into the first room, the child created a series of small tunnels, one-centimetre to five in width and height, connecting all of the rooms together. Once the rooms were connected, the water started to flow into all of the rooms. As the water reached the soil, the child used a water mana string to prevent the water level from rising.

Just as the water flow coming in from their portal slowed down, the child felt something happening in the plant room. They dropped what they were doing on the second floor and rushed to the room. When they entered the room, they first noticed a small vine that had sprouted and started to grow. The second was a small, couple centimetre dark green cushiony moss that seemed to grow from one of the seeds.

The child took their mana string and started increasing the vine’s growth. They watched as the vine grew and matured, with the plant growing seven fleshy, flexible stems from the vine’s base that grew around 30 to 40 centimetres long. The stems grew slightly oval leaves between three to five centimetres long. Along the tips of the stems grew small clusters of around three to four orangey-red flowers. These flowers were small and trumpet-shaped, they were at the largest, three centimetres wide and four centimetres long. The child decided to call this plant “red trumpet vine.”

Turning to the other plant, the child took their string and increased the moss’s growth until it matured. The moss quickly blanketed an area of around 30 centimetres wide. The moss had small roots that went into the top of the soil, but their roots were not like any of their other plants. Other plant roots dug further down into the soil, while the moss stayed at the very top, just enough so that the moss could get nutrients and be slightly anchored down. The moss had tiny stems and leaves that grew packed enough together that it created these cushiony half spheres. They decided to call this moss the “cushion moss.”

The child quickly cut off pieces of the two plants and grew more versions of the plants before turning back towards their second floor.

With the emergence of these two new plants, the child had an idea for the soil portion of the floor. They could place a few bearded bushes to limit visibility and maneuverability between the rooms and allow the cushion moss to cover the rest of the soil. But the main change that they wanted to do with the room was to make ledges along the ceiling and the highest points in the wall where they could place soil and allow the vines to grow hanging down to the water.

The child started digging out nooks and crannies through the rooms along the ceilings and along the top of the walls. Once the nooks and crannies were dug out, they took some of the soil and padded those areas with it.

They quickly built a tunnel to the portal, grabbed multiple cuttings of each plant, pulled them under water and moved them as quickly as possible through the portal and out of the water.

Luckily none of the plant cuttings died, so the child started to populate the area with non-aquatic plants.

As they were placing and growing, Ivory, the sharp bill that could enter and exit their territory freely, caught their attention.

While the child didn't really pay attention to her comings and goings, this time, they did. Ivory usually spent time outside their territory, generally for an hour or two, but this time, she had spent five hours away, and when they came back, within their mouth was an alive small mammal.