If Dylan currently had a body, he would have been seen slumped against the floor, head drooping, eyes staring listlessly at the expanse spread out before him. That expanse was the brand-new upgraded version of his cave, a painstaking effort which had required Dylan’s utmost attention for weeks.

Luckily for Dylan, expanding the cave had actually been quite easy. He could carve a considerable amount of his plans out with the smallest amounts of mana. However, the process was painfully slow, as Dylan wanted to make his forest environment look natural. It would not do to have a forest filling a block-shaped room with smooth-shiny walls.

Thus, Dylan had opted to carefully sculpt the walls of his cave after expanding it to the size he wanted using [Dungeon Edit]. Firstly, after earning mana for days and spending it as soon as he had filled up, Dylan had pushed the walls of his cave out, making a circular cave about a mile in diameter, and pushing the height of the whole thing up to around 50 feet high. He expanded the size of the entrance of his cave to be a rough oval-shaped hole about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, which would allow easy entry and exiting for his creatures to explore while he was preparing the cave. He had been sending out the centipedes one at a time with the leaping bombardier beetles to collect plants and fight to fill up on mana. He hadn’t lost any of his precious minions yet, so he was fairly confident that they could be considered higher tier in the forest surrounding his dungeon entrance.

After he had created the main room and made the walls all rough and cave-like, Dylan had used a centipede to move his core as far away from the entrance as possible, across from the entrance. Following that, he filled the room with as many plants as he had been able to summon at that moment. Common grass currently filled about half of the room, with ivy and vines draping from the walls and ceiling. Stout palms, which resembled palm trees anywhere between 3 to 8 feet in height, were scattered throughout the grassland. Large rocks and boulders were also scattered throughout the room, with mosses and lichens which Dylan’s creatures had collected adorning them. Ferns and wildflowers peeked over the short grass, while shrubs sprawled over the ground and rocks. Towering trees between 20 to 40 feet tall were scattered throughout the land, covering it with shadows. Glow bulb fruit which resembled glowing balls of light attached to short hanging stalks were suspended from the ceiling, vines, stalactites, and from the branches of the trees themselves. They peppered the makeshift forest with soft light, almost like the sunlight was peeking through the heavy cover of a forest canopy, though this was due to the glow of the bulb fruit being too weak to cover the whole expanse. Through the middle of the cave was a ditch dug about 3 feet deep and 10 feet wide, snaking through the middle of the cave and separating it into two parts.

Dylan had planned to put a river there, but he had no way to summon water. He had had his monsters bring back dew from the outside and put it on the ground, an order which translated to rolling around and shaking it off, but he hadn’t gained anything from it. Thus, he concluded that it was probably a skill he would learn later.

Following that, Dylan had carved several tunnels into the areas in the cave. If Dylan assumed that his core was situated at the North of the cave with a bird’s eye view, and the South of the cave represented the entrance, then the new tunnels would be found to the West, East, North West, and North East. These tunnels were only about 3 feet in diameter, and stretched for about 100 feet into rooms about a quarter mile in diameter, retaining a similar height to the main cave, as Dylan now called it. He filled these smaller caves with foliage similarly to the main cave, then populated all of the caves with insects. He sent 2 of his giant centipedes to the West small cave, the leaping bombardier beetles to the east small cave, and the heavy bombardier beetles to the northeast small cave, leaving the swarm ants and final giant centipede in the main cave with him. The north west cave would have to remain without monsters for now, as Dylan would add a new species when he got it. As the monsters within the small caves grew, they would eventually be moved over to the main cave, to help bolster Dylan’s defenses.

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[Natural Order]. Dylan used one of the new abilities he had gained since leveling up to level 2, and he instantly felt action take place within his dungeon. With the exception of the last giant centipede, which Dylan had specifically ordered to guard him, the rest of the dungeon dove into action, insects milling about and occasionally preying on each other. Dylan had been working so hard for the past few days that he hadn’t even had time to level up. Every time he had filled up on mana, he had spent it all updating his cave. Luckily, non-evolved plants did not cost a lot of mana, and they helped to boost his passive mana regeneration through the effects of [Siphon Mana].

Another thing Dylan had noticed was that plants did not require any upkeep due to them being summoned by him-similarly to his animals. They passively absorbed mana from the environment similarly to him, which allowed them to gather enough mana to evolve. They didn’t even require mana, water or sunlight to survive, and under the effects of [Natural Order], they would soon begin to grow too, with reckless abandon.

I’ve finally finished this goddamn project…But I still should look to hide my core a bit better. Dylan thought to himself. Using [Dungeon Edit] once again, he carved a hole which could roughly fit his core in the wall about 15 feet above him. He had the giant centipede crawl up the wall while carrying him, and tuck him into the hole before going back down.

Now, all we can do is sit and wait. Dylan thought as he settled his vision back into his core. Hopefully after a couple weeks, I will have enough guards to safely level myself up without any worries…

Three Weeks later…

Dylan was pleasantly surprised at the progress within his dungeon. He had been using his mana everyday it had maxed out to summon giant centipedes before sending all of them to the west small cave. Each giant centipede costed 20 mana, which took a lot out of Dylan’s resources, but they were definitely a valuable creature to have in the event of an attack. Within the small caves, the breeding pairs had expanded like crazy, and Dylan had a small army of monsters ready to support him. Using [Dungeon Overlay], he saw that he had 315 swarm ants currently, since the ants did not seem to require a queen to produce eggs. He also had 63 leaping bombardier beetles, 57 heavy bombardier beetles, and 43 giant centipedes. Dylan found that many of his normal insects had gathered enough energy to evolve, too, a process he would address later. For now, Dylan wanted to level up. He called 10 giant centipedes to personally guard his core, then sent 3 out on an expedition, giving them specific orders to stay in a group and capture something they deemed dangerous, as Dylan was confident in their capabilities. His mana was maxed out, and he was ready to level up too, so he was excited to see what they would bring back.

Just like last time, Dylan ‘said’ out loud; [Level Up], Which promptly caused him to feel as if he was sinking into an abyssal whirlpool of darkness. Dylan let it take him willingly this time, as he ‘closed’ his field of vision and ‘smiled’ before falling unconscious.