‘There is something strange about the dagger,’ murmured Teaghan as she studied the dagger. The dagger had an aura of power to it. An aura of dread, death, blood, and violence surrounded that dagger. It felt really off to Teaghan, which made her so much more interested in this room than before. Even the dagger’s overall appearance was just fascinating. It looked to be the shin bone of a human, or at least something similar in shape, and it had geometric designs covering the handle of the dagger.

Teaghan, who just wanted to see what the dagger actually did, absorbed it, and a blue screen popped up.

Ritual Athame

A ritual athame used by an ancient species of beings eons ago. This ancient species has left behind many things on Sakivis that have almost all been destroyed, but this cave has been left frozen in time. This species worshipped many ancient gods and performed ritual sacrifices and magic in the name of their gods.

Teaghan stared in wonder at the blue screen. She knew that if this ancient species used this cave as a place of worship or something similar, there would probably be more things to discover.

She knew now that she definitely must explore all of the cave system, for there were probably many more treasures and exciting things to find. But, Teaghan put that at the back of her mind for now and sent the kobold group in the cave system to keep on looking for new things. Teaghan then turned her attention back to building her fourth floor.

The first thing that she wanted to try, and had been mulling over, was using the platforms and placing trees on them. The trees can then grow through or around the platform and have the roots anchor to the ground, hopefully creating a column or cage of roots dangling from above.

Teaghan looked over the platforms she created earlier and decided that she would use those platforms first, and then if she wanted more later, would create more. She had four types of trees that she wanted to use for the platforms: purple locust tree, sky blossom tree, dragon trees and a few exischal’s scattered on the platforms.

As she pushed mana into the trees to grow fast, Teaghan watched as roots slowly chipped away at the stone, not the prop beryl and slowly grew out the sides and the platforms’ bottom. The end result was a forest of roots and trees, and Teaghan could just see the potential in this floor when she finished adding everything. But there were not enough platforms with what she was imagining. So Teaghan created more platforms in the three main rooms and populated them with a random amount of the four tree species she decided to use. Which created hot spots and potential traps all over the main rooms.

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With the trees and the number of platforms all sorted out, Teaghan started on the rest of the plants. She placed mineral flowers on the top of the platforms and spread rage plants randomly around the rooms on the ground. Teaghan placed sunglow on the ceilings and sprinkled luminous moss in only some dark places, like under platforms, creating some light, but still keeping up the ambiance that she wanted this floor to have.

Teaghan also placed all of her vine species, both the plants and the monster type, on this floor. She placed the white holly vine, tia tia, kudzu vine, and white grapplers throughout the platforms. Though the kudzu vine got its own platforms, and the tia tia was placed sporadically, appearing randomly on the platforms. She placed trappa, a plant that uses its roots on the platforms, and shield ferns and catalpa tarragona on the ground. Teaghan also placed some of her new mushrooms around the floor. One of her new species was also placed on this floor, tala grass, a tall, dark green grass. She also placed the two types of bat flowers she had: the white bat flower and the lightning bat flower and placed them on the roots flowing down from the platforms.

With the plants out of the way, now it was time for Teaghan to choose the creatures she wanted on this floor. She placed the three types of foxes she had on this floor, the red fox, earth fox, and the chicane fox. Teaghan also placed taki bee’s throughout the floor and placed them near the purple locust trees. She also added calleta caterpillars, calleta butterflies, cotton-tail rabbits, tigger beetles, deathstalkers, anchorite spiders and more.

Teaghan knew what she wanted this floor to be, and she wanted this floor to be spider-based. Of course, she would also have other creatures, but the main monsters would be spiders. She added giant rats, giant wolf spiders, webspinner tarantula, harvestman hive and mana enhanced harvestman hive.

Teaghan planned to make the two types of harvestmen hives the main monsters, and she wanted to combine the two hives together. The thing about the harvestmen hives was that they were very similar, except the mana enhanced ones had abilities, like small control over shadow mana. So Teaghan placed these two hives in the third room and let them do their thing. She was hopeful that it would work out.

With that, Teaghan just sat back, watched her dungeon, and smelled the roses until the next problem popped up, or she decided that it was time to get back to work.

* * *

POV Adventurers Guild Master

“Oh, you have to be shitting me,” groaned Lional, the elven adventure guild master of the Ekesh, when his secretary brought in a report of a new dungeon in the Everlasting Mountain chain region. A couple of hours later, she brought in another report about potential core robbers going into the dungeon and never coming out, or was just never caught.

This brought problems to the guild, and more paperwork and politics were dumped onto Lional’s lap. The area that the new dungeon may or may not be in right now was a political hotspot. The mountain chain had many countries fighting over its resources and the dungeons already there. That area is also considered neutral, but now with a new dungeon that is not near a large city or guild, it leaves the new dungeon ripe for the picking. As the adventurer guild made sure that dungeons were not destroyed unless there was reason to.

But he digressed. There had to be a guild representative and an assessment team sent to the location of the dungeon.

“Dara!” said Lional to his assistant, “Bring me all the files you have on qualified assessment teams and potential guild representatives near the Everlasting chain.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Dara, his assistant.

A couple of minutes later, she came back in carrying files of qualified assessment teams and potential representatives.