The Fourth Floor Takes Shape
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Half of a day passes fast in a dungeon. My mind wandered from floor to floor, watching the many creatures hunt or be hunted. Eventually though, my mana had almost entirely regenerated. I began pushing my mana into the emerald again, withdrawing more and more earth mana. Switching my attention to the fourth floor for a moment, I noticed Leira actually reacting and noticing me collecting the earth mana. I sent each of my creatures on the floor a feeling of calm and staying still, to ensure they wouldn't hurt themselves while I worked.
Once I'd gathered up as much earth mana as I could, I went to work, grinding away and shaping another section of the fourth floor. As the platforms, roosts, and rough floor took shape, I kept a close eye on my mana, wanting to keep enough left over to start adding in the additional aspects of the new floor. Having carved out another third, I told everyone on the fourth floor it was okay to move around and explore again, while I focused on other things.
I used as small an amount of mana possible to carve small, barely visible tunnels leading from the floor of the cavern outwards, and flaring out into smaller side caves that I placed small pools of water in. In each of these side caverns, I created for the first time, Infant Azure Mosslings. The mana glowed, twisted, and formed. The Mosslings looked very similar to the bodies of the delvers, bipedal and with two arms a head. The difference was that the Mossling's body was made up of roots, moss, and other bits of plant matter that somehow functioned similarly to an animals body. I had no idea how long it may take for them to mature, but my hope was to eventually cover the floor of the cavern with a colony of Azure Mosslings.
Watching them for a short time, I made sure they weren't immediately dying due to some oversight of mine, before moving on.
As I'd carved out more and more of the fourth floor, I'd been leaving behind plenty of roosts and hidden away cubbies on and in the walls, mostly towards the ceiling. The roosts were meant for the Giant Bats I intended to seed through the floor, and the cubby holes were for the Sporewing Moths, and were also where I would grow the Sporeshrooms the moths lived alongside. Sporeshrooms began to bloom throughout the small cubbies I'd made, the little puddles of water I'd prepared for each one providing more than enough moisture to grow well and easily.
Casting my attention around my newest floor, I felt satisfied for a time. Just until I could finish it properly I suspected, but it would do for a time. Luckily, my attention was taken from the frustratingly unfinished fourth floor by the sensation of an intruder. Casting my attention up and towards the first floor, I watched.
A large serpent was slithering into the dungeon. It looked to be almost seven meters long and perhaps thirty-five centimeters across. What drew my attention most though was it's dark green, almost black scales and the long, brutally sharp fangs I could see whenever it opened its mouth.
I saw the serpent about to slither past a Rock Skorpion, and decided to watch what happened. The skorpion's stinger shot forward, and deflected easily off of the serpent's scales. In response, the snake reared back, and lunged forward faster than the skorpion could possibly react. I felt myself grow a little more intrigued when I noticed that the snake's fangs pierced straight through the carapace of the Rock Skorpion, as if it wasn't there. A moment later, I felt the skorpion die. An incredibly deadly venom having surged through its body almost too fast for me to even notice.
The serpent began slithering through the cavern, no obvious pattern emerging. But everywhere the snake went, the creatures that attacked it died quickly and relatively easily. The rats and skorpions were completely unable to hard the snake, and the Stonecloak Lashers seemed to be able to bruise it at best. Of course, the snake didn't seem to be able to kill the Stonecloak's either, but it didn't have to when it could just slither away from them.
The snake thrashed about as a large web dropped onto and stuck to it, one of the Webdrop Spider's above having caught it. Slowly, and with great effort, the spider began hauling the serpent up and into it's nest, the web holding strong against the snakes desperate flailing. Eventually, the snake was hauled into the spiders and nest and began to be covered with more web and threads as it's movement began to slow down and become heavier. It was only a few minutes after that, that I got the message.
You have gained the schema for : Death Serpent
Death Serpent
The Death Serpent is among the most powerful of the non-magic-using serpents. While it cannot use magic itself, it makes up for it in other ways. From its large size and magic-resistant scales, to its incredibly deadly and quickly lethal venom, the Death Serpent can be a dangerous enemy. Due to its scales' strength and magic-resistance, the serpent is rarely killed with direct means.
That was a rather good aquistition actually. And I could see what the message meant, the Death Serpent had been almost invulnerable to everything on the first floor. It was only it's movement getting restricted and being trapped that let the spider kill it. Otherwise, only the Deiron Drowner could have killed it. Though, even that would have been indirect as well, killing it through drowning. I would need to place the Serpent's on a floor where there were few, if any, indirect means available. Thinking over what ideas I had, I decided to hold out on creating any large numbers for a time. The Death Serpent seemed to be a good creature to catch out intruder's with, but I didn't have many places I would like to place one.
As it was, I quickly carved out a small burrow beneath the bottom of the fourth floor and made tunnels connected it to the pillars. The fourth floor provided a decent way to kill them indirectly by just knocking them off a platform, but perhaps they would be able to make intruders panick enough that they wouldn't think of it quickly enough. I wasn't quite satisfied with their placement, but it would do for a time.
Nonetheless, I quickly turned my mind back to the greater dungeon at large, resolving a number of evolutions throughout the upper floors, none of them new or interesting. It felt more like routine maintenance than anything. Time passed quickly however, and before long I'd gathered enough mana to finally finish the fourth floor.
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Carving out and forming the last segment of the new floor, I was impressed at how large it was. Then again, it was the first floor that took me multiple sessions to finish, so it made sense. Over a thousand meters long, four hundred wide, and seven hundred tall, the fourth floor was enormous. My mana began spinning the floor's inhabitants into existence. Giant Bats in their roosts, Sporewing Moths in their cubbies already covering themselves in spores, Stone-Tailed Rats to act as a bottom rung in the food chain. And finally, on the ground and in the wall near it, around a number of small ponds and watering holes, I formed the Humming Dragonflies.
Looking around the fourth floor now teeming with life, I began to feel like I was missing something. Before long, I began looking over my different elemental gems, seeing if they had anything I could add to the floor, anything that felt right. My mind strayed to the onyx in my pillar, and the diamonds off to the side, infused with dark and light mana each. Looking over the fourth floor, I began to looked for places I could put infused stone to the greatest effect.
I had no doubt that any group that got through the second floor would have done their best to come up with a mitigating solution for the dark haze I'd flooded the floor with, and besides, I didn't want my own creatures unable to see delvers. Instead... Instead of taking their sight, what about taking away information! I had a little happy tinge to my manavision, making Kyr look over at my from where he was practicing flying, "Is something happening?" His calm mental voice resounded in my mind. I responded as I began drawing earth mana, "No, no. Well yes, but it's a good thing! I'm just adding some last touches, nothing to worry about!" Kyr simply made a humming noise and starting flying a little higher, making me a little amused.
Nonetheless, I turned back to my idea. Using the earth mana I'd gathered, I drew a mental line, a hundred meters down from the platforms, well above the ground still. I began slowly condensing and purifying the stone on that line, both in the walls and in the pillars holding up the platforms. I condensed the stone, making it harder, more solid, tougher. Purifying it, I began removing everything but the most mana-conductive traces I could find in the stone. Slowly, that mental line I'd drawn became real, a line bisecting the floor with a strip of stone with an unusually high mana-conductivity. And once I'd finish that, I began drawing dark mana from the onyx, as much as I could and started imbuing it into that strip of stone.
Slowly, over a few hours of work, the stones began to accept the mana, adapting to it and radiating it. Before long, the stone was growing more and more infused and dense with dark mana than the tunnels I'd made on the second floor. After another two hours of work, the cloud of dark mana completely obscured the bottom of the floor, from the top. A solid blanket of dark, making it impossible for delvers to judge how deep the chamber was, and how far it goes. And should one fall, then they wouldn't be able to see back up, trapped in the dark and alone.
On the other hand though, I began to copy the patterns of light mana into stones in the ceiling, giving the room overall light sources, casting it in a bright light compared to the other floors. The first and third floors were lit primarily by the biolumiscient plants in them, but the second floor was as dark as I could make it. Hopefully a floor with relatively bright light would be enough of a change to throw off any delvers.
It was as I finished up with the lightstones that a number of evolutions became available, the five bats evolving at the same time surprising me. I quickly finished the last pattern of one of the light stones, my haste throwing the pattern off slightly, giving it a slightly different glow, but I dismissed it in favor of looking at what pushed the bats over their threshold for evolution.
Panning my attention to the second floor, I saw that a large swarm of bats had killed two Stonecloak Lasher's that happened to enter their cavern at the same time. The danger and victory enough to push a number of the bats that fought over their evolutions together. And admittedly, it was rather impressive for the bats to managed to kill a Stonecloak. Accepting the answer, I began looking through their evolutions.
Your creature, Giant Bat, has reached the threshold for evolution!
Please Select your desired evolution!
Dark Bat (Uncommon) : The Dark Bat is solely a subterranean predator. The Dark Bat sacrifices sight entirely, choosing to rely solely on its echolocation and other senses to navigate. In exchange, the Dark Bat gains the capability to summon small globes of darkness, attempting to blind their prey.
Sonic Bat (Scarce) : The Sonic Bat is a unique variant of bat, changing their behaviour almost entirely. Instead of hunting in the dark with claws primarily, the Sonic Bat adapts it's echolocation to be a weapon. Using specialized sounds it generates, the Sonic Bat can disorientate, confuse, and even deafen its prey.
Awakener
None
I immediately had two of the bats take each evolution. They were simply too useful not to. Once they were finished evolving, I could move them down to the fourth floor. The ability to summon darkness and disorientate or deafen targets? That would be perfect for the fourth floor. It was the last bat though, that surprised me and took my mind away from the possibilities for the fourth floor.
Your creature, Giant Bat, has reached the threshold for evolution!
Please Select your desired evolution!
Dark Bat (Uncommon) : The Dark Bat is solely a subterranean predator. The Dark Bat sacrifices sight entirely, choosing to rely solely on its echolocation and other senses to navigate. In exchange, the Dark Bat gains the capability to summon small globes of darkness, attempting to blind their prey.
Sonic Bat (Scarce) : The Sonic Bat is a unique variant of bat, changing their behaviour almost entirely. Instead of hunting in the dark with claws primarily, the Sonic Bat adapts it's echolocation to be a weapon. Using specialized sounds it generates, the Sonic Bat can disorientate, confuse, and even deafen its prey.
Awakener
Vampiric Bat (Rare) : The Vampiric Bat is a deceptive threat. Appearing as little more than a regular Giant Bat, the Vampiric Bat appears weak to draw in prey. Capable of extending and withdrawing its vicious claws and fangs, it can play weak with the best of them. More than that, the Vampiric Bat's muscle and bone is improved many times over, giving it a shocking strength, speed, and resilience. The Vampire Bat has an insatiable appetite for blood, its mind not developed enough to control the overwhelming nature of its vampiric instincts.
Oh, oh that's very good! Very good indeed! Awakener always gave good options, but this was better than most. Not just because of it on its own, but because I'd honestly never expected that much from the bats. So something like this, this was the reason Awakener was the most powerful ability I had. Quickly, the light of evolution began to ignite on the second floor.