My two new minions had hatched. They were now wandering around the chamber I’d made for them, exploring the decorations.

The Bulwark Blossom was an interesting creature. Did walking plants count as creatures? Either way, it was unlike any plant I’d ever seen in nature. The body was egg shaped and supported by four sturdy leg-roots. From the front of the ‘egg’, a huge dark grey flower bloomed. It had three enormous petals, arranged in a semi-circle shape, creating a barrier nearly eight feet across. The petals were thick and rubbery, and I imagined they could absorb a physical attack quite effectively. The plant didn’t have eyes but seemed to navigate by detecting vibrations with delicate filaments on the edges of the shield.

I decided to nickname it a Bully.

The Skythorn, meanwhile, was even stranger. It had an oblate body, about the size of a sheep, the majority of which seemed to be taken up by an air bladder which gave it enough buoyancy to float. The body was covered in soft downy leaves, which seemed to detect vibrations just like the Bully’s filaments. When idle, the Skythorn let itself passively follow the air currents, but if alarmed it could quickly release the contained air in a powerful jet and shoot forward, aiming the large single thorn on its head at the provoker.

I could already see how they’d work together. The Bully would soak up damage and hassle adventurers, while the Skythorn could swoop in for high damage aerial strafing. I couldn’t wait to see how adventurers responded.

It took me a while to replenish the necessary mana, but by the end of the day I had planted another Bully and two more Skythorns in the second room.

Finally, I could get to making a boss, an idea that had been exciting me since I’d unlocked the feature.

***

Twelve hours later, I discarded my third attempt at a boss design. This was harder than it looked. None of them were perfect. This was the first boss adventurers would encounter in my dungeon, and it absolutely had to be perfect.

The boss arena was a perfectly square room, thirty feet across. I had modeled it on a luxurious study. Heavy wooden paneling, a bronze chandelier that hung from the roof, and a huge wooden desk meant to intimidate anyone who received an audience with its lord. Except for the desk, the room was sparsely furnished, providing plenty of room for the fight to play out. I was happy with the room. I just wasn’t happy with the bosses.

I pulled up a different plant this time. I’d tried all my combat oriented plants but none of them felt right. They were each just a variant on something adventurers had already encountered, which felt stale and predictable. So this time I tried the Ancient Ebony Tree instead.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The tree appeared as a hazy silhouette within the boss arena. For now, it was an inanimate object with no combat abilities. I didn’t even know if I could turn it into a boss, but there was no harm in trying.

To create a boss, I had to infuse it with a Title. The exact logic of Titles slightly escaped me, but the basic method I’d used so far involved creating a sentence and then infusing it with mana. With a lot of testing, I’d figured out that it required a noun and a modifying adjective. Inserting different words would modify the output, but I hadn’t figured out how to tell ahead of time what changes a word would make. I really wished I had someone to explain it to me. I could’ve saved hours of trial and error.

Either way, I could then determine the level challenge of the boss, which couldn’t be more than my own level, and at last, I had a boss. Well, I would have one if I could make up my mind.

With no better ideas, I tried yet another title. Undatus, the Rotten Lord. I pressed the title into the Ancient Ebony Tree. The changes were immediate. Leaves withered and crumbled to ash. The tree’s bark began to flake away, exposing crumbling, rotten wood on the inside that pulsed like a heartbeat. The branches twisted and grew pointed ends, and finally, with a heave, the tree tore itself free from the ground on two thick roots and began to amble slowly forward.

It was impressive, and actually quite creepy, but it didn’t fit the theme. Disappointed, I dismissed it. When I picked Faerie Garden, I was trying to avoid the undead, not just take the long way around to being an undead dungeon.

I tried again. Azerachus, The Ancient Sentinel

In front of me, Azerachus’ trunk thickened and bark hardened into stony plates, making it appear almost petrified. Each plate was divided by fissure like cracks. The whole tree grew taller, until its crown brushed the vaulted ceiling. The branches warped into long, whip-like appendages, and the masses of leaves faded to a dark grey close to the tree’s bark, and finally, gained razor sharp edges.

Yes! This was perfect!

Without hesitation, I pushed the mana into the boss and let Azerachus spawn.

It appeared in the middle of the room, firmly rooted in the ground, but I had no doubt that the whip-branches could reach any corner of the room. It would be a great test of how adventurers had learned to cope with stationary enemies in the first room.

Now, I just needed some adventurers to test my boss on.

Well, first I needed to do one last thing. I needed to relocate my core. I didn’t have the mana to do any more major work today, but I could do that.

Beyond the boss room, I shaped the next chamber. It would only be a temporary home for my core, as I planned to move it backwards with each new room I created, but for now it was the most defensible spot I had available. I reinforced the walls so they were twice as thick, and then I gently willed my core to float and navigated it into the new core room, where I set it on a pedestal in the middle of the room.

Hopefully that would keep it safe for now.