Mordecai was happy. Not joyous, not gleeful, just that warm sort of happihat es from a certain kind of tentedness. It was a new sort of happiness for him, and new versions of emotions had bee rare for him. And it certainly wasn’t that he hadn’t felt the various parts of being happy like this before, but it was very different this time around.

  By the time he’d first fallen in love through one of his avatars, he’d been a very busy dungeon, and never really grew less busy as his levels tio expand. Part of his mind was always so busy with maintaining the flow of activity and growth, that he’d never really been able to give most of his attention to a lover. Now he was beginning to wonder how deep that love truly had been.

  Not that he was quite in love with these two women, but like Moriko, he could feel his growing affe and warmth for both of them ahose affes beiurned. So he retty certain that it was just a matter of time. Moriko had a habit of resisting these sorts of feelings, and Kazue was much less self-aware about such matters, besides having had no experiehis meant he wasn’t going to pursue or push for more than they were ready to give. Also, he’d never romawo women at once, so this was new ground.

  Mordecai was also just a touch bored. Not bored because he was doing the same thing again, he was bored because he had nothing to do really. That was also rather new. Moriko was out gathering stuff and Kazue was building the dungeon; he couldn’t help o all and ‘helping’ the other at this stage would just be hindering her growth. So, it was time to settle ba for some meditation, as he’d been doing when Kazue had finished her work on the first floor, and they’d beguraining session. It had been fun w with her to see what sort of magic spark she had inside. Almost everyone had something they could do, and hers seemed to suit her well.

  Settling once more into a cross-legged position on the floor of their tral chamber, he focused his attention on his avatar and the trickle of energy trying to supply everything that his body was demanding. Ozuran was right in calling this body not quite cheating. After all, what he’d done was nothing that any other deep, experienced, and somewhat a dungeon couldn't do. In fact, mergiired avatars was something lots of older dungeons did. But sacrifig them all to create just one avatar? That was seldom done. After all, in case of a breach, having multiple avatars spawn to defend your core was usually much more useful thara powerful one, given how much less a single avatar could do at a time and how ineffit merging more than a handful is.

  But Mordecai had do; had burhrough all his avatars to create one new, extremely pact design that had every bit of ability he could extract out of his old ones. And sihis was the only avatar he had now, it was the only ohat could spawn. Though he looked humaually had just about every ability of every adventuring race out there. This included an alternative form that had a lot of non-human 'additions', giving him the physiology to use the rest of his abilities. Which he wasn’t going to use if he could help it. It wasn’t just ugly in a way that might be off-putting to others, it was actually rather offeo him. There hadn’t been a lot of time, so he’d piled all the various body parts he needed into one mostly symmetrical form, but they really didn’t mesh well. If he’d do with more time avaible, he could have smoothed it out and taken some time to figure out how to get all the biological parts to fun with all of his skills while maintaining a on theme.

  Still, even without that ‘battle form’, this body’s potential exceeded anything he’d had before. He had simultaneous access to every martial and magical skill he’d ever learned, even if not quite so profit as he’d been before. That alone should be more than enough to handle most threats he was likely to enter soon. And yeah, he might be stuck here doing nothing but meditating for a little while, but it was so much better thaher options. If Kazue hadn’t been here, needing both assistand pany, he’d have lost most of the mana he'd brought with them within another day at the most. The strain on Moriko's body from having to try to hold it that long would have also beeremely hard on her.

  After that, the only choice would have been to try and hunt out a duhat truly needed destroying, try to figure out a way to ‘mostly’ kill the core without actually shattering it, and then try to take the core over before it broke. Aimated that they would have had only a little over a year in which to do so before the bonds he’d used to tie himself to Moriko would have forced him into being some sort of familiar for her. He still wasn’t sure how that would have turned out. He might have maed as a tiny dragon or she might have been able to ma him as a full eidolon, or several other options. But one way or ahat would certainly have made for a very differeionship. He found that he was quite pleased with how things had turned out, especially pared to his other options.

  Kazue hummed to herself as she set about iing the pnts and materials Moriko had returned with, and filled the first floor with the st of growing things: The deep green herbaceous st of shrubs, the light, delicate sts of flowers, the lightly musty st of small mosses. She even made the fairies redolent of florals, as another hint that they were the flowers in her puzzle. This also helped camoufge the st of the hidden caches of inse around that first floor that she had as additional loot. There were a few herby pnts that could be harvested, but nothing particurly rare or pote. She hoped that Moriko would be able to find some eventually so that she could supplement the inse with something a bit more thematic.

  Then it was time to design and implement the first room on her sed floor. This floor had a differe of plications to work on. First, she o separate 'loot' crystals from ndscape and puzzle crystals. The distin to identify crystals designated as loot was that they were already roughly blocked to shape for future cutting and sitting loose, while both decorative gems and puzzle crystals were embedded and had natural terminations. Loot would be geed when the puzzle-solving began. Kazue created a couple of bronze pques at differes to inform visitors of this, and the loot would be scattered throughout the level.

  Figuring out how to get the crystals to ‘sing’ the way she wanted was the hard part. After that, she just e a set of iion holes with crystal rods above them he exit door that, when tapped, gave off a pure note. A silver baton rovided at this door for this purpose. The difficulty could be adjusted by ging the number of iion holes to equal the number of people in the party plus troviding one rod for every two people in the group, to a maximum of four rods and nine crystals to find for a seven-person group.

  For the puzzle, it was another find-and-matow you had to remember the notes, find crystals in the walls that gave off the same note, loosen them carefully, ahem into the pedestal in the correct order. The crystals you o find and the crystals you sampled from did not look the same, so you had to work by sound alone. When you picked up the silver baton, you were given an audible and written warning that the rod would slowly evaporate over time until the puzzle was solved, but that any remaining silver would be theirs. Any uncimed crystals ems in a given room would disappear when the puzzle was pleted.

  And naturally, she couldn’t make the crystals too easy to find. So she created little half-hidden alcoves; stuck them on the back of ledges; hid single small crystals behind several rge ones so that you had to really look to find them; distracted with pg lootable crystals and semi-precious gems in front of other crystals; and so on.

  If you failed the puzzle by having the rod evaporate pletely, you could walk back out to the antechamber, where it would reset as if you had pleted it. She had worked in an entment that ged the musiotes after it’d been solved, and thus the correct crystals to find and match. She'd had to add a simir alteration magic upstairs as well, when Mordecai pointed out that adventurers often shared notes. She also made sure that the rod evaporated more slowly the smaller it got, creating a price paid with time if one decided tain instead of pleting it when they could. Time was one part of how much mana they received after all, with exertion being the other major part. Also, the value of findable loot was cut in half each time you reset, making each pass less effit.

  Kazue nibbled oip of her tail thoughtfully for a moment. For the sed room. Ah! This'll work. She set up something slightly different but on a simir theme. The clue crystals each pulsed with a specific rhythm and pattern. Again, the color of the light and shape of the crystal didn’t matter; explorers would have to find the crystals with matg rhythms and patterns. As the crystals did not o be tapped, iing the correct crystal instead created a crystal with a perma light entment, with the size of the crystal and brightness of the light entmeermined by how quickly that crystal was ied. The color of the gem and its light matched the crystal that it was geed from.

  The third one was more of a test of one's reflexes. In several pces around this cavern, in spaces too awkward to reach directly, were crystal tubes that would make a small whistling sound before they shot out a fragile little orb of gss. The orbs would hit a wall, ceiling, or floor and shatter into harmless dust. They would tio do so until the orb was caught without breaking. The trick was that the time between the whistle and the orb flying out varied, and each orb traveled at a different speed. If you tried to simply block the orb it would most likely break. You had to catch them gently. After that was easy though, the delver just pced them all in a little receptacle, and when all the orbs were present the receptacle would tilt them into a little gss-covered box filled with metal tihey rolled and bounced down to make gentle musiotes before they shattered at the bottom level, releasing a whiff of sandalwood inse. That st bit was for her own nostalgia, a reminder of the temple and her fellow shrine maidens that she missed. Then a tray would open up to dispy the prizes and the door would open.

  Kazue had decided to try to make single-use items to reflect the nature of the fragile marbles, and then found herself briefly overwhelmed by the knowledge of basic things she could make. It hadn't e from Mordecai either; the materials had mostly required getting samples, but the uanding to make simple potions, scrolls, and even wands was simply there. The scrolls were limited to the few spells her avatar had learned from Mordecai, or they would be if she didn't have the option of just using his knowledge to gee the scrolls. It didn't help her avatar know more spells, it only affected what her core could produce. After searg through all the appropriate spells, she settled on a sele of utility spells, such as creating water, purifying food, or creating a temporary arm ward, as well as healing potions and basititoxins. Naturally, the number and quality of the prizes was time-based. When she finished doing this, Kazue realized that even her creation of glowing gems lined up with what many crafters with magical knowledge could do, she could just do it a lot faster and easier.

  Fourth room! Alright, now what to do here. Mmm, Let’s make use of the rabbits. She could train them, right? Or at least let them know what she wanted of them. And she didn’t o make big strong oher. It took a little work and a bit of mana to evolve, but eventually, she was able to make them smart enough to uand what she wanted. Whenever a group of explorers came through, several of the rabbits would show themselves aheir attention. Then they would try and show through pantomime and other as what each of them wanted, which was always a retively simple ‘puzzle’ of putting together a few of the crystal shapes, whiapped together when assembled correctly. Once each rabbit had what they wahey’d gather together to do a short, happy dand present the prizes before the door opehe challenge involved unication and helping others, so she wahe prizes to do the same.

  The basic reward was a set s, one for each person in the group, that would ehem to send brief messages to each other that no o the intended recipients could hear. There was a minic that could do almost the same thing, but she wa to operate differently. First, it would only work between this set s and not to any target within range, and sed, each ring was attuo a specific person. But in exge for that, it worked at a longer range and was harder to block. In a moment of inspiration to ence repeat visitors, if anyone cleared this floor with separate groups, their ring would be tuo the rings for both groups. This wouldn't let other people in the groups unicate directly, but the person attuo multiple groups could pass messages between them.

  As for rewards for clearing quickly and treating the rabbits patiently and kindly, hmm. This took a bit of thinking, but an inkling of an idea grew slowly. The message rings she had figured out slowly, but this one she had to sult Mordecai for. There were occasionally physical issues that magic had trouble dealing with, and the magic that could fix them was usually expensive. But there were retively simple aids that could be produced: lenses could be ented to correct vision to the point of providing color corre for those who normally had issues seeing color, and ented gss eyes were even easier as they had a physical interface. A simir item could be made for iing into the ear to fix hearing problems, and a simple glove could be made that would create a ghostly, mentally trolled hand. It wasn't a very strong hand, but it was more than enough to help with many tasks. These wouldn't be direct rewards for most of her visitors, but they could be either sold iven to friends and family members. And that in turn might well ence people who received such gifts to e visit the dungeon now that they could participate in challenges easier.

  This idea might have occurred to her faster if not for the nature of her . The Azeria was retively small, and thanks to having a lot of long-lived members, they had a disproportionate number of strong priests and druids. Whether from birth or by act, disabilities generally get fixed, though that might leave oh a social debt to the healer even if no fiscal pensation was called for. Sometimes a person didn't want to owe a favor that big. Large unities, especially big cities, couldn't always match that sort of generosity. She hoped that when they got big enough, they could offer actual healing, but she could also feel a powerful instinct respond to the idea by demanding an appropriate challenge be met or a price paid. There seemed little point to the tter as then they could afford healing elsewhere, and people who needed healing might have trouble meeting a suffit challenge. But maybe it could be a reward one could earn on another's behalf? That felt right.

  Kazue shook off those musings to focus on her fifth challehe more she worked on her challehe more fun it became, and she kind of wondered why she had worried so much before. Making bo puzzles out of smaller puzzle elements made her happy, so she did it again. There would be several sets of rabbits that would mob a group of delvers. Each set would want something slightly different done, and it would generally look like the sets of rabbits had flig requests to be fulfilled. In the end though, the delvers would find that there were once more crystals geing and firing marbles, and that they had to be deactivated by catg and holding the marble for that crystal. The crystals could then be moved to aim them, and the targets were crystal chimes that the party had to assemble and hang. The crystals could be reactivated by breaking the marble and turned back off by catg it again. They would o line up the correct marble-firing crystal to the correct chime, and activate them in the correct order to create a brief melody.

  Ohe correct melody yed, a longer and more plex version would be pyed while the rabbits gave another celebratory dance as the entire area around the door lit up with lights and music before opening up. For prizes, Kazue went baore celebratory items and provided a mix of durable instruments that could tuhemselves if needed, music boxes that didn't need winding (and had dang rabbits and foxes for their rotatierpiece), dang shoes in different styles that would help a persohe proper step assuming that they could dao begin with, and flowing silk ribbons and scarves with just a touagic to help them flutter, float, and billow in dramatid beautiful motions when used for dance.

  There! She was done. Of course, she hadn’t moved their private chambers, so the exit now went to a circur s room that roximately uhe dungeora would bee the stairwell ohey could create their third floor. From there, the passageway then looped back around the outside of her 5-room arc to the front room of their private chambers. The whole thing was a little lopsided as Mordecai hadn’t had a ce to give her the designs for anything oher side, so it was still just a pin old corridor with nothing in it until that was fixed. Speaking of whom… eh, he was doing that meditation thing again. Well, she didn’t feel like walking back, and she o practice actually being a dungeon, so she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and despawned her avatar.

  Oh goddess, this was weird. She didn’t have a body! Well, she did, she had her core, and the dungeon was also kind of her body, but it was stra having a normal kitsune body! Nope, she didn’t like it, how did normal dungeons stand being like this until they could make an avatar? Hastily, Kazue focused her attention on the spot behind Mordecai and spawned her avatar there again, to immediately jump on his bad give him a hug. “I got you!” She said as she snuggled up against him.

  “Mmm, yes you did.” He replied, leaning bato her. “I see you had quite the creative streak. Hopefully, anyone who chooses to take your peaceful route isn’t expeg it to be too easy. They’ll have to put some work into those, though I think it should be fun. And if there are any muscle heads who thought they could just bash their way through the easy path, well, I’m sure we figure out some friends who help solve that sort of problem.”

  Kazue felt him the warrens a touch, feeding them a little bit of energy and a carefully shaped cept. “Um, what did that-oh! I see! The warrens will grow with the dungeon now! And most of the mana is ing from the living creatures there, so that’ll limit how fast they grow, but we won’t get any energy straight from them if the warrens have some growing to do. That’s kind of , but that’s not muergy, it’s mostly pnts and stuff.”

  The kitsune yelped as Mordecai reached up over his shoulder and pulled her forward, curling her over his shoulder to nd her in his p, then snuggled her into pce. “You haven’t quite thought that out yet. You have drawn in lots of rabbits, but we only have so mu for inhabitants. The rabbits will do what rabbits do, and before long we should expect to have lots of cute little guests. They live back there quite happily and provide all the energy the warrens need, aually, many of them bee future inhabitants.”

  Oh, she hadn’t thought about the bunnies breeding. That made sense. Um, why was he still looking at her like that? And leaning a bit closer? Um, was he going to – Kazue startled briefly, then grabbed onto him and closed her eyes as Mordecai kissed her, sinking into the sensation. Moriko’s kiss had been a little sweeter and lighter, but brief. This, this she could lose herself into.

  Mordecai suddenly broke the kiss, leaving Kazue with a little pout of disappoi. “Uh oh, I think Moriko had a less than pleasant day.”

  Huh, what was he talking- ah. She could feel it now, a little ball of simmering frustration tinged with a bit of rese. The half-elf was stalking back to the dungeon and it felt like things had not gone great.

  Zagaroth