{The dungeon core}

  As I was watching the campsite a group of people started going towards my entrance. A decent part of the camp that is. The main group of explorers I think. Hopefully they have brought some interesting flora and fauna for me to use. While I was watching them move to the entrance I recognized one of them the felinid that was in the scouting team. It seems he is part of the research guild. He seems eager to enter again going back so fast with little rest. I mean he didn’t fight so had less rest needed.

  Then they came to a halt when they arrived to my entrance. 4 meter steps do that. A few of the crafty people in the group brought some ladders or build ones out of logs. And after a hour of building an going down they were finally in the dungeon. The giant staircase was worth it a gnome fell down one ladder, if I could I would totally be laughing out loud.

  They brought several crates and placed them of to the side and then they walked away. It seems that these are the “gifts” what shall it be. When they were far away enough I looked inside and interesting these gifts were. Several flowers, frozen hovering shrimp?, seeds maybe from a tree can be sure, leeches… why would they give me leeches if they knew I am going to use them. Oh interesting a lesser dragon can definitely do something with those, a stone badger? Devious creatures willing to fight things way bigger than it. Finally we have a skeleton, would my powers even work on that? So far it only worked on living things.

  Level 3

  Species: metal-flower

  Mana: 0/(depends on metal) Regen: (depends on metal) mana per/?

  Species traits [minor metal affinity], [metal mana absorption], [ferrophage]

  [minor metal affinity]:

  This trait gives an increased amount of affinity to metal

  +25% metal affinity

  [metal mana absorption]

  This trait gives the ability to absorb metal mana and grow that metal

  +50% metal mana absorption, +25% metal production

  [ferrophage]

  This trait gives the ability to eat metal for nutrients

  +25% nutrients form metal (depends on metal)

  Level 3

  Species: fire-rose

  Mana: 8/8 Regen: 2 mana per/h

  Species traits [fire affinity], [lesser fire mana heart], [manaphage]

  [fire affinity]

  This trait gives an increased amount of affinity to fire

  +100% fire affinity (this effect applies to all “fire” traits)

  [lesser fire-mana heart]

  This trait converts excess mana into fire mana

  +50% mana conversion (fire)

  [manaphage]

  This trait gives the ability to eat mana

  +25% nutrients form mana

  Level 3

  Species: water-hyacinth

  Mana: 18/18 Regen: 1 mana per/h

  Species traits [water affinity], [lesser water mana heart], [manaphage]

  [water affinity]

  This trait gives an increased amount of affinity to water

  +100% water affinity (this effect applies to all “water” traits)

  [lesser water-mana heart]

  This trait converts excess mana into water mana

  +50% mana conversion (water)

  Level 1

  Species: Ironwood tree

  Mana: 0/500 Regen: 50 mana per/h

  Species traits [iron skin], [iron infusion], [ferrophage]

  [iron skin]

  This trait gives the user a skin of literal iron

  +250% resilience (“skin”), -50% movement

  [iron infusion]

  This trait gives the ability to absorb iron from the ground and infuse it into your body can use mana to create iron

  +100% resilience, +25% iron production

  Lvl 9

  Lesser drakeling

  Mana: 45/80 Regen: 19 mana per/h

  Species traits [minor dwarfism], [mana heart], [lesser dragon scales]

  [minor dwarfism]

  This trait makes the user grow smaller than average

  -25% size, +25% mana usage, +25% metabolism efficiency, +30% movement

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  [mana heart]

  This trait gives increased mana production and releases more mana

  +100% mana production, +50% released mana, +12% maximum mana

  [lesser dragon scales]

  This trait gives scales of a (lesser) dragon

  +50% resilience, +25% fire resistance, 12% magic resistance

  DWARFISM!!!! This poor creature forced to stay small I shall create brothers and sisters that shall tower. Evil dwarfism, but only after I checked the last 2 creatures well one creature since one of them is a skeleton.

  Lvl 4

  basalt badger

  Mana: 8/8 Regen: 4 mana per/h

  Species traits [greater fire resistance], [basalt skin], [lesser resilience]

  [greater heat resistance]

  This trait gives the ability to greatly resist heat

  +200% resistance (heat)

  [basalt skin]

  This trait gives the user a “skin” of basalt

  +100% resilience (skin), +50% fire resistance, +50% weight, -45% movement

  [lesser resilience]

  +50% resilience

  Now we finally have the mystery skeleton. What shall it be it looks like a more lean drake or maybe like a big bird. But alas I haven’t seen a bird. Only some bats. I really should look more outside to see what life there is.

  Lvl N/A

  Greater raptor

  Mana: (who knows) Regen: ?? mana per/?

  Species traits [lesser reflexes], [lesser intelligence], [N/A]

  [lesser reflexes]

  This trait improves the reflexes of the user

  +50% reflex speed, +10% dexterity

  [lesser intelligence]

  This trait improves the intelligence of the user

  +50% cognition, +10% intelligence

  It seems that I indeed can recover some information form skeletons, but not everything. A trait got lost degraded over time. Then we have the [lesser intelligence] trait this means this species of creature was turning into a sapient. Or had the possibility to do so. After I inspected everything a few minutes had passed the guilds get my attention. A large human with scars step forward.

  “Greetings dungeon, if you are indeed sapient show us a sign. If not well you are probably not going to do anything.”

  I create a smaller kobold statue only 50 meters tall pretty close to them.

  “That would be a sign. I have brought a contract in short the contract means that you don’t try to kill everyone who enters, send monsters out without a guilds permission in return we the adventurers guild will protect you. Although the contract can only be signed by your actual core. So if I may have permission can I and a small group go un-attacked to your core to sign the contract and leave?”

  I create a even smaller kobold 10 meters tall with a thumbs up. These contracts mostly mean that other governing bodies can’t claim me for personal use. They did leave a copy of the contract in the crates for me to read, but I will read the actual contract when they arrive to my core. But before they arrive at my core it may be some days past. Unless they just jump off the cliff then they might arrive in 1 to 2 days? Even then they still need to go through the lower groveroot forest.

  Let’s get started with using these new flora and fauna. The ironwood trees interest me the most because their unmodified maximum height can be increased a lot thanks to iron infusion. Unfortunately I had to change one of the traits to [lesser gigantism]. Either [ferrophage] or [iron skin]. The main problem removing a trait that lets the lifeform “eat’ something is that then I have to pay mana to sustain them. While my mana production is very high I am not sure if I can sustain such large giants of trees.

  Wait didn’t the drakeling have [mana heart]? I can maybe create a plant that can produce a lot of mana and be small in size. But where am I going to put them. I guess next to the ironwood trees, but them they would be very much in the open. I can always move them later if adventures start removing it by the million. Now what plant shall I use that is small. Ah I know the skyalgae! If I remove the ability to fly gave it [mana heart] and try to mutate the [lesser electro-synthesis] into something more pure mana related. The only thing is that the algae need a lot of water that is not moving fast. So after 10 kilometers past the lower lake I created stepped pools of water. Replicating the ones I saw in caves including the white colour of calcium. In caves they would only go wide as 5 meters and 2 meters long, but here they are hundreds of meters wide and up to a hundred meters long.

  Creating a gradual decent. Now lets get to mutating. I put in a few spots small lightonium ores to increase the mutation chance. Then I put the modified skyalgae in the pools to begin mutating them. At first most of the mutations gave me worse versions of the traits I already got then a few more interesting ones appeared.

  [lesser mana emitter]

  This trait increases the amount of mana emitted and multiplies it

  +50% released mana, +25% magic resistance

  [mana liquidation]

  This trait lets excess mana be turned into liquid form

  +100% liquid mana production, +50% mana resistance

  [lesser electrical instability]

  This trait makes the user instable and electrically explodes on contact

  +50% electricity, +25% explosion radius

  These three traits are interesting 2 of them are very good and the other is well explosive. I tested a few algae with the trait by throwing a snakerat in the pool. There was only bones left and a lot of small pieces of meat in other pools. The electricity stuns the creature and then more than tens of thousands algae fry and explode the creature. Downside all of the algae is gone now any movement can just trigger all algae creating a blast.

  Then we have the two mana traits the [lesser mana emitter] trait was kind of what I was looking for more mana production. And then we have [mana liquidation] a trait that produces liquid mana very interesting, but it doesn’t give me more mana. The adventures will love to find liquid mana, great for spell casters and alchemist. So I made smaller pools around 30 by 30 centimeters and spread them around the pools where some got the explody algae and some got the liquid mana algae.

  Then I spread across all the other pools the mana production algae. The [lesser mana emitter] makes the algae glow a little blue. So the pools themselves glow blue.

  When I was done with the mutations the large human with scars was nearly at the cliff. Interested by how they are going to go down the cliff I watched them. The group all grabbed a potion form I assume a alchemist and drank it. Then they jumped down the cliff. Very slowly falling. At the speed they are going it would take around a hour to reach the water or a little less if they land in the rootgrove.

  Taking my attention away from the group I started modifying the ironwood to get an even larger base size. I planted a few ironwoods where I replaced the [ferrophage] with [lesser gigantism]. surprisingly one grew way bigger than the rest. Oh! Great this one has [Gigantism].

  [gigantism]:

  This trait increases the size of this lifeform.

  +100% size, +100% mana, +100% mana regen, +100% health, +150%% metabolism usage, -20%

  movement

  Each ironwood tree now has over 1000 mana maximum and 100 mana per/h. While the production is nothing compared to the mana algae total it is still impressive. Now time to change every creature below lvl 10 with [lesser gigantism] to [gigantism]. so everything will become even bigger than before. I started creating ironwoods between the lower lake and the algae pools. The trees grew until they reached the ceiling over 6 kilometers tall. And the base of each tree was 1 kilometer in diameter tapering off towards the top where the trees still were over 200 meters thick at the ceiling.

  The trees were placed near the iron ore veins. I placed a few more normal sized one that were only 300 meters tall and 25 to 35 meters thick. Between the trees I places metal flowers for the iron theme. And for now I placed a decent amount of basalt badgers but with [iron skin] instead of [basalt skin] and [gigantism] instead of [greater fire resistance]. I called them iron badgers, tough little fellas. Oh wait tough big fellas. The badgers with these traits were 5 meters long and 2 meters tall, pretty big indeed.

  Looking at the party that is going to my core one of them had died by drowning. It seems that my bubbles near the waterfall made it so that you cant really swim. Too many bubbles and the waterfall as well pulling you deeper. I made the bubble production a decent amount less, so people don’t drown. And the party seems to have taken rest in a dense part of rootgrove. They seem to do a ritual on the dead guy. A funeral rite maybe?

  The dead person started glowing the persons blue lips slowly started turning pink again. Then the person puked a lot of water and was alive again.

  Damn these guilders don’t spare any expenses a ritual like that costs a lot of gold. It seems that they are going to camp in there. Probably for the guy who drowned. Luckily for the guy one of them was a semi-aquatic kin. Though I have never seen one of those, he looks like a crab? I am uncertain I can ask when they arrive after all.

  what shall he make as a 1st floor boss