Chapter 59: Approaching Litter

Chapter 59: Approaching Litter

Now that I'd upgraded from a molehill to a proper cavern, it was time to make it my own.

As rightly pissed as I was about the horrible asymmetry, there were benefits; the largest being that my twin little entrances were still close together but tucked in a back section, an outcropping shadowing on their left side. I tugged up a spool of mana and grew the outcropping, sprawling it out into a tunneled half-wall with a mighty fine inner thread of granite just in case any invader got a touch too big for their britches and wanted to break it down. Because I was rather against the idea, thank you.

In the end, the two entrances emerged into a dark enclosed space, forcing out on either the far left or right where they would then enter the cavern proper—but when they went into the larger space and looked back, they wouldn't see their entrances, just another stretch of stone. And if there were some distractions, say, armies of pissed critters and hungry beasts, they probably wouldn't have the time to dutifully search every nook and cranny for their way out.

Because that was what my first floor was for. Even with its new size and the new dangers I planned to throw into its midst, I didn't want it to be a threat to invaders first arriving. A couple stone-backed toads, a few luminous constrictors; basic monsters enough to soothe their concerns and make them think I was a foolish little dungeon with no threats. The bears would stay tucked in their dens, any other creatures would stay asleep—until invaders tried to come back through on a retreat.

Because they would find themselves lost, panicked, and utterly beset by the floor they had written off as easy.

Sometimes I was rather proud of my ferocity.

Of course, I was hardly done now. I darted about the cavern, shoring up walls and carving hundreds of dens over their base. Not all of them were nice, or even particularly pleasant—I wasn't a complete hatchling over my creatures. They would have to fight for comfort in my halls.

Even if the lowest den was still a vast improvement over the scraps they'd found in the outer mountain. My creatures needed their strength up if they were going to evolve.

I meandered my way around the newly widened space, dropping spores like raindrops in my wake; whole new gardens sprouted, unfurling pale caps and algae slithering outward until once more the silver-grey of the limestone was fully hidden under the greens and whites of my Fungal Gardens.

Truly, you cannot understand how badly I wanted to try and complete the floor now, watching my creatures get over their hesitancy and start to once more live in the space I'd provided for them, dangerous little beasties. But no. I would wait for Nicau to return and give me all manner of new creatures and plants, just to make sure the space was ready. As perfect as I could get it.

And not finishing it immediately would let me hold out just a little longer before starting my sixth floor, because I still didn't have enough creatures to fill it like I wanted. Gods knew that I was still struggling to fill the Skylands. Truly, any distraction from the desire to start a new floor was very necessary for my fragile self control to win out.

And there were a few more things I could do.This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

With the notable exception of letting them bind me to their service. That would not be on the list of proffered temptations, funnily enough.

But jewels I could provide aplenty, already using them myself to keep a steady back up of mana for when invaders were rude enough to steal my ambient supply, and it wasn't like I was about to stop creating unique and powerful creatures. More plants, more floors, more ecosystems; plenty to steal.

Just unfortunately for the thieves, they wouldn't be leaving with any of the shinies they'd try to claim for themselves. I dug deep into my stolen souls and pried loose what attracted them; and all about my Fungal Gardens I hung great strands of jewels, shimmering little treasures—although unfortunately not diamonds, given they were too mana-expensive for me to use as set dressing. Veins of pure silver and gold streaked their way around growths of algae-light, glinting in the darkness, and I wrapped patches of granite around them to make them pop even more.

Now for the creatures; I carved little dens directly at eyesight, filling them with soft algae and gentle trickles of water from above.

Some part of me was inspired; I dug deep into the schema of my luminous constrictor and tugged out just the bones, learning all of their skeletal structure. Taking a page out of the sarco's book, I cleared a winding section free of algae that started halfway up the wall and trailed overhead, winding between several stalactites and ribboning its way for easily sixty straight feet. Then I expanded the serpent's skeleton to true massive proportions and inlaid it into the limestone, its jaws expanded as if about to take a bite right at the tip of a stalactite.

A welcoming little beast. Perhaps not entirely useful for my weak first floor appearance, but given that it looked like just a fossil, hopefully the Resurrector title wasn't common enough that people would expect me to have it as a schema.

Of course, I immediately tried to use said Resurrector title to bring back this enormous serpent, but even as I snaked my mana throughout the bones, it simply refused to activate. Figured.

It would be far too easy for me to just make incredibly powerful creatures by messing with their bones and bringing them back to life, so I could understand why the gods had restricted that particular little ability, but it wasn't as if I wasn't annoyed.

But now, with my welcoming faux fossil and a floor littered in fungus, I could feel it was approaching done.

The rock pond was still filling the rest of the way, meaning the silverheads were a little cramped for the moment, but their numbers would settle as the weak died and luminous constrictors ate the foolhardy. I predicted several hundred more webs to spring up as the newest generation of cave spiders fought for territory, the whitecap mushrooms shriveling as more burrowing rats ate their number down. It would be a few days of upheaval, and that was before Nicau returned and gave me all manner of new beasts to fill my halls.

Then the Fungal Gardens would be complete.

As soon as Nicau got off his ass, wherever he was, and brought me back some schemas.