Ohe new pieces to the hell route were plete, and all entrances had their sequenced chambers added, Kazue took about an hour to doze and recharge, curled up against him in their bed. Mordecai pet her hair gently while she napped and took the time to sider what he wao redo on the first floor. Kazue’s path didn’t need alteration, it already served its purpose as it was, but it did need a touch of reinfort. It was his own path that he was ed about. And being able to create a sed boss would certainly be helpful, but it could only help so much with the power of a first-floor boss.

  When the dungeon had 10 floors Mordecai could give it one of the Raid Boss nodes, but that was a way off. And even a focus oh of power had its limits. Of course, he didn’t have to make the sed 1st-floor boss another hidden raid boss, but it felt weird to have such a power discrepancy between two bosses on the same floor.

  Oh, wait, could he…? Mordecai tested out a new idea in his mind, and it felt like it should work. The i was going to py a part too. It was a very different sort of ‘loophole’, or rather, it let you do things that you wouldn’t be able to do normally if you think through how to apply it toward the reason the rules exist. And that thread of thought gave him some ideas for the floor itself. He was finding himself quite excited to try some uff out, which left him amused as well. By the time he was trying to ter more difficult problems before, he had more floors and power, he didn’t have to get the most out of each floor. He was going to have to be trickier than in his previous life.

  Of course, he was being perhaps a touch paranoid in trying to make sure that the normal bat route stood a ce against enemies more powerful than a given level was intended for, but being a little bit paranoid was healthy as a way to cover as many edge case tingencies as possible. If a hostile mao get through to the end without having revealed their true nature, he wahem to have worked for it, and make it easier to defend the core.

  Kazue stirred, then pulled him down to her for a kiss. “Give me a little bit more time and I will be ready to go.” Mordecai watched as she pulled herself together by going through the ritual of making tea. In all reality they could have tinued on as their cores alone, but it was good for Kazue to find the limits of her avatar and how best to cope with her own head-space. If they had to take breaks more often and for longer, well, he saw no problems with that.

  When she was ready they headed back to the war room to begin. “Alright love, your mother taught us a lesson about specialists in a favored enviro. I basically handed her the first three floors. So let’s work on that.” He waited for her nod before tinuing with careful w. “The resources we’ll be geing are meant to keep people from bypassing challenges or cheapening the purpose and i of our levels, so we’ll do our best to keep retively precious struaterials ued by proper explorers, and troublesome for rule breakers.”

  There was a slight hum in his mind, and from Kazue’s expression, she felt it too. But it only took a moment for her to catch up, recalling what he’d told her before about his visit. “Ah, our i. And how exactly are we going to implement that i?”

  “First, five feet behind the surface stone is where we will put our outer yer of tai. And with that i and prote, it should be easy and cheap enough to create yers of mithral and pure sapphire, sandwiched together to create a very tough mination that earth magic will not budge and will resist attacks well enough to be a waste of energy. Go on, give it a try, and feel free to experiment.”

  Kazue did exactly that. He watched as she quickly created the security yer, theed a different yer of crystal over that, creating a sheath of the living crystal that they’d made for the bunbee's flowers on the sed floor. From that she drew roots to the surface, creating more crystalline blooms. It was rather like the root system of many fungi, and by creating a yer of artificial life over the core of pure metal and crystal, well, it would take several different specialists to pee through directly, and cost a lot more time and effort than going through normally would.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” Mordecai said as he examined her work “Hmm, easily replicated for all the floors really, though I think I’m going to tweak the cept a bit for the bat library, make the flowers more mushroom-like. That way I bring some into the maze to give it a bit more of aic deg atmosphere.”

  Kazue beamed up at him. “Gd you like it! So what was the part you wao ge?”

  “Well, I’d like to make my path a touch more iing. We were in a bit of a hurry before and had fewer resources. But to take from what you’ve done, I’d like to see my side made into a hedge maze, floor to ceiling of course. 5 pnt themes since we have so many to choose from, and each se be one of several patterns that will ge after a party goes through. I’ll tweak the results from there.”

  “Oh, are you saying that my work isn’t ‘iing’ to you?” She asked with faux innoce, and he couldn’t help but ugh as she attempted to draw him into a verbal mistake.

  “And are you saying that you put all of your best efforts into designing this part of the floor before?” He asked back with a grin, before kissio interrupt her game of pretending to be insulted. Mordecai wasn’t always great at pying those particur verbal spars, but he had very much learned how to either avoid them or break them.

  Kazue gave into the kiss for a moment, then broke free with a smile. “Alright, one hedge maze in five parts, ing right up!” This didn’t take her very long, and she was even niough to color-code each se with flowers so that someone expl would know when they cleared each maze. And though the tiny kitsune might not have a killer’s instinct, she did have a clever mind and no love for cheaters. The hedges became brambles a few inches in, covered with thorns and every inch covered in itdug oils. It cost a little more mana than normal hedge walls would, but not as much as that many traps. Only a cheater would get caught in it, and eve was only an invenienless you were really stupid.

  “Perfect, thank you. Now, let's see, I think here would work.” It cost some amount of magic for a druid to and pnts ah to move, so one of the best things he could do was force them to waste that magito the ter of Kazue’s hedge and brambles, Mordecai wove a fence of thick steel wires, with an occasional pte hanging in the middle, about 5 feet above the floor. He couldn’t use mithral as it was too accessible, but this would do. “And once we are doh the upgrades, I gh and manually put trap glyphs on those ptes that will go off if exposed.”

  She frowned slightly in puzzlement at him. “Why manually?”

  “If I just create them, they e out of our mana budget, though with the advantage of resetting for free. But if I go in with my personal skills, spend an hour per glyph and use up some of the materials we traded to acquire or that are otherwise lost to us, that’s a perma cost that does not e out of our budget. This lets us save our budget for traps that will get used more often.”

  After a moment’s thought Kazue nodded. “Makes sense. Sounds like a bit of a pain, but that’s part of the trade-off, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. Now, we just seed a few pces where we want regur enters to occur, and we have a solid challenge. You never know what might jump out at you in this maze, and they’ll have less maneuvering room. That puts the enhanced rabbits at an advahey were teically monsters, but Kazue never seemed happy with them being called that. “Now for our boss. I think I have had a brilliant idea.”

  Skeptical silence awaited him as Kazue raised an eyebrow. “Not going to infte my ego huh?” Mordecai chuckled. “Alright. So, first I want this sed boss to have two modes. The first mode will be a normal boss for the first floor, to be used when Zushi isn’t avaible for any reason. The seode will be used in jun with Zushi, froup that needs a stronger challehe seode teically starts off weaker, but is empowered by how muergy Zushi absorbs. So if Zushi goes into full Raid Boss mode…”

  “The sed boss gets stronger as Zushi starts sug in magic!” Kazue excimed. “OK, I like it. But I am not certain I’m willing to call it brillia.”

  He smiled with anticipation as he expined. “Well, I started with the thought that Zushi could use some aerial support. And then I remembered that there’s a promise I have not yet fulfilled for you. I had inally been thinking a lower floor, but if he get empowered when needed, I don’t think the form will go to waste.”

  A beat passed before Kazue pulled the clues together. “Wait, on our first day, you talked about some creatures we could create together…”

  “And it’s about time to do that. Ready to create our first dracobit?”

  “Oh gods yes!” She ractically dang ih excitement. “Let’s do this!”

  It took a little bit of refining before they were satisfied within the straints of a first-floor boss, but they had no problems finding a voluo be upgraded. The creature stood almost huma, his body protected by a mix of white scales and fur, and his leathery wings stretched out to twice his height. His neck stretched a little more than a normal rabbit’s would, enabling him to angle his head for a breath on attack. His long ears swept upwards in a more narroe, doubling as horns to el a lightning attack through. And finally, his front paws grew wicked cws and his incisreer and harder, capable of being a true threat.

  “Mmm, I think I have the name for our new friend. Ryuhoho, we wele our floor boss!” Mordecai smiled as Ryuhoho shook himself and then turned around to examine his form. “Go o used to your form. You have a few different breath ons avaible, but they all draw on the same reserves, so you should learn how best to use them. While you do that, we’re going to prep the room.”

  “We are?” Kazue asked. “We already reinforced the level.”

  “Yes, but I use some of our trap budget here. Not for actual traps however. Instead, the ‘traps’ will be trapdoors that both Zushi and Ryuhoho create on the fly. They’ll have a limit to how often of course, but it will enable Zushi to duck out of a normal challeo give victory to a weaker group that had proven resilient and strong enough to be allowed past. It will also allow Ryuhoho to have a ir up in the ceiling, where he be charged up by Zushi before entering the fray for a two-stage battle. And by giving trol of the room to the two bosses, it’ll be more difficult for someoo and even the surface-level earth against them. Hmm, actually, we have enough budget, oh, that could be fun.” Mordecai grinned. “I just thought of something else. Instead of hinging, the trap doors optionally rotate instead. If one of them chooses that option, the side that rotates into the room will be a sticky trap, so say someone is chasing Zushi when he decided to leave, they get stuck. So for more challenging fights, the lo goes on, the more difficult Zushi make it for people to move around. There’s less reason for Ryuhoho to use that option, but it is avaible if it es up.”

  “Well, let me try it. I like this sort of trap much better thaher type.” Kazue said, theo work.

  Zagaroth