Early the m, as the sun was just cresting the horizon, Bellona utting the st of her gear onto a mert wagon. With the ge in pns for several routes that came with the news of the new dungeon came an opportunity to start the first part of her route with some pany. For the first leg, she’d be apanying a caravan, then going by horse alone for the sed leg, befoing on foot for the st leg. It made her logistics easier, as it meant she wouldn't have to worry about feed for the horse for most of the journey.

  The champion of Amirume went over her mental checklist one more time as she adjusted the position of her stuff, making everything as as possible. All her heavy armor was in the chest, until she was setting out o leg there was little reason to wear more than a shirt. There was little ce of danger on the main roads, so her axe she’d keep at her side and her shield on the horse. Everaveling solo, it would be easier on the beast to distribute the weight of her armor rather than have her entire armored mass tered on its back.

  For the st leg, when the horse would be left behind, she’d wear her full kit. If you were going to be carrying the weight anyway, there was er distribution than to wear it. That would also be the se where she’d be traveling up mountain paths, and she didn’t look forward to it. She’d worn her armor for days while moving and fighting across retively ft nd before, but days of going up a mountain in armor was going to be quite different. Fortunately, it was early summer, so the mountains wouldn’t be too cold on her .

  After Moriko had reached the monastery, Mordecai and Kazue had turheir attention baward, for it was time to build. As usual, Kazue went first. With her pns finalized, the walls of the cavern on the fifth floor shifted and formed tiers, enabling ever-higher pt of mushroom buildings, and rger structures that could spread their weight on supports of multiple heights.

  This was a rge vilge of artisans, crafters, farmers, athletes, eainers, writers, philosophers, and simir professions. She expanded ookens idea, to pass through the gate required five tokens, but the ganthros were free to hand tokens to one, some, all, or none of a party’s members as they saw fit, and the tokens would attuhemselves to those who they were preseo. She also borrowed from Mordecai’s double-door cept: the first door could be opened by anyone who had five tokens, the sed door would open only if the first door was closed and everyone ihe corridor had five tokens, and the first door also ’t be opened uhe sed door is closed.

  In addition to the more straightforward challenges she’d been thinking of previously, she had developed some slightly more plicated quests. Many professions use heat, so a challenge could start with “My fire drake wandered off and I ’t find him!”, leading to trag down the drake, then figuring out the sub-challe might be somewhere hard to access, or be distracted by a love i, or maybe it found a shiny te for it to carry but won’t let it go and hisses at any one who gets close, etc), solving the issue, and then they might still o persuade the drake to e home.

  There were many variations of ‘I need a thing’ that could be made into challenges, and the first obstacle was unstated: The inhabitants could pick the challenge, and could make it harder. If they didn’t like you, it would probably be long and involved, and wind up with you getting dirty, wet, and cold. So being at least reasonably polite made everything much easier. It wasn’t terribly likely that this would be an issue by the time someo this far, but Kazue had decided that she was going to include variability in all her future challehat made things easier for people who were being nice.

  Now, people needed proper settings for them to veo, so she spun off side caves of differing youts and enviros; some were jagged rifts that required navigating a lot of vertical terrain, some were wide with one or more streams or small ponds, others saw a return of crystal outcroppings, and a few were mildly caustic with acidic, alkaline, or salty enviros. Nothing too dangerous of course, unless one was exceptionally foolish.

  With many of the avaible challenges being at least partly physical, she started arranging for appropriate rewards as well. Mordecai had made sure she now knew how to craft some of the on physical entment items and how to alter their form and fiuheir sedary abilities. A belt that could let someone carry more weight, boots that made you a little faster or made your steps quieter, a cape that could keep you warm or could help you blend into the background, and many other possibilities.

  Not that she ed the mental side either: gsses that could help decipher an unknown nguage, a pen that always wrote smoothly and without smearing and with unlimited ink of your choice, crafting tools that enhahe produade, and several other items of specialized use were all avaible rewards. She wahe rewards here to be more focused on helping people better their skills, rather than rewarding them with direowledge as the library did.

  Of course, sometimes people would be ing through who knew more than anyone in the dungeon did on a topic. Their challenge would be to teach, and rewards would generally be in raw materials uhere was other information they wanted.

  She did have to be careful just how generous she was though. From dawn to dawn, there was a limit to how much the dungeon could create that could be cimed as loot, and they could only ‘stockpile’ for values that had already been won or that they already oart of a trade agreement. Their inhabitants were not so limited, but only if they worked with ‘real’ materials rather than ones created directly through dungeon mana, and it took a fair amount of time and effort to craft even a minor ented item the proper way. So uhere was a good cause, the items the inhabitants crafted were their own to use or to trade as they saw fit.

  When Kazue was done she looked over the town to make sure she was satisfied with her work. There were t mushroom spires, thick-walled squat mushroom buildings, long buildings made from many mushrooms grown together, and every other bination that had been asked for that she could make work. A lot of them were ‘dummies’ at the moment with no roads to reach them or doors to ehem, but she’d ge that as the popution grew. She even had a few unoccupied buildings growing from the ceiling, which were left avaible to be cimed by any inhabitants that could make their way to them. A little challenge and reward set up for her own people, figuring out how to make flying magic items or systems.

  Creating the lighting had been one of her favorite parts. There had been a few cepts she’d sidered, such as just making every mushroom and fungal surface glow slightly to create a very even and ‘sourceless’ lighting, but in the end, she went for something a bit more fvorful. The underside of the mushroom caps glowed to illumihe area around their base while rge glowing ‘spores’ floated overhead to cast a dimmer radiao the general area, and all the paths were marked with tiny little puffballs that would colpse in a sudden burst of glowing dust spores if disturbed, most likely coating whoever messed with them and leaving a glowing residue that would smear the more you tried to rub it off.

  All of the fungal-based light was in a soft blue/green color, but in addition to the ‘natural’ lighting, the inhabitants had access to fire and normal light spells, making the interior of the buildings look warm and inviting against the backdrop of perpetual twilight outside. Overall she rather ehe trast of slightly spooky exterihting and warm, inviting interihting.

  They’d had plenty of time to build up lots of energy since Kazue’s mother had e through, so teically Mordecai could have built up his side at the same time. But he felt it was best to wait until she finished in case there were any surprises. The upside-down houses on the ceiling had not been in their inal ideas for example, though in this case, they didn’t cost a signifit amount more. They did, however, give him ao add ter.

  For now he focused on his inal pn. At the entrao the fifth floor, visitors would find themselves entering a wide campsite. There was no equipment, but the space was obviously cleared with a small, 2-foot tall ‘fence’ of piled stones and a fire pit in the ter. There was also a pque that read:

  This area is ral territory for the tw fas beyond, but animals and monsters do not know such distins.

  Proceed at your own time and in your own way, there is no oh or ohod to success.

  bat challenges were fun and straightforward, but even the library was only a warm-up. Beyond the cleared campsite stretched a dimly lit mushroom and fungus forest that gave away nothing of what y in wait for brave adveo face. Or at least would, when he was done.

  Mordecai started with the terrain. The campsite was going to be slightly disadvantageous in that it was at the bottom of a shallow depression. All ways out were uphill, making it impossible to see most of the cavern from here even without the addition of a forest. From there he varied the terrain, creating twisting valleys, solo and clumped hills, the occasional small ravine, and very few areas of simple, ft nd. If oried hard enough, one could even find thin trails running along the walls of the cavern, but those were carefully pced and ao be difficult to spot from below. Once doh the yout, he created a few springs to bee the heads of several streams that eventually bined into a river that flowed into the boss chamber at the end of the cavern.

  Back toward the entrance, he also introduced a small, natural ‘alcove’ with three waterfalls ing down along the inner curve of the wall into a small pool, whi turn started its own stream. These three waterfalls were ected back to the warren’s water work, making them part of the ecology of the dungeon. It was also time to add a yer of plexity: rather than just having exclusive pathways for different water uses, he started using nature’s filters of rock, soil, and sand to keep most of the impurities flowing into the sewers, and the water seepage work its way into various underground ponds, whi turn became the sources for further streams. He made sure the paths alternated going into airless pockets and into caverns that were half-air and had light sources embedded in the ceiling to let photosynthesis take pce. All natural purification. This was the source of the water for these three waterfalls and introduced the preexisting biome into this floor.

  Now he looked at his ealog of avaible mosses, lis, and fungi to select the best ground cover options, then he carpeted the entire floor in a mixture of this ‘grass’. irely unaltered, Mordecai did fortify them to make them more resistant to being walked on and generally tougher, but for the most part he left them alone in their design. He was also doing a wild-seeding mix, to let them all pete and find their preferred enviros. And there were plenty avaible, every single visitor had brought in various spores and tiny seeds that most humanoids never realized were ging to them and shedding from their skin at all times.

  He’d also been very siderate of Kazue’s ins. While she knew how to zoom in on material structures, he’d carefully avoided showing her how that teique could be used to examine all the tiny critters that lived on people all the time. Mordecai had found out a long time ago that most people did not want to know about them. It did however provide a source for the yer of this floor’s ecology, filling all the undergrowth with tiny creatures invisible to most people. Once Mordecai was satisfied that everything had reached a self-sustaining state, it was time for the ‘trees’ of this forest.

  Zagaroth