A few days after Kazue and Mordecai fihe fifth floor, they had a set of visitors from Riverbridge whicluded a couple of surprises. One of those surprises was the inclusion rim and Nainvil with the set of guards ing in for training. The dwarf and half-orc had mao iate a supervised parole where they worked for the city guards, and part of that duty was going to include training at the dungeon.

  The other surprise was a visit from their sister-in-w, Hainako. Moriko’s little sister had bee with a few sets of medies for Kazue to try a ba efficacy. Ochel and note were delivered she hung out with them in the war room so she could watch the training group move through the dungeon.

  The group had two recruits with only a basic level of training, which bogged doweam a bit. Mordecai sent out instrus to keep the challenge down to a minimum, but even so, they only barely mao scrape through the fourth floor and it was clear that they weren’t getting through the fifth floor. Mordecai was gd that they’d shown the good seo call it off there, he’d have sidered intervening if they’d tried t the newbies through the fifth floor, the ces of an actal death were too high.

  One side be of this particur group ing through was that Mordecai finally got to see what an expert gunner looked like. Brongrim’s fighting style was a skirmishing type that mixed pistol and short sword, and it allowed him to cover his reloading with attacks from his bde. It only worked because he also had his waxed-paper bullets readied in specialized bandoleers. You had to have everythi up for it, it wasn’t the sort of thing you could do on the fly and Mordecai could see where you had to dedicatedly practice certain movement binations t gun and bandoleer into the right alig without interfering with the rest of your movements. Still, the biggest fw he could see in guns was the o reload each shot that way, not that crossbows were aer really. Bows and slings both had much more fluid as to ready the piemunition, but they also took more time to master, aher could be used with only one hand.

  Nainvil’s teique was a more straightforward style that focused on a two-handed grip for power, but with a light enough sword that he could free a hand for other uses and still be able to swing. That wasn’t a new variant for Mordecai, but all the styles and teiques of their visitors were being studied by the ganthros. Even if Mordecai knew most of them, there was no good way for him to try and teach every possible style, so he kept to the basid let them practid train to find their preferehough some of the works Moriko was bringing bacluded older copies of teique scrolls, maybe he should ence Betty to study those and start her own school fanthros.

  They were the muype, with no learning entments or anything, but for the most part he preferred those anyway. Learning what you are actually doing was usually better than just having a bo or teique impnted in your head.

  But that was for much ter as the wagons were going much slower than Moriko on her own. For now, he made arras for everyoo have a pce to sleep for the night, including a private room frim and Nainvil. No special prizes however, sihe group didn’t clear the dungeoing bonuses for clearing everything was going to get harder as they grew, and Mordecai was fih that. Teically it wasn’t required, he just liked doing it, but it also wasn’t something he wao be dealing with stantly.

  Now he could turn his attention to something else that Hainako had brought with her. It was a ission and payment for a set of equipment, with some iing measurements for the armor and cloak. Traxalim was who had sent the ission with her, but acc to the note he was reying the ission from someone else. The work wasn’t particurly hard, but some of the materials were unusual, and the payment included samples of them: Wyvern hide for the armor, W fur for the cloak.

  The request also wanted a pair of daggers long enough he’d almost call them short swords, except that the specifications for the armor were for someoher tall and nky. The instaurn entments for the daggers were a fairly on design so it was no trouble adding those to each dagger as well.

  On top of that was a full gear set plete with an Expanded backpack. It had just about everything one could want for expl the world and surviving in a range of enviros. It was like baby’s-first-adventuring-kit, except most folk couldn’t afford this level of gear when they first stepped into the world of explorers and meraries.

  It wasn’t enough to keep someone inpetent alive, but it would make the job easier for someo it. And all the major pos had a rather iing insignia attached or inscribed in some way: A wolf with three horns. He had no idea what that meant.

  But it didn’t matter, the dungeon had gotten some new materials to add to their repertoire, some more raw materials for the ganthros to work with, and a few new small animals that had been easy to carry in a cage this far. It was a fair trade. By the time the group was awake the m the dungeon’s part of that trade was plete. And when they had left, it was time to begin on the sixth floor. “Are you ready, love?” he asked Kazue.

  This was a bigger se to do all at ohan she’d done before, but after talking it over with her husband Kazue rather liked the idea. They’d goraight down so far, each floor looping bader the floor above it, but now that they were down this deep there was no reason to not also expand horizontally. The end of the fifth floor roximately uhe end of the first floor, this left them ‘pointing’ bader the mountain. So this time whehered energy to push their home plex down, she also pushed ‘out’.

  There were a couple of design ges as well. Looping bad forth had made it simplest t the two paths back to each other at the end of each floor, and they’d used the stairwells down to keep them isoted. But there was no simple stairway between the fifth and the sixth this time. While the st door for each side could still either lead forward or reroute back up to the start of the sewer path, the foraths merged into a meandering and slowly widening tunnel.

  The tunnel opened up onto a wide, well-lit cavern that was almost meadow-like, excepting only that the ground cover was of a simir makeup to fungal floor five. At the far end of the meadow was a basin that would bee a vast ke once filled, and at the shores of this ke-to-be was a rge vilge once more occupied by ganthros. Only this time it was set to be a more well-rounded vilge, with a clear mix of potential batants and nonbatants. A well-trod path led toward this vilge, plete with a sign saying “Lapin Lake Vilge”.

  At the other end of the basin that was slowly filling with water the ke lit by a rge peninsu that e the far wall. This sighe divergence of the paths again, with two underground rivers splitting off from either side of the peninsu. This eup meant that at this stage people could decide to switch paths, though they would be obligated by the rules of the new path that they chose.

  This did run some risk that someone might try and trick their way this far by taking the non-bat route to serve their resources before switg, but they would still o be well-armed to tackle further bat so it seemed uhat she or Mordecai would be uo spot them and call them out on it. And they did io offer it up as an option for those who had cleared the fifth floor of the bat route previously and that were in good favor with the dungeon.

  The vilge itself was the first challenge in progressing, as the ganthros were going to be building docks and boats, and the boats could be either sold or rented with a guide who would help pilot them. For the absolute cheapskates, they could even do a short rental to get them to the peninsu, where there were plenty of both normal and mushroom trees to potentially harvest and make their own rafts or boats from.

  This was also an optional challenge and reward as some of the vegetation and fungi here were rare or valuable, if you knew how to identify and harvest it.

  As for the rest, well, for the moment they had a pair of fairly simple rivers that led to another ke, though this one just had a sandy shore to pull up onto. Filling the floor out was a future endeavor, but the yout was ready. And now their home was even further uhe mountain itself.

  Kazue had been careful with this by using a trick Mordecai showed her, probing ahead with their mana as she sought to cim more territory. Running into worked stone e caverns would have felt different a her pull back before she fully cimed that area. Even if they had a perfect map of the dwarven kingdom, and right now they had no map at all, there was always a ce that something else lived down here.

  Well, actually, there had beey of that. But those were all simpler underground creatures, and she’d been able to ihem into her dungeon’s ecosystem or as inhabitants. Kazue surveyed her work and was quite pleased with herself. Mordecai approved as well, but she realized then that he’d been partially distracted while she worked on their level. Before she could ask about what had taken up his attention, his mental voice became excited.

  “Kazue! Take a look at this. Focus on the aura of any of your dire rabbits on the first floor. Look at the whole thing.” He seemed to be eagerly anticipating something, so she followed his instrus with curious fusion.

  What he wanted her to see quickly became obvious. Some of their mana was flowing into all of their inhabitants, enough to leave her a little hollow feeling given how much they’d just spent, but it was having an iing effect, ohat was most dramati the simplest creatures. She could see energy sparkling along the pathways of their brains, the individual pos pag into more effit forms, then multiplying and creating more plex pathways.

  Their auras fluctuated in respoo these ges, their very spirits being altered by this physical ge until suddenly colpsing into a denser, stronger form of spiritual energy. Every single one of her wonderful creatures now had a spark of true sentien them, plete with the rise of a soul! A quick check verified it even applied to the clockwork creatures in the library and the spiders on the fifth floor, though not the simpler, reactive vegetative fungi.

  This was great! They’d always been able to unicate ideas and cepts to all their inhabitants, but this would allow deeper, nguage-based unication! Though closer examination revealed that the mental capacity upgrade only barely breached that level, it would in many ways be like talking to a not particurly bright child. Oher hand, the upgrade seemed to affect all but the smartest of her inhabitants to some extent. Which meant Horad a small pertage of the ganthros.

  Hmm. And Mordecai seemed pleased but not particurly surprised. Kazue’s thoughts focused on him with suspi only to be met with amusement, so her avatar stirred from where they were cuddled on their bed and bit into his shoulder.

  Zagaroth