The group that arrived with Akahana alsht with them the final results of the trade Mordecai had arranged earlier: three ented staves of spiraled metal and wood, inally crafted by Mordecai, and oer ented to supply an unlimited amount of water, up to a geyser level of pressure.

  One of the staves was a bo staff etched with ruo give its impacts crushing ford another set enabling it to fully i with incorporeal creatures. It had also been ented to press down into a disk that Moriko would be able to quickly snap out to its full length, a trick useful for a variety of reasons. Moriko might prefer to use her fists but she was well trained in ons too, and sometimes there were things you really did not want to touch with your hands.

  Kazue’s staff was sturdy enough to be used as a quarterstaff if needed, but its primary purpose was as a reservoir of spellforms and mana. While Kazue had developed fairly potent casting ability under Mordecai’s tutege, psychics were only capable of holding a retively few spell forms in their minds at a time, and relearning them was a time-ing effort. The staff would enable her to have a sele of rarely-used spells attached to it, and it was capable of holding a charge each day as well as letting Kazue el her mana directly into it. The sele of currently imbued spellforms went well above what Kazue or Mordecai was capable of casting right now, but given the unique properties of the staff, it seemed better to future-proof instead to get a aff ter.

  Mordecai’s staff was the most expensive of the trio but with good reason: He was the only one capable of using all of its properties. In addition to having all the abilities of the other two staves, he’d made sure to modify its form with some modurity. It was lohan a normal bo staff and had notches in ead that could be used t it into a bow or as attat points of some spearheads which he inteo make by hand using the raw materials the dungeon had received. Mordecai was also going to make an attachable hand grip with a rest for the arrows. The final piece of the increased cost was that it had two sets of runes: O identical to Moriko’s bo staff, and oo take advantage of a spearhead or arrow to increase bleed-out. They weren’t particurly nice effects, but if he was trying to use them, he was intending to kill someone.

  Only o could be fully activated at a time, a given item could only hold so much magical charge, but just having both sets was excessively costly. bined with the potency of the entments, some of which were well beyond what Mordecai could currently craft even giveools, materials, and time, these were very valuable ons. And they were io the Azeria for them even with the value of the staves he’d created. Fortunately, that debt was rather easy to pay dowime as Mordecai sent more mithral and other requested materials back with each group that came from Azeria on top of whatever they won as delvers.

  Hypothetically Moriko could take advantage of the modurity of his staff, but she hadn’t trained in archery beyond the basior did she know spear forms, so she’d be treating it like a staff with sharp points which is not very effective use. And quite frankly she wasn’t strong enough to properly string the metal and wood shaft nor tall enough to fire it unless aiming at a fairly steep angle up; for all of the flexibility of the spiraled wood aal design, it took a lot of forake it bend enough t and even more force t it back for the retively short draw given the length of the shaft. It was a on design that only really worked because of the height and strength of his avatar.

  It was going to take a few more days for the caravan to arrive, so in the meantime, Akahana taught some druid craft and herbalism to the bunkin, with Kazue’s avatar in tow. This also meant she rodug plenty of mana during her demonstrations and the dungeon cores were quick to take advantage of it and their ret visitors to begin work on the sixth floor, and Mordecai’s avatar began w on analyzing the deter’s entments and designing the final product of the experiments he’d been running involving water pressure.

  Sihey were already w on the same cept and had a path forward pleted for both routes they started off piecemeal. Mordecai’s first step was to help some of his river drakes grow stronger and migrate down to the rger river on the lower floor while Kazue started w out the details of her skill challenges.

  It was mostly a series of skill challenges. Every part of the waterway teemed with edible aquatic life, making fishing and aquatic trapping appealing, as well as harvesting of various aquatits. But doing so in some areas would be harder than others.

  There was a length of the river that held small sandbars and hidden cross currents, f explorers to use long poles ic to navigate around them lest they be repeatedly grounded, potentially damaging their boats.

  In another se, the tunnel widened and the river spread out until it was too shallow for any sort of boat or raft, requiring that a party either figure out how to carry their vehicle to the other side or to make a new craft from the pnts growing along the edge when the cavern began to narrow again.

  At the halfoint there was a ke with an occupied isnd and a barrier preventing transit past it. The bunkin occupying the isnd charged a mildly eous sum to retract the barrier (which was variable based on what Mordecai and Kazue judged the group should be able to just barely pay, whether in oods). Alternatively, if the group could beat three of their champions in various athletic or skill-based challehe barrier would be withdrawn for free. Of course, this was the real intended choice, but they were willing to let people buy the occasional skip here as both options beed the dungeon in different ways.

  The most dangerous part of her river was going to be a short white water se that ended in a small waterfall, with plenty of warnings ahead of time. She also made sure that the waterfall was an , leaving nothing but void behind it. A couple of river drakes and bunkin with healing skills were on standby here, but the white water se was navigable with suffit skill, and the best option at the waterfall was simply to bail out of the craft or use magic, depending on one’s capabilities.

  The ke beyond the waterfall was officially the end of the level and held campsites to let groups gather and recuperate. Once a campsite was chosen Kazue would also create a treasure chest there with performaings and rewards, with buying one’s ast the barrier ting as her a bonus nor penalty to rewards given.

  The ke was also a ‘hidden’ challenge, taining rare fish and aquatits. At least, that was the idea, but holy, none of their samples had tained anything particurly precious in this regard yet. And while the water flow would push people away from the waterfall, if one made their way to the inner edge of the ke and hugged the wall ohin ledge of rock there, they could get behind the waterfall and into a cave. Kazue hadn’t poputed it yet, she wao see what Morikht with her, but there would be some hings growing there and she was thinking maybe some outcroppings of easily mined raw gems. Nothing too fancy, but something that could make a person a small profit.

  The vilge at the halfoint was unoccupied too. While the dire rabbits had a reproductive rate only a little bit slower than normal rabbits at a gestation of about 39 days instead of 31 (though with mana expenditure they could cut that down to about 20 days, or even less at ever steeper costs), the ganthros had a lestation period and a smaller litter. By default, the bunkin had a gestation of about 4 months, which the dungeon could also reduce but at a much higher mana cost than with the dire rabbits, and usually had no more than three kids pared to the full dozen a dire rabbit could have. They would also reach full maturity at a paly a little faster than an orc, being a young adult at the age of 10 (pared to an orc’s 12), whereas an unaccelerated dire rabbit reached adulthood at about 2 years of age.

  The most mana-effit path was to just let the bunkin have their children normally and not interfere with their growth, while the fastest path was to accelerate dire rabbit pregnand development, and then evolve them into ganthros. They had been using the faster method until now, but now that the dire rabbits had fully formed minds it didn’t seem right to speed their way through their childhood and adolesce. After some discussion Kazue and Mordecai settled on a promise: They would speed up pregnancies of both bunkin and dire rabbits but leave growth rates alohis also meant that their bunkin would have to shuffle about and py more roles for a while but the geion will have the advantage of having grown up in a more normal manner.

  There was another option however. They had tapped less heavily into their rabbat popution, having only a few locations where the bat-winged version of the dire rabbits had beehe bunkin provided a great tempte, and after some careful evolution the ganthro genus had two species: the bunkin and the rabkin, with the only visible difference being that the rabkin had bat wings. For now they were mingling with their brethren and learning, but they would be able to fulfill many of the same roles before long.

  Kazue suggested they sider doing the same with the dracobits, but Mordecai dissuaded her by pointing out that if individuals grew strong enough they would be able to develop the magics to transform into humanoid forms much like many adult dragons could.

  Speaking of the dracobits, once Mordecai had the river drakes settled iarted creating caves and ing growths for both them and the feathered serpents to start expanding into. He also had some ideas for a new creature or three, but he wao see what the caravan brought as well as let the dire rabbit popution begin replenishing.

  By the time they’d finished making all their ges, the caravan wasn’t all that far away, Moriko could dash from their most ret campsite ihan an hour, but she felt it would be rather rude to leave her father-in-w like that, so she would be patient ahem in the mid to te m; the caravan was going to break camp at dawn.

  Mordecai appreciated how easy it was to unicate with his wives, it brought a sense of fort to always be able to che with Moriko like this. Sure, there were magic items that could be used for much the same effect, but they were far less reliable and much more btant.

  Zagaroth