Now that raid bosses were sorted, Mordecai turo elevating level bosses. The first two were easy.

  With the ges that he and Kazue had pnned, delvers were going to rap finders and trackers, amongst other skill sets. They already had a mistress of arms and of magid it didn't take long to find a buzzkin ied in the new position: Mistress of skills and lore. Jiah would also be evaluating other skills to help send people in the right dire, as they effectively had three indepe growth vectors now. This would apply to non-bat-oriented delvers too. An experienced herbalist shouldn't bother with the hunting grounds, while someone who was barely more than ahusiastic gardener with a good reference book shouldn't be looking for exotic mushrooms in the deep fungal forest. And if it came to fighting, her skill set included stealth and poison.

  Stealth was also part of the skill set for their new hunting grounds boss. Menhit was happy to take up the mantle of a boss at st. Mordecai enhanced her iealth skills with a bit of shadow blending and boosted her already ear-pierg scream to the point it could cause serious damage, though using that required her to recharge in much the same way as Belle and Freya needed for their fsh attacks.

  Her job was to mess with hunters who mao take out either or both of the bats. The price of a successful hunt was the risk of being the hunted. With her enharength and speed, she had her choice of siarget stealth attacks much like those of any rge cat, or using her scream to disorient and deafen a group of foes before attag. But barring invaders, she didn't have to be involved most of the time and had a well-hidden ir.

  The first hard decision came as he sidered their inal zone. On the one hand, he o maintaihird route properly, not rely on wild anisms, so he o have bosses for it. Oher hand, he suspected he was going to use it far less often even after he ope up for more routine use rather than only a punishment route. But he was also going to be adding a lot more in the way of dangerous traps, whicreases the threat and challenge. Hmm.

  In the end, he decided to mix and match. So long as he provided an appropriate challehrough every zone, having some floors not be matched with a sewer-oriented boss should be fine. And this would be one of those. There was a different challenge he wao pose, although at first ghis boss would be very simir to Ryohoho, as they would both be dracobits tied to Zushi's energy-draining powers. He got a volunteer almost as fast as he proposed the idea to their inhabitants, a flying dire rabbit named Haruka.

  The first clue to the new boss's nature was going to be her coat, as her fur and scales had a dark but pastel-like iridesce. It was a beautiful, dreamy sheen, darker than but simir to the effect of a thin yer of oil on water. And a slick of oil was exactly what one of her breath ons was going to be. The spray would coat people and surfaces equally well, viscous enough to g while shearing in a way to make everything slide easily. Holding ons and standing upright should bee equally difficult.

  Her other breath on was an effervest cloud of rainbow colors that could intoxicate, befuddle, and induce halluations. Both breath ons were also highly fmmable, and a group faced with all three bosses was going to face quite a challenge.

  In addition, she was faster and mile than Ryohoho and had a toxic bite and cws. Where he rarely closed in so that he could wield magi a distance, she often darted in as an aerial skirmisher. Mordecai thought that the fighting styles would plement fairly well and provide an iing mix of challenges for people ing through this zone.

  For the zone, Mordecai decided to make a sewers boss that would also work well as support for Hildegard and Crios. Specifically, he upgraded one of the bunbee queens; specifically, the one who had her hive in the sewers into a boss and provided her with a path to both arenas she might o fight in, both for her and her upgraded bunbee warriors. For the most part, the bunbees hadn't been particurly threatening outside of swarms, but these were going to be rger and stronger, with more toxiom in their stingers.

  Beeatrix o be more than just an impressive bunbee of course. Mordecai gave her the ability to tweak the vibration of her wings and give herself a stant discordant buzzing sound that was magically enhao not only affect the minds and ears of those close to her but physically assault their bodies as well. And her own swarm was of course immuo this effect, though not not any other inhabitants, including Hildegard or Crios.

  Additionally, he unlocked a set of psychic abilities for her, letting her use telekiic abilities and wield aspects of the enviro around her as ons. The way that Kazue had shuffled around the zones' densities left this formerly 'floor two' zoh the may and power capacity he would normally associate with a fifth floor, and that gave him a lot more room to be flexible even as bosses such as Crios and Hildegard had their existing powers boosted.

  There rice to pay already for this sort of upgrade. Against a proper invasion, one or more zones could be bypassed readily, depending on the route an iook. But that would also be leaving forces at your back, and against an invasion, a dungeon didn't have to hold back or py nice.

  Mordecai also wasn't certain how stable the arra was. They were going to do their best to keep everything evenly distributed, but the zones were going to have some serious power jumps as zones got interleaved this way. May should increase one more time for this zone before the power distribution started ing from deeper zones, if they did everything correctly. But that was enough musing.

  He pyed with plimentary and trasting ideas for a while before striking ohat could work in the sewers and provide a bah Umbrowl ay. There were plenty of little crystal slimes slowly growing from the remains of the sewer creatures sin during the invasion and they o incorporate all the creatures that they could from here anyway.

  The one he picked had a mutation that caused it to lean more heavily toward living crystal than ooze, which might normally have bee a liability. Mordecai focused on its affinity for crystal and enha while borrowing some cepts from their living crystal flowers. The version from crystal ooze to crystal elemental wasn't difficult for a creature that was used to not having a defined shape.

  The result wasn't as amorphous, but Mordecai did give it some shape-ging abilities. It could disguise itself as a 'normal' crystal flower, roll about as a crystal sphere that was incredibly hard to damage, or fly in the form of a small crystal dragon. Like Cimbu, this new boss would t as dragon-kin and aal creature, rather than a true dragon like the wetnds bosses or a pure elemental like Enki. Such distins rarely mattered outside of schorly matters, but upon occasion there were magical effects where such differences could greatly alter the oute.

  Into this tiny crystal being Mordecai infused powers of light and illusion and found the results to be rather pleasing. The new boss's direct attacks were mostly limited to searingly intense beams of light, but when it ged shape it could choose to do so by 'exploding' into crystal shards that fell back together into the new form. The dragon form also had sharp cws ah and could spit a small e of crystal shards, making it the stro form for offense.

  In addition, all forms were equally capable of wielding illusion magic. It was most skilled at visual illusions but it could also do audible illusions, though those came with the slight fw of having a faint chiming sound to them if one listened closely enough. The elemental decided it liked the name Annur, but did not feel any ination to assume a gender identity. Mordecai sent Annur off to visit with Umbrowl first, with dires to fiy ter to get to know her as well.

  A third boss for the library zone seemed problematic at first, at least, if he wao make it fit in both the library and the sewers. Then Mordecai realized he already had the solution and even had a sample still hanging around with its mistress. And crystal was a great matrix for holding information.

  The crystal spellslime that Mordecai fed out of a normal crystal slime was very deliberately made non-acidid he even made sure that it could slightly absorb acids. It also had a very high surface tension, leaving its surfapletely dry. This bination would make the spellslime perfectly patible with handling books and scrolls.

  While it could gee an appeo bludgeon a foe with, it hit with the force of a strong but not particurly skilled humanoid. The new boss's offensive skill set was simply going to be magid Mordecai carefully cultivated the potential to cast any type of magic, limited only by the strength of the spells it could cast, along with the ability to absorb a portion of any spell it was attacked with. That did e with a cost; which spells the spellslime was going to be able to cast refreshed randomly when the dungeo. That also meant that it was going to be harder for delvers to prepare for a fight with Aiden, as the spellslime had chosen to call himself, along with pig a male gender. Aiden was also deliberately made as a green crystal slime, in homage to Bip who had been the inspiration for his creation. As a final touch, he assigned a portion of their loot capacity to geing a spell tome carrying a copy of each of Aiden's current spells, to be ged or remade each time Aiden was renewed.

  The mushroom forest was his stop. Kstoria could already fit iher enviro, and Saraag could sprout mushroom trees in both locations simultaneously now that he was a raid boss. This left Mordecai feeling very free in developing a new boss. Inspiration did not e so easily, but eventually, it came in the form of spying a pixie talking animatedly with one of the fungal-focused bunkin druids.

  A pixie 'shroom druid, that could be a fun way to mix things up. Mordecai had no sooner formed the thought and began posing his ihan the pixie iion spun in pce excitedly at the idea. "Do you mean it? I talk with all the ushrooms and pnts and stuff too?"

  His attention had clearly leaked across to her, no doubt to how keen she was on the subject. "Yes," he sent to her with amusement, "now give me a moment to focus please." She was already a pixie and had a tendency to leave sparkly trails of dust, so there was no reason that her dust couldn't also act like mushroom spores. He already had a solid tempte for her normal druidic magid he topped it off by giving her a beech mushroom staff with a sele of of extra spells to make sure she had a wide range avaible during her fights. It would also double as extra loot if she was defeated, and if she had the ce to flee she was to 'actally' drop the staff as she fled.

  Having their bosses cede defeat when their loss was immi was one of the ways they'd been able to host as many parties each day as they had been. While the dungeon didn't begrudge an instinctive swipe at a fleeing boss, active pursuit after victory was clear was something they did mind and promptly punished. It fell uheir general rule about respectfulness.

  The tiny pixie immediately decred that her new name orewhisp, then cimed a pori boar as her panion and mount, and named him Glimmermold. Watg them head off to py made Mordecai happy with this choid the chaos it would inflict upon delvers. In many ways, she was 'just' an upgrade of a normal druid, but between her natural pixie mischief and her pixie dust's ability to now cause everything from halluations to having mushrooms sprout all over the victim's body, she was going to quite the formidable and unventional foe.

  Cheg in on Kstoria before he moved on to the river level, Mordecai discovered that the increased may was helping speed up her learning curve for fine manipution of her body. She could now form a roughly bipedal type body from her torso and up and gave herself the outline of floor-length robes to hide her ck of legs, and she'd created a diadem of crystals on top of her head, to denote herself as a princess (per Kazue's decration). She could talk as well, and while her speech was quite intelligible, it did e with an odd mix of burbling sounds and chiming notes. He enced her to share notes with Aiden who had a simir i in a bipedal form. Mordecai suspected that Aiden was going to have an easier time f the shape he wanted, given his higher and more stable surface tension, but that ck of fast flexibility would also hinder how fast he would learn to find a way to physically speak. Though his wide range of magic would often be of use there.

  For the river zohere were two siderations Mordecai had been sidering for a while. In the end, he chose not to upgrade a bunyip as that would make three aquatic bosses and feel like 'more of the same'. Instead, he chose to upgrade one of the feathered serpents. While an open sky flier like an ali would have felt out of pce here, a jungle flier would fit in just fine.

  The male who took Mordecai up on the idea was ohil. He became somewhat rger than his fellows, but more importantly, his scales took on the ability to shift their colors automatically, granting him camoufge in almost any enviro. He was able to reuse both his magical darkness and dark 'smoke' abilities repeatedly after a short recharge period and could both spit poison that could blind and amplify his echolocation into brief bursts of damaging sound. As a final touch, Mordecai added a muffling aura that only worked on sound of a lower frequency than the echolocation and the ability to briefly go invisible.

  Jasi and Kulle, the naga and kelpie bosses of the river zone, provided plenty of magical power and could be very dangerous in close bat, but her were particurly stealthy. Mordecai waohil to be a sneaky and dirty fighter, at home both in melee and at she. This would also make him devastatingly effective in the sewers.

  The new boss for the wetnds was an obvious choice, though Mordecai would rather go fight in the sewers himself rather than try to get her to do it. He decided to not directly ask her either, and simply floated a line of mahered to the boss node for the wetnds in her general dire.

  Carmil started pining about the burdens and added responsibilities of being a floor boss before she had even finished seg the e to her soul. He listened with some amusement to her rantings as the additional potential of a boss was added to her. She had already been as strong as they could make a non-boss for the floor and had sort of the responsibilities of a boss without the powers of ohis rectified that imbance.

  And with that, Mordecai was doh filling out the new nodes on the existing floors. It was time to shift his attention back to the topside.

  Zagaroth