The next day was filled with realizations. While my time tutoring Lilly had been less and less as she grew in her studies, the tasks that I had previously assigned Walker still needed to be completed. Kine graciously agreed to stay until the new assistants arrived and take on several of Walker’s previous duties, which did help. I also stopped the patrols out into the bog. Those patrols took increasingly longer periods of time as the exploration went further and further out. To date, the patrols found little of value besides an enormous quantity of quartz crystals. Unless I counted the one fourth-tier Revenant that awoke from its burial mound when they walked too close. Still, that left several duties I needed to perform myself. Which is why I found myself in the dungeon with a record-keeping tome realizing that, for some reason, the mushrooms had evolved into ankle-height humanoids. Pale white humanoid mushrooms that were, in fact, doing the gardening for my newest variant of the Asrid Flower. I flipped through Lilly's meticulous tracking of the growth of ‘mushroom-man’ culture, and, with perfect hindsight, decided that I should have been more involved in the study of the dungeon creatures. I had been so devoted to my study of the Pestilence scales I obtained and my schemes for revenge that I had no knowledge of this tribe developing within my very tower. Not that I feared the moving mushrooms would pose a threat even if they grew to a much larger size. They ate the Asrid Flowers for sustenance, and I’d long changed the target of the loyalty-infusion away from the kingdom to myself. Even if the flower’s loyalty magics didn’t work, I doubted they could even get past the magical barriers I had in place. No, what unnerved me about it beyond my ignorance, was not their existence. Nor was it how they developed a society within less than two years. Nor was it the handspan-tall statues of Lilly and Walker they had constructed in the center of their village. Statues that were as realistic a replication of the siblings as what I could do with magic myself. What unnerved me the most was that they had halted all work when I arrived to begin the immediate construction of another statue, one that was a replica of me. I held several reservations about the matter, not the least of which was the correct manner to communicate with a mushroom with limbs. In that moment, I felt a multitude of emotions that each rivaled one another in a turmoil that I could only compare to a squirming pit of lampreys. The fact that it was not my illusion but my real features only increased the turmoil. I felt shame that I hadn’t known about this earlier, even if neither Lilly nor Walker mentioned the matter. Within my own tower, how could I not have known? I was almost angry with myself for overlooking this development. Fear of the heights these little people could reach, compared to my own. A village in two years? Would it be a city in five? A country in ten? It was a line of thinking I wasn’t prepared to go down for fear I would torch them all. And if I missed one single mushroom man, one who vowed revenge, what would that even look like? Curiosity of what this could mean for the future of magic. How was their body made? Could I join them with the flowers somehow and feed them to the Pestilence? Could I teach one to speak and learn magic? What were their lifespans? How did they grow? How intelligent were they? Disbelief was present as well. I’d seen some weird creatures in dungeons before, but nothing of this nature. Were they somehow meant to defend the dungeon core? How? Did they have defensive spores or would they throw pebbles? Finally, the emotion that topped them all, was resolution. I did what came naturally to me. I took all these bewildering emotions and shoved them into a barrel in the corner of my mind. I firmly resolved to look into the matter in a few days when I wasn’t bewildered by the very concept. This resolution is what convinced me to proceed with the task at hand, to gather clippings from the flowers for further testing. I took several flower samples, more than I originally planned, but I was also studiously and meticulously pretending the mushroom creatures were not, in fact, bowing to a replica of myself in homage. Nevermind how they so perfectly captured my incredulous expression on such a small figurine. I also noted that, since I hadn’t been in the dungeon in a year and a half, that the dungeon was preparing a second room. To the right of the entrance, a small cave about four feet tall led to another room about the size of a closet. While I wasn’t certain what the intended purpose of the room was, I didn’t believe that this would be the final size. In an effort to try and forget about mushroom religious behavior, I distracted myself by using my [Earth Manipulation] skill to raise the ceiling of the hallway and flatten the ground smooth. Then I expanded the room beyond to an equal size of the first by compressing the earth around it. I took whatever stones I found and moved them to the floor of the hallway creating a smooth and solid path between the two circular rooms. When I was done, I ignored the mushroom men filing into the new room and gracefully departed to take the samples back up to my laboratory. As I arrived, I came to a decision. I decided I would research these mushroom people after I had finished my two higher priorities. Their physical and social growth wouldn’t matter if we were all devoured by the Pestilence. That decision did not stop me from skimming through Lilly’s book to see what she had already documented. Some curiosities simply must be sated when they occur. I could only hope that my new assistants suffered more from natural curiosity than fear when they get assigned the task to monitor the dungeon below. After reviewing her thorough work, which detailed everything from their limited social structure to what different food types looked like after digestion, I felt a great welling of pride in the girl. It was a pity I had to consider eliminating the species because of the inherent risk they posed, considering how much work she put into the matter. I doubted she would forget about them any time soon. With that disgruntled consideration on my mind, and after a hearty meal of stew made from feast leftovers, I made my way out to the beast pits. The moat around my three-story-tall tower was beautiful this time of year. The walkway and walls were now covered in light blue marble. They were reminiscent of the stone buildings in Sena City, but better looking in every conceivable way. The waters were clear, with arcs of first-tier water elementals that jumped about with the sounds of small bells each time they landed. The lilies were in a constant state of bloom, the orange and lavender petals brighter and more beautiful than the book I chose them from described. Many had small nature elementals, tiny pixies or fairies of some kind, that lived in the center of the flower. These ones were larger, nearly as wide as I was tall, and shone in the night. The pillars dotting the moat, lit with little mice-shaped fire elementals scurrying around on top gave it a warm inviting feel. Even the tier-two mist elementals with the little dots of nature wisps stuck to the edge during the day. The bronze gate on the wall matched the door to my tower. Even the gate was beautiful. After I grew tired of having to order it polished, I tasked Kine and Walker to coat the bars with clear quartz crystal. At the time, I had called it a form of practice, but I think they suspected the truth. Meathead, my only guard that remained at the second-tier, stood watch at that gate. The muscular man had suffered a head injury in a battle that left him addled, an unfortunate event to be sure. Despite that, or maybe because of that, his attitude was that of a happy child, an attitude I appreciated on most days. “Hiya, boss!” Meathead took off his helmet to wave at me. “Good morning,” I answered with a nod. I heard a door beside the gate open and close, and the [Beastmaster] Eni appeared soon after. Six wolves followed in his footsteps, though I could hear many more still in the kennel. He looked at me, then the record-keeping tome in my hand, “To the pits, sir?” “Yes,” I answered as Meathead opened the gates. Eni gave a quick salute, and then turned to walk by my side, “They’re all eatin’ well, sir. No problems. Foods a little low, but I can go hunting if ya want,” Eni offered, more vocal in those few words than he had been towards me the entire past season. I glanced at him, checking to determine if there was something wrong, but he didn’t seem to notice me as his eyes were on the pits. Maybe he only likes to talk about beasts and animals? If I had done this task more often, I would have known that about him. As we arrived, I took in the sight of my experimental grounds. Pits dotted the boglands here for a square mile. My experiments had grown far beyond the original scope, and I would need to make some changes soon if I wanted to keep it within reason. Possibly hire more guards to feed them. Or maybe a [Rancher]. The closest pit held the snake experiment. Pits tall enough that one could only reach the top if three people stood on one another’s shoulders. Pits twice as long and three times the width as they were deep. When we originally caught the beasts, after a beast wave, I needed to wait until their breeding season to begin my experimentation. I had been unaware that this particular type of monsterized snake was the type to lay its eggs and move on. With nowhere to go, they began consuming their own eggs. My original experiment with the beasts was to see what the impact of shedding was on my longevity spell. I wanted to know if the shedding would reduce the number of growths on the skin or not. That experiment turned out to be short-lived, however, when it was proven that it did not. Which was fine, really, as I didn’t want to invest time in developing a method for humans to molt. I had been considering terminating the remainder of the snakes at that point, when Kine made a suggestion. To use the adults as feed and see about adapting the newborn snakes to feed only on lampreys. Lampreys disgusted me, with their slimy bodies and their circular mouths. My guards and assistants held them in no higher esteem after numerous patrols in the bog. A couple of years ago, my fourth-tier water elemental had hunted down an enormous lamprey and brought it to the tower as a trophy. After it confirmed there were no more of that size, I had it bring smaller ones to feed the snakes, a task my elemental found enjoyable. The very idea that I might have to one day gaze on another one of that size again was more than enough to cause me to agree with Kine’s proposed experiment. To see if we could breed a monsterized snake that ate only lampreys? That was a concept I regretted not thinking of myself. I spent some time allowing Eni to count the number of snakes in the four pits to verify that none had perished before moving on. So far, the second generation of snakes fed on only lampreys had no survival issues. Of the first generation, only a third survived long enough to breed. A few more years of this, and I would be prepared to release them into the wild. The next stop was the boar pits. I had started with two pits but had to expand to four. Two pits contained the boars enchanted with the longevity spell to see if any would survive and not succumb to the growths that would turn them into abominations. I surveyed those to see if any were exhibiting signs of the growth, but none were. It had only been two years, and I didn’t expect to see results for at least a decade or more. The third boar pit held a selection of boars being subjected to fire mana. While the originally captured beasts were Poison Boars, and not edible, I wanted to see if an elemental infusion would change that. I'd read an alchemist study that claimed ‘while the Flame Boar was not acceptable for the testing solutions, the beast tasted delicious’. Far be it from me to believe the words of an alchemist, and given that I had the materials on hand, I thought some verification was needed. The fourth pit of boars was my breeding pit. This pit was larger than the other three, and I allowed the boars to freely breed and spawn. I did this because I made an agreement with the Kingdom’s Scout division. They would come by every so often to purchase the animals as animal companions. The offer was also available for any [Ranger] class holders at the local adventurers’ guild. The last part of the testing fields took up most of the land. The experiment with infusing earth mana to induce a Stone Wolf or some other earth variant was a partial success. I was able to find the correct rate and time requirements of mana infusion to trigger the change. The downside was that I could not find anything within their bodies that slowed or stopped over-infusion. If there was, then it was something I wanted to find to potentially use to stop the growths caused by my longevity spell. So, I combined the results of that test with my other one. I had many separate pits with only two wolves, male and female, in each for breeding. Adding another few pits with stone wolf variants to the mix wouldn't harm the experiment. The pups of each pair were numbered and mated with pups from parents in other pits. My goal was to determine if I could breed wolves into a longer life. Already, one mating pair had failed, due to the male wolf succumbing to an internal ailment. Eni had begged me to allow him to keep the pups from that pair that I had planned to terminate and I acquiesced. I also obligated him for their feeding and care, as well as responsibility should they cause harm. He used those pups to start a kennel and train them for support on patrols. This was likely the reason he obtained his [Beastmaster] class, though I wasn’t entirely sure. Still, the task at hand was incredibly mundane, and I felt I wasted the better part of the afternoon marking all the living wolves. It was on our walk back from the experiment pits, that we saw Honest Brom, a seedy traveling merchant that worked as a rumor-monger for Baroness Nix, waiting for us by the gate. A new guard, this one silently brooding and sizing up a smiling Meathead, stood by his side.