Aby had been rather stunned, watching the third five-person group moving through the dungeon. They did something new to the gem, teleportation. It was poring over the information it got, it had seen some magic before, innate magic in some of its more complex creatures, like the rifle shrimps ability to direct force forward, or the snowflake snapper and its scales, but these invasions had shown it directed spells, something it hadn’t known possible.

As it had been running over what it had seen, and the item the group used, it noticed the last remaining group beckoned out, leaving it alone with its creatures once again, and moved on to combing through what it had gotten.

You can now spawn “Wisp”

You can now spawn “Undine”

Firstly, it had been confused when it saw light that it couldn’t directly absorb, though it realized that, despite not appearing alive, they were living creatures called elementals, representing life given to a certain element. Wisps and Undines were of fire and water, respectively, and while Aby hadn’t known what to do with the spirits at that moment, it would be testing them in the future. It released a handful of each into its halls, and they each flickered about, showing some form of incomprehensible instinct as they congregated together, or spread apart, or even stayed still. They dispersed themselves along the floors shortly after, many of the wisps taking to the coastal floors, with one curious white specimen found its way to the tenth. The Undines were much more spread out, flowing throughout the waters of all floors, appearing like a glowing trickle of water that would be hard to even spot with the radiance found on most floors. It let those do what they may, they’d likely not have a use at their current stage, so it would allow them to potentially fulfill special conditions and grow further.

Next on its mental checklist was items, of which it had gained a rather grand amount, mostly from that group of mer-people. Weapons, leather, relics, and trinkets, something that it knew could be useful to the kobolds if nothing else. Allowing them to get a few harpoons amongst the tribe could only be helpful, after all. That relic that was expended in the group teleport was interesting, but largely unusable. It was called a “sacrificial focus” and forcibly ripped mana away from the user to complete a pre-made spell, needing to have their own reserves of mana slowly and arduously rebuilt. Aby couldn’t think of anything that this could conceivably help it with, but it was nice to have.

Along with the gathered items, a single creature had gotten an evolution during that entire invasion, something Aby felt disappointing, but reasonable.

Congratulations! Your creature “Crystal Seahorse” has fulfilled a hidden condition(s), allowing it to undergo a special evolution!

Conditions fulfilled:

Creator titles: Randomizer, Invasive, Adaptive, Ambitious

Special Evolution Available:

Bloody Crystal Seahorse

While a crystal seahorse relies on camouflage and illusions to remain hidden in its environment, this creature uses its own in order to mesmerize and bewitch creatures far larger than itself, then latch on to them and leech their blood and mana

A parasitic evolution to the crystal seahorses reintroduced to the seventh floor was interesting, especially since, in large numbers, these creatures could drain somebody dry. The visual changes displayed were very minor, and its formerly translucent, crystalline body became a slight red, as though a drop of blood in the water simply took the shape of a seahorse. It was slightly larger, and could move slightly faster, but after it started breeding, it was very likely the seventh floor could have a consistent source of danger present, rather than relying on Carmine, or on wandering creatures, and those seahorses could settle onto other floors just as well.

However, the new creatures and interesting items weren’t what it considered the most important. Rather, it had a lot of new information at its disposal, both from how it was able to interact with these sapients and what it had taken from the mermaids, with things on its floors that it felt it needed to alter in some form or another due to this.

The first thing it thought of was when the bipedal group descended to the fourth floor, and didn’t press forward. They saw the wyrm and weren’t driven blindly forward towards the higher mana concentration, as the animals before had been. That made it think, obviously the wyrm was big and scary, and because of this those invaders felt unsafe. Should she be hiding in wait, it might lend better to luring them into striking distance, something that the core found to be correct after witnessing the second group getting successfully ambushed. The third group was able to avoid this by doing something similar to the octopus, and making it unable to see as they passed her by

The brittle star was also countered well by that group, it wasn’t able to damage any of the more heavily armored beyond simply making them sore, and the weaker members were very well protected, something it couldn’t get around on its own, and Aby was thinking about what could be done differently.

Carmine had performed very well, however. Its tendency to remain on the sixth floor had worked very well after the battered second group had found themselves there, swiftly succumbing to her Song because of their exhaustion. The third group too had felt its effects, though they were able to hold firm long enough to leave her behind, and Aby decided for her not to pursue due to the risk she may face.

Its wyvern had shown great results after all this, having performed a successful hit-and-run and breaking their ranks, much as he had done with the dolphins. However, the group had surprised him, using that strange item and confusing spell to quickly escape before either Aby or the wyvern knew they were doing something.

Aby was certain that the wyvern had managed to fatally injure at least one of them, but even if he had, they had left before anybody had died, making that wound useless. The core contemplated going after the five bipeds on its first floor, possibly sending the kobolds up there, but seeing one of the escapees come in and hurry them out made that thought useless.

It also learned a lot based on the thoughts and memories of those five mermaids and mermen, some of it trivial information like what they had eaten that morning, or what they planned on bringing home to their daughter for her birthday, but there was a great deal that could be put to use. In fact, Aby finally had a more concrete way of measuring its creatures than simply estimating their prowess, a convenient lettering system. Many of its creatures were below B rank, though some were definitely much higher, and this pleased the gem.

There was also information about wielding the weapons they had brought, harpoons, and even some spells that the mages had known. The gem itself was unable to use them, using extensive tests to be sure, but there may be some way to put them to use in the future, for example, the shaman and dragonkin could both benefit from the ice spells that were put on display. The core had issues directly imparting that knowledge, though, and would have to find another way to do so. However, it wasn’t top priority right now, as neither had gotten the chance to even demonstrate a need for it.

Instead, Aby would work towards addressing the biggest issues it had seen during the invasion, making some large changes first before it worked on making more precise and smaller edits to the structure of its floors.

Firstly, it decided to make the first few floors home to more than just transient fish that roam the halls. Spawning a few herds of sea-boars to patrol the shallower waters of the first three floors was a decent start, it felt. The creatures were C- and higher in groups, more dangerous as their numbers increased. They also meant that there was more than simply the barracudas to accost any invaders. A few groupers, including a single goliath grouper, were also made to take up residence here. One of the sea-boar herds had, oddly enough, taken to following the grouper, seemingly deferring to it as their leader, resulting in a brown behemoth three meters long being followed around by nearly a dozen brown boars no longer than one and a half meters.

It also sent a command to the sea-snakes, one telling them that they were to attack in the future, regardless of size differences they were to attack, which was something that wild sea snakes would avoid. They may have potent venom at their disposal, but they tended not to use it on creatures that weren’t prey unless pushed into dire circumstances. Having an entire floor of highly dangerous snakes that acted as little more than decorations was not what the core wanted.

Of course, the overall threat of those first three floors was largely unchanged by simply adding a few new denizens, or by making the fourth floor more toxic overall, but it was more pressure, and could still prove fatal to anyone caught off guard. It had noticed that all three groups of invaders were mostly untouched throughout the floors, something that most non-sapient invaders couldn’t claim.

The fifth floor required some changes to its structure, making the halls shorter, and the turns tighter, being able to let the brittle star better maneuver throughout, and remove the need to chase through the straightaways in order to reach victims. Now, most every hall could be fully spanned by the stars six meter width.

The sixth and seventh floor got an even greater change, however. Aby directly connected the two, making the two mazes into a single, two leveled one. Throughout the entire floor, certain passages would be needed to ascend or descend between the two levels, small portions totally submerged or nearly totally dry. This three dimensional maze was still considered two floors, it was now impossible to go through one without the other, effectively doubling the size and length of the maze, and allowing much more room for Carmine.

Aby changed nothing on the eighth floor, besides treating the wyvern to the closest to a stern lecture it had given any creature since its birth, effectively telling the young wyvern not to play with his food in the future, before leaving the reptile to sulk.

Then, the core settled into review once more, the whole process of changing its floors taking little more than half an hour due to the mana it had at its disposal. It felt that there was more that needed to be done, but couldn’t put its metaphorical finger in just what that was.