Aby reviewed the rest of the eleventh floor after it finished with the kobolds, interested in how the life which had inhabited it was growing and developing. This floor and the twelfth were the only two which was regularly changing in terrain, and it happened without the core’s influence.

There was something about witnessing the changing and shifting landscapes that appealed to the core’s ever growing eye for design. How the creatures built landscapes and homes out of the dunes, or made the sparse corals and seaweeds into patches of vibrant life which stood out from the waters of the sandy floor. It particularly enjoyed the decorator crabs it had gotten from a group a few days prior. Many of the invaders brought various things down to serve as snacks or meals, creatures it hadn’t gotten templates for or even seen before. These crabs, for example, normally aren’t found in its reef, or mana reefs in general, but Aby felt they were a great fit within its halls nonetheless.

They were moderate sized things that covered themselves in the colorful scenery. These creatures also served to teach the core more about how certain things in the dungeon interact, a great opportunity to learn more about how some of its smaller critters might be influenced by the myriad crystals and corals within its halls without being at risk of the violent lesson the drake learned.

They lined their backs with odds and ends of the environment around them, some were encrusted with grains of sand and a few towering spires of crystals while others were covered in waving seaweed and dancing soft corals. One even seemed to permanently inhabit the only hard coral Aby placed on this floor, a few anemones on its back and a piece of shell on the center of its own.

It was certain that normally, this quirk of covering themselves in these objects would serve as an excellent concealment. It wouldn’t be able to tell for certain, though, since many of the options they had for their decorations were killing them in various ways. Only those which used the more mundane of materials were spared from this, though they weren’t even aware that using much of the scenery would result in their demise.

A great deal of their problems came from the elemental crystals they tried to decorate themselves with. They didn’t do much for a while, merely perched precariously as they grew slowly from the ambient mana. From what Aby could tell, if one managed to fuse with the crabs in some form, every time by the crystals sprouting into their shell, they’d invariably die, and usually not by anything simple. Of the few times the core had seen it happen, it had witnessed the crabs ripping themselves apart with newfound strength, explosively molting when their innards built up steam, one even had its body turned into a beautiful gemstone itself, still sporting the glittering white spire of crystal thrice its height which shoved itself into its head.

The core wondered why the crabs had such a different experience than the drake when it came to the gems, but it didn’t force any of the creatures to try and find out yet. What’s more, the crabs on its upper floors had far too much scenery to bother using the smaller crystals, so it couldn’t be sure if it was just size, or if there was more to them.

The core was desperate to know why its creatures had such interactions, but none of its invaders had ever interacted with anything like this. It now knew quite a bit about what the sapients used crystals for, but none of it was related to what Aby knew they could do. Questions like these drove the core mad, but thankfully something appeared to draw its attention away.

Congratulations! Your creature “Common Man-O-War” has fulfilled a hidden condition(s), allowing it to undergo a special evolution!

Conditions Fulfilled:

Creator titles: Randomizer, Invasive, Adaptive, Ambitious

Act as the center of a fleet of mindless creatures

Survive an attack by a beast of the sea

Special Evolution Available:

Hive Flagship

A beast not seen before, these creatures lead an armada of their own over the waves. Where a Man-O-War must let the winds and seas guide them, the Flagship can move through its own power, as unusual as that power may be. As their fleet grows, so too does their control over themselves and their inferiors; with enough creatures beneath them they can come to terrorize the open ocean with nothing more than their own toxic weaponry and armies of followers.

Once more, Aby was caught off guard by the conditions which can trigger these special evolutions, in this case nothing more than random chance and some unusual circumstance combined to give the core a creature with rather good potential if the description was to be believed.

After a bit of contemplation, Aby turned to observe the subject of this potential evolution, there was very little about it which made it stand out amongst its peers save for the fact that it really was always pulled into the center of the cluster. Surrounding it were dozens more man-o-war and jellyfish, each unable to escape the center of the floor and the mild pull towards it.

It was also plain to see what the “attack” the gelatinous creature survived, many of its own kind had their so-called sails slashed or pierced, and they were simply forced around by the heated waters. It decided to proceed, very rarely did the core see an option for evolution it would turn down and none of those which it had were something it hadn’t seen.

And so, the transparent blue gas bladder and the azure attachments began radiating. It began swelling until it had inflated to become at least twice the size. The membrane containing the gas was straining from the pressure, threatening to burst before it finally began getting thicker than it had been initially and taking on a new hue. A rich aquamarine crept up the sides of the former man-o-war’s bladder while its shape changed to be more streamlined, something that could cut through the water with minimum effort, though Aby was dubious whether this adaptation was actually necessary.

After the bulk of its body had changed, its tendrils were next. They squeezed out of its body like clay being pushed through a sieve, and then drooped downwards slowly. After a certain length they seemed to be carried outwards by some unseen current, picked up by waters Aby wasn’t controlling and guided towards the other life that was within its reach and then danced around them. These tendrils went about tangling themselves into the tentacles of many of the other jellies and one particularly unfortunate fish, the offending tentacles turned the same brilliant blue as its body, and the color seemed to seep into the creatures too.

After some sparse struggles from the fish and some brief quivers of motion from a few of the jellies caught, all of the creatures simply went limp for a moment before flaring back to life with much less protest and much more blue than they had before. A moment later and the tentacles attached to the creatures fell away, allowing the animals to once more enter motion, though they were far more synchronous this time.

Once all this had ended Aby felt a new link form for a moment, it was brief and fleeting and Aby wouldn’t have even noticed had it not come from the flagship which it had already been studying, but before it could learn anything more about it the presence seemed to fall unconscious and flicker away. This brief moment was still enough to leave Aby fascinated, however, and the core immediately set to work examining what exactly happened. After a fairly extensive time spent searching for something out of the ordinary, Aby came up empty. It could only find two things it could consider real differences. The first, everything tinted blue seemed to have less surface thoughts than what it was used to, but considering the fact that the group it was studying was almost exclusively composed of creatures without the means to think at all, that meant very little. Only the fish showed any real difference in behavior, but it hadn’t had the Searing Angelfish long enough to understand what constituted its norm.

The other change, one which taught it even less, the flagship as a creature seemed more singular than the man-o-war; rather than Aby needing to treat it like multiple individuals, the core felt it more similar to the jellyfish in that it was all a single animal. Whatever it had done with its tendrils also served to fix what had occurred to the injured man-o-war, and they were slowly returning to the surface as their gas bladders reinflated, soon to float alongside their savior. The core was quite surprised that they weren’t killed in the first place; it seemed that when the wyvern opened up their sails, all it did was sink them before the core got around to healing them.

And then it realized that the bit of focus it had on its wyvern and on its drake was frantic over what it was witnessing, a feeling Aby had ignored when it was so intently focused on understanding its newest creature. When the bulk of Aby’s attention went to the twelfth floor, it understood why. The wyvern and drake had apparently become embroiled in their own conflict, and the wyvern was just preparing to end that conflict more permanently than Aby would be comfortable allowing. It sent a message to both participants to calm it down some, before watching their battle in depth. It wasn’t often that Aby got the chance to watch either of them do more than gallivanting around, and seeing what both were truly capable of was not unwelcome to the core.

Watching them push themselves was most certainly helpful to the core’s understanding of how both were progressing, too. While it wasn’t overly surprised by the drake beyond finding that it had become even stronger than what it had thought initially, the wyvern’s affinity to heat and steam was startling to Aby. By the time the two had broken off from one another and Aby healed them, the wyvern’s body was hot enough that there was next to no moisture in the sands surrounding it, and glass was threatening to form underneath his serpentine body.

After the two of them had gotten back on their feet and went on their own ways, Aby followed the wyvern back down to the fifteenth, making sure to warn the beast not to prey on his new floormate. The wyvern seemed nonplussed by both the warning and the flagship itself, having been woken up by the tentacles of the new man-o-war was apparently not something the wyvern enjoyed. The wyvern was quick to prove this point, slashing off the tentacles with a quick stroke of the tail. Aby healed the damage shortly thereafter, but noticed that when the wyvern had done so that elusive link was brought back for a moment, and this time Aby had enough time to read the fear it felt so strongly before it once more disappeared.