Arriving at the first floor and reaching the safe island that the elves live on, Mir and Dia paused to look around. It was easy to see the fighting force of the dungeon which also seemed to confuse the elves. The reason being that it was the fairies and spirits that filled the sky playing around as they waited. It was unlike anything they had seen before.

To them it was like watching a dance of fireflies, but these had small bodies and actually danced and played around.

On the ground next to the entrance, that had sealed itself so no one could fall, was Jack who was chuckling as he spoke with someone from the door of their home while on the ground were many gnomes.

Then came the ones they expected, the tree warriors and tree guardians. These waited near the edge of the island due to their size and the number of creatures here.

The final creature were countless earth wisps and at the center of their glowing body was a miniscule crystal which was the monster core that allowed them to leave the dungeon.

Dia had left all ‘ugly evil’ monsters without monster cores while giving all fairies and spirits one so that only the nice creatures could wander around.

As Dia arrived at the island Mir began to explain.

“When you drop the seeds it will take about 5 minutes like before, after which the beanstalk starts the grow and the dungeon will open. When that happens, have all the flying spirits fly out. Tell the bigger spirits to prepare to take the gnomes.” Mir instructed but Dia was flustered which made Mir sigh. “Alright, I will tell them just calm down a bit.”

Dia lightens up upon hearing that she doesn’t need to speak out loud and smiled. Although timid, Dia was already starting to open up to the elves. This was an obvious effect of seeing all the fairies and spirits peacefully moving around the elves and it makes her feel a slight feeling of jealousy at being left out which causes her to try and join in to play.

When they reached the entrance, Dia walked closer to the edge and stretched her hand and focused.

Mir looked back and everyone focused on her as she began to instruct all the spirits how they will descend.

“Alright, once Dia throws down the seeds the entrance will open. Any flying spirit big enough, transport the gnomes. They are needed to speed up the construction of the new city walls. Gnomes, make sure to put all the earth wisps to good use. And Jack!” Mir shouted drawing the giant’s attention to her. He looked down, “Only after the beanstalk is up do you descend and quickly help the gnomes. Your control of earth is better so try to speed up the construction of the walls while the others do the fine details.”

“Aye ma’am.” He said and turned back.

At this time the final seed was born and Dia tossed them down.

A small glowing ball drew them close together as they fell.

Below everyone was looking over the clouds. It wasn’t a massive tree town like the capital and instead was closer to human towns with a wooden barricade and stone or wooden houses. Even among elves, there are those that are good with magic and those that aren’t and villages that lack those experts with magic aren’t able to expertly make the tree houses leaving them even more at the mercy of monster attacks.

A few watched and suddenly a small ball of light was seen dropping.

“Something's falling!” Someone shouted and pointed.

They watched as that ball came perfectly down, not in some angle. It was on a crash course right for the fountain in the center of the village.

“Move back!” another person shouted and instantly all the villagers ran back giving the small opening a good 20 meters of space.

Bang!

The light came in fast and smashed in hard before the light faded and the seeds were released.

The tunnel the crash caused became unstable as the spraying water soaked the ground and soon the earth collapsed and covered the seeds.

The people watched wondering what that was, but underground the seeds slowly started to release a light that matched their color and the earth around it was starting to get pushed back. The moment the space of all seeds connected it began to glow extremely brightly and all of them released roots that quickly invaded the earth. Then small sprouts came from them that merged into one as they began to crawl up.

In the silence, five minutes passed and that moment a small sprout appeared. As it became free of the earth, the earth began to tremble as the mana in the air was sucked up and fed the growth of the roots of the beanstalk making the roots spread rapidly over 50 meters in all directions including down and finally the beanstalk sprout rushed out of the ground towards he clouds.

At that moment the town residents cried out in fear before they heard giggling.

As they heard it they looked up and saw countless fairies and spirits coming down from the clouds. Some were holding a very small strange creature that dropped to the ground and rushed off.

Then a wave of brown balls came down from the dungeon and everyone identified it as earth wisps.

The spirits all headed outside over the barricade and some guards followed them, climbing the watchtower to see what was happening.

After a minute the elf ran back. “The earth wisps and those strange tiny creatures are creating a mud wall around the town!”

They then all looked at one of the royal army’s commanders.

“Calm down everyone! The queen has spoken with the dungeon and they will be setting up defenses for the town so it can handle any waves of monsters that may come this way. Its own monsters will come down to protect the town and only the intelligent ones!” The commander said.

Even if he said these words, he didn’t believe a newborn dungeon could produce any powerful enough monster, but as the beanstalk hardens its stalk and the leaves grow out they look up as the beanstalk shakes momentarily once more.

They look at it and some narrow their eyes to see what it was before they all paled, including all in the royal army, when they saw a giant body descending.

When the massive body was halfway down, he turned and looked down before he readied himself and pushed off the beanstalk. He easily jumped from the center of the town to beyond the walls, a distance of about 50 meters between the center and the wall and he landed just outside the town.

The impact of his body shook the ground causing everyone to almost feel sick imagining that weight put into an attack.

Jack stood up and turned around before looking over the walls and smiling gently.

“Sory folks! Big fella lak me can’ come dohn easy!” He said and laughed before turning and walking towards the walls. When he lifted a wooden mallet and slammed it down on the ground, it caused the slowly rising walls to blast upwards to 7 meters. An entire section of the walls was lifted in one go and he looked around and said something before walking to a low side.

“By… the gods! It’s a bloody giant! How can the queen allow a dungeon with giants to keep existing!?” The soldier unconsciously said seeing Jack.

Obviously common knowledge of ancient giants was that they were man eaters of tyrannical power and some were said to be able to fight a dragon into submission alone.

Everyone just stared at the amazing creature in front of them that they didn’t notice the largest of the fairies descend along with the tree warriors and guardians.

When they noticed their hearts skipped for two reasons. The hulking 2 meter tall tree warriors and guardians, but then they noticed the bell flower empress spirit and their hearts stopped once more because of her incredible beauty. Not just men, but women and children were mesmerized by the beauty excluding from that spirit and after her were the queen fire spirit and queen water fairy who didn’t lose out.

“Fire spirits guard the skies, have fire wisps gather into large groups and emit light to light up the area. Master’s clouds block far too much light below them so we need some light sources.” The empress said.

Suddenly a spirit that was only a third smaller than her landed and bowed. She had a large mushroom cap on her head and a large glittering mushroom cap dress that kept releasing sparkles of light causing her to be lit up in this twilight.

“Highness, my servants have developed a few useful tools for both the dungeon and below.” She said.

“Show it!” The empress said and the queen mushroom spirit turned and clapped her hand making other mushroom spirits appear and in their hands was a very tiny mushroom.

“Plant the ‘small’ ones along the roads and place the ‘big’ ones around the wall, the cute short ones are buildings.” She said and the spirits all giggled before flying off.

They flew to the edge of the packed dirt and a few planted around what was left of the plaza of the village. Others went along the houses and road and planted them while a third group went in different directions outside of town.

Upon being planted, the mushrooms quickly spread their roots and began to grow until it was 30 cm thick. Afterwards, it stopped growing wide and suddenly it started to shoot up to three meters before the cap stretched to one and a half meters and it began to emit a light that quickly lit the area around it.

All around the village these mushroom grew. Suddenly the ground shook as outside the village the several giant mushrooms 3 meters thick at the trunk grew all the way to 20 meters high and their cap grew to 10 meters. They emitted light that was similar to the light of a sunrise but it did its job. What was even more amazing was the luminescent spores it released.

“The spores are really useful, they fertilize the ground so well. Sadly they don’t grow more mushrooms but everything has its drawbacks.” The queen mushroom spirit said in a jolly tone.

The other queens rolled their eyes hearing the ‘drawback’ and looked interested at the mushroom. Since the mushroom spirits appeared, the mushroom problem has been under control and new kinds of mushroom have been slowly appearing but not monsters. Instead, large bulky mushrooms that could house fairies, mushrooms for food and others for medicine. Those of the two latter category were planted within the forest areas of the floor they grew on while the first kind were used to make the fairy and spirit villages. What somewhat surprised the flower spirits was that the mushroom spirits controlled, to a degree, the outcome by raising different types of mushroom in their huge mushroom field underground.

Truthfully they want to move above ground and build a mushroom forest but the flowers require more sunlight than mushrooms which caused some problems until Dia said she didn’t want a mushroom forest ‘yet’.

This suggested that the mushroom spirits will be allowed to do that in a higher floor probably when Dia wants to make something new.

This did wake the flower spirits up and they have been trying to copy the skill of the mushroom spirits, but never allowing the flower to become a monster which results in a number of magical flowers and crop plants. There was even one when the flower was kept from becoming a monster but the roots evolved and created a mandrake. Even as flower spirits, they needed a gnome to remove it and put it closer to the path an adventurer will pass through. It was clearly harder for flowers to be used differently when compared to mushrooms.

As they admired the mushrooms the rumble from beyond the walls started to be heard.

“It’s time!” the empress said. The spirits grew serious and quickly moved out to accomplish their own tasks.

At the wall Jack had lifted all the walls completely while the earth spirits were making them into the shape of the stone walls and the gnomes were doing the details like making the walls stronger by improving the quality of the dirt, transforming dirt into stone, compacting it and solidifying the foundation.

Fire spirits manned the walls that were being built and under the command of greater fire spirits, the normal fire spirits all began to gather concentrated fire making small but packed balls of flames.

If there was time the gnomes would have made a moat for the water spirits to fill up, but there wasn’t and they worked as they were.

Jack quickly jumped over the wall, stood at the road and readied his mallet. He also poked around his pocket and pulled out a single human head sized bronze colored ball.

“Hmm, dis goose egg betta beh strong.” He mutter as he casually tossed it up in his left hand.

If anyone on earth saw him they would think of a baseball pitcher and after a long while he saw the herd of wolves, bears, birds and countless monsters appear in the forest.

“Time to play!” He said as his gentle smile turned into a serious but somehow neutral expression as he tossed the egg very high up and with an overhand swing of his mallet he struck it.

*DING!*

The sound of the ding was like a hammer on metal and the egg flew at an incredible pace forward into the swarm of monsters that were hit and smashed before that egg smashed into the ground.

The eggs were naturally from the golden goose that had reached its young's size that it would allow it to lay one egg a day. The goose eggs were unique because four would be pure metal and one was edible after maturing. The one he hit was pure bronze and another unique part is that the egg is naturally filled with a lot of mana allowing it to take a single blow from Jack, but the moment this egg touches the ground it will break apart and its mana will seep into the ground forming a small mineral vein using that mana.

Jack whistles as he saw the effects and was genuinely impressed by the endurance of the egg that even his mallet didn’t dent.

Before he could think more, the animals and monsters rushed in.

“Ah! De beast ah strang.” Jack said with a frown as they neared.

It was a bit strange, dungeons did attract animals and monsters but it’s never so powerfully like this. It’s like they want to attack the dungeon.

Jack lifted his right foot and slammed it down. Instantly the landscape in front of him exploded as large bulky rock spikes spread out creating a blockade.

“Jack, don’t kill them all, Mir requested us to acquire a few new animals.” The empress shouted from the air.

“Den git de tiny uns ta trap em!” Jack shouted back as a large male deer came towards his leg. It had three long horns and its body was armored with scales.

Jack turned and kicked its side causing it to flip over but not without grunting.

“Blast! Har as a bloody rok!” He cursed. “Oi! Git fighten!” He shouted.

His voice caused the gnomes to pop out. “Jack, kep em busy, wes aint finished!” The gnome replied.

“Ya don half of it! No bloody beast bigger den de wall!” Jack shouted back and slammed his mallet on the ground creating a shockwave that blew the animals backwards.

“Fire spirits attack!” The empress suddenly said and along the top of the wall the fire spirits all shot their fireballs over the mushrooms and behind the wall of rocks slowly building on the side Jack was fighting.

They fell down and exploded, causing numerous animals and monsters to suffer burns and push those further back into the forest but those in the back pushed forward.

“Water fairies and pixies, stop the fire. Gnomes and tree warriors move to capture wolves, bear, fox, rabbits and lizards from the animals and from monsters, the dire wolves, a few wild kobold and those stray salamanders. Sylphs push the birds down with the wind, sort through them and grab some small birds while pushing away the monsters.” The empress instantly gave orders to all the spirits.

After the fire began to spread, the water fairies and pixies descended and made small storm clouds near the fire and made them rain while the gnomes came from underground and locked the targets with hardened earth trapping their limbs. If the monster was too strong, they would add stronger minerals and make the hard dirt into stone.

In the air, raging winds blew all over the sky of the village keeping the birds from being able to get close. Some crashed to the ground where a sylph appeared and used magic to create a wind binding that lifted the bird and took it to the foot of the beanstalk.

No one even knew what they were seeing, but in under a minute dozens of animals were beaten, killed or trapped. Quickly all the smarter monsters began to fear for their lives and retreated leaving the town in silence besides the struggling monsters and animals that the gnomes were now starting to lift and transport back.

Jack sighed as he kicked the ground and caused the wall over the packed road to collapse. Then with some control of earth magic, he connected the open sides and made an archway that was three and a half meters high and filled the rest with dirt. He sent the earth wisps to continue working while the gnomes brought the animals in and the spirits took the animals from them and began to transport them up.

The empress and queens oversaw the transport when suddenly the elf commander walked over.

“Excuse me, but what is going on?” He asked the empress.

“We were asked by the queen to keep the monsters we draw from invading and to set up city walls for this village. As for the animals we are taking up, these are creatures we lack in our dungeon. It creates a rather imbalance where we don’t have prey or livestock and Dia doesn’t have disposable creatures to set up as dungeon bosses without it being sentient or a spirit.” She said without looking at the man and pointed at a water fairy that was struggling and shouted for a few to go help.

As for the elf, he didn’t know how to react, the dungeon was pretty much increasing its monster variety, but he had never seen the dungeons interior so he didn’t know how it actually looked. He was actually feeling somewhat off about letting them do as they please, but upon seeing the giant his brow twitched at the thought of that thing moving against him and threw away the thoughts of stopping the spirits. They were spirits after all, if they were evil they would be dark fairies or spirits instead of true fire spirits or fairies. Since they aren’t, it goes to show they aren’t ill natured. This was the common thought of all elves due to a lack of general knowledge involving dark spirits since they have only heard of evil ones while the rest are more hidden.

In the dungeon the spirits began to appear with the trapped animals and it made Mir smile.

“Good, it seems to have been resolved quickly.” Mir said.

“Hey Mir… why are they bringing up more animals?” Dia asked.

“There are lots of creatures we lack and there is one thing your dungeon doesn’t have and it is a grave thing to not have.” Mir said.

“What?” Dia asked confused.

“Conflict.”

Dia frowned when she heard that. “I don’t want fighting!” She said.

“Dia, as much as you don’t want it, conflict or the law of survival of the fittest is the best thing in a dungeon because only then will you be safest. The more we fight the stronger we are, don’t you understand?” Mir said calmly, but Dia shook her head.

“No! I don’t wanna! I don’t want to see all my friends fighting and I don’t want ugly monsters in me!” She shouted.

The elves around the entrance looked at her warmly. They have had some time to understand what ‘ugly monster’ means which usually translates to violent animal. Dia isn’t fond of sky sharks, but she finds balloon jellyfish cute because they just float around. She normally sees them fishing, but to her it’s just fishing. Something she did with her family.

“Then what do you want, think of this first, if you make ‘ugly monsters’ the fairies, the big strong tree warriors, me, Jack and all your friends can grow stronger and even prettier while we control all the ‘ugly monsters’ but if you don’t then you will only be able to wait for each floor to get new pretty fairies. When we fight even a special spirit can appear.” Mir said trying to tempt her.

She was silent but teary eyed and Mir tried to think of a new example but then thought of something.

“Dia, look at me…” She said and Dia reluctantly looked at the crouching Mir. “Have you ever planted a flower with your mother or father?” She asked.

Dia nodded and tears streamed down her little hollowed cheeks.

“Tell me, when you planted the flowers, did they take a stinky black piles of dirt and throw it under the flower or over the seeds?” She asked. After a moment Dia nodded. “Do you know what that is?”

Dia shook her head and said a very quiet, “No.”

“Well… that smelly dirt is…” She moved in and whispered in Dia’s ear.

Instantly her eyes went wide before she cutely scrunched her nose. “No way!”

“It is, now don’t the flowers grow really pretty after that is thrown on it?”

“It does but…”

“But what? When it rains that dirt is pushed underground and just like how the gnomes feed the ground mana to make the flowers so pretty, that smelly dirt will go into the ground and make it healthier. It’s the same for all of us, we fight the ‘ugly monsters’ and we can get the soft pelts to make clothes, the tasty meat to eat, the sharp fangs to make cute accessories or strong weapons and we grow big and strong to protect each other.” Mir said.

Dia pinched her lips and looked down and muttered, “okay…” and after a moment she thought of something, “From now on I will just make all the ‘ugly monsters’ the boss of each floor, that way I won’t have to put my friends in danger. Hmpf!” Dia said.

Everyone started to laugh and Mir pets her head. Mir then directed the animals to be released outside of the village and for the spirits to make them dungeon monsters quickly.

Like that, gale wolves, sky foxes, cloud bears, nature lizards, dire sky wolves, kobolds, monster salamanders and countless different birds entered the dungeon and tried to rush to the third floor only to be stopped by the first floor boss and to be corralled by the fairies until Jack returned from the ground when it was truly safe.