Well, adult Oni weren’t a possibility. If his theory that the amount of experience gained from killing monsters was the cost for him to create a monster, and the cost to forcefully evolve a monster was one hundred times the mana amount to create the next rank, then simply going from an A- rank monster to an A rank monster would require approximately 2,970 days of doing absolutely nothing with his mana. The case of why were there so few high rank monsters in all but high rank and long lived dungeons was coming to light. He had 357 days left and Oni were A rank monsters, so that wasn’t an option.

The highest monster rank available to him with his current timetable was a B- rank monster which would take approximately 209 days worth of mana. Afterwards, he would be able to make B- rank monsters at one a day with an additional one every one hundred days. If he only used his mana for B- rank monsters, then he would have a total of 171 B- rank monsters. However, that wasn’t feasible since he needed to make his maze, and he had already made instances which required him to periodically inject mana as creatures were killed. Thankfully the loot was supported by outside mana.

Ian referred to it as outside mana, but it worked in a similar manner to the ambient mana when he was human. He termed it ‘outside’ because it came from outside his dungeon. He had observed himself and everyday the one million mana, now one million ten thousand mana, was injected into him. Generating mana, as his status put it, was correct from the standpoint of his universe, but the reality was he was granted a set amount of mana each day from the Greater God’s universe. Ian used to be able to supplement his mana regeneration from ambient mana, but directly using ambient was a wall he had never been able to cross. Of course, directly manipulating someone or something else’s mana was another story.

Supplementing his mana from outside mana wasn’t currently possible. He had no ability to feel outside his dungeon and access that mana. Any attempts he made to divert it to himself when creating items were in vain. In fact, every time he tried a sharp pain would attack his mind and each time he reattempted it the pain would get stronger and stronger. His ability to manipulate mana not his own was no longer present. The pain still hadn’t gotten strong enough to distract the other part of his split mind, but Ian was worried. Should he continue his attempts? He was leaning towards no at this point. As a young dungeon, he had much to learn and didn’t want to give someone, *cough* Greater God *cough*, too much of an excuse to remove him from his current position. He was worried about the pain suddenly stopping and a currently unbreakable part of himself becoming completely breakable.

Ian didn’t know why there were so many restrictions on dungeons, but they seemed to be from the Greater God rather than the lesser gods. The lesser gods wanted as much mana as possible coming in to the universe, so any part of the dungeon that was counter to that shouldn’t have been necessitated by them. In fact, how much input on the structure of dungeons came from the lesser gods versus the Greater God? Did any? Some of the design decisions didn’t make a lot of sense. Limiting development through mana rather than some other method seemed like it would slow the mana flow into the universe to a trickle. ….What about encouraging technological development? Was that a requirement imposed on them by the Greater God or were they trying to hit two birds with one stone without the use of magic? Ian truly didn’t know if they were lackeys or idiots.

While human, Ian’s reverence for the Gods had dimmed when he realized they were not infallible beings, but their might kept him praying. When he had created magic that even Unera had trouble understanding, he no longer prayed. Even though his reverence and prayers no longer reached them, his faith stat continued to increase through friendship. As a dungeon the Gods were no longer his patrons, and he had no ability to speak with them. While he questioned their decision making skills, it didn’t make him hate them. They were his friends, but he really needed to scold them for being idiots.

Still, if the Greater God allowed the lesser gods to take mana in the first place, why was he making the flow of mana such a slow trickle now? Based on what Tidon had said, greater gods liked to give tests to those asking them favors. The dungeons could in essence be a test for mana access. Did the lesser gods have any input besides what souls became dungeons? If they didn’t, then choosing the correct souls might be the Greater God’s test. Maybe the slow trickle of mana wasn’t intended. Instead, it was a result of the lesser gods failing the Greater God’s test.

If Ian was right about the Greater God’s involvement, then it made more sense how the system would have the ability to create instances when its understanding of space magic was less than his own. It was likely provided with schematics of different functions. Which meant, did the Greater God intentionally give a crappier transfer formation or did Ian have a greater understanding of transfer formations than a Greater God? Hmmm, so many questions. Hopefully he would have some interesting discussions with other dungeons during the auction.

Now, since he couldn’t make adult Oni and didn’t want juvenile Oni, the only monster left that had at least a little sapience was the goblin. He technically didn’t need his powerful monster to need intelligence, but his two chats with the system weren’t quite enough to satisfy even someone like him.

However, did he even need B- rank monsters? They would do nothing against A- rank and up intruders. They would probably have some trouble against B and B+ ranks too.

Even if he made an excruciatingly long maze, as long as they prepared well enough the intruders would be able to make it through.

Hmmm, he supposed then the only way to make sure they couldn’t make it through the maze was his magic. The problem with using magic that could kill SSS ranks and possibly EX ranks is once someone saw that floor, they would think, ‘Fuck this dungeon, I’m out’. Treasures of equivalent value were the go to, but if no one discovered the vast wealth before they were eviscerated then it was simply a death trap. Of course other dungeons had extremely difficult floors, but they had a long history of providing treasure on other floors before their death traps appeared. As a young dungeon, Ian couldn't count on built up history.

Ian’s book clapped together. That would be where the B- rank goblins came in. They would be much easier than the EX rank of the floor but drop valuable equipment above their level.

Interspersed between packs of goblins would be the death traps. In the beginning of the maze, traps could be avoided by paying attention to how the goblins act. The goblins would act happy as intruders approached traps and grumpy when they went away from traps. They would also try to lead intruders into traps but have terrible poker faces while doing so.

However, the latter half of the maze would have unpassable traps that needed to be disarmed. Ian would make these traps only disarmable to SSS rank mages of the equivalent mana attribute or SSS rank rogues. The EX rank difficulty would come from multiple attribute traps and multiple dead ends that spelled instant death from EX rank traps. Of course, the instant death traps would have warnings that everyone would follow.

Now what would Ian do about the trap requirement of the floor? Having a shitty trap in the midst of magnificent formations didn’t sit well with Ian, and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t sit well with Magical Beauty. He supposed the only way to improve those was to finally use the Trap tree. Ian was loath to get lost in what he could only assume would be a drain on his DP, but he would have to examine the dungeon trees eventually.

Ian opened the Hole tree and was surprised at how little there was. He was presented with two options to evolve the one meter cubed hole. Either increase the depth of the hole for 100 DP or increase the width and length of the hole for 100 DP. Depth it was. Ian received the ability to make the improved trap, but what he didn’t expect was to receive a free 1 meter by 1 meter by 2 meters hole trap. The free hole trap didn’t give him any DP, but as soon as he personally created one he received the 100 DP first creation achievement. ….He should purchase as many 100 DP evolutions as possible.

That’s just what Ian did. At least for traps and treasures. The 100 DP purchases for traps and treasures simply amounted to slightly better materials, slightly larger, or they work slightly better. Ian was able to make a couple 100 DP purchase for each item, but they all eventually started requiring 200 DP. The hole trap was now five meters deep, but it still only had a square meter area.

Ian could still go back and purchase the increased area, but each evolution required 1,000 DP instead of the original 100. If things went like they were described during the tutorial in regards to his Magic Tree, then every non-chosen branch on the 1,000 DP line would cost 10,000 DP. Also, his original 100 DP branch would became 1,000 DP. He could definitely see why choosing the right path the first time was important. The evolutions for the hole didn’t require detailed descriptions to get their point across, but would creature evolutions provide enough detail for the proper choice?

The web spider’s tree popped up into Ian’s vision, and he was surprised at what he saw. Spreading from the web spider were five different spider monsters with the clear web spider already chosen. The other four included Web Spider, Glowing Spider, Regenerating Spider, and Distorted Spider. After Ian read their descriptions, they were spiders originating from nature mana, light mana, healing mana, and space mana respectively. Also, the descriptions were the same ones he received when he evolved his creatures.

An interesting thing Ian noticed was even though it cost 1,000 DP to choose another spider evolution, there were no G rank evolutions available. However, Ian was able to bring up a separate clear web spider menu which had G rank evolution options at the normal rate of 100 DP.

Ian brought up the trees of other biota and unlike the web spider they didn’t have any evolution options. It made sense, since he was the first to actively evolve a biota into a monster. It seemed to get future evolution options he would have to personally evolve his biota into monsters.

The thing that confused Ian was there were a lot more mana attributes than the five offered to him. Were DP evolutions restricted in this way? Only five at most? Ian tried to increase the available options by infusing different mana attributes into the window, thinking of different spider evolutions, and he even nicely asked the window to please give him more monster evolutions. No more options became available.

If no more than five options were available, then how were the original five decided? The hole trap had given him a continuous set of two simple options each time, but how were the five mana attributes for the spiders determined. It only took Ian a short while to figure out they represented attributes which he was highly skilled in. Of course, it wasn’t a perfect representation, it included nature mana instead of illusion mana. Why nature instead of illusion? Ian could make conjectures like nature was the basic evolution attribute, but he didn’t know for sure. While his creature trees were interesting, he’d rather not use DP for his creatures and instead rely on mana.

With that Ian turned his attention back to the hole and wood spike traps in an attempt to make a highly deadly version of the illusion pitfall he made on the first floor. He currently had a deep hole and large, sharp, and reinforced wood spikes. Thankfully the next five options for the hole followed the same pattern as the first four however the DP expenditure did double to 200 DP. Ian had a five meter wide by five meter long by six meter deep hole at the end.

The wood spikes had a wider variety of options. Serrated, strongly poisonous, and stone spikes are what Ian settled on. Thankfully upgrading to stone spikes didn’t erase any of the previous evolutions. While not completely up to tier, if he added in a few more magical effects in addition to the illusion then it would all work out. He’d make their final form when building the maze. With the boring part of the work done on traps, creating acceptable treasure was next.

Ian glanced through his treasures, but none of them really seemed to fit the magical trap theme of the floor. With a sigh Ian sucked it up and purchased a magic staff tree for 10,000 DP. It was of course made of balsa.

As Ian prepared to put DP into the tree pit, he stopped himself. Even if he made the best magic staff ever, if no one found the chest then it didn’t matter. ….Oh! He’d make the main monsters on the floor B- rank goblin mages. They’d be equipped with the strong staffs, but drop weakened versions. Then the stronger versions would be in chests throughout the floor. Yeah, that would work. However, he needed to make the goblins first. The wood type needed to match the magic they would cast, and while he knew what type of mages he personally wanted to create, he wasn’t sure their evolutionary options would conform to his expectations.

Ian gave a last glance through the trees. Thankfully his enchanted weapons and minor illusion pitfall were considered separate trees, so he didn’t have any bloated DP branches. Would that always be the case? Ian noted that these were created through use of his magic, so that might be what separated them out. However, he didn’t see any use for these trees as he could simply create their much better versions later on by increasing the basic trees.

Ian’s heart started beating a little faster as he opened the magic trees. He was quickly disappointed. While there were still options available to him, they cost trillions of DP. Even the options that were available to him were slightly different versions of magic he already had. Well, not all of them. Magic that he had researched but was not able to cast such as instances were present, but seeing them cost trillions of DP just made him sad.

As he grumbled, Ian closed the magic trees and opened the research trees. At least he tried to.

To use the Research Trees a Research Room must be purchased and created.

Another goddamn room. However, he was kind of looking forward to this one. As he brought up the dungeon shop, Ian was to be disappointed yet again.

Research Room: A Room in which research is conducted.

Requirements:

Dungeon Level 11

Something that actually required him to be a certain dungeon level? Ian’s disappointment didn’t last long as he started to wonder about what other cool things had dungeon level requirements. If Dungeon Level 11 was required, was there something special about that level? Would there be special rooms that only he could get as an EX rank dungeon with no level limit? So many questions, so much time. At least, he hoped that last part was true.

✦✦✦✦✦

Ian’s vision unfocused off of the windows and instead focused on the creatures swarming his core room. It had been a while since he just settled down and looked at his creatures. The view satisfied him. He went through each of them checking their status. All of the newborn goblins and oni had reached full development. Sadly no newborn wyverns, moving moss, enraged ferns, or ankle biters had the ability to evolve. Each of the slimes, jellies, and clear web spiders had one individual each that reached full development.

Of the slimes and jellies, the two that could evolve were the first two he created. The only options for evolution were the G rank Inferior Jelly and Inferior Slime. They were basic evolutions that only increased in size and acidity. While the evolutions were basic and they received the basic level increase in Mana Perception, the additional skill they got was quite unusual for slimes and jellies. They got the Running skill. Not only was it exceptionally odd for slimes and jellies to get the skill, but basic skills like Running required extreme dedication to the act. It didn’t just come from running a lot. If it did, then Ian would have had it. He wondered what kind of odd varieties they would be at D- rank.

The other slimes and jellies were separated into two groups: the nanny group and the normal group. While none of them were ready to evolve, the nanny group had an overall higher development than the normal group. They seemed to be doing about as good of a job taking care of newborns as could be expected from a bunch of acidic amorphous creatures without any helpful tools. The normal ones on the other hand were simply exploring the room. Ian wondered if development could be increased faster by focusing on one discipline for other creatures, since the way the slimes and jellies were developing seemed to indicate that.

Now that he had a G rank jelly and slime, would the ones he created be copies of the ones he evolved? After summoning a copy of each, they had different skills than the ones he evolved. Rather than the Running skill, their Absorption skill leveled up by one. It seemed that skill variety wasn’t stored in his dungeon menus. It looked like he could only create the generic versions of creatures. With that he would have to make sure creatures with uniques skills lived long enough to evolve into unique evolutions.

It irked Ian that he had to keep his monsters alive. Their purpose was to fight, so holding some back just to make sure they developed unusual evolutions didn’t sit well with Ian. To him most development would come through fighting since that was how most experience was gained.

While he thought that, Ian wasn’t sure how he would handle sapient creatures fighting and dying for him. That would be akin to leadership, and Ian had made sure to avoid that aspect of life. He was aware of the hypocrisy associated with valuing sapient life over non-sapient life but didn’t care.

Ian browsed through the Dungeon Shop and found a room that fit his purposes. It was called the Respawn Room, and it let five individuals be assigned. After they were killed, the individuals would respawn with abilities and memories intact for ten times the mana cost of a normal respawn. Five individuals wasn’t a lot, but he could put as many respawn rooms on each floor as possible. It would cost him a lot of mana, but he seemed to have a lot of that.

However, was it the right thing to do? Would creating enough respawn rooms for every sapient creature be good for the Dungeon’s purpose? What would be better: fighting and dying in a single life or fighting and dying over and over again without end? Could he ever create villages of sapient creatures if there was the possibility of adventures coming and killing everyone? If his creatures went into battle with the knowledge that they would never truly die, how would that affect their minds, their lives, and their evolutions? The most important was how did they personally feel about constantly fighting with the possibility of death in his dungeon? He had never been able to successfully tame and ask that question to a high rank sapient dungeon monster. Ian would only know when he asked the first goblin mage he created.

With philosophical questions hanging over his head, Ian moved onto the other creatures moving about his core room.

The one clear web spider that could be evolved was the first one he created. Ian evolved it but not much changed. It got a little larger, and its skills Silk Creation and Stealth increased a level. It was still a Clear Web Spider, but it was now rank G. That was pretty normal for most creatures. It was only the other category of monsters, slimes, jellies, elemental, etcetera, that seemed to have modifiers attached to their names.

As Ian evolved the newborn Goblins and Oni, the didn’t change much at all. They became Infant Goblins and Infant Oni and were only slightly bigger. In fact, their skills didn’t increase at all. Their growth mimicked the aging of biota rather than the evolution of monsters. Originally Ian had thought monsters aged like other creatures until adulthood, then they received the ability to evolve. However, during the tutorial when all his options for animalistic monsters were ranked newborns he assumed his previous observations had been wrong. He was starting to rethink that. Was evolving baby and child monsters a speciality of dungeons? *sigh*. Oh well, he would deal with forcibly making newborns into infants for now.

Happy with his evolutions and observations of the room, Ian prepared to settle down for the long haul. He needed something to do during the two hundred and nine days he waited for his mana to build up. The most obvious choice was using the zoom ability. Not only would it allow him to pass the time, but it would make it seem like time went by faster! However, what to study?

Ian drifted towards the slimes and jellies. He wanted to figure out how to make variations before they became D- rank. However, that wasn’t his top priority right now. Goblins should be his focus. They were only infants right now, but if he studied the difference between evolutions he might find better ways to achieve the evolution he wanted.

Now, what part of the goblin should he focus on? He wanted mages, so the brain? But the compatibility between the body and certain mana attributes was important too. Higher rank goblins already had the ability to cast magic, so he shouldn’t have to worry about them not being smart enought for that. Also, his starting point in knowledge about the body was much further along compared to the brain, so he’d be able to get further with his limited time. Body it was then.

Making sure to split his focus, Ian zoomed in to study the bodies of newborn, infant, and future evolution goblins for the next two hundred and nine days.