Ian’s vision zoomed out to build his maze floor. He was distracted having to teach different courses to the goblins, while also building the maze, and Ian wouldn’t be surprised if that exacerbated tiny mistakes like he had made on the first floor. In fact, although it was technically completed, Ian felt the first floor needed some work. At least he had the DP for it now.

Should the maze have a single level or multiple levels? Multiple levels would make it harder, but the majority of the difficulty would come from his magic formations. A single level would fit the theme of a straightforward flat cave that the first floor represented. Not that a single floor could really represent a theme. ….Single level it was then. Ian originally thought a long maze would be better, but if someone could get past EX and SSS rank spells, he was shit out of luck anyway.

What should the layout be? Should he make a tangent maze that prevent wall hugging? Curves? Loops? If there was someway to make them go through the entire maze, that would be terrific. How about multiple endings? Something like checkpoints? Hmm. What if the intruders had to clear certain rooms to open the boss room? Yeah that was good, but how to make that harder? ….Oh! They would have to do it in a certain order!

Ian could mess around for days attempting to come up with a way on his own to implement his idea, but with his massive DP stock, he went straight to the Dungeon Shop for once. After multiple word combinations with different thought patterns, Ian finally got the functions he wanted. Door Creation, Locked Doors, and Sequential Checkpoints would get him what he wanted. Door Creation and Locked Doors were a thousand DP each, while Sequential Checkpoints was ten thousand DP.

Ian continued using Deep Cave terrain even though he could make another type. He wanted to maintain the theme from G- to EX, and the fact that he’d get five new creatures that would distract him had nothing to do with it.

The entrance would start at the top left corner and the exit would be near the center of the maze. Checkpoint A was near the bottom right corner on the right path from the entrance. Checkpoint B was on a separate path, the left path, from checkpoint A near the entrance. Checkpoint C was back on the same path as checkpoint A but even further along. Checkpoint D was once again on B’s path and near the exit. The last checkpoint, E, was on A and C’s path somewhat near the entrance. There was a shortest path to A and C, but the follow the wall strategy led to the longest path in that direction.

The short path to A and C had long, straight corridors with a couple of turns and dead ends. The long path was evenly split between long, straight corridors and corridors that had a lot of turns. It also had an equal number of dead ends compared to the short path. The A and C path had the one feature that wasn’t checkpoints, corridors, or the place for the intended boss room. Ian debated between making it a trap room that would kill anyone inside or a water elemental oasis. In the end, he went with both.

The B, D, and Exit path contained a lot of turns and dead ends. The path to the exit was a single long corridor that went straight, then turned, went straight, then turned, multiple times. Ian intended the corridors after the D room to be laced with the most dangerous traps. However, intentions can change.

When Ian created doors for the five checkpoints, they appeared as large arched double doors. They were rough and fit the natural cave look. Well, besides the fact that they were doors. The checkpoint doors filled up an entire wall of the checkpoint rooms. Ian had made the checkpoint rooms ten meter cubes, which gave solid height, but not a lot of room to work with during party on party battles. He set two conditions for the doors to lock. One, if the previous checkpoint had not been cleared they would be locked. Two, five seconds after the last intruder entered the room the door was to lock. Thankfully, setting the doors to lock also set them to automatically close. The condition for unlocking the doors once inside was to eliminate all dungeon creatures in the room and touch the checkpoint relief.

Ian tied the checkpoints in each room to a lifelike relief of a Gazer. His talent in art was limited to replication, and very useful for research journals. Considering how gazers looked, replication was all Ian needed. The mass of eyeballs that seemed writhe and follow whoever looked at them, would scare most adventurers enough to piss their pants. He also had some ideas for a Gazer oriented floor later on, however he’d have to get the gazers first.

Ian created a blink hobgoblin in checkpoint A, but after he checked its status, he was not amused. The blink and tool use skills weren’t at level seven but six instead. As a result the skills: stone skin and flash each increased a level. The new hobgoblin hadn’t lost the light based skills thankfully, but it was still annoying. However, Ian was worried and created a blink goblin. His worries were well founded as the goblin no longer had the sturdy body or invisibility skills. Instead, it had increased stench, brawl, and night vision skills.

Ian grinded his pages together. God dammit! The goblin was still usable, but he should have the better goblin he originally made! Earlier, he had ignored it when he was dealing with the running jelly and slime, but not now. Ian started trying different things to get his original blink goblin version. He tried manipulation of the creation process, but that was a failure. He asked for the original blink goblin version, but that was unsuccessful. However, Ian’s next attempt succeeded. After saying ‘blink goblin variant’, a new window appeared with ‘Blink Goblin - Yirvin Variant’ on it. Happy, Ian created this blink goblin, and successfully created the original skills of Yirvin as a blink goblin. However, the cost was twice as much as a normal blink goblin. That meant his blink hobgoblins would be two million mana instead of a million. He really felt like punching the system right now. Ian smirked as he was pretty sure he saw the window shake a bit after that thought.

Having figured out variants, Ian continued with filling the checkpoint rooms. Checkpoint A used the default blink hobgoblin and the three blink goblins he already created. B contained two default blink hobgoblins along with two blink goblins, two goblin warriors, and two goblin fighters. Ian wanted some light magic with the next checkpoint, so he placed five invisible blink goblins along with two blink hobgoblins. The invisible blink goblins became spatial invisibility goblins in checkpoint D, and Ian added two warriors for good measure. For the last checkpoint, Ian created a variant blink hobgoblin along with three default blink hobgoblins and three normal hobgoblins. Luckily the normal hobgoblin didn’t have much variation from Yirvin’s original skill list.

With only a little over six million mana, populating the corridors with blink hobgoblins wasn’t possible yet. Also, Ian needed trap locations, so the blink hobgoblins could lead intruders into them. Traps it was then.

Teleport traps were always a good way to kill people. Ian placed ten teleport traps invisible to all the senses throughout the corridors. They all led to a separate room with no exit. He placed EX level Ray spells at the ceiling of the room, which constantly bombarded the room with beams of light that eviscerated anyone inside. The teleport traps were placed five along the path to the exit and five along the path through A and C. The path to the exit had traps right before the exit, B, and D, with the other two along the long path to the exit. There were teleport traps right before E and C but not A. Two teleport traps were placed in the middle of corridors, while the last one was placed at a dead end. Of course, they could be disarmed or dispelled, but jumping over was not an option. The teleportation extended from the floor to the ceiling.

Next, Ian made the better version of the minor illusion pitfall with wood spikes. Taking the five by five by six meter hole, combining it with the serrated and strongly poisoned stone spikes, and adding an illusion on par with the fish on the first floor, Ian created quite a deadly trap, although nowhere near the deadliness of his top tier magic formations. However, if Ian made the illusion exactly like the fish, intruders would simply be able to walk over it. So, he made it that the illusion would disappear after an intruder reached the center of the pitfall. What Ian created was termed an Advanced Illusion Pitfall with Stone Spikes. It cost him five thousand mana to make each one.

Ian placed twenty pitfall traps throughout the floor. Most of these he simply placed along corridors, focusing on the path to the exit considering its length. He had one at a dead end, two that were right next to each other, one that was right next to a teleport trap, and a couple near the beginning of the floor on both the right and left paths.

As Ian had already trapped two of the dead ends, he needed to switch gears to treasure before he trapped the entire floor. He didn’t have many ideas beyond the EX rank staff. Ian was a bit of a miser, so thinking about spending tons of DP on upgrading his treasures, even though he had over two fucking million, caused him anxiety. Before he decided on anything else, he decided to make the staff.

It took a lot more DP than he had initially thought, but a lot less DP than it should be. Although, he supposed the DP prices only increased by one hundred increments as long as he didn’t take both paths, so the cost shouldn’t have been too unexpected. Ian wanted Yirvin to cast space, light, and strength magic, so choosing a single mana targeted wood was in poor taste. The best mana channeling wood for any attribute was Ancient Mana Wood. Any wood could become mana wood, it simply took time for the trees to be infused with mana. However, ancient mana wood took thousands of year to achieve what most considered perfection. Ian had thought that wood left to mature for millions, billions, or even trillions of years would make an even better conduit, but his own research, trees didn’t live that long, and now the dungeon tree seemed to say otherwise.

While Ancient Mana Wood was the ultimate every mana attribute wood, simply using wood did not make the best staff. Ian continued to use DP until the staff was adorned with space, light, and strength mana stones each a foot in diameter and a perfect sphere. The stones formed a triangle formation on the top of the staff. These mana stones not only increased the power and casting speed of all space, light, and strength magic, they also stored up to three spells of each attribute for instant casting. However, while DP purchasing was done, the staff itself was not.

The first enchantment Ian cast was personalization. This tied the staff to the mana signature of the owner. It was possible to override the previous owner by inserting the new owners mana, but it took more mana and time that would be allowed during a fight. Next, Ian cast remote control on the staff. It could now be used within a one hundred meter radius of the owner. Remote control also allowed the owner to move the staff in a similar manner to telekinesis within that one hundred meter radius. And, of course, Ian placed the unbreakable enchantment on the staff.

With quality of life enchantments done, next were attack spells. Ian inscribed the ability to use one SSS rank spell per attribute per month. The uses would not stack, so if the use wasn’t used then the next month would still only have one use. Ian used this method instead of a one month recharge time because it made it possible to use the spell twice in a row if the user knew the monthly cycle of the staff.

The strength spell allowed the user to transform their body into pure strength mana called Strength Infusion. This allowed the user to display strength and endurance comparable to SSS rank Mana Artists. The space spell, Grand Transfer, allowed the user to teleport over a million human individuals or an equivalent mass anywhere they could think of. Judgement allowed the user to erase anything within a two kilometer radius with a grand beam of light from the heavens. Ian also upped the storage to ten spells of each attribute by enchanting each mana stone.

Ian looked at the staff with satisfaction. Thankfully, the staff had come in a perfect shape, since he didn’t have the proper artisan skills. It was quite powerful, although not the most powerful thing he could make. He had limited the spells to once a month, and he hadn’t inscribed EX rank spells. Even with all the amazing enchantments, the thing that would probably surprise whomever found it the most, would be the fact that all the enchantments were fueled by ambient mana. That was something Ian had been extremely proud of while human. The staff didn’t have a specific name in its status, so he called it Staff of Heavenly Might.

Ian debated whether to place the staff in normal chests or make it the ultimate prize for the floor. After a while, he decided that the floor itself was the bigger challenge compared to the A- blink hobgoblin boss that was likely to be created. So, Ian placed ten treasures chests throughout the floor each with a Staff of Heavenly Might. He made sure to make them stone chests rather than normal wood chests. They would be harder to spot at the end of long corridors that way. All in all, between three and four hundred thousand DP was used along with a couple million mana. For what most would consider a legendary or mythical magic staff, it really wasn’t that much.

With treasures placed, Ian needed some more traps. He had done space and illusion traps, so now he needed light and strength. Light would be easy. For long stretches of corridor, Ian placed formations that constantly shot out beams of light which would cut someone in half instantly. Ian made sure to crisscross these beams, have them move up, down, left, and right constantly, and he also made them invisible. Was making every trap invisible cheap? Yeah, so what? He was trying to kill everyone on this floor. Ian placed ten stretches of beams and focused them along the route to the exit.

Hmm, what to do for strength. All Ian had used strength magic for was physical reinforcement. He never thought he would try to make a trap out of it. Could he do it? Things that tested strength like a ceiling that tried to squash intruders didn’t actually involve using strength magic. As Ian thought long and hard about the problem, he started to wonder if he could apply the SSS rank strength spell he cast on the staff to all creatures in a room. Which then brought his attention to the water elemental room he hadn’t created yet. Ian snorted as he thought about buff water elementals, and proceeded with the plan.

After he placed a large pond in the center, and filled the room with water elementals, Ian covered the entire room with inscriptions and enchantments. The water elementals seemed to shiver a little bit after he activated the room enchantment, but nothing beyond that happened. He needed to test this, so he created a simple adult goblin and made it fight with a single water elemental. As soon as he initiated the fight, the goblin fell over dead. Ian observed the goblin and a tiny hole went straight through its head. The goblin soon disappeared and the resulting mana was absorbed by the water elemental that was leisurely returning to its original spot. Ian was impressed by how well the inscription worked and how little the water elementals outwardly changed.

Happy with the strength trap, and not wanting to think on them anymore, Ian moved onto other traps. What other attributes would fit thematically? Technically, he could coat the entire floor in light magic, but making it easier to see wasn’t his top priority. In fact, he’d rather do the opposite. With darkness magic in hand, Ian started coating the walls, floors, and ceilings of every corridor and room on the floor. The process took him around five days as he had to meticulously make sure there were no gaps or slightly brighter spots. When all was said and done, it was a near impossibility for light to penetrate beyond two meters. It also blocked the night vision skill, so he would have to exempt the goblins from the darkness.

Three main traps, one trap room, and one pitch black floor were pretty good, but Ian wanted variety. Ian placed an advanced version of the water trap from the first floor. This new trap was under enough pressure that it would activate, kill the intruder, and deactivate before a single blink was finished. Ian purchased gates for a thousand DP and connected them to a flash formation. This flash formation would vaporize anything that was between the two gates as they slammed shut due to an intruder having stepped on the trigger formation. He placed earth spike traps, but their speed and hardness was unfathomable to most individuals. Intruder’s heads and then bodies would be eviscerated before they even noticed. Five of each of these were placed throughout the floor. Although, the earth spikes were more than five individual formations, and were instead placed in five clusters of multiple formations. Ian admitted he was basically reusing traps, but he wanted to save some variety for other floors with the appropriate terrain. Also, he had already gone somewhat overboard.

All that was left was filling the floor with creatures. However, besides the blink hobgoblins, he didn’t really have any creatures that could be considered strong or rare. Well, the clear web spiders might be considered rare, but they were weak, didn’t give extremely rare drops, and he already used them on the first floor.

The ten chests with the Staff of Heavenly Might wouldn’t entice people until they knew they were there. Until he got Yirvin to learn magic and evolve again, he wouldn’t have any magic casters to use the staff. Considering he had placed the treasure chests behind deadly traps, there were no advertisements for his cool staff at the beginning of the floor. The only thing left to entice intruders was either rare ingredients and creatures or money.

Most adventurers that reached and chose to challenge an EX rank floor already had plenty of gold, so Ian would have to make some rare creatures, namely useful plants. Of course, he would still provide money, but it wouldn’t be the big enticer. Also, it was nearly impossible to harvest monsters without killing them, and killing them would reduce them to drops, so Ian would have to make different biota. He had just learned how to make biota into monsters, so he definitely didn’t know how to make biota into completely different biota without turning them into monsters. It looked like he would have to experiment. Ian rubbed his pages together as he zoomed back into his core room.