With the spider room done; it didn’t need traps, and Ian would decide what to fill the treasure chests with later; he needed to decide on the rest of the creatures for the floor. The same as the first floor, he wanted variety in both new creature evolutions and types of creatures. The new spiders he created met the evolution requirement, but they were still the same creature even if some could shoot lightning and some could create illusionary duplicates of themselves. Also, not every adventurer was going to be happy with just new spiders. If a few tamers he knew ever entered his dungeon, they would pass out near instantly. Sometimes being protected by strong tamed monsters caused tamers to be slightly negligent to danger.

Of the creatures Ian chose during the tutorial and when selecting his deep cave terrain, he only had two that he hadn’t touched: the blind swallow and the newborn albino bat. Why had he chosen two creatures, one biota and one monster, that had such a niche overlap? Well, for one, he couldn’t choose cave swallows as those were shallow cave system biota, and two, he could create themed floors. Sadly, the themed floor wouldn’t be this floor as the adult bat was sure to be too high a rank. As such, he did what he did with all the other creatures and created some newborn albino bats, blind swallow eggs, blind swallow babies, blind swallow adolescents, and blind swallow adults in his core room. With that, he had created all the creatures in his possession, although he could easily earn ten more by selecting his two remaining terrain choices and purchase more in the dungeon shop at anytime.

Race:

Newborn Albino Bat

Rank:

G-

Gender:

Female

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Titles:

None

Skills

Grip Strength

Echolocation

Description

A newborn albino bat monster. With their full lifecycle occurring in caves, these bat monsters have lost all pigmentation. The albino bat groups together in large colonies inside large caverns. They primarily subsist on insects, but as they are monsters, they will still attack sapient races on sight. The newborn albino bat will hang onto its mother for six to ten weeks before learning how to fly.

Common Item Drops

G- mana heart

Wing Membrane

Before he got to creature placement throughout the floor, Ian decided to finish off the creature themed rooms. On the first floor he had four rooms in total: spiders, ferns, moss, and mushrooms. He also technically had a water elemental themed room on the EX rank maze floor. He contemplated if the short gauntlet of small rooms with only a couple slimes and jellies counted, but decided not to count them, as they didn’t come close to the number of creatures in his other themed rooms. Blind cave swallows and water elementals were going to appear first on this floor, so he wanted to create rooms dedicated to them. The water elemental room would be a repeat, but he hoped adventurers that reached the maze floor would be few and far between. Besides, physically strong water elementals weren’t exactly normal.

The swallows needed a room with a tall ceiling, so Ian chose the large circular room in the third quarter of the floor from the entrance. He changed the shape of the room by adding nooks and crannies for the swallows to nest and rest.

To help their echolocation, Ian reduced the presence of stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. Most of the room was empty besides a few boulders sitting here and there on the floor to give the room a bit of atmosphere.

Ian created a mana heart inside the adult blind cave swallow and created its basic nature attribute monster version: a G- rank Blind Cave Swallow. The monster version was the length of a human forearm tall, with much sharper talons and a much sharper beak. It should be noted that even though their beak and talons became sharper and larger with monsterization, they were still swallow sized and thus not a great danger. At G rank not much changed besides an increase in its skills: Pierce and Dive. Pierce created larger puncture wounds than its talons and beak would normally create. Dive increased the speed and power of its ability to divebomb opponents.

Race:

Blind Cave Swallow

Rank:

G

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Titles:

Biotic Born

Skills

Flight

Pierce

Dive

Description

Blind cave swallows are monsters that have spent such a long time in deep cave systems that their eyes have lost their use, and have thus been lost. The development of echolocation in these birds occurred separately from their mammalian counterparts, bats. These monsters only occur in deep cave systems with large enough caverns for them to forage and fly around. As they are naturally flying monsters, their Flight skill is much higher than a normal G rank monster.

Common Item Drops

G mana heart

Swallow Feathers

The monster swallows retained the same shape and color as their biotic counterparts. Their feathers were completely absent of pigment, their eyes had become vestigial organs, and they still chirped, called, and sang.

As Ian was deciding how many monster swallows and normal swallows to put in the room, he had a moment of regret. The swallows needed to fly, so they needed a lot more room, and the spider room was much larger than his currently selected swallow room. However, he wasn’t going to go back on his decision. The swallows would have to deal with a smaller room, although still quite big.

Usually Ian would go back to what he was doing immediately, but instead he kept staring at the room with his mind ticking away. It took several minutes before it finally clicked in his mind. The resulting thought made Ian place his spine in his pages, and if he could blush, he would have.

So what if he already outlined the floor, it was his floor, he could change it at anytime. He had ignored that ability on the first floor and the maze floor too. After he finished the layout on the first floor, he never changed anything besides the insides of the rooms and corridors. With the maze room, he originally intended to create a loop and had failed in doing so. Rather than erase what he made and try again, he simply went with his failed loop maze and created the checkpoints in response. Although, he was kind of glad he failed at making a loop because he really liked those checkpoints. It seemed his ability to comprehend he could change things did not go hand in hand with his ability to comprehend he could create things.

Ian was glad he had not invited the plant loving goblin to help him with plant and fungi evolutions yet. If he had, then he would have had to hide from him and the sleepy goblin too.

With change in mind, Ian erased the short pathways that led to and from the two main corridors, rectangle room, and another side corridor. The erasure of these corridors freed up space between the two main corridors. More space allowed Ian to expand the circular room to a slightly deformed oval room larger in size than the spider room and nestled between the two main corridors. Instead of multiple paths leading to and from the circle room, the deformed oval room had two paths: one to the rectangle room and one to a side pathway. He repeated all the previous changes he made until he was back to contemplating how many swallows to put into the room.

After his contemplation, Ian decided to not place any normal swallows in the room. It was true he had just increased the space of the room and had placed normal and monster versions in all his previous themed rooms, but even with the increased space, two colonies of swallows didn’t seem like they would fit to him. Enough swallows were placed to fill half the nooks and crannies. He ordered them to go about their business, and they left their nests and flew around the room in shifts. If they flew around all at once, the air would be filled with too many swallows. As a result, they would crash into each other even with their echolocation.

The spider room only had spiders and trees, but all the webs still made the room seem full. With only swallows, the swallow room seemed lacking. Thus, even though they wouldn’t actually be eating or drinking anything, Ian wanted to create a swallow like environment. To do so he needed water and insects, specifically flying insects.

With those in mind, Ian selected deep cave again for his terrain and prepared to select five cave insects. However, all he received was an additional cubic kilometer of deep cave terrain. He waited for a couple minutes to see if the selection screen would appear, but nothing happened. Well, that certainly sucked for him. He supposed it made sense though. If he could get five creatures for the same terrain every time he chose it, the he would get five creatures every level and that would make the creature choice at every tenth level obsolete.

Ian shrugged off his disappointment, but needed to decide what terrain to choose for his remaining cubic kilometer. He could choose the shallow cave terrain, but only if he was being a stickler about having only cave species in the cave terrain. However, his creatures survived off of mana and thus could live in any terrain, although the Ecosystem perk might allow him to change that in the future. With the ability to live in any terrain, choosing the terrain with the most flying insects made sense. As such, he chose the swamp terrain.

Mosquito Egg, Swamp Fly Egg, Translucent Blue Dragonfly Egg, Skylit Butterfly Egg, and Screeching Cicada Larvae [G-] have been chosen.

After he made his choice, Ian didn’t immediately start creating his creatures. Something had been bugging him about the swamp terrain. When he had first observed the mountain, he noticed that the swamp was filled with dark mana. However, his terrain choice wasn’t dark swamp but just swamp. Also, there were no creatures for him to choose from that would be associated with a dark mana swamp. With these questions in mind, he created a section of swamp terrain.

What he created was only five meters high, ten meters wide, and ten meters long. Ian chuckled at the fake sky present on the five meter tall ceiling. He was pretty sure he’d never seen such a low fake ceiling. All the ones he’d seen were ones he had to fly up to.

After a bit of amusement, he focused back on the question at hand. A quick analysis of the swamp showed him that it was a completely normal swamp. He created another section of swamp while focusing his mind on all the characteristics of a swamp suffuse with dark mana, but he also made sure to not actually inject the dark mana himself. All that resulted was another patch of normal swamp. It seemed that the outside swamp containing dark mana wasn’t a natural state. With his immediate question answered, Ian erased the swamp terrain, shrugged his covers, and decided to get back to work. Any investigations he wanted to do in the swamp would have to wait until Ian got his avatar.

As he went back to his floor creation, Ian had an idea and created a small patch of swamp and injected dark mana into the terrain itself. He was able to replicated the look and feel of the outside swamp, but the mana cost was far greater than he imagined. As he was about to erase the small section of dark swamp, a window appeared before him.

New Terrain ‘Dark Swamp’ Acquired.

To use this terrain please select it for your next cubic kilometer of dungeon area.

Ian stared at the window, and if he had a face, it would have a massive grin on it. Ideas for terrain began to rush through his head, but he quickly shook the thoughts away. A way to create new terrain was quite interesting, but for now he would focus on creating his floor. After the small patch of dark swamp was erased, most of the mana used to create it was returned to him.

Ian created and developed the four biota, and he even evolved the screeching cicada larvae once to get a G rank Screeching Cicada. He did this in his core room like the others as there were no experiments involved.

The mosquito was basically a demon from the Depths. Well, the only way it was similar to a demon from the Depths was in how annoying it was, but Ian felt that some hyperbole was needed from time to time. They resembled vampires with their blood sucking, and not the kind of vampires that needed to suck blood to survive but the assholes who sucked blood for enjoyment. True, blood provided nutrition to a female mosquito’s offspring, but it could get that nutrition from nectar and plant juices instead. Worst of all these two winged, long legged, compound eyed, with a proboscis flies were carriers of disease.

Race:

Mosquito

Gender:

Female

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

A species of fly. The female gender of this species primarily relies on blood to supply nutrients to their eggs. A mosquito’s saliva can produce an irritating rash on the victim of their blood sucking. As a result of sucking the blood of many different individuals and species, these insects can carry disease to a large population quite easily.

The swamp fly looked like a common housefly: six legs, two wings, compound eyes, and a black body. What set it apart, from the common housefly, was the fact that it reproduced like a botfly. It was a parasite that layed it eggs on mammals or other insects that associate with mammals. The swamp fly’s eggs sense the body heat of the mammal, inducing hatching of the larvae which in turn burrow into the skin of the host. The larvae will age and eventually be shit out where they develop into adults inside the feces. Ian noted that as long as he didn’t allow them to reproduce, there wouldn’t be any infested adventurers. However, he would never discount the possibility of a swamp ecosystem floor.

Race:

Swamp Fly

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

Swamp flies, as their name shows, reside in swamps. Beyond their parasitic nature, they pose no more danger than the common housefly, which they physically resemble. A quick glance at a swamp fly and a house fly wouldn’t be able to pinpoint any physical differences between the two insects. However, the most distinctive difference between the two is the wing shape. A house fly’s wings are wider and shorter than a swamp fly’s wings. A swamp fly’s wings are fifty percent longer and fifty percent thinner than the house fly’s wings.

Why did he choose two such obviously disgusting insects? Because even though he was trying to create a small difficulty incline, he was still a dungeon and dungeons need to have things that freak invaders out. At least, that was Ian’s opinion.

The translucent blue dragonfly was like blue glass, but unlike his clear web spiders, the dragonfly’s organs could still be seen. The head was dominated by two large compound eyes with two small antennae sprouting from the top. Two pairs of wings that rested perpendicular to its body, along with its six legs, sprouted from the thorax. Finally, the abdomen was the majority of the dragonfly’s length but did not reach the width of its thorax. At around five inches long, with a wingspan of six inches, the translucent blue dragonfly was of an average size.

For the creation of monsters, Ian saw the dragonfly as a large source of variety. Beyond creating monsters from the adult dragonflies, the larval stage, or the nymph stage, was adultlike in nature. The main difference between the nymph stage and the adult stage was the presence of wings, so a monster created from the nymph stage wouldn’t act like the newborns of most other creatures.

Race:

Translucent Blue Dragonfly

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

The translucent blue dragonfly is a predator in both its nymph stage and adult stage. In fact, it is possible for a dragonfly to spend several years in the nymph stage and only a couple of weeks in the adult stage. An adult dragonfly has great vision and flight movement, able to make extremely sharp turns on a copper.

The skylit butterfly glowed in the moonlight and sparkled like the stars in the night sky. The sparkles were present on both sides of the butterfly’s wings. As such it was a nocturnal creature that flew between plants finding nectar. Ian had no problem with the proboscises of butterflies.

Race:

Skylit Butterfly

Gender:

Female

Attribute:

Sky

Development:

0/100

Description

A butterfly that has adapted to its nocturnal environment. The skylit caterpillar, the larval stage of the skylit butterfly, is also nocturnal. The greatest oddity of the skylit butterfly is its innate attribute: sky. Not only is it not the nature attribute like most biota, it is also a rare and conceptual attribute. This sky attribute is what allows the butterfly to mimic the night sky rather than a biological evolution.

When he selected the screeching cicada larvae, Ian was hopeful that it would become an adult with a single evolution. His hope was met with results. The screeching cicada was different compared to the other monsters that shared similarities with biotic creatures. Physically there was no change as the screeching cicada looked like a normal cicada with a short, fat body, eyes that didn’t take up much of its head, and wings that touched tips a fair distance away from the butt of the cicada. The difference was in how the sound produced by their tymbals affected others. Rather than being annoying to some or a symbol of peace and tranquility to others, the sound produced a mental pain in the listener. The skill involved was called Screech.

Race:

Screeching Cicada

Rank:

G

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Titles:

None

Skills

Flight

Screech

Description

An insect monster that relies not on its physical skills to harm an enemy, but on the sounds it makes to harm them mentally. Its natural ability to fly creates a higher than normal flight skill. The screech skill is normally associated with monsters that use their vocal chords to mentally attack their enemies. While the screeching cicada doesn’t have vocal chords, the use of its tymbals to produce the sound is enough to gain the skill.

Common Item Drops

G Mana Heart

Cicada Wings

Ian placed a golden apple tree in the center of the room for the cicadas to rest on. He elevated the ground the tree grew on and created a moat around the tree. Seven small waterfalls appeared on the walls of the room between the swallows’ nooks and crannies. Six of the seven waterfall flowed into three small ponds that surrounded the moat a fair distance away. The last waterfall flowed directly into the moat. The three ponds themselves also flowed into the moat.

Ian did the same treasure trick he did in the spider room with seven spots and two treasures. However, those weren’t the only treasures in the room. The centralized apple tree with the moat surrounding it and cicadas screeching gave him an idea.

For the first time Ian used his puzzle function.

Please describe the puzzle you wish to make.

“A simple question puzzle. The question itself will be inscribed into the tree surface. Below the question will be a hole, the question will only activate once the answerer has placed an appendage into the hole. If the question is answered correctly, the treasure will drop into the hole. If the question is answered incorrectly, then the trap will be released into the hole,” rattled off Ian.

Hole Activated Question Puzzle Created.

A hole appeared in the trunk of the tree.

What question shall be used for the puzzle?

“What is the skill screeching cicadas use to cause mental damage to their opponents called?”

Please select a reward.

“One brass coin and one F rank nature mana stone.”

Please select a punishment.

“A swarm of mosquitoes.”

How many times may the question be answered?

“Once.”

After Ian answered the last question, the question appeared on the trunk of the tree. He was about to call one of the two goblins not training to come test it, but stopped himself. After a quick shake of his book body, he created a goblin in which he inhabited.

Ian stuck his hand into the hole and answered, “Screech.”

Nothing happened. He tried checking the settings for the puzzle and found out what was wrong. The friendly fire setting was off, so he set that to on.

He stuck his hand back inside and said, “Screech.”

A brass coin and an F rank mana stone fell into his hand. Ian prepared to stick his hand back into the hole, but the puzzle hadn’t reset. He nodded to himself and let the goblin disappear. As soon as the goblin disappeared, the puzzle reset. He created himself a new goblin body and prepared to answer wrong.

In his new goblin body, Ian placed his hand back in the hole and said, “I bet your roots are shallow too.”

Suddenly his hand was in immense pain, but Ian slowly removed it from the hole. It was covered in buzzing mosquitoes all sucking his blood. He observed the process as the mosquitoes started to bulge with blood. Soon they had their fill and buzzed off. His body felt much weaker, like he had anemia, but he wasn’t under threat of imminent death. If this was what they did to an F+ rank goblin, then it should be an appropriate punishment for a G rank floor. Even the smaller sapient races had much better constitutions than goblins, so the anemic effect wouldn’t be as pronounced.

The room reset after Ian’s goblin died and, with it, the trap mosquitoes also disappeared. Next, the room was filled with insects. He only placed ten screeching cicadas on the tree. The tiny nature of the other insects allowed the room to be filled with them. Ian was pleased with the progress of the room, but it was still missing plants.

He could just go with the plants and fungi that he already had, but the beginning of his dungeon had to have variety. However, as much as Ian enjoyed evolving monsters and as much as he knew about plants and fungi, the problem was he found them boring. He had studied them to fill out his repertoire, but it was the most arduous part of his studies. There were plants that he found interesting, like the flame tongued flasterby catcher, but his like for them generally had very little to do with any of their plant characteristics. The problems that this created, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, was if he didn’t enjoy something, he suffered from a lack of creativity. That was where the male goblin came in. His love of plants, and Ian’s knowledge of plants would hopefully result in more interesting plants and plant monsters.

Ian zoomed his vision back to the core room where the male goblin was letting the constrictions ferns grab his fingers. The sleepy goblin was next to him watching with a smile on her face.

Ian greeted them, “Hello.”

Without so much as a twitch, the two greeted him back, “Hello, Ian.”

“I was wondering if you….”

They were sitting right next to each other, so it was hard for him to say ‘you’ and expect them to know who he was talking about. They needed names.

“Actually,” Ian began, “How about I give you names?”

The two looked in the direction Ian’s voice was coming from and then at each other.

The male goblin responded, “We’d like that. Not having names makes it a little hard to refer to each other.”

“Alright then. Let me think about it for a bit. I don’t want to give you bad names.”

They both nodded and let Ian contemplate their names for about an hour. Ian returned from his internal debate session and found the female goblin sleeping and the male goblin almost completely covered in fern leaves.

“I’m back with names in hand,” announced Ian.

The male goblin tapped the leaves surrounding him which slowly unfurled. It took a couple of minutes for the goblin to be completely free of leaves.

“What are they?” asked the goblin.

“Your name will be Botan, while her name will be Narcy.”

Botan put his finger to his head before nodding a short while later, “I like it. However, you’ll have to tell Narcy her name later.”

“I can’t just wake her up?”

“You can try.”

Ian considered trying to wake the female goblin up, but he didn’t need her right now and he could tell Narcy her name later.

Botan interrupted Ian’s thoughts, “So, does this mean we all have names now?”

Ian twitched at the question before answering, “No….I haven’t named the other female goblin.”

“Why?”

“She’s training.”

“Couldn’t you just interrupt her while she’s training? It would only take a second.”

“....”

“Did she do something wrong?” asked Botan with a hint of sadness in his voice.

“No, not at all. Rather it’s the other way around. I got carried away and did something that made Yervin, Mina, Izu, and the other female goblin a little afraid of me. I’m being a little bitch right now and avoiding talking it out with them.”

Botan just scratched his head and looked confused.

Ian continued, “Considering you’re not that old, you probably don’t get what I’m talking about very well, but I’m glad I talked to you. I’m going to go apologize and talk to them about what happened. Thanks for listening, Botan.”

“You’re welcome?” Botan responded.

“Now, do you want to come to the new floor and help me figure out new plants to use?”

“Yes!” yelled Botan as he jumped to his feet, “But, weren’t you going to talk to those training?”

“I am. I can split my mind. Remember?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Really? I could have sworn I told you guys that,” Ian shrugged his covers. “Do you want me to transfer you to the floor with magic or make a formation to do it?”

“What’s the difference?” asked Botan.

“One is a single time use, while the other is multi use. However, I plan on erasing the formation after you use it, so it’s single use this time.”

“Either then.”

With Botan’s permission, Ian used transfer magic and transferred him to the swallow room. Ian almost freaked out when he remembered right after he transferred Botan that the friendly fire function of the puzzle was still turned on. He quickly deactivated it before Botan accidently stuck his hand in there.

Before Ian could even tell him what he wanted to do, Botan asked him a question, “Can you create each of the plants, so I can look at them? Please, Ian!”

Botan’s reactions to plants was beyond Ian’s initial expectations. When he had said he liked plants in the training room, he didn’t think it was an obsession. Were….were they becoming like he was with dungeons and creatures? He certainly hoped not, he knew how much a pain his obsession was to deal with.

“Alright,” answered Ian, “But, a bare room would be better than this room full of water and insects.”

Botan seemed to consider Ian’s proposal before nodding.

“Where to?” he asked.

“The experi-....the creation room.”

Ian stalled for time as he quickly created a bare room to the left of his dungeon staircase. This would be called the creation room unlike the equally bare room called the experiment room to the right of the dungeon staircase. Were they objectively the same? Yes. However, now Ian didn’t have to worry about telling his dungeon creatures he was transferring them to his experiment room.

Botan appeared in the creation room where Ian started to create each plant and fungus available to him. He created each life stage for the biota and each rank for the monsters.

“Can I go play with them?” Botan asked.

“Of cour-, WAIT!” Ian yelled.

Botan had already started running towards the plants before Ian even gave his go ahead. At Ian’s yell, Botan stopped as fast as he could resulting in him face planting into the ground.

Botan raised his face with a bloody nose and asked, “What’s the matter, Ian?”

“First, don’t rush off before receiving an answer, and second, I keep forgetting that even though I don’t allow dungeon creatures to actively kill each other, that doesn’t mean they can’t passively kill each other. Look at the plants I placed next to the death saffron and the flame tongued flasterby catcher. They’re decaying and melting respectively. If you had run off and touched them, that would be you right now.

“It’s partially my fault for forgetting, so I’m sorry about that. However, you need to learn some self preservation Botan.”

Botan looked down and apologized, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you’re sorry, but remember the most important part of an apology is not saying your sorry, but no longer doing what you apologized for.”

With a raised head, Botan nodded in the direction of Ian’s voice.

“Now,” Ian continued, “let’s make some preventative measures. I’ll add you to the Respawn Room like I did with those training just in case the worst case happens. However, if you don’t want to feel terrible pain and die a horrendous death, don’t touch the death saffron or the flame tongued flasterby catcher.

“I’ll also separate the two dangerous ones across the room, so you can play with the rest. I’ll heal your nose and we can get to work.”

For the next half a day, Botan played with the plants and fungi while periodically staring at the two dangerous plants from a distance. Ian rested the part of his mind that was watching Botan. He felt more mentally exhausted talking to Botan than he had talking to Yervin, Mina, Izu, or the other female goblin. The length of his talk with Botan combined with not feeling as close to him probably contributed. As a dungeon one thing he was thankful for was his throat didn’t hurt after talking for a long time. Although, his throat hurting had been his own fault for not talking days at a time.

Ian continued to watch Botan, and had to stop him from eating the red cap mushrooms a few hours in.

Eventually Botan called out to him, “So, Ian, umm, what did you actually want me to do?”

Ian chuckled, “Do you remember that room we were in before?”

“No.”

“....Fine, let’s go back to that room first.”

They transferred to the swallow room.

“Take a look around the room, Botan. What kind of plants do you think would fit here?” Ian continued.

Botan walked around the room taking it in before answering, “I don’t know.”

“....What kind of plants do you think would be cool here?”

Botan’s mind went ticking away, before Ian saw an imaginary light spell appear above his head, “Oh! The constriction ferns like reaching out and grabbing things, so what if they could grab the water and throw it?”

Ian liked his idea, but how would he implement it? He returned Botan to the core room for a short while. Ian in turn would experiment with ferns and water.

Rather than nature mana, Ian infused the green cave fern with water mana.

Race:

Wet Fern

Rank:

G-

Attribute:

Water

Development:

0/100

Titles:

Biotic Born

Skills

Spore Creation

Water Creation

Water Shot

Description

An aquatic fern monster. They live in wetlands and in the shallows of lakes and rivers. Ferns or fern monsters that survive long periods of time being submerged in water evolve into this monster. Although its natural habitat is being submerged in fresh water, it can survive and is more effective in combat outside of water.

Common Item Drops

G- Mana Heart

Water

Ian was surprised at how successful and easy his experiment was. He expected to only receive a monster that could create water with the purpose of slowly drowning people to death. With the skill to shoot water, it would be a much more effective monster. It wasn’t exactly what Botan had suggested, but it was close. He evolved them one more rank and began placing them in the swallow room. They primarily were placed on the bottom of the ponds and moat with a couple on the edges of the streams leading from the waterfalls into the ponds and moat. Although he placed them in a much lower density compared to the first floor, Ian still placed constriction ferns and normal ferns in the swallow room.

With the ferns planted, Ian invited Botan back into the room to let him see the progress and get some more ideas from him. Botan’s eyes scanned the room and immediately locked onto the new plant.

He started to sprint over to the new plant before he stopped and asked, “Is it safe for me to touch, Ian?”

“Yes, you can touch it Botan.”

With Ian’s permission, the adult, but still young in Ian’s eyes, goblin rushed over to the wet fern.

After a couple minutes of examining the new fern, Botan turned in Ian’s direction and asked, “Can it grab water?”

“No, but it can shoot water.”

“Different, but still cool,” said Botan with a thumb raised in Ian’s direction.

After giving him a couple more minutes to enjoy the wet fern, Ian asked, “Anymore cool plant ideas?”

Botan stood up from a crouched position, crossed his arms, and began observing the room. It took about an hour before his muttering and head nodding in both directions stopped.

“Bug catchers. I don’t like these flying bugs, they’re annoying,” Botan finally answered.

“....It took you an hour to come up with that?” Ian sighed.

Botan scoffed, “Of course not. I have tons of ideas, but that’s the best one for this room.”

Ian didn’t say it out loud, but he felt that he could have come up with that one himself.

“Thanks for the help, Botan. I’ll transfer you back to the core room now. When I need to make more plants and fungi, I’ll ask for you help again.”

“You’re welcome, Ian. Thanks for letting me help! See you later.”

With Botan back in the core room, Ian purchased a Ehla Flytrap.

Race:

Ehla Flytrap

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

A carnivorous plant that subsists on insects and arachnids. Creatures that crawl across its open maw trigger the closing of the maw and the trapping of their body. Their body is slowly absorbed by the Ehla Flytrap for nutrients. It primarily lives in wetlands.

Since the room was supposed to be the swallow room, Ian decided against making a monster version at the moment. The wet fern was okay since most of them were at the bottom of the ponds and moat.

The Ehla flytrap was placed periodically throughout the floor of the Floor along with half of the remaining nooks and crannies. Pleased with the room, Ian was ready to move on. The traps, his magic, and the treasures could wait to be the finishing touches. With two enormous rooms finished, Ian was still on track for the floor to be the quickest floor yet. ….Although, he wasn’t sure how much he still believed his own words.