On the G rank floor, as quickly as he could, Ian created the three other themed rooms for the floor. One room mirrored the water elemental room he created off of his core room, the second was filled with slimes, and the third was filled with jellies.

The water elemental room had a large pond in the center with small puddles throughout the room. Waterfalls streamed down the walls, becoming streams, and eventually leading into the center pond. The only other creatures that Ian placed in the room were the wet ferns he created for the swallow room.

Instead of the usual treasure chests, the hole puzzle would suffice as the treasure chest equivalent for the room. He placed a hole puzzle at the bottom of the pond, which asked the answerer to give two skill names that G rank water elementals had. The reward was coins, mana stones, and a basswood javelin with a single water shot enchantment. With the thrust of the spear, a jet of water would shoot out of the tip. The water shot enchantment was dangerous enough to harm another individual and wouldn’t normally be on a G rank floor if it wasn’t single use.

The water trap from the G- rank floor was revised to appear both on the walls and the floor, however it would only shoot from one side in such a large room.

Ian covered the ceiling and walls with glowing blue water droplets. He used water magic to create the water, time magic to prevent the water from being acted on by gravity, and light magic to make the water glow blue. Admittedly based on how the ceiling ferns in the G- rank fern room reacted to gravity, he first tried creating the water droplets without time magic. The floor was covered in shining, blue water soon after.

Next was the slime room. No massive adjustments to the normal cave structure were needed, so he placed G rank slimes in the room. Ian was still attracted to his hole puzzle, so decided to place one of those instead of teleporting treasures. He stuck with the questions pertaining to creature skill compositions, specifically for this room: slimes. The treasure itself was a good iron sword, but the enchantment coated the sword in a layer of slime. Technically it could still be used as a sword, but it would be extremely hard to hold onto. The enchantment was permanent as it used ambient mana to function. However, Ian made it so the slime would dissolve the iron sword, so it would only be usable for a week and disappear completely after two.

In regards to traps, the water trap was restructured to shoot slime instead of water. Sticking with slime, he used illusion magic to cover every surface of the room in slime. It didn’t have the acidity that monster slimes had and it glowed with light. He knew the reactions adventurers showed to slime most of the time, and he couldn’t wait.

The jelly room was similar to the slime room in that it only had jellies, but the more solid nature of jelly meant it would be harder to coat every surface with it. In lieu of covering every surface, Ian removed all the stalactites, stalagmites, and columns and created jelly versions using illusion magic. As always, he made these glow with light magic. The whole room jiggled with a clearish blue light.

The reward for the puzzle treasure was simply a chestnut wood sword, some money, and some mana stones. He couldn’t think of anything that would be a good fit for a G rank floor with his current setup and still be moderately useful. Something that could create jelly would be too useful, even though most people hated eating non-acidic jelly, and he felt that covering weapons in jelly was far more detrimental than covering them in slime.

The traps were revisions of the earth spike trap from the G- rank floor. They shot jelly spikes instead of earth spikes. As such, the speed at which they were shot was massively increased. However, just because these jelly spikes were shot fast didn’t mean they were going to impale anyone. Instead, they would simply give adventurers concussions.

With his three new rooms finished, Ian moved back to his spider and swallow rooms.

He filled the treasures chests in each room. The swallow room got an unenchanted white fir composite bow and a unenchanted sycamore tomahawk. The spider room got a parana halberd and a chest full of coins.

A hole puzzle also appeared on the rock in the center of the spider room. This puzzle asked specifically about the skill composition of the sub-boss in the room. The reward was a lot of mana stones. He made this as an additional reward for actually fighting, or at least discovering, the sub-boss, since it was possible to bypass it on the way to the actual boss room.

No traps were placed in the spider room, but Ian placed the water traps and the flash traps in the swallow room. If his swallows were blind, the intruders deserved to be blind too.

In regards to the lighting situation in each room, he created swallow nests made out of light in the swallow room, and covered every surface of the spider room with a toned down version of the dark magic he used on the EX rank floor. Thus, technically, it was more of a lighting situation and a darkness situation.

With the five themed rooms out of the way, Ian started populating the rest of the floor. He decided against creating all new monsters and placed G rank versions of creatures he could already create. The remaining rooms and corridors became very similar to the G- rank floor, but with a lower creature density and G rank creatures.

In the same manner as his creatures, he placed the same type of, but upgraded, traps throughout the floor. The illusion pitfalls shimmered a little less, the earth spikes were a little harder and dropped a little faster, the flash traps blinded for a little longer, and the water traps shot a little harder.

He had changed up the magic lights for the thematic rooms, but reverted back to his original lights for the rest of the floor. However, the lights weren’t exactly like the G- rank floor, instead he made them a little more detailed. Although, not as detailed as the vines in the entrance hall.

The entire process of filling up the rest of the floor took forty days. The fact that he had so many minor mistakes didn’t help. In fact the process took a lot longer than even the first time he had to fix his mistakes. It seemed splitting his focus definitely didn’t help. At the end of the forty days, the saddest part was the floor was still not done. Ian didn’t freak out yet, however, as the empty puzzle rooms, lack of puzzle doors, and two empty sub-boss rooms were his own choice. Now, if Magical Beauty still wasn’t met after he finished those….he might cry a little.

Ian spent a while debating with himself what to do with the puzzle rooms. He originally planned on having a multi-tiered question system, but he already implemented the question puzzle in the five thematic rooms. However, as he was about to dismiss his question idea and try to come up with something else, a good idea hit him. He quickly zoomed in on one of the pre-created puzzle rooms and began to create it.

The original multi-tiered system that Ian had in mind was simply multiple questions that the adventurers had to answer in order. Now, however, each subsequent questions would be tied to the previous question or questions. He created ten math questions that tied into one another starting with simple addition as the first question and basic algebra as the tenth question. As long as they got a single question right, they would get a prize, but if they got a question wrong, a trap would trigger and no prize would be obtained. He also made it so that the sequence of questions could only be answered once. As such, between each question the adventurers would be asked if they wished to continue answering or receive their prize. The activation condition was changed to placing both hands on a slab of rock in front of the question instead of sticking an appendage in a hole.

Most of the prizes were simply a tiered increase in mana stones and coins, however the fifth question gave an enchanted wood weapon with multiple uses between ten and one hundred, and the tenth question gave an enchanted iron weapon with multiple uses between ten and one hundred. Also, the enchantment was actually useful, not like the slime enchantment.

Ian didn’t want to have to personally randomize the puzzle prize, so he purchased the Treasure Randomization function. He hoped this function would work as the prize for answering or completing a puzzle was a treasure. When he applied the function to the treasure aspect of the puzzle in the puzzle room, it succeeded. Afterwards, he placed an assortment of enchanted treasures into the randomized treasure slot.

The trap for answering a question wrong was an electric shock emanating from the surface where both hands were placed. The degree of electric shock increased the more questions that were answered. A question ten shock could easily kill a lower level adventurer.

There were a total of eight preplanned puzzle rooms, and Ian split them into two addition, two subtraction, two multiplication, and two division rooms. The multiplication and division rooms had better enchantments and higher uses for those enchantments. That also meant the electric shock for answering wrong was much worse.

To illuminate the puzzle rooms, he created glowing numbers and mathematical symbols.

Time wise the puzzle rooms only took about two days, but the mana cost was incredibly high. Each room cost a total of one million five hundred thousand mana. Most of that cost came from the detailed puzzle creation. He wondered if the mana cost would have decreased if he had simply purchased a Puzzle Room and upgraded it with DP.

The next puzzle element that Ian created were his puzzle doors. He combined the door creation function, the locked doors function, and the puzzle function. At first he was unsure if he could tie the fact that the door was locked or not to the prize part of the puzzle function, but it worked out splendidly.

There would be locked doors on every entrance to the five themed rooms. That meant adventurers would have to unlock four mandatory doors on their way through the floor as the swallow room was the only one that could be bypassed.

Rather than a question puzzle like he had in the themed rooms and in the puzzle rooms, he created a sliding puzzle. Each sliding puzzle was a three by three with eight tiles and an empty space. The picture that was to be completed was of the most prominent creature in the room, so a water elemental, swallow, jelly, slime, or spider. For the spider picture, he just created a generic web spider. He shifted the tile positions of each puzzle door for the various entrances into the themed rooms, and made sure that each position was still solvable.

There were a couple rooms that could only be entered from the themed rooms. Ian considered if he should switch the puzzle side around, so the puzzle had to be completed inside the room, but left them as is. However, this left the problem of the doors being locked with no way to open them. He revised the locking system of the doors, so that they would only be locked from the side that the puzzle was on. They could now be opened from the other side. Once the adventurers returned to the themed room to continue on their way, they’d have to complete the puzzle to get back into the themed room. The puzzle doors would also stay unlocked for that specific instance once the puzzle was completed. Ian also made sure to purchase the puzzle respawn function to mitigate his personal respawning of puzzles.

However, these dead end rooms, which consisted of his puzzle rooms and his two sub-boss rooms, gave Ian an idea. They were special room types, so they needed puzzle doors the same as his themed rooms. As such, he installed puzzle doors to enter the puzzle rooms and the sub-boss rooms. He planned for the sub-boss rooms to also had sliding puzzles to unlock them, but the puzzle rooms had the most basic of math questions to open them, such as one plus one, two minus one, one times one, and one divided by one. There was no one minus one as he knew some had difficulty with the concept of zero. That would be introduced later. He didn’t create any doors with puzzles on both sides as each dead end had a short corridor between the puzzle or sub-boss room and the main corridor or room of the floor.

For the traps on the puzzle doors, Ian simply put none. The sliding puzzle or tile puzzle wasn’t one that could be failed unless the adventurer gave up, and if they gave up, the door would still be locked. Thus, the end result was the same as what he originally intended the consequence of failure to be. The puzzle room doors could have a trap associated with them, but he decided that the doors remaining locked would be a sufficient punishment. Ian made sure that all the puzzle doors had an infinite number of times that they could be answered.

The two sub-boss rooms were off of the jelly and slimes rooms, so Ian decided why not make jelly and slime sub-bosses. However, he was conflicted. He didn’t want to simply make a jelly and slime sub-boss that was larger and stronger than their G rank counterpart, but the same reason they could evolve into so many variations also meant the way he created his spider sub-boss wouldn't work with them. Unlike the scythe spider, there wasn’t anything that immediately stuck out to Ian as enhanceable. There was their slime and jelly along with their acidity which came from the nucleus, but he was never able to get a very good handle on how it worked. If he spent time with his zoom function, then he might be able to figure it out, but time was a wastin’.

The only thing that seemed usable was the nucleus or core, so Ian shrugged his covers and made another core inside a jelly. When he let the jelly go, the two cores coalesced into one. Afterwards nothing happened, and the jelly went about its normal business. He continued doing the same thing but added another core each time until he created a jelly with ten cores. However, once he let it go it acted like all the rest.

With a sigh Ian ordered them to fight one another to clean up his experiment room. What happened next was not what he expected, but made total sense. Instead of a free for all between nine jellies, it became a team based battle between fifty four jellies. At the end of the jelly slamfest, five remained and formed back together.

Ian ordered them to split and five jellies appeared. He chuckled to himself for the great sub-boss he created and for not catching the possibility immediately. However, he wasn’t mad as that was how things rolled sometimes. No matter how obvious something seemed afterwards, you couldn’t beat yourself up over not seeing it beforehand. That was a big part of experimentation.

A jelly and a slime were created with ten cores and pumped full of attributeless mana. The results were called Split Jelly and Split Slime each with a rank of F+. The rank was higher than he wanted for a G rank floor, but he’d just make sure to add a warning. There were no differences between the split jelly and the G rank jelly beyond the split jelly’s ability to split and their coordination. Each individual jelly was the equivalent of a G rank jelly, but as they were one individual rather than multiple, they could coordinate with one another unlike normal near mindless jellies.

Race:

Split Jelly

Rank:

F+

Attribute:

None

Development:

0/100

Titles:

None

Skills

Mana Perception

Absorption

Split

Description

A jelly with multiple cores allowing it to control multiple bodies at once. This evolution most often occurs in environments with an overabundance of jellies. Most researchers have little to no understanding as to why this occurs. Jellies can eat anything, so behavior that controls their numbers has continuously confused jelly researchers.

Common Item Drops

F+ mana heart

Jelly Core

To add a warning, he created the appropriate picture for the puzzle doors leading to the sub-boss rooms. In addition to the puzzle, he added a large F+ above the picture. Additionally, he added a F- on the puzzle door leading to the spider room. He considered changing the spider picture to the sub-boss, but most of the spiders in the room were ‘normal’, so he kept the generic web spider picture.

He placed stone treasure chests in the sub-boss rooms, purchased the locked treasure chest function, and tied unlocking the chests to defeating the sub-boss. A treasure chest was also placed in the spider room as there was also a sub-boss there. The treasure chests contained wood weapons with useful enchantments that could be used for a total of one hundred times or iron weapons with useful enchantments that could be used a total of ten times. The enchantment would disappear and could not be recharged the same as his original one use enchantments.

For the slime and jelly sub-boss rooms, he maintained the atmosphere that he created in the themed rooms. As such, the slime boss would have to be fought in a slime covered room, and the jelly boss would have to fought in a room full of jiggling, semi-transparent jelly.

Ian wiped the non-existent sweat drops off his pages and waited for it. However, it did not come. He brought up the window to make sure he didn’t forget something like biotic fungi, but it was all there. There was only one things not met….Magical Beauty. He cried a little.

The next ten days were spent shifting things around to make them look perfect before he got the ding-a-ling and could make his entrance room and boss room.

Before he continued on with the boss room and entrance room, Ian gave the floor another once over. Instead of focusing on the minor details, he looked at the overall composition. Afterwards, he only noticed one thing that was slightly off. He had placed phosphorescent mold on the floor, but none of it was in the largest rooms. Beyond that, the mold was the only useful, non-loot drop potion ingredient.

Should he introduce another potion ingredient or just have the mold? The other major potion ingredient he had was too powerful for a G rank floor. A weaker ingredient for mana potions might be good. He started scrolling through the dungeon shop looking for a good plant or fungi based on his knowledge. Eventually, he decided on pungent liverwort. This variant of liverwort produced a small amount of smell mana which produced a worse smell than most biological smells. It was useful for creating potions, but most couldn’t stand the smell and puked the potion up after drinking it. He couldn’t create too many things that preserved lives, so an ingredient that took effort to use and ingest was perfect.

The liverwort was placed throughout the floor the same as the mold. Small patches of both liverwort and mold were placed in the themed rooms, sub-boss rooms, and puzzle rooms. Each patch was usually only enough to make a couple of potions. Do to his meticulous placement of the mold and liverwort, Magical Beauty was still met after he was done.

Ian slapped his pages together to perk himself up for the final leg of the floor.

He transferred all the functions and the look for the entrance room, but recrafted the pillars to reflect the creatures for the new floor.

The boss room also had all its functions transferred. Ian was pleased with how easy it was and how little work he had to do, before he remembered all the different environments he needed to create for the new monsters he made. He seriously contemplated not allowing every monster on the floor to become a boss monster.

Another ten days went by as Ian created all the different boss environments. Most of the time went into the different spider variants even though they mainly consisted of webs. When he came to the sub-boss variations ranked E- and E+, he almost removed them for the weak adventurers. However, he realized to actually get them as bosses, the adventurers would have to not kill any other monster on the floor, which would be a feat unto itself. This also made Ian realize the possibility of someone not killing anything. He set it so the boss doors on each floor would remain shut and unopenable until at least one monster was killed.

Dungeon Level [3] → [4]

1 Cubic Kilometer Floor Space Gained.

Mana Generation Increased by 10,000

DP Generation Increased by 1

Ian sagged against his pedestal and muttered, “Finally.”

He only had thirty days left until he opened to the world, and needed to make more floors, but making the G rank was exhausting. He still enjoyed making it, but the meticulous detail he had to go into for Magical Beauty was not something that he was used to. Sure, knowing that his dungeon was beautiful down to the small details filled him with a sense of accomplishment, but it wasn’t something that he had done while human. Either this was a part of his nature that he was unaware of while human, or maybe his lights weren’t magical enough and the system was compensating by making sure every tiny detail was beautiful. If it was the latter, he would have to deal with the meticulous detail for now because the magic he considered truly beautiful would overwhelm most young adventurers.

Ian needed a break, so he shifted his focus back to the goblins and hobgoblin. He hadn’t talked to them for almost two months, so he wondered how they were doing. It wasn’t like he hadn’t kept an eye on them as he wanted to see if they had reached their full development. In fact all five goblins had reached full development about ten days ago, but he wanted to wait and talk to them about it first. Even though he waited for the sapient goblins in the learning room, he didn’t wait for the goblins living on the maze floor.

Some goblins on the maze floor had reached their full development becoming E- rank goblins for the most part, while one goblin became a goblin thief. It seemed that goblin liked to steal the loincloths of the other goblins. The goblins weren’t the only creatures to reach full development as the monsters he created near the beginning of becoming a dungeon had reached F- rank at the lowest. The slimes, jellies, and elementals had reached E- rank. Unlike the time where he studied goblins for around five months, there were no new evolution variants, beyond the goblin thief, they simply became stronger versions of what they already were.

Ian wondered what to do with the monsters that evolved on his floors. Having higher rank monsters disturbed their balance. He could move them like he did with the fern in his first few days as a dungeon, but where would he put them?

He had contemplated the problem for a while before simply deciding to place them in a large open room he created from his deep cave terrain. The amount of monsters that no longer fit the floor they were on barely made a dent in the space of the room. His vision shifted between the room and his core room before he started to fill the nearly empty room with all variations of his monsters. He hoped that the monsters that evolved in this room didn’t become sapient or kind like the ones he raised in his core room. His creatures would die when fighting intruders, so he only wanted a certain percentage of his dungeon creatures to give him large feelings of empathy.

Ian moved his vision back to his sapient monsters, who were all currently in the learning room. Four of the goblins were in the classroom learning lectures. Yervin was in the gym practicing what he learned along with Narcy who was sleeping on the floor. Ian was unsure if she had already completed and understood all the lectures and was now implementing them or if she simply found the gym floor better to sleep on.

“Hello, everyone,” greeted Ian, “I’ve finished the G rank floor. How are you doing?”

“Good,” responded five of them, while the last responded with a snore.

“You all seem busy, so I’ll leave you to it for now. But, when you’re done, I’m ready to make your private rooms and furnish them.”

Yervin gave a nod. Narcy gave a snore. Botan and Pugi didn’t respond at all. Mina and Izu looked in Ian’s direction, nodded with a smile on their faces, and seemed to lose focus on the lecture.

Right before he left he also added, “Also, the five goblins are ready to rank up.”

Unlike the somewhat lackluster response to private room announcement, four of the five goblins started sprinting out of the learning room.

However, before they could leave, Ian ordered them, “We’ll do your rank ups after you finish your current lectures and get Yervin and Narcy to come with you.”

The four goblins came to a sudden stop before walking back to their desks with heads down and arms hanging at their sides.

Ian chuckled and left them to their devices. Once his vision rested back in his core room, he turned his attention away from from dungeon, but kept some focus on the most important things and the goblins who were learning as fast as they could. He needed to get some mental rest. It looked like while dungeons had nowhere near the buildup of mental fatigue as the sapient races, it didn’t seem that they had none. His thinking for three hundred and seventy days straight had finally caught up to him. Now that he knew he could get mental fatigue as a dungeon, he would have to make sure to take breaks from now on.

He chuckled to himself as he realized if he came into his clinic with the amount of mental fatigue he had, he would have chewed himself out for a couple of days while making sure he got rest in between. With that thought in mind, Ian got as close as he could to sleep as a dungeon was able to.