After settling things I went to the new first floor the ants have just created. When I reach there I see a sprawling cavern 20 meters in some places and shorter in others without any lighting it's hard to see visually but with my dungeon sense, I can “see” that it will make a splendid first floor. With the digging out of the way I can move on to populating the caverns with life, First I start with the lowest on the food chain, moss. This moss glows slightly in the dark and grows in next to no light, using mana as a substitute, a perfect start to the food web I’m going to create. Selenia has told me that most dungeons summon, create or lure the creatures used to defend the floors, but I don't want to do something so bothersome as that. I am a dungeon with almost godlike powers if I don’t use them to automate some things and instead did everything manually I would be retarded and a waste of mana.

After adding the moss I started on the insects most of which are harmless, they just fill the gap between the smaller animals and the moss in the ecosystem. These insects I’ve already absorbed before from my beginnings as a dungeon so I can re-create them with one of the advantages of a self-created organism is they are created with enough miasma to be instantly controllable by me which usually takes time for larger creatures and is impossible with the stronger verities of monsters. Now with the insects out of the way I need things to eat them too so I added some frogs and a few birds and added trees, vines and other assortments of plants to populate the cavern floor making it seems full of life, feeling as if something is missing I notice that there is virtually no light here so I add the same glow-stones I used in the ant farming area to brighten it up. It's not as bright as daylight but I think the gloomy atmosphere adds to the aesthetics of the jungle like cavern. Now the small animals can reproduce rapidly in the mana-rich environment. Finished with the small creatures I can now start to work on the larger ones that make my dungeon just the right amount of dangerous.

I have several creatures that I can create from the Earthmails I have received until now, but most of them that I have experimented with are either too big too deadly or just plain wrong for a jungle environment to use. The ants have gone on several expeditions outside, something I have to put a stop to now adventurers are coming. The ants found several species of animal and monsters and brought some of them back from the valley below some of which I’m impressed they managed to kill let alone hike up a quarter of a mountain. One such animal was an over-sized black panther, truly a beautiful creature, even if your sense of beauty does not stem from how deadly something is. Nearly 1.5 meters tall on all fours with fur as dark as night, in the dark the only part of this creature you would see is its eyes if your lucky enough to get a glimpse of it before you are mauled to death by it. Despite its size, it moves with speed and fluidity on its large paws the claws of which are retracted until the moment 4-inch long razor blades become useful to mangling something it finds unpleasant.

Originally I planned to make my own creature to be the main monster on the first floor but this thing is awesome, it requires no modifications to be dangerous. I’ve already killed the original so I can make more of them but too many would make it impossible to have anyone survive here, which would not be good for what I am planning. So I have to make sure to keep their numbers low, So I lowered their fertility then made some fast deer species that breed rather rapidly for their source of food.

Now with the main predators on the first floor complete, I need to make a boss “apparently” to give access to the second floor and so on. The thought of just making a giant version of the panther crossed my mind but I don't think an ambush predator really suits a first boss. After looking through the various animals that I can spawn and find nothing that particularly stands out, I decided to simply use a modified boar. Making the boar larger more muscled with thicker fur and a hardened skull then elongating and sharpening the tusks to a razor edge, then widening the hooves to give better traction in the muddy terrain of the jungle. After carving the wall to make a cave for the boar king and linking the back of the cave to the ants maze as a pseudo second floor for the moment, all that is left to do is to distribute rewards around the area of the dungeon for the mages to deem me at the adolescent stage at least.

After thinking about it for some time I decided on what kind people I want living near the dungeon, which is mostly workers and the professions that sustain them because miners and such will enter my mine in large numbers if it is safe enough with escorts of a few competent adventurers. No-one will really care if one or two of them go missing by cat related causes so I can even make some profit too, I just have to balance the amount that I give with the amount of danger it poses. Too many resources and greedy nobles might try to stick their noses in and I don't need learned people getting too close to my dungeon, too little and no-one will bother coming meaning I’ve wasted my time trying to lure some easy life energy and mana to my dungeon only for it not to be interested.

So with this in mind I began creating ore deposits obtained from a particularly interesting Earthmail, the deposits look more like crystals growing from the cave walls made from different ores. This part is easy and should automate the rewards to some extent because the crystals automatically grow in the dungeon with enough time and mana. I’ve asked Selena if the mages use similar crystal ore deposits but she says that the amount of mana to create any sizable amount of ore is enough for a mage to create several scrolls or enchantments that would sell far better or they could even just go to any street corner and sell buffs to wandering adventurers going on a particularly dangerous mission or they could store the mana in gems and sell the mana itself to other mages and people with artifacts requiring it for a greater profit.

After spreading these ore deposits around the first floor with more of the cheaper metals scattered about and a few more expensive ones tucked into corners here and there I have finished my first level of the dungeon and I can relax for a while, maybe work on figuring out how to get these Earthmails by choice rather than random chance.