《The fool's paradise (dungeon novel)(complete)》Still under constuction 56
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While the sixth floor filled with water Lucifer went back to the fourth floor and began adding monsters, first he let loose several dozen species of prey, boars, deer, rodents and several other small animals to wander the floor, then he started to work on the predators, he wanted the floor to feel safe to people not obsessed with greed and they could use this floor as a rest stop before they entered the higher leveled areas.
The worst thing Lucifer could do, was to make it impossible to all but the strongest of adventurers to advance further into the dungeon, most of his methods of killing adventurers did not function from exhaustion, they either killed you instantly for not paying attention or were relatively easy to survive if you saw them coming.
On the first floor, untrained people occasionally get maimed by boars but very few are unlucky enough to die from them, the second floor is similarly safe as the first floor, a few people have managed to get themselves caught in webs while collecting the sticky silk and became food, however, most of the people who go into the dungeon to collect spider silk move in groups, so even if one person becomes stuck the others can fend off the spider while they cut them free.
Most of the deaths from the wildlife are caused by a specific spider, Lucifer noticed it after finding a tree riddled with animal and human skulls attached with old webs, Lucifer waited at the tree for the occupant to come back and what he found was a giant spider dragging a paralyzed adventurer up into the canopy, he found this spider odd because it did not match the ones he had created, this one had much longer forelimbs and larger eyes.
After watching the spider for a few days he had to guess that it was a variant of the species he has in the dungeon here, this species was far more dangerous than he intended to have on the second floor so he did a once over of the entire floor to make sure they weren't common, after finding no more of the longer legged species he decided to leave this one alone to see what it could do and decide if he wanted to breed this one if he ever got a pair of them.
He found this species hunting strategy highly amusing, it would weave a web in its four longer limbs and wait inside a dark area hidden by leaves and shadows, once something alone walked below the spider it spun a web and lowered itself over its prey and stretched its pre spun web over its target, once its prey was captured it used the longer more powerful legs to spin the prey and cover it in thick webbing until the prey was stuck inside a sticky cocoon of spider silk, then it dragged its bag of food up to its nesting area and injected poison into its victim then drank the person afterwards when they liquified.
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other than that spider most of the deaths came from Luckys traps and occasionally her pranks would "accidentally" kill someone.
The third floor was by far the most dangerous so far, the oversized Panthers proved to be quite efficient hunters in the darker third floor, experienced parties can move through the third floor unhindered if they are careful or have a good scout, the Panthers tend to only attack people who are alone or in small groups as most of their lethality comes from surprise attacks, Kuro however seems to love attacking larger groups and would target them over smaller weaker groups, she stalks them while waiting for the opportune moment to strike then attacks the groups weakest point, she will continue to stalk the same group even after having killed someone and keep picking off the group one by one, often allowing opportunities to kill someone pass so she can continue hunting them later, the other thing Lucifer found strange in her behaviour was that she often allowed one person in the group to live, even going to far as to "escort" them back to safety more often than not with a limb taken for payment.
However, Kuro changed completely once someone hurts her kin, all of her playfulness disappears and is replaced with viciousness. A group of adventurers was becoming known for trading Panther furs every couple of days and were later found mangled and dead at the entrance to the first floor, she had methodically torn them to pieces with her darkness enhanced claws but did not kill them, instead she dragged the half-dead group onto a fire ant mount on the second floor and watched them slowly die while gently swaying her tail.
Lucifer did not know how Kuro found out about them but he suspected a small fairy to be pushing her nose into other floor guardian business, Lucky is often seen frolicking with the Panthers at the lake and appears quite fond of them, enough so that Lucifer noticed that people who killed them would have better chances of meeting some of her more devious traps.
After thinking it through Lucifer decided on the inhabitants of the fourth floor, keeping in theme with the rest area idea he started with a Venus flytrap, first he added a small alchemical ingredient inside the traps mouth, he was not so worried about using expensive ingredients now that the mages guild was his partner and did not mind if powerful alchemist came this way as long as they were part of the university, which he was sure that the university would keep out any outsider alchemist trying to set up shop in their playground.
Next Lucifer added hollow thorns inside the mouth of the venus flytrap that excreated poison when they punctured something, lastly he increased the strength and size of the trap tremendously and changed the outside flesh to a thick hardwood to increase durability.
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Once he planted the trap he noticed that even with the limited visibility of this area the Venus flytrap stood out quite badly, the idea behind this creature was for brave idiots to try and get the alchemical plant inside and wind up crushed and poisoned, then they would be slowly devoured if they were one of the adventurers that liked to move around his dungeon by themselves because they don't work well with others, or they simply wanted all the loot to themselves.
Lucifer added leaves and bark to the creature so it could blend in with the environment better, after he finished he was quite satisfied with his new creation, if you looked where you were going, you would not get caught by this trap unless you wanted the ingredient inside it, he briefly thought of ways an alpha tester would break his new creation and he immediately thought why wouldn't you just kill the creature before you retrieve the ingredient causing Lucifer to frown.
After thinking for several minutes he decided to add small plates of hard flesh on either side of the ingredient, so once the mouth closed it would mash the ingredient into juice that the plant would reabsorb to grow a new one.
When he finished Lucifer sighed, he was happy about his newest trap/floor guardian, however, modifying creatures cost a considerable amount of mana and at this pace, he would not have enough for the sixth floor, if he continued creating such heavily modified creatures he may not even finish the fourth floor, so he decided to add a few creatures from his EarthMails without modifying them because that was cheaper.
Lucifer set loose several species of poison dart frogs and several more species of snake, some were poisonous and others were not, the adventurers would have to figure that out for themselves before they ate or cooked anything from this floor if they did not want to kill themselves, lastly he added a larger python species and only enhanced its size and strength, this should prove to be more of an annoyance rather than a threat as long as they worked together to kill it before it crushed one of their companions to death.
Now that he had finished this floor he flew over to the sixth floor and found that it was ready to be used, the entire cavern was under several meters of water leaving only 1 meter of room on the roof of the floor with breathable air, Lucifer suspects that people would soon create boats to use on this floor but he did not care because all the loot would be below the surface on this floor.
First, he cut off the water flow from the floors slightly above this one by raising the opening to the six floor, then started messing around with the water flows from the water trap to get everything to maintain and equalize itself, once he completed that he started adding the plants and small prey for the larger creatures to eat.
The main plant he added was what he called "strangle kelp", this was a grass that grew from the floor all the way till the surface, the only modification he made was to give it small feelers that when triggered caused the kelp to pull down into a bundle on the sea floor, which is not particularly harmful unless you are tangled in the stuff while swimming, or a small boat gets caught in a forest of the stuff.
He was about to add sharks when he noticed that he was almost completely out of mana, after this killed his mood he decided to go back to his lab and work on some things that would be less mana intensive while he waited for his mana to regenerate.
Once he arrived he looked around the room for something to spark his imagination then caught sight of an object in the corner and frowned for a moment, he decided to instead work on something outside the lab that he had intended to do for a while.
He found an area devoid of ants at the deepest area of the hive, mana gushed out of a hole in the ground where ants had unearthed this thing and died for it, Lucifer could absorb the pure mana from the flow easily enough, however, the amount of mana kills anything living that comes near it because they are forcibly evolved too rapidly and explode.
Something Lucifer intended to use to his advantage, after witnessing the strength of the variant spider Lucifer became interested creating mutated species, he just needed to somehow town down the effects, at first he wanted to use enchantments to lower the amount of mana that interacted with the creatures he was trying to modify.
Without any better ideas he simply increased the distance from the mana well, he created a fenced off area then added several different creatures inside the Penn, he left and would return later to see what happened.
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