One of the first six rooms was unoccupied. Fred had used it for growing potatoes in the recent past. But before dawn a new resident showed up, to take possession of the space.

It was unlike anything Fred had seen. It had a hunched body, and moved like an old man with a severely domed back. It had clawed feet, and its hands were like eagles' talons. The head too was bird-like, with amber eyes and a large beak. But aside from a few head quills, there were no feathers on the gray body. Instead it was covered by a tattered purple robe. The creature held a staff in its hand as it shuffled into Fred's domain. The staff looked crude, a gnarled wooden shaft with a horned skull on the top.

Fred saw a great deal of intelligence in those eyes, and its movements were purposeful. It moved to the center of the room, and hunched down to wait, turning yellow rather decisively. So Fred imagined its lair. He saw he'd have to dig the room longer, and place cubic stone blocks throughout. Easy. He did so, and also made sure the room was completely encased in stone. The creature looked intelligent, but seemed to have no need for light, or warmth, or even a bed. After Fred changed the room, the creature turned green, and shuffled to the back of the room, to brood in the darkness. Fred, now used to weirdness every day, let the creature be and looked in on Shelley.

He saw something heartening; the boy was in the harvest room, with other children, and they were busy filling little sacks with food. Once they'd all filled up, they climbed out of the back tunnel, and ran quietly off, to their families, Fred presumed. Good. That was the point of the new harvest room. Fred hoped they would keep coming back.

Shelley and her family seemed all well, and Fred stayed with them for the rest of the night.

Good morning, Fred.

"Yay! Good morning, Jim!" For some reason, Jim's greeting made Fred very cheerful. "I found some water."

And you've piped it to your domain. Well done.

"Yeah, well, it took some doing. I'm still not sure it's flowing right, but I'll keep an eye on it. The naga seems happy, anyway."

That little pond would be better with some of those special plants around it.

"Good idea. I should copy and place those plants, all of them. Speaking of, what do you think of these mushrooms?"

Probably valuable to some alchemist somewhere.

"That's exactly what I said!"

And what is this? I'm not sure I know what this creature is.

"Yeah, it came in last night. Wait, you're supposed to know all the things that come live here, right?"

Not this one. It looks a bit like a bird, but wears clothing instead of feathers? And it looks like it could be a magic user.

"Well, don't look at me. I just give them rooms when they show up."

Okay. I'll look into it, and see if I can find out where it came from. Your magic found it and called it here, so it's meant to be here, whatever it is. I can't imagine it being detrimental to you. Still. Very peculiar. I DID think I knew every species you'd encounter.

Fred looked out the front entrance, to another busy day for the humans. Hundreds of them, it seemed like, all preparing their equipment, getting in lines, and talking excitedly. "Wow, my domain has gotten busy!", he said. "I really do have to keep expanding."

Yes. But let's talk about that. I really like your first floor. It could accept another creature or two, but I wouldn't expand it beyond that. The variety is perfect for basic training. But as you dig deeper, and host larger, more dangerous creatures, the humans can only fight them in groups, and then only with careful planning and preparation.

This is good, and proper. You want the lower levels to teach lessons about group tactics, and teamwork, and such. There are so many different kinds of demon. Humans need to learn many different ways of fighting.

"But the humans are already stacked up, waiting in line for my lairs. Shouldn't I, say, double the first floor?"

I wouldn't. To a certain extent, human training needs to be quality over quantity. You don't want to be attractive only to amateur warriors. You want to cater to all skill levels, and you can't do that if you're micromanaging the first floor. And believe me, the bigger you make any floor, the more work you'll have to do to manage it.

Jim's statement seemed a little weird to Fred. Right now his first floor was very hands-off, and he didn't really see how more monsters would make him work more. Still, it was easy to trust Jim and accept his advice.

"Okay. Well, I'll get to work planting plants, then."

I'll talk to you tonight, Fred. Goodbye.

Fred went back to the naga's lair, where the little oasis pool was all filled up, and the surrounding sand was damp. "Perfect!" Fred thought. He decided to plant just a couple types of the new herbs, all around the pool. Then, on a whim, he added several copies of the love potion plant down here, too. He had plenty of herbs to use, so he planted one type in the bear den (the bear seemed not to mind), sprinkling copies of it liberally around the room.

He did another herb, one of the incense ones, in the man-bat room. He added another into the metal beast's lair, sprinkling them within the field of oversized grass. That was all he wanted to do right now, holding a few in reserve for later possibilities.

Suddenly, there was a flash, and a commotion, at the front entrance. It happened quickly, and Fred wasn't paying attention to that area, but three men lay dead just inside the entrance to the weird bird-thing's lair. They looked like they'd been cooked by a lightning bolt. As Fred watched, another man with a sword ran into the room, grabbed one of the charred bodies, and started dragging it out. A magic spell came from the back of the room, enveloping the man in blue light. He looked like he was having a seizure for a second.

Then, with a bizarre scream, he turned from the room, drew a sword, and began attacking the other men in the main entrance. He seemed to go berserk, chopping frantically and mindlessly. Several other men were wounded by the unexpected attack. Then other men piled on him and managed to incapacitate him, though he continued screaming and struggling, as they tied his limbs and drug him out of Fred's domain.

Fred was in shock. He realized that the bird-thing was much more dangerous than he'd imagined, much too dangerous for the first level of his domain. He felt bad that men had died to teach him his mistake. The humans were also agitated and distressed. The battling groups retreated outside, where (seemingly all the) men stood shouting and gesturing at everything. Fred hoped they'd leave the bird-thing alone, and give him time to relocate it to the second floor.

They did. The humans all kept well away from the bird-thing's lair, and guards were posted outside of it, keeping a vigilant eye on it throughout the day. Fred got busy making another room for the bird-thing, which he'd begun to call the Nasty Bird in his own thoughts. Initially he thought he'd give one of the two remaining second-floor rooms to the nasty bird. But then he thought that those rooms were for really big monsters, who needed a lot of room, and access to the outside. So instead he went up the ramp to one of the rooms beside the King's Tomb. It was easy to change its shape to fit the needs of the nasty bird. He also added the cubes of stone the bird required, and kept the writing from the King's Tomb on the walls. "Who knows? Ol' Nasty Bird might like it. And if not, I can erase it easily," thought Fred.

Nasty bird didn't immediately relocate, which was fine with Fred. He planned to wait til dark to evict the bird from the first floor. And until then, he didn't want it to kill any more humans.

Then, in the afternoon, things got hectic. First, the woman in tight-fitting black clothes came back. Fred assumed she was taking another survey. She carefully avoided the current lair of the nasty bird, and used her invisibility to slip by the various men and beasts who were shouting and bleeding. She went down the ramp, and slowly and methodically investigated the three rooms along the ramp. She seemed particularly fascinated by the King's Tomb. While she didn't try to open the coffin, its lid was already ajar, and she spent some time looking inside, the blue glow of the coffin highlighting her excited face.

She also made note of the other two rooms, before heading down to the second floor. There she seemed almost awestruck at the silver tree, the ring of glowing stones, and the huge vertical shaft. The tree was singing, tinkling like a… bell-like musical instrument of some kind. Loudly. "This is new," thought Fred.

As he paid attention, he noticed that it was rather windy. More specifically, there was a powerful, hot draft coming from the naga's lair. Suddenly, it made sense to Fred. All the hot air in the hot naga lair wanted to go upward, and cool air from the vertical shaft rushed down to take its place. The (relatively) small entrance to the naga lair acted to accelerate and turbulate the air, as the hot and cold air flows collided and rushed past each other.

The result was a bit of a windstorm, right in front of the tree. "No wonder it's singing," Fred thought. "Wait. How do I know all this? Why do I know what air works like? Was I an… air… expert in another life?"

Before he could muse upon that further, he saw a creature moving across the mountain towards his domain. Curious, he looked closer. It was a mummy. A tall, dirty, human, wrapped entirely in cloth strips, walking through the grass. It had very dirty feet wrappings. Fred thought it must have walked a long way. It approached the top of the central shaft, with a stiff, straight-legged, robotic stride (that still managed to be reasonably quick). Its arms didn't swing, like they were too stiff to move.

When it got to the lip of the central shaft, it kept moving, and fell straight down the shaft. When it hit the stone floor at the bottom, it bounced. And then lay still, exactly like a doll that had been thrown to the bottom of a deep well.

The woman in black was drawn to the mummy, like a moth to a flame. Fred guessed she was trusting her invisibility, or thought it was dead. She stepped across the open space, walked past the tree, and approached the still form. She reached out to it, and then shrieked in surprise when its head bent upward and looked at her. Suddenly she was running from it, and it picked itself up off the ground and gave chase.

The woman ran into the entrance of the naga's lair, her hair whipping wildly in the wind. The mummy clearly had ill intentions; its arms were now reaching out in front of it. It chased the woman into the lair itself, and she quickly outpaced it and hid behind some of the stone ruins. The mummy kept up its stride, and reached the center of the room, before it suddenly came face-to-face with the naga, which was considerably taller.

The two stared silently at each other for a moment. Then the mummy took a knee and genuflected very formally towards the naga. The naga screeched/hissed, seemingly in surprise. It stared at the mummy a few more seconds. Then it turned slowly, as though dismissing the intruder as inconsequential, and slithered away, back to its little oasis. The mummy got up, and immediately exited the naga's lair. It walked out towards the tree, and then up the ramp.

The woman in black, no longer chased by the mummy, was now following it. She kept the most distance she could, but clearly wanted to know where it was going. As it walked up the curving ramp, out of her site, she slipped across the floor to follow it up. She saw it walk with purpose straight into the King's Tomb, but only Fred saw it walk up to the coffin, pick up the lid like it was made of air, crawl stiffly inside, and pull the lid down on top of itself. "What an entrance! Bravo! Encore!" Fred laughed to himself. He liked this mummy's no-nonsense attitude, even as he recognised that it was a particularly grumpy and homicidal creature. Then he realized he hadn't even seen it turn green.

The woman in black looked in on the tomb, saw that the coffin lid was closed, and kept moving. She was out of Fred's domain, and reporting to the other humans, in minutes.