Vance carefully stretched as he wound down his training for the day. The sun sat like a fat golden coin as it slowly sank towards the horizon. This had been a good day, the gnawing driving need to grow to get stronger, to never be weak again was quiet. He knew the drive to get strong would take him far, but at the same time, the obsession with power he had been developing after the attack hadn’t been healthy. The talk with Silas had helped, training had helped, and ironically the dungeon delving had helped as well. The activity killed the lie of his helplessness. Sure he wasn’t the strongest out there, but he wasn’t a weakling either.

He scratched his head as he placed his practice sword back on the rack, maybe he should take a few jobs for the surrounding area. It’d be nice to help some people out, and it would make a nice change of pace from his normal routine. He would see if Arthur wanted to come along, hopefully, his friend was doing alright. “Grandson, there you are.” Vance froze and slowly turned around, his eyes flitting to the shorter woman standing right behind him. “You ended up rather tall didn’t you Vance? Just like your grandpa.” Sophia patted him on the arm firmly as she wandered over to the practice weapon he had just put away. “You need to stop using this stupid great sword, get yourself a nice long sword, or maybe a katana. Great swords are too bulky to be practical, and the weight doesn’t even matter when you get to higher tiers.”

Breaking out of his reverie Vance spoke without thinking. “Why do people keep telling me that? Great swords are fantastic weapons, I can use them as a shield for ranged attacks, and their size and weight mean I can take down most enemies with only a few hits.” He wilted somewhat as he remembered who he was talking to. “Well, that’s just my personal opinion grandma.”

Sophia chuckled and shook her head indulgently. “Don’t worry about it boy, it's good that you stand up for yourself. Well, it seems like you're going down the sword path as of now, right?” He nodded, that was his plan for right now. “Then try the long sword on a few dungeon runs, if you don’t like I won’t make you keep it but give it a shot.” Vance nodded again, it was his grandmother asking so, of course, he would do it. “Also it might be a good idea to grab a short sword when you don’t have enough space to swing something larger around. Long swords are still well long, and I don’t have to tell you that great swords are absolute monsters.”

That made sense, he’d never really thought about it before though. He’d never been in a situation where we would need a small blade before. “Thank you for the advice grandma, I’m not sure when I’ll be going dungeon diving next, but when I do I’ll be sure to take a long sword and a short sword.”

Sophia patted him on the shoulder again nodding approvingly. “Good good, I have no idea why so many people make following my advice such an issue. Also, let me know when you go dungeon diving next, I might have another party member who could come along.” Vance meekly nodded, that was fine. “Come on, let's go find some food, I’ll also have to meet my apprentice back at the mage guild in a little bit too.” Hurrying after the unreasonably fast woman, Vance wondered what kind of person his grandmother’s apprentice would be.

Achoo. Valens stopped in shock, had he just sneezed? He didn’t have a mouth for goodness sake, this was ridiculous. Hey Magnus, why in the world would I be sneezing? I blame you for this, ever since we bonded I’ve had all sorts of weird biological ticks. Most of them weren’t that much of a problem, but it was a little disorienting to try and nod and then not be able to.

The black drake slowly stretched but didn’t open his eyes. I don’t know Valens and don’t blame me for your new habits. If you got any weird things from the imprinting that’s on you. Whatever you kept of my memories are purely based on your subconscious not anything that I did.

How would anyone prove that, I call bull you stupid lizard? Achoo. Valens paused his mini rant and growled in annoyance. I don’t like sneezing, maybe someone is talking about me? If that’s the problem then I can just send Sora to take them out.

Magnus opened his eyes and chuckled, cutting the core off before he could really get going. Don’t be ridiculous, if people talking about you made you sneeze then you’d never be able to do anything else. The adventurers alone probably talk about you almost constantly. It's probably just some sort of nervous tick. If you feel the need to sneeze just focus on the feeling and try to stop. You don’t have a biological need to sneeze so you can just force yourself to not, probably at least.

Fine, I’ll try that. Valens paused waiting for the next sneeze to come and waited and waited. Well, maybe it stopped on its own. Anyway does there seem to be more adventurers than before to you? The drama that had been going on outside the dungeon seemed to have wrapped up so maybe that was the reason.

Well, it's probably that your higher-tier floors are developing. Most of the tier twos around before were the people who leveled up inside your dungeon. Now they’re starting to come from further away.

So will I just get more and more adventurers as I get to higher tiers? That would make growing pretty easy, wouldn’t it? He did think it could be that simple, after all, Magnus had made such a big deal of setting up ecosystems and such.

Not at all, you’ll probably have the most adventurers around tier three or maybe tier four eventually. After that, there’ll be fewer and fewer people who will still want to fight in the dungeon. Most will either get themselves killed or decide to do something safer for the rest of their existence.

The dungeon scoffed in annoyance. Safer? That sounds incredibly boring.

Magnus grinned a toothy smile. Agreed but then again you’ve never actually been in danger before so you can’t talk. How are the floors going by the way? Poor Sora still looks miserable so I assume there’s not that many tier three monsters yet.

Yeah, it's taking forever but I’m getting there. The lizards are doing well, no surprise there, and the tier three hawks are downright terrors. I can’t wait for the adventurers to start getting picked up and dropped from hundreds of feet up. I made the ceilings especially high when I figured out how strong the tier three hawks are.

Magnus scratched his head as he leaned up. I think they’re called dire hawks, but anyway, how are the wolves doing?

The wolves seem to adapt pretty well to wherever they’re put. On the new floors, they’re staying mostly around the rivers and oases that I added. Which makes sense, they’ve picked up a habit of picking off things that come to drink at the oases.

Have any of them made it to tier three yet?

Valens checked on floor twenty one where his creatures were more developed on the already completed floor. Looks like a couple of the alphas are dire wolves now, lots of dire creatures at tier three it looks like. Anyway no stable populations, but it looks like I’ll be getting my first set of dire salamander hatchlings. Once that happens, the ball will be off and rolling with getting that race firmly established, got to love the accelerated growth cycles.

Magnus nodded seriously. I know, things would take forever if we had to wait the full amount of time for creatures to grow. Are the goblins still running around causing mass chaos? I’m sure they’ll be fine no matter the environment.

Yeah, they’re fine, all over the place actually. There are no tier three goblins yet, but that’s only because the hobgoblins make for such tasty treats for everything else. I’m not sure there’d be any tier three creatures at all yet without the hobgoblins reproducing like rabbits and giving everything else great sources of experience. It was working out rather well, with the goblins forming into a rather dangerous prey species.

Good, goblins can be a great asset if you can keep them from overrunning everything else in the dungeon. They’re rather relentless as you well know. Have you thought about using a goblin again for a boss? The chimera is by far the better choice but a goblin would still make a solid choice.

Valens grimaced, he hadn’t liked how his goblin boss had worked out last time. Maybe, we’ll see once some of the hobgoblins evolve again and I can see what their tier three is like. Right now I’m leaning towards picking a hawk, even if they’d get slaughtered at the lower tiers.

Well, it's a long way off, I still have to finish all of the tier three floors and all that. Anyway, Aspen was getting close to evolving to tier three right? Shouldn’t that have happened already by now?

The core sighed as the problem child of his bosses was mentioned. You would think and she is almost there but not quite. I caught her just lazing around a few times when she should have been hunting. I like Aspen I really do, she’s a strong fighter, but I’m not totally sure she’s cut out to be a boss.

Magnus looked up and shook his head slightly. Give it time I don’t want to spoil anything but these sorts of tendencies are there for a somewhat good reason. It’s also why there’s not a lot of fae hives everywhere so it's not the best instinct to have but still. It's not altogether her fault like I said it's a bit of a racial thing, mixed in with her just being a bit lazy I think.

Well alright, it's not like it's causing that much of a problem. I can always send Sora up to chase her around a bit and give her a reason to keep growing. Valens chuckled at the mental image of the big lizard chasing around the tiny fairy. He wouldn’t try that route unless things with Aspen got really bad though, encouraging an antagonistic attitude between his bosses seemed like a bad idea.

Well, any other creatures that I’m forgetting about? It seems like everything is going well and we just need a bit of time to get more floors and let the monster populations develop. Hopefully, we don’t start getting tier three adventurers until things are all ready.

The core hummed in dissatisfaction. You’re right, having tier three adventurers killing off my creatures would be a bit of a disaster right now. I’d have to send Sora out to drive them away, the tier three populations are just too low right now. Speaking of though I’ve been meaning to ask, did you sugar setting up separate breeding areas on the upper floors? They’re getting a bit low again and I’d like to figure out a more permanent solution this time.

The drake scratched his head and looked a little confused. I don’t remember ever suggesting something like that but it sounds like a good idea. Might be a good idea to separate by species to make the areas even safer. What species are being over hunted by the way?

It's mostly the smaller and weaker ones. The wolves and goblins are doing fine, along with the foxes, snakes, and birds. Oh, we forgot to talk about the foxes. They’re doing quite well on the tier three floors, the little guys seem to love the desert, and wandering around at night seems to be their preferred hunting style. Anyway, the ones that aren’t doing so well are things like the rabbits and deer. All of the animals on the upper floors are tier one so groups tend to go after the things that can’t really fight back.

Maybe you could make some extensive dens or something for the mice? It might be tricky to keep the snakes out of there and you’d have to do something different for the deer though.

It wasn’t a perfect solution but it was something he could get started on right away. Yeah, all start with that and then we’ll see for the deer. I want to know how well this warrant idea works for the rabbits first. They lapsed into silence as Valens got started adjusting the first floor wherever the humans were absent, always something else that needed to be done.