Fenrir

It doesn't take me very long to build the staircase to the sixth floor before I begin clearing out a dome spanning twenty-five kilometers in diameter.

I already decided what to do for this floor a while back, when I first learned about loot drops.

Well, except for which environment I was going to use.

I couldn't exactly choose that until I was told my options for it after all.

Now that I have access to all of the information I need to make a taiga, I can go ahead and start building the floor after I finish clearing out the floor's foundation.

Several hours later

I take one last look throughout the wide-open floor before looking at Dawn for the first time since I started my work.

Wait a second...

Where's Dawn?

I can vaguely sense her, but I don't see her anywhere in the dungeon!

"Calm down, Fenrir! I am possessing a direwolf right now!" I hear Dawn say from somewhere on my fourth floor.

I search through my fourth floor before finding a direwolf acting strangely.

"Is this you?" I carefully ask as the direwolf slowly walks in circles as if it was a newborn learning to walk while appearing to examine every last detail of everything around it.

The direwolf looks up for a second before Dawn's voice sound within the room, "Yeah. This body is very different from what I am used too."

I mentally sigh in relief before Dawn suddenly asks, "How is the work going on the sixth floor so far?"

"I just finished clearing out the foundation for it and am about to begin work on the environment," I explain to her as she attempts to walk at a faster pace than before and fails as she loses her balance and lands with her wolf legs sticking out at awkward angles.

"That's good," Dawn barely manages to get out as she attempts to get up again.

"I think I will just leave you to what you are doing and go back to work," I mutter before focusing on the sixth floor again and thinking back to the knowledge I was given on making a taiga.

The first and most important part of setting up the environment – for this one at least – is to lower the temperature.

From what the knowledge that I was given says, to lower the temperature, I just have to make it so that the world energy in the area forces the molecules in the air to move at a much slower speed. I also have to make it so that the heat from outside of the floor doesn't flow into the floor itself.

I begin doing this in a much smaller area to test it out.

Unfortunately, it looks like it might take a little bit of experimenting to get this perfect, so I spend the next couple of hours working on it until I get it right.

After that, I finally start doing it on a large scale with the entire floor, quickly dropping the temperature to a decent amount below the freezing temperature I found for water.

Next up is to begin spawning the flora of a taiga through the patterns the starter environment gave me.

This takes me a lot longer to do than changing the temperature as it takes me four hours to go through everything and make the environment look natural.

Or at least what I think is natural based off of the knowledge I was given.

"Fenrir?" I am interrupted by Dawn as I look over my work on the floor.

I glance over to where I think the voice came from before finding her – or at least I think it's her – in Fang's body on the third floor running around in circles.

"It looks like you got the hang of it," I tell Dawn as I watch her run in circles with her tail wagging.

"Yeah! It feels so strange to have a body, but nice at the same time!" she shouts with excitement without stopping her run.

"Really?" I ask out of a slight interest, "Maybe I will know how it feels one day."

Dawn suddenly stops running before she says, "Don't worry, you will get an avatar at Tier 5, remember?"

"What is an avatar anyways?" I ask Dawn.

She had mentioned it a long time ago, but I didn't really get the chance to ask about it, and she moved on just as quickly as she mentioned it.

Dawn doesn't say anything for a second as I feel slight embarrassment flow through our link.

Wait a second, I can feel her embarrassment?

That's new...

Before I can think about that any further, Dawn says, "An avatar for a dungeon is their physical manifestation. You can think of it like a second body outside of your core where you can shift your consciousness between the two, or just split it between them. In your avatar, you will be able to actually fight on your own without the need for monsters or anything, so it's a pretty important step in a dungeon core's life."

Oh.

That does sound pretty cool.

"Anyways, how is your work on the sixth floor going now?" Dawn asks me as she goes back to running in circles.

I glance at my sixth floor before answering her, "I just finished placing all of the flora for the floor and was about to start making the snow and weather."

Dawn quickly stops running again before she asks, "Oh, can I watch?"

I stop looking through the floor and glance at her before asking, "Wait, you want to watch me work?"

That's a first.

"I kind of want to see what snow looks like," she says quietly before adding, "some of the intruders mentioned that it was really pretty to look at."

Oh.

That's why.

"Sure," I say to her before focusing on the sixth floor again.

Fortunately, making snow isn't actually very difficult.

All I have to do is create tiny crystals of ice in the sky while filling the room with a little bit of humidity in the ceiling areas of the dome before making an enchantment on the ceiling to ensure that the process of creating snow flows smoothly without any problems.

Unfortunately, I do actually have to wait for the snow to fall and cover the environment, otherwise it might look forced if I tried to place the snow myself.

I search for Dawn as I wait for the snow to fall before finding her floating down the stairs to the sixth floor in her wisp form.

The moment she enters the floor, her flame shifts to a greenish blue for the first time as feelings of awe are transmitted to me through our bond.

I guess I can feel her emotions now that I have reached CL 5.

Dawn just floats in place at the entrance as she watches the snow lightly fall from the ceiling onto the spruce trees below.

"Do you like it?" I ask Dawn with amusement.

Dawn snaps out of her stupor before excitedly saying, "Yes! I love it! Thank you for choosing the taiga!"

I watch her with amusement before spawning a direwolf for her to possess.

Who would have thought that she would love snow so much?

She happily possesses it before she starts to run throughout the trees in the forest.

I spend the next hour or two watching her play around as I wait for the snow to cover the forest.

After it covers it enough, I begin to work on spawning wolves throughout the forest both at random, as well as in packs as I finally begin working on the main purpose of this floor.

I change each of the patterns I place on this floor to drop a small piece of a key after each monster dies. These pieces will then be put together like a puzzle before they form the key to the mini boss' room, which will be at the opposite end of the room from the entrance.

The intruders will need two hundred and fifty pieces, along with a central piece that the pieces will all connect to in order to form the key.

I turn my attention to a closed off corner surrounded by cliffs I created before beginning work on a new fortress.

One that will be manned by human monsters.