Misaki stretched a bit, careful not to disturb Phyllis who’d fallen asleep beside her. Then she gnced down at her selections for a moment hesitating to confirm them. She’d put a few hours into the decision. Phyllis had suggested she consider which traits would help her the most in the long run. The problem was she had nine choices, and many of them were so good! Fortified Puzzles was very tempting, the mana density one was a game changer and the shrine thing seemed really good. At least she had two picks, but that hadn’t made the choice any easier.

  Phyllis had assured her there was no wrong choice, but she couldn’t help feeling she was making a mistake somewhere. The Fortified Tower trait was an upgrade to the tower trait she already had and while good she didn’t feel the need to pursue that. Given her pn for new floors, she decided it wasn’t an immediate priority which narrowed her choices. In the end for her first pick she had settled on Dungeon Shrines, the free resources being the real selling point. It was hard to say no to that, so that left her with one more and it was the other pick she’d struggled with. Did she give up Fortified Puzzles and take conditional curse, or was Mana Density the better pick? Dungeon gates had potential to offer as well.

  She’d gone back and forth on it several times, but Phyllis’s advice had echoed in her mind. In the end she’d finally settled on Mana Density. It might not seem as glorious as the others and she was really wishing for a third free pick so she could snap up Fortified Puzzles, she really wanted that one, but she felt Mana Density would help her more at the moment.

  After staring at it for a bit, she finally finalized the choice, and immediately noticed a difference as a few more shrines spawned in her dungeon. Misaki was weirdly aware of how they came to be, and she turned her dungeon sight on them, admiring how they looked. They slotted into her safe zones so naturally.

  They felt like a good pick already, so she turned to her five floors and started making a few subtle adjustments here and there. Just a few minor changes that would help improve the flow of the floor and hopefully make the experience better.

  It didn’t take her that long to finish the changes and the moment she was done it was finally time to get started on something she’d put off far too long; new floors!!!

  She’d had some time to think about it and the next three floors were going to be a little different, an integrated multi-floor byrinth. It would be full of puzzles, and traps. She also had a few ideas on what monsters would be spawning there as well. She’d recently purchased Minotaurs, and they went so well with a maze. Misaki also ended up with a fair number of slimes, and even a few slime dragons, they’d be at home on the floor too. Her Arachne demons would be well at home in a byrinth, it wasn’t that different from where they lived already. Not to mention they were good trap makers.

  With that in mind, she started building a giant byrinth. For the walls, she made them solid stone bricks, lit by magical torches. She added rooms, and hidden areas, even dwelling space for the denizens of the floor.

  Milith let out a sigh, as she stepped back to admire her work. She was still cleaning up, but she’d picked up a few things from Arrieta on undoing Abyssal brainwashing. She wasn’t an Abyssal so she couldn’t just siphon that corrupted mana herself, but there were solutions for that. In this case, she used a few Sytheian crystals, a valuable form of crystal that could hold enormous amounts of mana. More importantly, it could hold the corrupted mana safely. It would have to be purified ter, but for now she just needed a pce to store it.

  That, however, left her with numerous women to work with, and an entire vilge where almost every member old enough to carry a child was pregnant. It was a real mess no matter how you looked at it. Just like the young dy she was working on, she’d just finished draining the corrupted mana from her body, now it was time to heal her mind.

  Milith reached out and pced a hand upon the other girl’s chest. Her own mana spread into the girl's body as she focused it in preparation for a spell. Arrieta had to physically cut the brains of a brainwashed girl to shock them back into normal function. They were precise cuts, and painless, but it was certainly an involved procedure. Milith had figured out an easier way to do the same thing. She cast her spell and the girl blinked. For a moment her mind went still, then like a computer started booting again. Opening her own mind, Milith listened as the girl’s thoughts which y silent for a moment came back... normal or well mostly. She’d spent years brainwashed by an Abyssal; she’d never be fully normal again. Hell this young dy had her brains in her boobs and that wasn’t really going to change. Moving brain tissue was a delicate and involved procedure that Milith honestly wasn’t going to attempt. It was enough to know the girl was starting to care for her babies again.

  She watched as the girl shifted and pced a hand on her stomach, the worry pin on her face. Milith smiled, “It will be alright, I did what I could for them. You shouldn’t be expecting complications anymore.”

  The girl breathed out a sigh, “I’m gd, it’s strange though, a while ago I was happy to be expecting complications.”

  Milith nodded, “I know, you were happily looking forward to them being killed and eaten too. How does that sound now?”

  “Well I wouldn’t mind feeding you some of their brain tissue, but I don’t want them to die.”

  Milith sighed, “And how do you feel about someone slicing up your brain?”

  “Oh please do!”

  “Great,” breathed Milith, “you don’t feel weird about your brain being food?”

  The girl shook her head. Milith sat there for a moment looking at her, that was one of things she hadn’t been able to fix. These girls were perfectly comfortable letting others eat their brain but it wouldn’t kill them. That was one thing the Abyssal had done for them, improved physical regeneration, memory and health. From what she could tell, some of these changes would be and were inherited by their babies. It would likely leave a mark on this vilge. “Right, so, um, have any daughters or, um, sons?”

  “No sons, we aren’t allowed boys, but I do have a few daughters. This isn’t my first litter.”

  “Oh? How many?”

  “Three lovely girls, my oldest is five,” said the other girl as she smiled, radiating pride.

  “Five eh? You must be very proud and she must be a real trooper to survive five years of that horror show.”

  The girl nodded, “I guess you are right, she was so cute when she was born. Didn’t breathe that well either, but she was the one I was allowed to keep. Although they picked her as the baby I get to keep since she had the most complications. More likely to die that way, you know?”

  “More likely? Aren’t you bothered by that?”

  “Well she lived, but maybe a little.”

  “I see, but am I to understand they wanted her to die?”

  She nodded, “Yeah, girls are allowed one baby from every litter to raise to adulthood. Which baby they get to keep is chosen for them at birth. With me, I get whichever baby has the most complications, that way she’s less likely to actually live. I was also encouraged to give them poisons so they’d die.” The girl shifted a little, “I, uh, actually did it too. They’d praise me and tell me how happy I’d lost another litter. Strangely I was always looking forward to when the litter was dead more than a baby living past the point I was allowed to kill it.”

  Milith hugged her, “It’s okay, they wanted you that way, and it sounds like they didn’t want your babies to live.”

  The girl nodded into her, “They didn’t, but once a baby lives past her first year she’s likely to reach two. Once she’s two she’s pretty much made it since she’s too old to eat at that point.”

  “Poor kids, and you managed three?”

  Her face paled a little, “Oh shit! I poisoned my youngest just...”

  Milith blinked, “Poisoned? Why?”

  She got up, “I need to get her, I hope the poison didn’t kill her.” Milith moved to follow her as she was linking dots, “How old is your youngest?”

  “Six months, the rest of the litter was killed and eaten, like my st two litters. I don’t get to keep a kid often.”

  Almost hesitant to ask, she inquired, “How many did you lose?”

  “Thirty-seven whole litters, pretty much every baby after my oldest and middle girl the following year died. Either from the complications or the poison I was encouraged to give them. They were quite happy with how often my litters were total losses and how big they were getting.”

  Milith nodded, “Right, you’ve got twelve in there. I can’t imagine you’d have much fun raising that many.”

  “Um, it was twenty-three shortly after conception, but for the st eleven weeks they’ve been removing one baby from my womb during each check up.”

  “Damn that’s messed up. What happened to the kids?”

  The girl frowned, “I don’t really know, I think they were experimenting on them.”

  “Of course they were,” commented Milith as she followed the girl into a modest house. Her attention was drawn to a young infant. She’d been left in a crib by the door, her breathing bored, but Milith noted that the crib didn’t have a side, the girl was lying face down without a bnket and the room was cold.”

  Milith scooped the baby up, already extending her senses to feel how it was doing. “You are one very irresponsible mother.”

  The girl sheepishly scratched her ear, “I, um, did say I was...”

  “Killing them, I know.” Said Milith as she identified the poison she’d been informed about. She blinked when she noticed it was a genetic poison, tailored to the babies genes and naturally slow acting. The dose she’d been given was already fatal, but the girl would likely linger for days before she actually died. Assuming her other health issues didn’t kill her sooner, the poison seemed to be making those worse. The girl had a number of them, bad lungs, weak heart, underdeveloped kidneys, and even a dying liver. Nothing she couldn’t fix though, but it was going to take a few spells, “But you’ll be gd to know you didn’t kill this one.”

  The girl smiled, clearly relieved, “She’ll live?”

  “Not without treatment, but I can fix it.” she paused, “But I’m kinda afraid to ask.”

  “My neighbors' girls are just as bad, and others in town. Most of us were encouraged to kill our to-keep baby if it didn’t die on its own. Although my niece wasn’t, but they did things a little differently with her. She’d have her litter poisoned about a month before she was supposed to give birth. Little doses, and checked twice a week. Once confirmed dead, they’d harvest the babies right from her womb. Give her a week to recover and get her pregnant again. Once every three years however they would let her give birth without...”

  “Poisoning the litter. I guess that means she has fewer daughters.”

  “Actually she has four lovely girls.”

  “I see,” replied Milith as she finished healing the infant, “Anyway show me to the other mothers whose babies were being poisoned.”

  Misaki stretched and looked out the window. It was rather te, but her next three floors had come along really well. She hadn’t yet moved her core room down deeper, but that was because it wasn’t going on any of these three floors. The three floors were all interconnected with some puzzles requiring you to descend or ascend a floor in order to progress. She’d even found a pce for that letter puzzle she’d thought of. It was tucked into a little side path on the seventh floor, adventurers who wander into the room would be challenged to list as many three letter words as they could without repeating a single character. The puzzle would randomly start them off with one of five words, Bog, Cat, Dog, Ear, or God. Once the adventurer ran out of possible words they’d be rewarded based on the number of characters used, those who used the most possible characters would get the biggest reward. However, those that failed were dropped into a minotaur nest. She was sure they’d have fun regardless of which way the puzzle went.

  As a side note, anyone unlucky enough to end up with Ear as their starting word, would lose out on the best possible rewards since it automatically took away more possible words than the other four did. Part of why she picked the word, since why not add a hard mode?

  Unlike her previous floors, she wasn’t going to have a floor boss for each floor, but rather a single one that would be encountered on floor eight before people could move on to floor nine, which she was going to make a water floor. She had a lot of ideas for it, and even saw a few interesting aquatic demon species in the shop. Looking them up she found they were not only exotic but rather sexy as well. They’d be right at home in the waters of her ninth floor, which she’d also decided to popute not just with aquatic species but also thriving isnds complete with towns. While on the seas there would be roaming sea vessels from merchants to pirates. Pretty much all her nd dwelling demons could be found as crew, but she had a few new species in mind as well, including imps and orcs. Both would make for fun pirates in her mind.

  Of course that pn left floor ten not quite done, but she was thinking it would be another water floor. This time a single paradise isnd, with her personal castle overlooking the town. At the castle would be the final boss for the floor, and the isnd was a safe zone. Adventurers would even start in the town, but entering her castle would require finding certain treasures that would be hidden out on the water. She was still working the idea out, but she had a few thoughts on the pn and time to work on it.

  With pns in mind, she started work on building the next two floors. She’d popute them ter, for now she just wanted them built.