“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” Pearl S. Buck

  While the Hawk-eagle began its assigned search pattern, I decided to shift the primary entrance to my dungeon and separate myself a bit more from the surface. To do so, I first spawned in an adult female Grassland Grizzly and introduced it to the cubs in the soon to be entrance room. They were nervous, at first, as adult bears are one of the greatest hazards for a young bear, but I impressed on them all that the new bear was intended to act as a guide and protector for them until they were ready to find their own territory. At that point, I opened the new entrance – a significantly larger one about 3 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall, opening directly to the western side of their den. I did extend the blackberry bramble to obscure it a bit, and spawned in some apple trees and scrubby oaks, giving the area near the entrance the appearance of an abandoned orchard.

  Having done that, it became time to close off the old entrance, which I did by simply blocking it with a large granite boulder. It could be removed in an emergency, but it should be enough to prevent most incursions. At the same time, I blocked off the entry to the original eastern room, where the grizzly mother had met her end. That meant any visitors to my current core room would need to traverse at least four of the other rooms first. I didn’t fill in the passage, but I did seamlessly extend the wall of the eastern room to block entry. That blockage was only about 25 cm thick, currently, but unless they knew it was there, there should be no reason to try tunneling through.

  I’d been hopeful that the Hawk-eagle would spot a ruin quickly, and in fact, it wasn’t much more than half an hour before it sent up an alert cry. Assuming that reasonably level land would be at a premium on what amounted to a flying mountain, I expected good portions of the mostly gently sloping land to have been occupied at one point or another. The main question being how much of the occupations would have been subterranean to begin with and how much they needed flat land for agricultural purposes.

  Flashing my focus over to the Hawk-eagle and looking through its eyes, I could see what it had made out – a series of four small mounds arranged around a central courtyard, with straight lines of stone still visible as low walls on the two largest structures. I assumed it was likely to represent a family household, those being the most common class of structures statistically in essentially every society.

  It wasn’t very far away, maybe 100 meters or so from my core, but to the northeast, across the stream and along the treeline. If I focused on expanding my surface zone, I could reach it in a couple of weeks, I decided – less if I could manipulate my growth in a specific direction rather than simply expanding radially as I had done so far.

  [Quest Completed: Discover a Ruin; Reward – Aerial Survey Skill; Local lore advanced]

  [New Quest: Assimilate one phase of an archaeologically relevant structure; Reward: One Material Assessment Skill; Lore]

  That seemed promising, and I was gratified to finally be making progress on my scholar quests; I’d be even happier to get some hints on my divine quest, but again, I didn’t have any real sense of urgency, so I’m trying to just let go of that anxiety.

  The aerial survey skill seemed likely to be a huge help, in conjunction with my 3D cartography skill. I wasn’t sure if my ability to hold a mental image of my current extent tied in with the cartography skill or was just inherent to being a dungeon; I suspected the latter. It felt like kinesthesia – knowing where my control reached and what it included, like knowing where my body was in space. I didn’t need to think about it very hard at all.

  Aerial survey clearly required having a flying minion, but I got the distinct sense that from now on I could use the Hawk-eagle to map out the surface features and terrain of everywhere it flew. I still couldn’t use her eyes in real time, but I’d get three-dimensional cartographic data instead of simply selected visual memories. I was going to let it continue searching the immediate area, but after that I plan to make it circumnavigate the sky island. Sometime later, I might have it searching the territories below the sky island, but that’s a long way down my list of priorities!

  My impression was that while the Hawk-eagle could circle the island within an hour or two, surveying it effectively would take much longer, needing to be done from a lower altitude for proper resolution.

  I recognized that I could complete Aven’s latest quest by starting work on a second floor, but I decided I’d rather work on the surface for a bit longer, at least starting the process of expanding towards the ruin and finishing up another couple of quests along the way.

  I decided that, at least at first, I’d begin by expanding my surface zone to a 25-meter radius to match my subsurface extent. The disjunction had been bugging my orderly mind, and this would help clear a quest as well. Frankly, I already had a couple of small intrusions at the surface anyways, both at the stream bed and in the southern rocky outcrop, so this would help tie some things together. I don’t think there’s any inherent need for me to expand in a tidy fashion, but it held a certain undeniable appeal, and my dungeon instincts seemed to agree. The desire to consume creatures and expand my range was definitely building again, however slowly.

  As Aven had indicated, expanding the number of rooms had already boosted my mana capacity significantly, though my regeneration was only somewhat improved. Expanding my surface extent was likely to help with capacity as well, and I had some hopes that the stream would represent a stronger flow of ambient mana. The regeneration likely wouldn’t improve much until I dropped down to a lower level, though, if mana pools like Aven had said.

  I began expanding my surface zone of control outwards towards the stream, focusing on pushing in a non-radial manner this time, just to make sure I could. As it happened, with some focus I was able to push my control in a narrower pathway, reaching out to connect with the stream bed where I’d already opened a hole to my water features.

  Doing so did secure me a few more plant and insect blueprints, though not anything that struck me as immediately useful.

  Blueprint Acquired: Sky Island Sedge

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  Blueprint Acquired: Purple Bulrush

  Blueprint Acquired: Dwarf Cattail

  Blueprint Acquired: Smoothbark Willow

  Blueprint Acquired: Blue-winged Mayfly

  Blueprint Acquired: Fire Mosquito

  I could tell that there were other fish species present in the section of stream I’d acquired, but until one of them died/ was eaten I wasn’t going to obtain their blueprints. I didn’t see myself spawning in mosquitos any time soon, but I did get the sense the “fire” part of the name suggested an intensely uncomfortable bite, so it remained an option for nonlethal discouragement.

  I also encountered my first cultural artifact in the streambed– a worn piece of ceramic that had presumably been washed away from some site farther upstream. It provided me with a general blueprint for low-fired, shell-tempered ceramics, but lacked any context or relevant details to provide insight into the people who’d made it.

  Blueprint Acquired: Low-fired Shell-tempered Ceramic

  I tried to see whether my radiometric dating skill would give me any information on it, but it didn’t extend to thermoluminescent dating; either the sample never reached the critical temperature, or the sample lacked the appropriate mineral content. In any event, I got nothing for the attempt. Seriation, similarly, did not offer any information, as there were no other samples to assess it as younger or older than. Perhaps once I got a larger sample, I could use that to provide a relative age for this sherd. Curvature suggested it might be from a small pot, but that wasn’t exactly helpful information. For now, I’d just file it away as promising but unhelpful.

  Having reached 25 meters from the core extending north, I filled in the 25-meter radius in a counterclockwise direction, working towards the cliff edge next. That didn’t add many new blueprints, though I did get a few lichens and mosses at the cliff edge, as well as one interesting, predatory tree.

  Blueprint Acquired: Hanging-tree

  That one didn’t have an earthly equivalent but seemed to seek nutrition by snaring passing creatures in a sticky, acidic set of tendrils. As with most carnivorous plants, it seemed specialized for areas with poor soils, in this case the thin acidic soils along the cliff edge, where its tendrils were tossed about by the strong winds along the cliff edge, snaring birds and small insects. Anything larger than a medium-sized bird could likely pull itself free, though it might suffer some chemical burns. I doubted I could use it for much directly, but the sticky, acidic ooze might have some potential for traps.

  Sweeping along to the south, I assimilated the rocky outcroppings into my zone. That pushed the remaining non-dungeon ground squirrels into leaving – 20 or so of them fled south, abandoning a set of burrows my ground squirrels then coopted. Their abandoned food caches made me feel a bit bad about their eviction, but did garner some additional blueprints, drawing in seeds from the eastern woodland, or so I assumed.

  Blueprint Acquired: Silver-needle Pine

  Blueprint Acquired: Northern Golden-oak

  Blueprint Acquired: Sugar False-Maple

  Blueprint Acquired: Peerless Bolete

  Blueprint Acquired: Salmon Mushroom

  Those seeds and mushrooms suggested a mixed species assemblage, though my general impression was that deciduous trees dominated this base level, with evergreens becoming more common as the elevation rose towards the center of the sky island, with the top seeming bare of vegetation even before the snow-covered summit. Those blueprints offered some potential for things ranging from pine tar and pine nuts, through quality lumber, and even sugar and edible fungi. Interestingly, while not a real maple, apparently, the sugar content of the sap was such that it would work for syrup production. I hadn’t tried to develop blueprints directly for exploitable resources; I could sense that possibilities existed but might require a skill or additional levels of effort.

  More critically, that had pushed me through the second level of the plant quest in my naturalist set. I’d gotten through the first one, some time back, but had only received a blueprint for purple ragweed – good only for causing sneezing in some susceptible people, as far as I could tell. This time the results were a bit better, I thought.

  Quest Completed: Spot Plant Species II; Reward – Choose two of the following: 7-flavor ginseng, drowberry, masked orchid, spiked chestnut

  New Quest: Spot Plant Species III - Identify 15 new species of plant, including three of at least tier 2; Reward – Two Tier 2 Plant Blueprints or one Tier 3 Plant Blueprint.

  I opted for the first two, assuming they’d likely be useful in medicine, or at least as food.

  Blueprint Acquired: 7-flavor Ginseng

  Blueprint Acquired: Drowberry

  Completing the sweep along the eastern side of the 25-meter radius ran me up against the edge of the woodland and added a few more plant blueprints to start that third level of the quest line.

  Blueprint Acquired: Bronzed Ash

  Blueprint Acquired: Creeping Alder

  Blueprint Acquired: Squirrel-nut Hickory

  Blueprint Acquired: Streamside Birch

  Blueprint Acquired: Rosy Hawthorn

  Quest Complete: Expand on Surface II; Reward: Choose One of Each Set: Cloud Wildcat, Giant Rat, or Meadow Sprite; Grey Truffle, Destroyer Truffle, or Inkwell Bolete; Sky Island Pear, Spiny Sycamore, or Striped Oak

  Once again, I found myself torn. Did I want to focus on utility? Defensive capabilities? Magic? I want to say I agonized over my choices, but I’d gotten used to the idea that some options would keep being offered until I took them. The meadow sprite was an easy choice, as I was deeply curious about what such a creature would represent. The trees were almost as easy, and I went for the fruiting tree apparently endemic to the sky island. I did spend some time thinking about the fungus, since I didn’t seem to get offered those as often. In the end, I went with the inkwell bolete, figuring it might be useful for scholarly functions.

  Blueprints acquired: Meadow Sprite, Inkwell Bolete, Sky Island Pear.

  New Quest: Expand on surface III – assimilate a surface zone reaching at least 100 meters from the dungeon entrance and incorporating an area of at least 8000 square meters and including at least 8 meters above the surface level. Reward: T2 Field boss, T2 Creature Blueprint, Loot Blueprint, and Magic Tool Blueprint.

  The rewards there sounded promising, though that area translated to a radius of over 50 meters, with the requirement to reach directionally much farther. I’d have to ask Aven about the Field Boss; it sounded cool, but I wasn’t sure about its function or the cost of maintaining it. I’d need to start in on my second floor first, though reaching towards the ruin was a priority as well.