Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle – Napoleon Hill

  Aven didn’t stick around too much longer than that. It seemed generally a bit harried but expressed a willingness to return within a day or two of the completion of my new quest. I felt like I should have had more questions about what my goals should be, but Aven gave me the general impression that there wasn’t much of a right or wrong approach and that I should do what felt right. I appreciated that, on the one hand, but there’s no doubt a more proscriptive approach would have been easier for my peace of mind.

  It wasn’t until after the little fairy had departed that I realized I should have asked more questions about the general functioning of dungeons and their interactions with the surrounding political authorities.

  *I suppose I should make a list of questions for it, too. I need some way to take notes; that’d be handy for my scholar quests too, I’m sure*

  My quest options were a bit more limiting this time around, as I’d still made no progress on several fronts. While I was hopeful that monitoring the hawk-eagle would enable me to start in on the Xenoarchaeology line, there was certainly no guarantee it would happen anytime soon. Knowing the sky island was an artificial thing made me confident it would happen eventually, at least.

  In the short term, I clearly needed to work on expanding the rooms in my claimed zone, but after that it was a bit of a toss-up. I could work on the naturalist quests by cataloging species that entered/existed in my domain; I’d guess that would go quickly, but it also wasn’t likely to be particularly helpful in boosting my defenses. It might be a better idea to improve my core protections and figure out ways to automate my traps. Assimilating more creatures also sounded good, and I was excited at the potential reward – not the blueprints so much as the new skill. I wasn’t sure exactly what Absorb T1 Skill would require, but adding skills seemed like an excellent way to diversify my options. Expanding on the surface was my other simple option, though I’d prefer to have a better sense of which direction to expand before I started pushing things horizontally.

  *No place to begin but the beginning, I guess. *

  I gave it some thought, though not a tremendous amount, before opting to build out towards the north. I noticed that the while the quest called for five rooms this time, it didn’t bother to specify a volume or minimum size. I’m guessing the standards it gave the first time likely hold, though, and I’m not really interested in trying to game the system by creating tiny rooms.

  Heading north seemed good, since that would take me towards the stream. Water sources are always important, whether for habitation, agriculture or simply biodiversity, so lacking any other specific goal I made the stream my target. I assumed that might help me add some aquatic creatures as well, and things I found in the stream bed might provide some insight into conditions upstream and possibly some artifacts from prior occupations.

  That thought in mind, I excavated the first new room a short passage length away from the eastern room, making this one the largest room yet, figuring I might put a bear or two there and open a new entrance to let them in and out. I sort of assumed I might close my current entrance at that point, so that my core wasn’t quite so close to the primary entrance. My dungeon instincts were screaming that I was dangerously exposed where I am now.

  Of course, I was also hoping to drop my core down into a second level soon, once I figured out how one moves as a stationary object. I hadn’t really given it much thought yet, but I suspect I can have one of my dungeon creatures move me once I have a new site determined. I did get the feeling that moving the core might also shift my boundaries – that I wasn’t so much claiming the specific territory as projecting a zone of ownership. I’ll ask Aven about that the next time it turns up, but I get the sense it’s a mana-intensive process as well, so not something to be undertaken lightly.

  The new room was easily six meters long and five meters wide in a generally oval shape. I tried to give the floor and walls an organic flowing feel with the floor sloping gently to the southwest. I’d set up a sort of platform in the northeast corner, figuring that might make a good den for the bears. I didn’t open a second entrance yet but decided I would probably place it in the northwest corner. From the positioning, I figured that one, maybe two more rooms in the north should bring me adjacent to the stream, so I figured I’d need to keep an eye on slopes to prevent flooding. Fortunately, the stream was generally downhill (as one would expect) from the core room and even if I misjudged the water table a bit, I shouldn’t see any flooding south of the new room unless the stream massively flooded its banks. I don’t know how the seasons and climate work on the sky island just yet, but I would expect the general slope to prevent any major flooding on the island itself. Worst case scenario, I’d temporarily be an aquatic dungeon until the waters recede, and I drain myself over the cliff edge!

  It once again struck me just how odd my new life was – hydraulic engineering was never my thing, though as an archaeologist in a tropical area, I did have experience in planning around the flooding of holes in the ground!

  The second new room I made narrower, mostly a broader passage extending northwest from the north central wall of the bear room, curving a bit at the end to parallel the course of the stream. As I had reached the surface stream, I could sense it above my excavations, and avoided bringing water into the room, just yet. I set up what I intended as a streambed, starting from below the center of the stream, and sloping gently downward to the south and west, but I didn’t actually open a hole to the stream above yet. I left 50 cm of granite substrate between the surface stream and the new room, keeping the water on the surface, for the time being.

  Over the next several days, I expanded west and south, nearly completing a circuit with the existing western rooms, adding two more large rooms. The first, I intended as a subterranean pond excavating a lower area on the northern edge, where the streambed I’d dug in the second room would flow in, filling the northern and western 2/3 of the space. At the same time, I’d added an overflow drainage leading to the cliff edge; I gave that drainage a wider bore than the tunnel I anticipated boring into the surface stream. I wasn’t looking to reroute the entire stream, at least not yet, but the pool would max out at about 2.5 m deep. I made sure that the bottom of the intended cave pool was granite but then laid down a layer of surface soil and pea-sized gravel above it. I sort of assumed that once I brought in water from the surface, that would cover at least the basic aquatic microbiota and presumably some smaller macroscopic lifeforms. I wasn’t really intending to open a terribly large entrance into the stream, but set it to create small waterfalls, both as it entered the dungeon and as it fell into the pool. That should help keep it oxygenated, and the steady flow should help with bringing in nutrients from the surface. I pondered adding mana lights to the room, but I wasn’t certain whether that would substitute for sunlight – another question for Aven, I guess.

  South and west of the pool, I opened a pathway into the fourth new room, due west of the bear room and north of the first western room. I hadn’t added any thematic elements to this room, leaving it empty, for now. I assumed I’d be adding some new creatures soon enough, and I figured I could customize the space for whatever I added.

  That left me with a need for one more room to complete the quest, and I thought perhaps I’d use that as an entry to the second level, so I thought building it to the south of my existing core room would be a good plan, assuming, as my instincts advised, that moving deeper was my best plan. This room was smaller than the other new rooms, and I sort of envisioned it as an area for visitors to rest before continuing to another level. As such, I’d constructed several relatively level platforms on either side of the main central path, with space for two fire rings, complete with ventilation shafts rising to the surface, with several granitic grates emplaced to prevent any creature larger than a mouse from infiltrating directly to that point. They vented to the rocky outcrop, meaning that anybody investigating smoke would need to shift several large boulders to access them. For that matter, if I cared, I could scrub the particulate matter in the smoke through assimilation to make it invisible to the naked eye.

  I wasn’t concerned with the dungeon’s airflow. I instinctively knew that even without designed ventilation, my inherently magical nature would keep the air from becoming too toxic; I was subconsciously absorbing and recirculating elements of the atmosphere to maintain what I felt was appropriate. Some quick attempts to manipulate the atmosphere were mostly unsuccessful; at this level, at least, removing the air from the room wasn’t an option, and while I might be able to smother people with carbon dioxide, it would take hours and hours of focused effort. On balance, that was probably a good thing, meaning that I wouldn’t need to invest much focus on ventilation systems as I expanded deeper into the sky island.

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  In similar fashion, I realized that I also didn’t really need to worry about erosion or direct damage to the walls and floors of my rooms. Once the pattern had been laid down, changes to the rooms caused by outside forces would gradually revert over time, as mana was available. That form of regeneration would likely be a major bonus for visitors as any resources they removed would become available again after some time; I could manage priority for that sort of regeneration, or even turn it off entirely, if I chose. The mana cost of those regenerations clearly varied with the nature of the matter being recreated, with mana-dense objects obviously costing more to restore.

  I’d also added semi-enclosed latrine pits, arranged to be facing away from the main platform areas, with waste falling into small cisterns that I populated with slimes, which I’d discovered thrived on carrion and this sort of waste and did so without much odor.

  [Quest Completed: Create Additional Rooms – Level 1; Reward: Sapphire blueprint and one of the following: Basalt, Asbestos, or Limestone]

  *Interesting. My choice of stone just got much broader – limestone and basalt don’t normally mix with granite. Now that I’m under the stream am I picking up stuff from farther away? Is the sky island itself passing over some new geological features? Or is the system not as restricted to local elements as I’d thought? Wonder if Aven has thoughts on the options I’m being offered? *

  In the end, I opted for the limestone, as that would allow for both more natural cave morphology and a wider range of color options. As far as I knew, basalt only comes in dark and darker, though the potential for derivative loot is probably higher.

  Blueprint acquired: Sapphire

  Blueprint acquired: Limestone

  [New Quest: Create Additional Rooms – 10 on level 1 or 3 on level 2; Reward: 1 Material Blueprint, 1 Loot Blueprint and 1 Fungal Blueprint]

  I guess I’ll probably shoot for the level 2 version given my discussions with Aven, but I have some more things to do on the first level before I do that.

  Having constructed the rooms with the intention of opening a channel to the stream, I figured that this would be a good time to actually do that and see what happens. Sending my creatures to the high ground portions of the dungeon, just in case, I opened a narrow tunnel into the stream bed, claiming a small section of the stream bed physically separate from the rest of my surface zone. The disjunction bothered me, and I’m pretty sure I’ll correct it sooner, rather than later, but it’s good to know that it’s possible. I erected a somewhat streamlined grating over the opening to help prevent obstructions from forming but left large enough holes that even mid-sized fish and invertebrates could enter. Obviously, I worked from the intended entry point in my room up and upstream, angling the tunnel to open into a small waterfall. Keeping the flow modest, it took several hours to fill the basin I’d set aside and for the outflow tunnel to start serving its purpose. Adjusting the outflow tunnel to handle the flow rate took a few minutes, but in the end, there was no real trouble in making sure it was large enough to handle even moderately extensive flooding. Most interestingly, I received not only several blueprints in the process (being sucked down the tunnel and dropped down some rocks was enough to cause some deaths in the local fauna), but I even was given a new quest line.

  [New Quest: Create a balanced aquatic ecosystem of at least 3 cubic meters; Reward: T1 aquatic predator blueprint.]

  Blueprint Acquired: Local Aquatic Microbiota

  Blueprint Acquired: Blue Crayfish

  Blueprint Acquired: Gold-stripe Minnow

  Blueprint Acquired: Silver-stripe Minnow

  Blueprint Acquired: Glass Frog

  Blueprint Acquired: Stonefly

  Blueprint Acquired: Fishing spider

  Blueprint Acquired: Blue-green Algae

  Blueprint Acquired: Slender Rivergrass

  [Quest Completed – Spot Aquatic Animal; Reward: choose one of the following: Lesser Chub, Lemon Dace, Cave Salamander]

  [New Quest – Spot Aquatic Animal II – Identify 5 species of macroscopic aquatic animals new to you; Reward: 2 Aquatic Animal blueprints]

  I guessed that since the fall had killed examples of each of my newly identified creatures, the system had given me some new blueprint options. None of those seemed particularly useful, but I took the cave salamander as the most interesting option. It turned out to be quite small, and pigmentless, but not actually blind, and I didn’t bother trying to spawn it into the developing pond.

  Killing these small creatures had apparently also counted towards my assimilation quest, as it triggered the second in that quest line.

  [Quest Completed – Assimilate 5 New Lifeforms; Reward: choose two of the following: Marsh Vole, Gray Rat, Brown Widow Spider, Green Meadow Snake; Absorb T1 Skill]

  [New Quest – Assimilate 10 New Lifeforms; Reward: three T1 creature blueprints or 2 T2 creature blueprints]

  Interestingly, the system apparently decided not to give me the option for a T2 creature blueprint - I’m guessing since all the creatures I'd assimilated were on the low end of T1. That seemed fair enough, though I might wish otherwise. I opted for the spider, which sounded venomous, and the rat, which had some potential uses in a variety of contexts. Really, I was more interested in the new skill, even if I wasn’t entirely clear on its functionality, yet.

  Blueprint Acquired: Brown Widow Spider

  Blueprint Acquired: Gray Rat

  Skill Acquired: Absorb T1 Skill – Enables the absorption of one T1 skill from a skill-holding being within the dungeon’s domain.

  It seemed clear that if I killed something with an appropriate skill, I’d be able to absorb that skill, though there was no telling what I’d actually be able to do with it, once I’d absorbed it. *Another question for Aven*, I guessed ruefully.

  After I’d let the water flow stabilize for a day or so, rooted some rivergrass, and added gravel both below the falls and in the main streambed, the situation stabilized enough to finish the first quest in the new quest line. I noted that I had some other, larger creatures taking up residence as well, including some I identified as common green turtles and Cyan-striped trout. I’m sure I’ll get those blueprints eventually, but not yet – they did seem to count towards the reissued aquatic animal quest, at least.

  [Quest Complete: Create balanced aquatic ecosystem; Reward: choose one of the following: Silver Pike, Giant Fishing Spider, Trapdoor Snapping Turtle]

  I’d been hoping for otters, or something a bit more exciting, but there was potential here. I decided against the pike, figuring that it might strip the pool of its other aquatic residents. I went back and forth between the other two but went with the turtle in the end. That was likely to be able to leave the water, if needed, and likely had relatively modest metabolic needs. Plus, I wanted to see what kind of ambush predator this would be!

  Blueprint Acquired: Trapdoor Snapping Turtle

  [New Quest: Expand aquatic ecosystems – reach a minimum of 15 cubic meters volume and have two different habitats available; Reward – Two T1 aquatic predator blueprints or one T2 aquatic predator blueprint]

  Pretty sure I should leave that one be, for now. I likely should start in on that second floor, but I think I’ve earned a construction break. Starting the second floor would likely bring Aven back, but I felt like it might have been expecting a longer break before its next visit.

  Time to send the Hawk-eagle out scouting for ruins with a bit more direction. I still can’t keep a focus on her for longer than a minute or so, but I can set a spiraling search pattern and task her to alert me when she spots a straight line of stones at least 1.5 meters long. Turns out that while I couldn’t use her eyes directly when outside of my area of control, I COULD get her to project recent memories to me upon her return. Not all cultures build in straight lines, but it’s the default pattern, frequently just to maximize the efficient use of space... More to the point, it’s something she’s likely to notice and unlikely to happen naturally – that should help me spot buildings and roads, if nothing else.