Valterra looked at the words uncomprehendingly. His instincts did not like the idea of a Detached Floor. With the words of the System came knowledge and he knew, in a detached way, that a Detached Floor was one that had no number and was completely separate from his Aether Flow. It existed outside of his Dungeon, completely and utterly on its own apart from the fact that he would need to claim the space first to create such a Floor.

  Despite the feelings his instincts gave him, his mind told him something different. He could have a whole Floor outside of his main realm where he could experiment with creatures and create biomes for them that wouldn’t work within the house. Not only that but he could create them wherever he expanded which meant that he could create pocket domains in order to get more creatures for his numbered Floors. More locations meant more opportunities for new Schemas.

  Valterra kept himself from getting too excited. There had to be a catch but even if there wasn’t he imagined it would be hard to remain aware of multiple Detached Floors. Any he made would also be unable to help his main Dungeon nor would the main Dungeon be able to help them. They would be on their own. At least until he had something fast enough that could get there in time to be of any help.

  Regardless, his new Floors had been recognized and were stable and his creatures had already begun to battle it out once more. Attempting to climb higher in order to win the right to enter the house proper and delve deeper. Valterra was satisfied.

  Until he wasn’t. He had spent his time since his last evolution fighting a war and cleaning up the aftermath. His very being chafed at such things. He wanted to play, to create, and to experiment. It was time to expand once more.

  So he did. His presence swept out from the house in a wave, taking new ground at a steady rate. Valterra was surprised to find that it didn’t seem as hard as it was before and certainly less jarring of an experience. His mind easily accepted the new territory, allowing him to eat up ground steadily. Allowing himself to get lost in the sensations he also lost track of time.

  He was awakened from his self-imposed stupor sometime later. His System blinked at him revealing a host of notifications. Apparently, it had been a day or two since he had started claiming more territory and he had succeeded in claiming the entirety of the clearing where the cabin was built. That land included a nearby pond and garden and he assumed many of the notifications would be new plants and perhaps some new creatures.

  Opening the notifications he was stunned by what he found.

  As if that wasn’t enough he had still more notifications, many of them being creatures who had finally finished their evolutions despite the war that had recently been waged. These were creatures that had reached evolution while he had been evolving and he was interested to see what choices he had made.

  Immediately the Core honed in on the last two notifications. One of his spiders had finally evolved and he had been granted an entirely different mouse evolutionary path. To his surprise, it wasn’t from Ile’Fen but rather Qual’Dorn. He wondered why that was. Perhaps all the gods would get involved in some way. Valterra smiled to himself at the thought and sent a thank you to Qual’Dorn, receiving a hazy sense of acceptance from the High Spirit.

  His new spider was impressive, to say the least. When he had first spawned it so long ago it had been around two inches long which was on the small end of his Schemas even though it was big for a bug. Now though? Now it was over three times that large. It was bigger than its mouse companion who had stayed around the same length as its previous evolution.

  That the mouse was changed was a foregone conclusion, its eyes sparkled green and its fur had a dark brown hue reminiscent of bark. Valterra was giddy with excitement. He loved his mice and to receive a whole new evolutionary path for them excited him to no end. He quickly spawned more of each in different parts of the new First Floor. He couldn’t wait to see what they would become.