Shizoku's sudden arrival earned her a round of lectures once she'd been talked down from hunting out Erryn. True, her magic skill in general should suffice for the weather and the shape-shifting spell she'd used was rather specifically useful, but if anything had happened, a slehirteen-year-old girl would fare poorly iher this cold. Especially given how deep into the night she'd chosen to travel.

  Fuyuko's cold resilience was i least, Shizo o actively use magipensate for poor weather beyond what her furrier form could handle.

  The lectures took pce at a table with hot drinks and food, which she clearly needed despite her use of the transformation spell. Once she was settled, Mordecai went to talk with Erryn.

  The young usagisune man was easy to draw into a versation while they enjoyed some hot mulled mead. Mordecai found a spot to casually drop, "Oh, by the way, did you hear? The Azeria matriarch is pregnant. It turns out she's having triplets, a rare treat for the given their birthrate issues."

  "Oh?" Erryn replied, "That sounds like good... news..." His voice trailed off as he started w out why Mordecai might be telling him this news about Aia. He had visible trouble speaking for a few moments before he smmed back the rest of his warm mead.

  Once he recovered his equilibrium, Erryn asked, "So, I guess why you are telling me. Um, well, what is expected of me?"

  "A lot different than having babies as just a rabbit without a care and barely a thought, isn't it?" Mordecai replied with amusement.

  He took a sip of his mead while he pted what to tell Erryn. "Well, Aia has had at least a few children and I believe she's never been married, so I suspect that she will not have a lot of demands on you. The neassed on via Shizoku who ractically bloodthirsty out of teen angst and embarrassment, so we do not have any official unicatio."

  Erryn groa the mental image of the irate little kitsuhat girl is insane."

  "It seems to run in the family," Mordecai agreed. "Anyway, I suggest that you send a message back with the group of kitsune gratuting Aia and saying that you io visit in, mm, two months from now. That would be two weeks before the start of the new year." Which was also the spring equinox and Zero Day. "This visit would probably only be for a few days, and then you could e back wheriplets are due so you meet your daughters on the day they are born."

  "That sounds like a good start," Erryn said, "but I'm not sure where to go from there."

  "Well," Mordecai replied, "first keep in mind that this might not be how things work out. Aia may want to have you stay for the rest of her pregnand maybe sometime after. I don't think that's her style, but I don't know her well enough to be sure. After that, the future is simply too uain right now. The two of you will o figure it out by talking when you visit. Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if she has a rough schedule for the en or more years already id out, but don't agree to anything you are not fortable with. If you need advice, Moriko and Kazue travel there."

  An option Mordecai wouldn't have until sometime after the tour.

  "Alright," Erryn said after a moment of silence, "I guess that works. I was kind of hoping for something more detailed, but I think you are right. Um, what about suggestions for how to be a good father?"

  Mordecai shrugged and said, "I have a ton of those, but most of them start with how involved in their lives yoing to be, so they still depend on your versation with Aia. They all have the same roots however; love your children, be kind, be avaible, and be supportive. Do not presume to know who they will be as adults; instead, learn who they are with them and help guide them into the best version of themselves. Oh, and a military motto apply here as well, ohey are old enough: praise in public, reprimand in private. There are exceptions, but it's a good general rule ohey bee adolests."

  "Why is this so much harder and scarier than when I was a rabbit?" Erryn asked with a sigh. "I mean, it should be easier now, they are going to be so much safer and I have so much more ability to help."

  "You weren't a sapient perso, nor did you bear the responsibility of helping to raise sapient people."

  The two of them talked for about an hour more as Mordecai tried to set Erryn's mind at ease regarding his impending fatherhood. He really didn't think Erryn had much to worry about, there was little doubt that Aia would have had a pn in pce before she announced her pregnancy over the midwinter festival. But she couldn't have chosen a more dramatic time than during a major holiday.

  Once he was dohere, Mordecai checked in with Kazue and Moriko. As Shizoku was here alone, she and Fuyuko were enced to share Fuyuko's room for now. Part of the reason Kazue had softly pushed for this was for Shizoku's health after having strained herself with her nighttime flight after a three-day festival.

  That same three-day festival made it the perfect time for Mordecai to begin w on their 'o' zone. Although the dungeon had expended mana on ensuring everyone had food and drink aplenty, the nature of a dungeon's ecosystem made such expenditures nearly -zero cost in the long run, and that turns into a profit of mana when the people eating and drinking expend a lot of effort and energy. Which most do while celebrating with song and dance.

  It would be better in some ways to wait even longer for the water to warm more, but this would suffice.

  The first thing he did was create a zone-wide entment. This would be their actual st resort to prevent drowning, and would not be announced. It was a weakened version of a normal water-breathing entment, with one signifit differe did nothing to alter the feeling of having water in your lungs, it just enabled air-breathers to use the water. So it would still feel like drowning to most people.

  He also saved a bit of cost by not having any way of disabling the entment. It shouldn't matter as any invaders would presumably have been routed into the sewers by this point, and the entment did end that far.

  The step was to start growing their 'flora', though most of it was not actually pnt life. Corals, kelp, sponges, and more created the oscape and became the start of their ecosystem, along with the endless flow of invisibly small creatures and pnts. After that came the cms, shellfish, snails, worms, and other 'ers' to popute the o floor.

  Fish were , and were quite abundant. There was a lot of variety to be had here, and Mordecai was being creative with their designs.

  Growing and evolving all of these creatures was much more expehan most of their other ecosystems. The biggest problem was that they didn't have a lot of live samples from the os when pared to the breadth of nd creatures they had access to, which meant that Mordecai was stuck finding the closest matches he could and speeding them through a guided evolution process that sometimes required drastic ges to basic biology.

  Naturally, Mordecai sought advantage in the prolonged, iterative process. From the ti creatures that grew gss shells to the rigid, multi-yered structures of cms and their kin, he had a living boratory to work with.

  Iron was the easiest to incorporate. It was cheap and easy to produ iible format and most life forms already had the biology to work with the metal in some form.

  Adding in the new metals was more difficult. Most of them turned out to be passively toxic without fiuning the metabolism of the creatures iing them. With a dungeon's resources, this simply took time and experimentation.

  Based on the elements Mordecai could test with, it seemed that carbon could form pounds with anything, though some substances required the assistance of other mediators, such as the part of air o maintain life or anas that be several times as reactive.

  This meant that with suffit iterative experimentation, he could incorporate any material into a metabolism without it being toxic to that anism and from there find a way to bind it into shells, scales, boeeth, and cws.

  Of course, he could only go so fast. Mordecai was w with life forms with too little self-awareo be sidered inhabitants and he ending mana to manipute their evolution and speed up their growth rate, but they still had to live and reproduce. It wasn't like designing inhabitant bodies.

  When he realized he wouldn't have the final results he wanted before the first parties re-cleared their way down here, Mordecai withdrew most of his attention from the ecological tier creatures and focused oing ready with what he had.

  Iron-hardened coral made for wonderful 'walls' to strus out of, even if they weren't as strong as what he inteo eventually repce them with. Mordecai also wasn't creating 'strict' rooms and corridors, they were simply strong suggestions. The coral was also not quite as hard as it could be; while Mordecai could tuhe position to be even harder, this came at the price of brittleness.

  He further ented the pathways with the same 'airy water' magic his avatar had engraved into stone manually. These overpping magics created a visible trast with the normal water a little outside of the boundaries Mordecai had id out. If you venture off the path, you are entering harder, more dangerous territory.

  At this stage, the small coral reefs were fairly bnd in appearance, but that could be altered by simply decorating them with the rest of the creatures he'd been encing to groopute. Anemones could make for wonderfully colorful uer 'flowers'.

  Then it was time to wind in tendrils of living crystal and Saraag's mycelium. It wasn't the derix that it often was in other zones, Mordecai just wanted a loose weave to reinforce what was already here.

  That crystal could also el light from the world above to down here on the sea floor. The way water absorbed light muted the effee which created an eerie sort of illumination filled with flickering shadows as creatures and pnts swayed iion of the o water.

  Mordecai's work was somewhat hampered by frequently needing to adjust the metabolisms of almost all the sea creatures, even if they were not the targets of his experiments. In order for the creatures to i aabolize odd metals, there o be enough enviroal presence of the metals.

  This meant that there were toxic levels of metal present in their o zone now.

  All of this work meant that Mordecai only had a single, slightly meandering 'path' built uer for now. He would have to e back to that on a ter day and start creating more options and crisscrossing paths.

  While Mordecai's core had been w on the oscape, his avatar had been trading off with Kazue's avatar and Moriko to guide the stru of the towns at ead. Their various inhabitants had bee swift and effit builders, there just o be a guiding hand to make sure that everyone was w toward the same visual themes and that all the basieeds of the delvers were met.

  The slightly toxiature of the seawater and the creatures therein ated adding signage on both the shoreside town and 'volic' isnd town. Not that they had ever guarahat everything would be safe to eat, but the toxicity of metal could be subtle and slow to show itself and it seemed best to ensure no one died from it after they had left the dungeon.

  Of course, this meant that their seafood was going to be extra exotic. Certainly, bat groups that made it this far were going to have access to the appropriate magic to deal with anything that could be poisonous, they just needed a bit of forewarning.

  Alright, the basic set dressing was plete, though he wasirely happy about his progress.

  Now it was time to make things dangerous.

  Zagaroth