One of the important differences between inhabitants and ecological creatures is the precision and power avaible to evolving inhabitants.

  Mordecai's experimentation with incorporating stronger metals into the hard structures of mundane creatures id the groundwork for his ges to some of their existing inhabitants as well as the new inhabitants upgraded from some of their ecological octs.

  He'd already established the tempte frading river drakes to brine dragons, plete with breath ons and water-based magic, but instead of gainiric powers to make them eletsima dragons like Nezha and Ysi, he enhaheir scales, bones, cws, and fangs with a tticework of the new metals, though he adjusted the exact structure and mix to create different visual effects.

  Their scales obtained a rainbow sheen that shifted with the angle of the observer. Cws ah shoh a slightly reflective metallic gleam that held a hint of pale blue in its silvery hue. Their bones, for those who might ever end up seeing them, were now a dull bck from the deal that ihem. Mordecai added a final, invisible tweak that he'd learned from one of the samples: all of these were impregnated with microscopic flecks of diamond crystals.

  Even magical ons would have difficulty maintaining an edge after striking those scales or cws. Some entments were strong enough of course, but they were retively rare.

  This would make the hardened alloy ons avaible as rewards even more valuable. Without the o bihem with lots of carbon, it was much easier to keep the on and armor rewards from being brittle when hardened with the new metals.

  For the crabbits and s drakes who were ready to migrate to a stronger zone, Mordecai gave the same upgrades to their hard tissues, with the exoskeletons of the crabbits obtaining the same sheen as the upgraded scales did.

  The s drakes needed minimal ges to turn them into bottom-dwelling creatures that could hide in the mud and sand at the bottom of the sea. They also maintaihe flexibility to swim up to the surfad use their cws to climb onto ships.

  However, the crabbits needed a little more alteration. Crabs were never great swimmers to begin with, but the crabbits were really bad. So he went with giving them a small surprise instead. If they crouched down to make a jump like their s selves, the a also primed a powerful jet of water. They might not be able to swim properly very well, but this maneuver could cateorying to escape. As a final bonus, Mordecai didn't have to do anything with their 'scream', the uhly harmonies would be amplified simply by being uer where everything was louder. This applied to the shock waves of their hydraulic-powered punches as well.

  When the king rew strong enough, they could migrate down with a simple increase in size, tougher hair impregnated with metal, and saltwater adaptations. The dungeon still only had the initial pair as adults, plus their young ones.

  While the bunyips were also few in hey did have a trickle of dire rabbits ied in the upgrade, so the saltwater adaptation was an easy minrade. They weren't very strong batants to begin with, so they retaihe roles of rescuer and healer for the most part. Mordecai gave them the option of participating in bat as support for the inhabitants, but with the restri that they had to wear a scary mask with some matg ery to desighem as batants, separate from the normally non-bat bunyips. He didn't want there to be any mix ups when bunyips were trying to help delvers in trouble.

  Mordecai created an upgrade tempte for the giant axolotls as well, granting them saltwater adaptations and toughing their skin and bohey would not receive a size upgrade; instead, they were given the ability to adjust their skin's color aure to provide deep camoufge.

  The final current species of inhabitant to receive an o upgrade was the pixies. Their flighty nature made it harder to nail down what they truly wanted instead of what was simply an i of the moment, so Mordecai created the upgrade tempte with a requirement for a pixie to acquire it; they o have both a strong enough will and spirit, plus enough focus and resolve to ehat it was a real desire.

  The upgrade itself was simple enough. It gave them a 'mermaid' form that retaiheir wings, though the wings now looked almost like flying fish fins rendered iridest by fey magid a faint trace of one of the new metals. They could transform between mermaid and normal pixie form but retaihe yle wings. Mordecai didn't touch their 'flower' transformation ability, but her he nor Kazue were particurly surprised whearted adapting themselves to the o enviro.

  Sea anemones were the first flower-like form that ted to, despite them actually being animals. This trend towards taking on minor animal forms instead of pnt forms tinued with other bottom-dwelling but visually spectacur species like starfish and sea urs.

  They also had some options on the scale patterns of their new fishtails. Many of them ehe rainbow sheen Mordecai had made on, but some also waher metallic patterns such as the attern on to certaihods of folding high and low-carbon steels. A few of those wahe same pattern but in preetal colors, such as silver and copper or silver and gold.

  As a final touch, this was the first new form for the pixies and thus their first upgrade in power. This was reflected in their size; those with the mermaid upgrade were now at least a foot tall iher normal or mermaid form. This wasn't really a choice but a natural refle of increased power. There were few paths of increasing power that left tiny fey creatures at their inal size.

  After that, it was time to indue new inhabitants from amongst their ecological creatures. He began by setting up a rule to automatically apply to all of them: ensuring that they could breathe both air and water. It was the simplest way to leave a lot of options open.

  Mordecai wasn't looking to make these immediately strong, instead, he wao make these new species have a slow growth pattern that would let them eventually bee huge, but for now, they would start at smaller sizes in a 'juvenile' form.

  The first of these were crabs.

  While there was some overp with the crabbits, these were almost normal crabs in form and fun, though their carapace was hardened and reinforced the same way as other o creatures in this zone.

  The metallic crabs would start at about twenty pounds i, which was within the range of some species of normal crabs, and would act as ground support when delvers were dealing with swimming inhabitants.

  However, they would slowly grow from there and after several decades they would be the size of a small elephant, weighing in at three to four tons. They were starting well below the power cap of this zone, and that cap would go up for quite a while given the current growth pattern for their territory.

  The 'up' and 'out' zos still needed some rebang, but that work o wait until they did their 'out' zone.

  Fed support, Mordecai went with evolving sea urs into giant forms that could fire off their bck metallic spihey wouldn't move fast, but they were well-armored and able to shift the position of their spines by flexing, making them difficult to bypass. But just firing foot-long plus metal needles was a little b, so he spiced them up by giving the fired needles a random ce to have other properties.

  On impact, they could unleash aric discharge, a cloud of acid or poison, a burst of super-heated steam, or instantly freeze the area around them. Only about one in ten fired needles would do this, and the ur had no trol over whies would be enhanced or what the entment would be.

  Given how fast they could fire their needles, this was still enough to make bat with them quite intense and iing.

  came the fish. Or at least, fish-like creatures, given Mordecai's designs.

  As they were going to be starting off retively small, he decided they should also act as an aggressive school of fish, no matter which variety they were. As they grew rger, they would spread out ao bee solo hunters. The schools wouldn't have more thay members, which could still be an overwhelming number when they were all ten or more pounds each.

  One of the stranger-looking ones Mordecai created was the turtle-sharks. The base body shape was that of a shark, but much of it was covered in a thick, hard shell like a turtle. They could also stretch out aheir necks, whial sharks could not do. Doing so created some gaps in their neck armor, so most of the time they had their heads drawn in tight, which made them look more like normal sharks. They were slower than most sharks their size, but it was much harder to damage them.

  Razorfin sharks were going to be the fast attackers of the set. While they had hard sharp teeth and a suffitly strong bite, their primary attack was going to be to run into and slide along their targets. Not only were the edges of their fins as sharp and hard as their name implied, but they also had sharp, raised ridges running down their long, thin bodies.

  Evolving some fish into rays was a bit trickier than making shark-like creatures, but far from impossible. These he gave long tails with poisonous stingers, plus the ability to shoot either pressurized balls of water that would explode upon impact h-pressure streams of water to knock people away. He also gave them the ability to unch from the water into the air and maintain flight indefinitely.

  Freshwater eels were fairly easy to evolve into giaric eels adapted for salt water. But even with strong jaws, that felt insuffit, so Mordecai also gave them snake-like muscles and flexibility, allowing them to around prey and strict them while giving off the occasioric discharge.

  After finishing with his fish-like creatures, Mordecai moved on to a couple of soft-bodied creatures.

  The first one was teically reted to slugs, though its translut and delicate appearance had ear the name of 'sea angel'. The normal version of such creatures didn't generally make muoise, but these ones Mordecai gave the power to sing in the high-pitched ranges normally used by creatures such as bats and whales.

  To that sea song, Mordecai added magic. The small creatures were going to be effectively bards, their songs ented to bolster aheir allies, or to enthrall or instill dread into their foes.

  He also gave them a small plement of normal enha and infli spells, such as those used to qui or strengthen allies or to slow or weaken enemies.

  They were simple. His project was a little more plicated.

  No one had been able t a live spe of a creature closely reted to jellyfish from the o to their territory, so Mordecai did his best to evolve a atch from their existent slime creatures. The result was fairly close, so he was satisfied with calling them crystalline jellyfish

  Their life cycle oher hand, well, he was having some fun there.

  At only a few pounds, they would be starting as the smallest of their new inhabitants. They were also smaller than a normal jellyfish would be for that weight, as they retained some of the living crystal properties of their slime aors along with a small crystal core to be a brain.

  These tiny creatures could be almost invisible when they were drifting slowly, but their thin tendrils were already packed with a potent paralytic. If they were spotted early they could easily be killed before they were close enough to be dangerous, but if a group was distracted by a fight already when a few of these drifted out from behind a piece of coral, it would be fairly easy for them to slip in unnoticed.

  They would be growing rger of course, aually reproduce when they reached twenty pounds. That was where Mordecai id aual surprise. Whearted produg young, the individual polyps would be mostly dormant and act as part of their parent's body. It would be nearly impossible to tell where one ended and the began, with many of the rger jellyfish's tendrils actually belonging to its offspring.

  All of this would ge when the crystalline jellyfish received enough damage to make it 'shatter'. This would cause it to split into the parent and the swarm of tiny jellyfish, along with a cloud of ective tissue ahe parent would still be about half the size of the bined form and thus a signifit individual threat, but its tiny children would be just waking up and running about in fusion as they learo coordihemselves.

  While individually they wouldn't be much of a threat, the pure chaos of those first several seds after the split would make it very easy for them to actally run into people and hit them with filing, stinging tendrils.

  This would leave the parent at about ten pounds again. The ime it was ready to reproduce, the total weight would be forty pounds with the parent making up twenty of those pounds. The offspring would be the same size, and thus twice as many would be borhe rger form shattered.

  Mordecai did not put a cap on this doubling pattern, he didn't o. Growth would be limited by what they could eat and the time they spent alive.

  That was a rule he implemented for all of these inhabitants who were inteo grow bigger. They only aged during the time they were alive, so an inhabitant who died in battle during the m would lose more than twelve hours of aging/growth for that day.

  Individually, many of the new inhabitants would underperform pared to even the river level for a while. However, the enviro made for unique opportunities for swarming and ambushing delvers and they had a sele of heavy hitters to back the swarms up.

  With that, Mordecai was doh the inhabitants for the o zone. up was going to be the bosses.

  Zagaroth