Mordecai had been pying with several ideas for the bosses of this level, but it was time to start discarding some.

  He was sad to discard the Leviathan whale idea. It was one of his favorites, but despite the vast amount of territory they had cimed and made even rger via spacial expansion, even a normal whale would have found this 'o' too small.

  The inhabitants that he was starting off small would have a igrate ter ter zone, but that wasn't an easy option for floor bosses.

  A kraken oher hand, well, octopuses were fortable folding up into small spaces and did not need a rge amount of territory to roam. Fortunately, a trader had mao get a single female octopus to the dungeon alive, which made things much easier, and Kazue had already decided her name would be Cephelia.

  Mordecai would have otherwise had to figure out how to mimic a cephalopod from a freshwater cm, which was a long way to go.

  Making a giant octopus was insuffit to earle of Kraken in Mordecai's opinion, and he decided to be creative with the cept. The first thing he did was give her rapid regeion and healing, including plete regrowth of lost limbs. He sidered a couple of options of where to go from there and discarded the idea eed limbs splitting in favor of giving her more size and shape-ging options.

  The splitting option would have allowed for potentially unlimited number of temporary extra tentacles, but by enhang an octopus's natural shape-ging abilities with suffit magic Cephelia would gain a lot more tactical options.

  Plus it made an easy stepping stoo givihe ability to shift all the way into a bipedal form that could walk on nd, along with being able to split the ends of her tentacle arms into 'fingers' of smaller tentacles, for fine manipution while in her normal form.

  While Cephelia's natural form would be about five hundred pounds with tentacle arms reag over sixty feet ih, she would be able to shift her mass to as low as five pounds and, hypothetically, to at least five thousand pounds.

  The hypothetical was because Mordecai was leaving that ability open-ended, based on how strong she was. That strength would increase as more zones were added topside.

  Additionally, she would be able to grow more pairs of tentacles as she grew above her natural size. She might be starting from the base of an octopus, but Cephelia was going to be much more than that.

  Mordecai then gave her enhanced versions of abilities from across the cephalopod family. Her suckers had tiny barbs to ioxins. She had additional ink sacs along her arms allowio release as local a cloud as she wanted, and that ink was corrosive to most creatures. The 'ink' also came in a biolumi variation, though it was just as corrosive.

  Cephelia's skin had spots of mild photosensitivity that were just barely enough to sense ges in light/shadow and a vague dire, to be used to supplemeactile sense of taste and smell along with the ability to detect faint vibrations arical signals.

  Even her ability to jet along using pressed water was enhanced, letting her hit bursts of two hundred miles per hour while uer. The shock wave of that move alone was enough to kill a person who had not been toughehrough training and bat.

  Then it was time for special powers. Mordecai chose to not give Cephelia a specific suite of magistead, he took what he already knew of different forms of elemental magid bihat with what he had learned from Derek during the boy's training. He filtered out everything that didn't resoh water and imbued her with that package of energy and potential.

  Water, and to a lesser extent id mud, would be hers to and, but it would be up to her to learn how to do so. This meant that Cephelia would have fewer and weaker abilities initially than if he'd granted her specifies, but these powers would grow in variety and strength as she grew in poracticed more.

  Cephelia's biggest weakness was her passive defense. Mordecai could enhance her skin's slime coating to make it briefly harden on impad he could toughen her skin withiain limits as well as embed it with hard nodules aallic grains to make strikes difficult, but in the end, she was going to be very reliant upon her regeion. There was a limit on how resilient her skin could be while still being as flexible as her limbs should be.

  He was able to do more with her beak, however. Here Mordecai decided to go a slightly different route with the metal it would be infused with. While it would only be in traces at first, her beak was going to tain adamantine. As the zone's power increased, so too would the amount of adamahat she would be able to incorporate, making it able to crush and pierce ever tougher foes and armor.

  To aodate her potential bat styles, Mordecai riddled the terraihe end of the designated area with tunnels. Not only could she readily dive in and out of tuo attad retreat, but if pressed she could dive into a deeper cave and gre enough to attack with her tentacles alone, making it almost impossible to injure her main body without squeezing through narrow tunnels.

  Getting into close-quarters bat with a cephalopod, the master grappler family of the o, was not a good idea.

  These tunnels were also training for Cephelia to fight in the sewers. While her elemental powers would enable her to use her water jet to 'jump' even when not submerged, she would be better off ging into a giant form and attag at a distance around ers, in support of the sewer-dwelling inhabitants.

  For their sed zone boss, Mordecai went back to their slime-based jellyfish, pig a particurly enthusiastie to grow into a giant jellyfish with a 'bell' over te wide. Dhamini, as Kazue named 'her' when Kazue knew Mordecai's pns, would not have an explosion of baby jellies when struck a strong enough blow, but there were plenty of other surprises in store for their delvers.

  First of all, the boss jellyfish had a 'lobed' main body, and at the edge of each lobe's se of the bell was a rge crystalline eye. The eyes swirled with light in shades of yellow, gold, and amber that created magically infused hypnotic patterns. Any foes with vision, which would be most delvers, that faced off against her would have to keep their minds steeled against the hypnotic effect lest they be left defenseless until the effect was broken.

  Each of the eight lobes had a small cluster of crystalline 'hat acted as sedary cores for Dhamini's primary crystal brain. This meant that each lobe could trol all of its tendrils indepely while being coordinated by the primary brain.

  And there were a lot of tendrils to trol. Between Kazue's boon and how tough people had to be to make it this far down the bat path, Mordecai felt free to be thh. The tendrils varied from thick, heavily barbed ones desigo around a target and draw them in close to almost invisibly thihat could drift lightly with the currents until they brushed up against an unsuspeg body.

  Some tendrils started off coiled and were inteo be shot like a tethered harpoon. Others carried rows of tiny spikes that were coiled instead, to be shot from a shorter raill others looked like feathery fronds and were inteo help el Dhamini's powers, but they still came with tiny toxic barbs.

  As for toxins, well, Dhamini was going to begin with only ones already found in other inhabitants, but she had the ability to i oxins and add them to her repertoire permaly. Still, the sele currently avaible was enough to make her a dangerous oppo, though a rather oe foe without more to back it up.

  Which Mordecai did by imbuing her with elemental lightning powers, much as he had gifted Cephelia with water elemental powers. These were physically enhanot only by Dhamini's frond-like tendrils by also by the tiny crystalline hairs c her everywhere.

  This allowed her to stantly and passively gee a weak but widely spread electrical field. She could feel even a tiny fluctuation in that field, giving her a rather detailed awareness of the world around her.

  It not only allowed for rather precise aiming of her attacks and powers but enhanore ability set Mordecai was giving her. Dhamini was their first inhabitant to be given direct mental attad trol abilities, though they were limited to creatures whose biology included electricity in some manner.

  So most elemental creatures, structs, fully spiritual entities, and so on were immuo her mental powers, with the exception of her hypnotic eyes which were visually based instead. Many of those were immuo toxins as well, leaving her with lightning as her only on against such foes. None of her attacks were physically powerful, but that limitation art of what let him trate so much of her potential into toxins, lightning, aal abilities.

  As for defenses, well, her crystal slime base still provided her with the same defense against physical blows as other crystal slimes, hardening against attacks briefly and locally while the rest of her remained malleable.

  Dhamini could also break off individual lobes if o protect herself from an attack. The lobe would adepely for about ten minutes before its metabolism and limited awareness began to fade. Any separated lobes would eventually die if not reied, which Dhamini preferred to do rather than slowly regee the lobe.

  Her core could tio fun even with all eight lobes separated from it, but she would be greatly weakened in this state.

  Mordecai's final touch for her bat abilities was to add the ability to float and fly in the air as easily as she floated and swam through the water. For out-of-bat abilities, he and Kazue had agreed to work toward all their zone bosses being able to i with delvers as people, so Dhamini was also given the ability to take on a bipedal form. The result looked a little bit like a human wearing a living jellyfish hat and a jellyfish-inspired dress, but that was Dhamini's preference when Mordecai asked for input on shaping her form. It also caused her to fit in with the local pixies, who had taken up the habit of wearing some of the smaller jellyfish inhabitants as living hats.

  Giving Dhamini the power of flight caused Mordecai to backtrack to the other jellyfish inhabitants and ehem with a simir ability.

  As long as he was doing that, Mordecai decided to go back through the inhabitants for the o zone and add flight to several of the others as well. The brine dragons already had it as a sedary mode, but giving even limited flight abilities to their shark-type inhabitants made the skies an even more dangerous pce.

  This train of thought made Mordecai realize that there ce for the feathered serpents in this zone as well. They wouldn't see a lot of bat, but there was room for a small of the stro of them on the volid on the far side of the o.

  Now it was time for the third boss.

  There were several possibilities still. A were-shark, a water-elemental dragon, and so many other ideas were floating around.

  But in the end, Mordecai discarded the directly powerful options for a very different idea. He'd already been pnning on introdug a special group of inhabitants for this zone, but making the leader of the group a zone boss and attag his six underlings to his status, making them support and part of his power, erfect way to create something very different.

  The group was prised of ratlings with ship-handling expertise and a talent for ship-board fighting ihe roughest weather. Their names were Cashew, Cherry, Chocote, Cobbler, berry, Custard, and their leader, Cheese, also called The Big Cheese or Captain Cheese.

  They were the seves of the sea; and of the seven C's.

  Kazue and Moriko had thrown pillows and cushions at him wheold them his idea.

  Fuyuko had looked both pained and embarrassed, which he took as evidence of a job well done.

  When Carmil had found out, she had simply rolled her eyes and stalked away from him, though he retty certain he'd heard a muffled giggle after she'd turned away.

  As for their special abilities, well, Mordecai did somethiively simple in cept. He intensified their nature, enhang the cepts involved with being a rat. They were fast, agile, sneaky, smart, and most of all, lucky.

  That st part was incredibly important, and Mordecai was deliberately calling upon his knowledge of Li to imbue them with the Shattered One's blessing. This wasn't something that was going to be immediately obvious if it was successful, so Mordecai backed up his pn by giving them each a holy symbol of Li, much like Fuyuko's.

  The ratlings were also all made immuo harm from poisons of all sorts, though not to all effects. This meant that they could get drunk or otherwise intoxicated, but tying inebriation to a boost in lud chaos was so easy in this sario that it would have taken a bit of effort to prevent it from happening in a milder manner on its own. Plus they had to be able to sing, in high-pitched voiaturally.

  Of course, pirates of any nature he right gear. Each of them came with a pair of cutsses and a bandoleer full of four-barrel pistols. With their long tails that could around objects to help keep them anchored, they did not always need a hand free on a moving ship and so could have two ons in hand even during rough seas.

  Naturally, all of these ons were made of corrosion-proof variants of the hard metals that Mordecai had introduced into this zohey were cssified as potential rewards, and Mordecai set them to be ented with a random set of runes, with the runes being ged during every reset so long as the ons were in the possession of the pie-rats. Even during the middle of bat if needed.

  He also tasked Fuyuko with being the ratlings' teacher. While the pie-rats all outcssed her in bat ability just from being inhabitants and semi-bosses of a zohis dense in mana, the girl had much to teach them about being followers of Li.

  Mordecai didn't leave his daughter to flounder with just her own knowledge, he made sure to give her access to every bit of lore that the dungeon had accumuted as well as Mordecai's previous personal knowledge. But assimiting and passing on that knowledge was going to be her responsibility, with a little help as his would also act as training for Fuyuko, for one of the steps towards mastery was to relearn the basics by teag another.

  As for when and how they would get involved in the avaible routes, a lot of that depended upoorylines Kazue was creating for this zohey could just show up at the end of the bat path as a fight if needed, but they were going to mostly be involved in more plicated roles.

  There were several adjustments that o be doh other inhabitants to aodate all the aspects that the dungeon had acquired, but those were going to wait until after Kazue had finished with her se, as a simple matter of prioritization.

  Zagaroth