While Mordecai had been w on the sea floor path and their inhabitants, Kazue had been busy w oowns.

  It was a little odd w on the first town. Previously, the towns she had set up had been further away from the transitioween zones but now she was w rather close to the invisible demarcation. It didn't help that the transition area was being rger and fuzzier, making it harder for oo know for sure which zone one was in at times.

  This proximity also meant that boss fights with the snd's dragons were quite visible from town.

  When she'd ented on it to Mordecai, he'd pointed out that the other option was to make more closed transition areas like the stairwells they'd used in their early zones. Kazue much preferred their curreup, even if it didn't e with a method to make it easy to force people into the sewer path if needed.

  Iure, she did want to ect these towns to the sewer path in order to spin off more stories for their delvers. Kazue knew many of them didn't care about the narratives she was creating for these zones, but they made her happy so she wao expand on them. But those pns were on hold until the Trionean soldiers had fiheir training and gone home.

  So for now she was creating mostly empty docks for sea-worthy ships along with dry docks for ships in various stages of stru or repair. The seaside town was also given a minimal amount of other buildings to flesh out a small settlement, with plenty of room for the town to grow by manually strug future buildings. Besides, they didn't have enough avaible inhabitants to staff a bigger tow anyway.

  This art of her narrative for the nonbatants; there would be various ways for them to tribute to the stru or repair of ships or the town itself in order to earn passage across the o to the distant isnd with the barely visible plume of smoke from its volic core.

  Not that they had actual magma goi. At this point, the isnd was only superficially volic.

  This was not the only way forward for the nonbatants, however. Offset from the town was a cove hidden by a bination of rising cliff walls and dense vegetation. It was here that one could potentially meet and speak with inhabitants local to the zone and work out deals for safe passage.

  What exactly those deals would entail Kazue left up to the inhabitants iion. The only hard rule Kazue put here was that any escorted group was to be left alohough other inhabitants were allowed to put on a little bit of a show by looking menag in the dista did help that the route leading from the cove and deep into the o water skirted the es of the airy water entment, keeping such escorted groups away from the fighting.

  It was all desigo look and feel more dangerous than it actually was.

  She had two reasons for creating this alternative path. The most important oo her was that she wanted everyoo be able to see the magnifit vistas uhe water, which were likely to bee even more eborate and vivid as time went on and everything had time to grow, multiply, and spread out.

  The other reason was simply an aowledgment that not every non-bat delver was going to have the time to spend putting in the requisite amount of effort into assisting with the building and repair of ships to earn passage. Simply paying their way forward wouldn't quite do either.

  Instead, they had to barter with the inhabitants, and it had to be something that suited the inhabitants they were bartering with. Kazue and Mordecai didn't particurly care about the exact barter, and it could be anything from items to knowledge to some service the person could perform.

  Her sario development wasn't quite dohere were more hooks to set.

  For ohing, the ships served a hybrid role. Not only could one work to repair or build a ship, one could work on the ship during the voyage to earn passage, though that would not be enough if one wao get any rewards from crossing the zone.

  Also, up to three delving bat groups could sign on as protectors fiven voyage, in order to rotate shifts. Naturally, any ships that were guarded would e under assault several times a day, at least twice each shift, and it would take a minimum of three days to cross the simuted great distao the isnd.

  This was rather slow, even taking into at that the ship would be tag against the small amount of wind the entire way. All the space that Kazue had mao cim bined with the spatial pression only provided the zoh about a dozen miles of length and breadth. That would be two to three hours for most sailing vessels.

  Illusion magic came into py heavily here, making the town behind them visually shrink faster than their actual distance would cause. Kazue was also able to use a bit of their faerie power here, enting the ships to travel only a small real distance for any given amount of apparent distaraveled.

  It was the exact opposite type of entment one would want on a ship traveling a real o.

  Ohose ways of crossing the o were added to the uer bat path, Kazue started addiory elements to motivate groups.

  The 'locals' would have tales and rumors to spread, all of them true to some extent. Or at least, made 'true' by virtue of the appropriate treasures being created for the purpose.

  There was a ship that had been lost at sea carrying a small cargo of ons and armors made of exotic metals, amongst other treasures. This rumor also came in a more challenging variant, where the ship was at a deeper se of their mini o that was far away from their airy water entments.

  A mert's cargo had been mysteriously ransacked and looted one night, with the trail of wreckage leading to the sea and the ented path that let one breathe uhe water.

  The natural hot springs of the distant volid were blessed with magical healing properties and the ohere were staffed by beautiful men and women. Both parts of this were true, though there was a strong emphasis that the positions were strictly volunteer and not an expected duty. While the job description was not terribly demanding, it did include specifically looking casually appealing iher elegant, beautiful outfits htweight ones, and some positions included giving massages.

  Being on dispy like that was not something everyone would be okay with, so only those usagisune who wao have shifts there would have them.

  Not that they were going to be the only potential staff, but that art of what Kazue, Moriko, and Mordecai were going to be w on together ter.

  Kazue also created some potential stories with a bit more drama. A delver might be told a tale of woe where someone had been kidnapped for any of several dozen reasons. Of course, the in-story truth of the matter might vary. The target iion might need resg, they might have already rescued themselves by the time the delvers arrive, they might have decided this was a much better life and might resist being rescued, they might be a runaway, or other such variants.

  She did have an ever-growing colle of books to draw upon after all.

  To spice things up, Kazue also included an option for delvers to py the role of 'victim' in this sario, for proper rewards of course. This was generally going to be non-bat delvers, but Kazue also foresaw the possibility of people wanting to use this as an opportunity to py out romantic roles involving a heroic rescuer.

  In airely different style of story, Kazue had the seven pirate ratlings to work with. She didn't o have the same sort of outlines for this lot. Instead, she hahem excerpts from various stories involving pirates ag in dramatid melodramatic ways along with some plete books and pys.

  Then she created temptes to act as different sorts of settings for them. Ship wreckage to litter across a se of the airy water path; a pirate's ir to pce at the end of the path; drifting wreckage oop of the o suffit to support the ratlings who would appear to be in need of resg; a small, stealthy pirate ship designed for sneaky night-time b; and a brightly colored and dramatic pirate ship for daylight challenges.

  More would be added over time, she was certain there would be plenty of suggestions.

  The onsen was going to start small for now. After all, there would only be so many groups who would be able to make it this far. But there lenty of room on the isnd for the plex to grow and they could always expand the isnd itself if needed.

  It was also not free. One could either pay upfront or take on a debt. That debt defaulted to redug the rewards that the delver might be presented with ter, but it could also be worked off or otherwise bargained for.

  The onsen was fairly expensive, but it was rather vish too.

  While the guest rooms for those who cleared the dungeon were still avaible, and for now were not too far away, the facilities at the onsen were much more appealing and luxurious if one could afford them. When the zone down is eventually built, Kazue was going to make sure to have a basic camping area of some sort there, for those who do not want to pay for the onsen.

  Kazue sulted every book and person who had any sort of ideas for avaible services and locations for the setting and did her best to include them all as options. She also had ohing not found elsewhere: a cy dragon that could breathe steam infused with tea that had various sorts of healing (or intoxig) properties.

  Cimbu's personalized services were amongst the most expensive avaible.

  He also made for a wonderful, looming presence if needed.

  Oh she and Mordecai were doh their primary creation process for this zo was time to sweep through and make any needed adjustments.

  Their new floating jellyfish slimes were introduced into the sewers as well, along with creating a subse of the warrens designed with partitiorao keep the seawater from draining into the sewers, though the process did deliberately allow a tiny bit of briny water to slowly seep down.

  The sewer inhabitants were easily upgraded to be able to live in salt water, and the o inhabitants had already been upgraded with flight and air breathing. Now they had even more iing binations avaible.

  There wasn't much to do with their raid bosses, though Mordecai did make sure to at least give Zushi the ability to breathe and move uer, just in case. Enki and Cimbu didn't o breathe and Enki was dense enough to walk along the sea bottom unhindered. Saraag still had the ability to grow one of his mushroom trees anywhere and was able to adapt to the cold saltwater without much issue. Still, if Zushi o fight uer, the state of his fur whe out was going to be, um, well, it would probably be best to not ugh about it in his presence.

  Kazue also took this time to review some of her puzzles and rewards, as she had a lot more to work with now. Her ges were not very visible in most pces, but the new materials gave her some ideas to add fun touches, such as in the crystal caves with the rhythm and harmony games.

  Previously, the rewards had explicitly not included any of the crystals. As they had been built with their base mana pool instead of their dedicated rewards pool, the crystals would colpse bato mana if taken outside of the dungeon's territory.

  Kazue removed that restri and instead posted new instrus. Crystals that were not part of the puzzle could be extracted from the walls, but they were highly proo breaking during any sort of mining or excavation attempt. Great care would o be taken with no guarantee of success.

  The crystals would not be particurly valuable normally, but Kazue could now coat them with an invisibly thin sheen of their new metals, giving them spectacur appearances without increasing their material value.

  Increasing rewards this way helped keep up with the effectively deeper zones caused by the surface growth.

  After she and Mordecai finished making bang tweaks like that and implementing some new signs and policies to make sure people knew about the possibility of the dungeon gleaning knowledge from their minds, it was time for a sweeping ge.

  The proper introdu of new fey into the dungeon, possibly as inhabitants.

  Zagaroth