None of their previous zones had required quite this muning, but the way they were growing was making things harder already, in addition to the things they specifically wao aplish with this new zone.

  For one of those things, Moriko had been preparing the location for the past two days, but her work was going to be the st of the major pieces to be pleted.

  Right now, Kazue was cheg that everything was ready o time during the dark of the night. They would begin a few hours before dawn as they didn't want any surges of inhabitant strength to cause a battle to g a someooo badly injured.

  There was no question about how much territory they were going to cim, they'd calcuted out the space exactly against the maps they had avaible. It cut across the outer hunting grounds of the kobold tribe's territory, so there had been some iation to purchase that nd from them.

  Thankfully, being aablished political entity ehat there was aablished methodology fotiating such a thing, though that did not mean it was simple. In the end, the elders of the tribe had iated that any tribe members delving the dungeon's outer zones would have a small increase in their allotted rewards.

  Kazue hadn't even known they could do that. But when the kobolds had suggested it, she had tested how the bance of that bargai and was surprised that it resolved so readily. A perma and ongoing gain offsets a perma and ongoing loss. However, what they could offer the kobolds was less of a boost than the kobolds had asked for.

  After experimenting with possible sarios, Kazue had determihat they had simply reached the limit of he a perma bonus could be grao that type of group. A group of specifidividuals had more leeway, but a tribe ution with ging membership as people were born and died.

  Another bit of preparation had begun shortly after they had finished w on their o zone. Saraag had grown tendrils of mycelium past the borders of their territory and into the nd they were going to be g and then used his presence as a sort of scaffolding to coax thinner roots of living crystal to do the same. This growth had only happened with the expenditure of mana, and it cost far more mana than one might think.

  The initial expenditure had been easy to determine, but this subtle breach of their territory was also causing a small but steady leak proportional to the amount of fungal boss and crystal matrix that existed outside of the dungeon. A normal inhabitant or boss could step outside of the dungeon and they would simply lose access to the dungeon's mana and support, but having su unusual inhabitaending this way caused mana flow down the mycelium, keeping it just as strong as the rest of their raid boss's body.

  This process was only done on the mortal side of reality; space was more flexible in Faerie and the proper amount of nd would grow to match their territory.

  It was along these tendrils that Kazue slowly extended grasping threads of dungeon mana that sought to cim the territory. At the same time, she was drawing simir threads of mana down in a long arc through the air from their crystal tree, though these threads had no physical matrix to support them. As each thread reached the ground, she tied it into the work of threads that were already present.

  As the work of mana grew denser and more of the area began to fill in, the density of the mana started fluctuating. Withution, this new zone would be slightly strohan the earth zone, but that was not the goal Kazue and Mordecai were aiming for.

  Now the living crystal came into py. Kazue shunted excess mana down into the crystal matrix, where it was immediately eled down into the first underground zone, which had slightly less dense mana than the earth zone did.

  This was the difficult bang act that they had been preparing for. Mordecai and Kazue had already figured out how the zones were going to expand if they didn't interfere: in any 'dire', the power of the zones was going to jump as if a person had traversed three zones instead of one.

  her Kazue nor Mordecai felt that this was a good idea, and this was their solution: rebahe may of the zones, shoving a portion of the power from a stronger zoo a weaker zoo even them out.

  It was something that would never have worked with a normal dungeon growth pattern; they could only do it here because of the many 'edges' to the zohe territory that Kazue was g right now touched three other zones, and might touch four iure. A new zone normally only touched oher zone, aually two.

  While she was doing this, her avatar was flying around the zone and looking for any unstable spots her ight have missed. Mordecai's core was doing the same, fog mostly oermost part of the zone.

  Mordecai's avatar wouldn't be able to step out into the new zoil it was fully cimed, so he was traveling along the outside of the Hunting Grounds to see if he could detey issues from iheir territory.

  The mana did not want to cooperate and Kazue found her endurance beied by having to tinually wrestle with it. She had to get it under trol before the territory cim was finalized or it would be even harder to ge iure.

  For all that this process was going to viote the way a dungeon 'should' grow, they had two things weighing in their favor. First and foremost was the simple awarehat keeping jumps in power smaller would be fairer for delvers wishing to travel along a single dire or theme, which would be most of them. They were basically normalizing the delvers' experience.

  The sed thing was that growing 'out' indefinitely could be problematic, so they might have to have far more 'up' zohan 'out' zones. Prearranging their zotern to grow in jumps of 'two' instead of 'three' would keep the growth pattern stable instead of having irregur jumps of power between zones.

  Admittedly, the outward growth issues were political, not fual to the nature of an enviroal dungeon. The vast expahat the southern dungeon occupied was an example of that. But they had bound themselves with political agreements, so for them the issues were real.

  Kazue and Mordecai kept both of these cepts he front of their minds, maintaining a focus on why they were doing this work while they wrestled with the recalcitrant mana.

  It took several hours to plete and stabilize, with the inhabitants having to inform the delvers throughout all the underground zohat it was not safe to proceed once dawn arrived. Kazue was mentally exhausted by the end of it, but they aplished their goal before the nee of their reality snapped into pce.

  The earth zohe new zone, and Kazue's inal underground zone were all maintaining the same density of mana and power.

  She could evehat her iion for the zoheme had partially maed, but she stepped back to let Mordecai take over from there. He'd had to let her shoulder most of the burden during the process of g, so it was his turn to work hard while she rested.

  Mordecai's first step was to sweep over the erritory to find as many animals as possible to invite as new inhabitants. The ecological tier creatures, such as the vast majority of pnt and i life, were simply incorporated automatically. Anything with more sense of self and a stronger spirit had to be manually invited.

  He did find two exceptions amongst the is.

  The first ecies of praying mantis that had adults weighiweeo twenty pounds. Such rge is had an innately magical aspect to them of course, but the growth also allowed further refi of their evolution.

  While he wasn't quite sure what their natural life span maximum would be, at the very least he expected them to live more than five years, while normal ones often barely lived a single year. This included survival meisms for surviving harsh winters in the forested regions of the mountain, more advanced senses and neural work, and a slower reprodu rate matched with better caretaking of eggs and hatgs.

  While they certainly weren't sapient, they had about as much spiritual presence as a normal mammal or bird of their size, and thus required invitations to join as inhabitants. Mordecai was a bit surprised at how quickly all of them accepted the invitation, but that surprise was mitigated wheiced that the few older males were the oo accept first. These would be the ones with the best survival instincts. Younger males followed iion, and the females followed from the instinctive drive to not be deprived of potential mates.

  Giveing habits of maheir social dynamics were going to be iing as their minds awoke. Kazue reacted swiftly to the dawning realization of potential issues and quickly started anizing those more mature inhabitants who had found that they were good at helping others through emotional trauma. her of them khat the mantises would necessarily develop trauma from their pre-sapience memories, but no one wao take a ce.

  The sed exception amongst the is was a strange species of beetles. Namely, a eusocial hive of horned beetle retives.

  While the praying mantises might be the result of a natural mutation, these most certainly were not. The first sign of this was that a quick observatioified what looked to be several dozen species and a deeper iion of the occasional dead body showed that each taihe information for over a hundred different ohough clearly not all were being used at the moment.

  The individual beetles ranged from two to five pounds each, and the queen was a little over thirty pounds. She was also the source that left Mordecai very fident in his assumption that they were an escaped experiment: she was incapable of produg eggs that had the right information to bee new queens.

  Additionally, the rest of the beetles were evenly divided between males and females, rather than the males being reserved for breeding. bine all of this with a true, if non-sapient, hive mind and you had the picture of an experiment with several levels of safeties built in. The hive could grow within feasible limits, but it could never produce a sed hive and it would not survive the eventual death of the queen.

  When the queen accepted the invitation, there was some internal fusion for the hivemind as it started to adjust to the new reality. Mordecai holy wasn't certain if the individual beetles would gain sapience over time or if only the hive as a whole would be sapient.

  As for pnt life, there was only a singur example that was going to o be talked with, and this wasn't a job for his core.

  Mordecai's avatar slowly walked toward a great tree that was high up on the mountain. From below, it only stood out a little, and that small bump i made it seem like a normal tree growing on top of a small uprising or such.

  The truth was quite the opposite. It was growing at the very end of a deep but narrow ravine and simply grew far above the lip of that ravine; Mordecai roag from the top of the cliff, which was how he was able to see the top this clearly. He gnced into the ravine and hat there was a well-worn dirt trail and some small signs of respect being paid to the tree.

  Obviously, the kobolds had known it ecial, but if they had uood just how special, he doubted they would have sold the nd for anything!

  Well, this one was well asleep or it would have noticed them g territory around it and done something. Time fotiations, he just hoped that this one wasn't going to wake up grumpy. Mordecai took a seat at the edge of the cliff looking out oree.

  Let's see, normal nguage probably wouldn't work here, that would be just so muoise right now. But Mordecai had much more than that to call upon. He exhaled softly and upon his breath rode sts desigo be picked up by leaf and root, though they would have to sink into the soil before the tter could happen. The message here was simply a sense ency, though n of danger came with it.

  After a few minutes of letting that build up Mordecai spoke, but it would not sound like speeost. Rustling leaves, crag wood, and low deep vibratio to travel through the earth; these were the pos of this nguage.

  "Greetings great one. Happenstance has pced us in a position to need versation with unseemly haste, and for that, I apologize. I hope that my disturbing your rest will not be too great a bother."

  Several more minutes passed before the subtlest shifts began, and the tree replied, "Hmm? Mordecai, is that finally you?"

  Or, possibly, the kobolds kly how special this tree was and had pranked him.

  Zagaroth