Kazue was quite pleased with how well things had goh Krystraeliv. For all of the living crystal's utility and power, it had little potential to beore than a tool. To ihat ability into a patible being and empower it felt so much better, and the world tree had adapted so well ohe process of iion had proceeded far enough.

  For all of that potential, however, there was not yet a soul. Krystraeliv's mind simply wasn't plex enough to initiate that final densation of spiritual energy. The same was true of the dryad spirit inside of her, who would still be 'sleeping' for some time.

  They would o decide on a name for her eventually; Norumi had left them with a long list of names she thought suitable but left the naming of the dryad to them as they would be raising her.

  Kazue thought it a bit unfortuhat her boon couldn't e into py here, not even with the enhahat she'd focused ohey'd cimed their most ret zone, as her tree nor dryad were inhabitants. Krystraeliv was simply a part of their realm, and her dryad panion would awaken as a member of their Court.

  The two halves of their realm were even more closely tied together now, and that also made Kazue happy. While this should make them stronger, Kazue's primary was to avoid having their people feeling divided into two groups. If both could cross to the other side easily and i, this should help the poputions mingle.

  Not, admittedly, that they had a lot of fey citizens outside of her pixies yet. But that was slowly ging.

  For now, it was time to focus on the inhabitants for their new mountain survival training zone.

  She started with the squirrels; though evil inate they might be, they were her little evil minions, and she would put them to good use. All of the squirrels were getting upgrades to being shade tails of course, but as 'juvenile' ones, pared to those inds area. Creating a weaker version that would grow stronger also mean that shade tails could be found in all of the underground zones without there being any power issues.

  There were some tree-dwelling creatures of simir nature such as chipmunks. Modifying the shade tail tempte to fit them as well was fairly simple.

  As for their primary duty in the survival zohey were to follow their nature and bee little thieves. It to delvers to guard their gear properly.

  This duty was aided by Mordecai's new boon: All inhabitants were granted a limited amount of shape shifting, enough to allow them to stand upright fortably and ge their front paws into hands, or equivalent appendages or special abilities for other anatomies, along with full speech abilities.

  This was less powerful than the shape-shifting that some inhabitants already had, but this ability was on top of any power already ied in their inhabitants, rather than being part of the power of eae. They should be able to enhahis ability with ter boons, and Kazue hoped that they would eventually be able to grant everyone a simir level of shape-ging as usagisune.

  Kazue's set of inhabitants to upgrade were the corvids. She had initially been thinking of ravens and crows, but when she focused her thoughts upon them she found how maed species there were. This gave her a rger pool to draw upon and evolve toward being the same species of inhabitant.

  She had been uain of what she was going to name her new species, but grouping all the corvids into this evolution made it easy to hem corvidians.

  Corvidians were notably rger than any of their mundane terparts, with adults weighing about five pounds. The other easily distinguished visible marker was that they had three eyes.

  Their third eye became the focus for some of the abilities that Kazue grahem, starting with their ability to see magical auras and look past minor illusions. They also had the ability to mildly hypnotize people who looked directly at their eyes, though this came with the drawback of requiring the corvidian to stay still in order to maintain the hypnotic state.

  Kazue also enhaheir vocal mimicry ability to the point that they could souly like specific people they'd overheard talking, as well as being able to make a lot of normally non-vocal sounds. But while that was useful for trickery, she also gave them an offensive power: Their caw could be loud enough to inflict damage if they focused the sound into a e, and the sound always carried an ominous sense of doom, dread, ah that could potentially paralyze a person or cause them to flee.

  Both of those abilities were greatly enhanced if a murder of them chorused together, growing ever more powerful as more individuals joihe group.

  And like the shade tails, one of their primary duties was to steal from delvers.

  Kazue grouped most of their other birds into two groups: songbirds and hunters.

  Songbirds were, simply put, spies. They were adorable and innocuous, their songs were soothing, and if they led down into pce they could camoufge themselves very well. After all, Kazue and Mordecai were not going to be supervising the entire zone all the time, so their inhabitants o be able to work together in teams, and reaissance was an important role that o be filled.

  But Kazue did give them one important bit of self-defeheir beaks and talons were razor sharp and carried a paralytic toxin. She also gave them a few minor spells that created short lived auditory or visual illusions and simir effects, though nothing that was damaging. If they got into a fight, their job was to flee.

  The hunters were made rger, stronger, and more resilient, especially their bones, plus Kazue gave them all a couple ed options. Their first option was to swing their wings in a sharp arc that flung special, metal-edged feathers at their target. The sed option varied by individual preference; some were able to fly in a burst of speed that left a wake of wind bdes, some could scream loud enough to damage oppos in a e before them, and the third option was to have access to a minor spell.

  While most of those who went for that third optioed directly offensive spells, a few did select options that created brief protective barriers or wards.

  The hunters would not be directly participating in harassing most survival-focused delvers, or survivalists as Kazue had started to think of them; they were part of the bat force for those who had chosen to participate in battle.

  That was the sele factor for survivalists and bat delvers; survivalists either ran away fre creatures or shooed off/chased away smaller creatures. The moment that ons were drawn or other serious force used, those delvers had chosen to experiehe bat path. A fact that was going to be advertised to everyone and ohing as much as feasible. The path was metaphorical instead of physical, but it was still there.

  With her aerial forces selected, it was time to focus on her ground 'troops'. Kazue tio work with creaties instead of creating specific species; there were just too many variations of different animals that had been incorporated into the expanding zones.

  As there were so many species, Kazue offered any new inhabitants with close-enough biology to simply be evolved into one of their existing inhabitant species, though she made sure to also let the relevant creatures know about her pns for this zone. When that was settled, she moved on to creating her new evolutions.

  For the snakes and lizards, she created two temptes.

  The first was 'shadow scales'; their name first came from darkening their scales with some of the pounds that they had worked out from the metal samples Satsuki had brought them, and then from giving them some basic shadoution abilities. Additionally, all their attacks had a minor life-draining effed they were given venomous bites if they didn't already have one.

  The sed was 'rainbow scales'; a differe of pounds gave their scales shifting hues, depending on the angle of refle. This was bined with the automatic chameleon teiques that creatures like octopuses had and topped off with minor illusion magic to fiuhe effect. Offensively, they could manipute light and their scales to create multiple effects ranging from rippling hypnotic patterns to blinding stiltion, along with the ability to release sprays of rainbow colors that had randomized minor elemental effects.

  For all the burrowing mammals, she simply gave the same basic earth tempte that Mordecai had previously created, which would enhaheir burrowing abilities as well as make them tougher.

  Like most of her previous temptes, Kazue wanted her nd forces to also focus o and sabotage.

  This was certainly far mgressive and egregious than a person would expect to find in most of the rest of the world, but that also meant that people who could secure and maintain their equipment and campsites in this enviro would be very well prepared for normal enviros and would not be ined to careless mistakes.

  For all the small animals that had not already bee up into other categories, Kazue made them 'judges' for now, though the ges were minor enough that they would be able to select other evolutions iure.

  Being a judge first enhahe senses of the inhabitant, along with their general speed, their reflexes, and the speed of their perception. That st upgrade was effectively a bination of making them think faster and making the world seem like it moved slower. Kazue was careful to make the perceptiorait something that they could engage or diseh little effort, lest the world bee painfully b.

  Uhe rest, the judges were not going to i directly with their survivalists, nor would they unicate information about what they observed to their fellow inhabitants. Instead, they would be creatiain types of minor rewards for the survivalists, based on the skills and teiques the survivalists dispyed.

  This idea had e from the realization that one of the major survival teiques was crafting snares and other traps. The idea of asking an inhabitant to willingly submit itself to a trap and the subsequent experience was rejected before it had even fully formed, and most appropriate animals who had not accepted the invitation to bee an inhabitant instinctively left the zone and migrated outward.

  Instead, judges would have a limited ability to tap into the dungeon's reward-creation ability, and make thing such as mana structs of appropriate carcasses. It wasn't a perfect simution of a real-world experience as many snares caught prey that was still alive when the hunter checked the trap, but it was the best that either Kazue or Mordecai were willing to do.

  Fishing was at least easier; many fish species fell below the sapience/spiritual threshold that marked the boundary of creatures that were 'enviroal' or not. Those fish were simply evolved to be faster at reprodug and growing.

  This was something that had e up because their territory now enpassed a se of a rge creek as well as several smaller ones.

  In addition to the natural ones, Kazue created several locally tained creeks and ponds to provide water sources for the various terrains people would be training in. This was also another exercise: some of the water was not safe to drink. Naturally, she toned down the effects of certain pathogens, but they would still leave people feeling, um, unfortable and distressed for a day or two.

  Kazue shifted her attention back to the fish above that sapiehreshold and ihem to bee inhabitants.

  Those ted were moved to appropriate pces in the mushroom forest, river, ands zones, and then enhanced in the much as Mordecai had doh fish in the o zone, with the biggest difference being the ck of exotic metals in their biology.

  Kazue was able to simply copy the rest as Mordecai had deliberately started most creatures in the o zo below their their potential to create more room frowth. This was going to allow their new fish inhabitants to simply migrate to lower zones as they grew.

  Those who did not accept were guided out of their territory. Even the most stubborn of fish could not resist the simple effects of terrain manipution, which Kazue used to flush them out.

  She did feel a little guilty about pushing them out of their homes this way, but it was a y. It was more difficult for fish to simply migrate to a different area, and she o not be responsible for them en masse.

  But she also wao be careful about her ecological impact here, so all waterways that traveled across their borders were reshaped to run along the inside of their border instead. These waterways were then carefully sheltered with the throwth Mordecai had previously desigo ehat no one would attempt to fish from them or anything simir.

  All the water that their delvers were to i with was entirely tained inside of their territory now.

  So, that took care of air, arboreal, surface, below-ground, and water creatures.

  That left bosses, which Mordecai had some ideas for, along with probably weeks of fiuning the experience, and Kazue wouldn't be surprised if they were still making tweaks months from now. There was a lot to at for and learn.

  Rewards were going to be performance-based, as usual for Azeria. It was especially important in this case as there wasn't the normal dition of 'clearing' the zo was more a matter of how long a group or individual could survive in this enviro and how well they fared.

  Most rewards were going to be thematic: high-quality and lightly ented versions of survival and camping gear, right up to self-ing tools and rge fsks that would automatically purify any water poured into them. It was a rather indiscriminate purification, so anyone who tried to store alcohol or other drinks in it would be in for an unwele surprise.

  For bat survivalists, rewards might include simir tiers of ons and armor.

  Upon occasion, they might even reward survivalists with items of simple moary value, such as minems gets of preetal. Those were especially likely for survivalists who were able to specifically prospect for such items while maintaining their survival needs.

  Kazue was satisfied with her work, and eager to see what Mordecai had in mind.

  Zagaroth