Jacob watched the adventurers leave with some regret. There were enough where he could have taken one for a quick influx of soul points. Unfortunately, it was terrible timing and he only had enough time to do something minor to capture their attention.

  He had to rebuild the ledge from the fifth wave that he had destroyed. On the pit where the two tunnels had been covered, he had created a carving of a city underneath a mountain.

  The carving…was complete bullshit. He had been desperate to create anything to transform the dungeon from a strange cave to an interesting or mysterious cave. He had gone through all of his memories about the different ways games had marketed themselves. The carving was copied from a piece of promotional material that had interested him in the past.

  He might create a city layer in the future, but for the moment the carving was just bait to bring them back. Hopefully, this was enough to attract adventurers back into the dungeon after he had set up the ants and crystal blooms. After that happened, then there should be a constant stream of people coming in to get resources.

  After they were gone, he realized that he really needed to start reformatting the dungeon in preparation for the return, if that ever came. This was inevitable back in the game, but Jacob had the feeling that this reality was not so determined. If he messed up, it could be a very long time until explorers rediscovered the cave.

  He created the outlines for the entrance of the dungeon for the dungeon fairy to stay busy while he went back to creating the generator plants for the second layer.

  Thanks to the distraction of the humans, he was able to work through the design in his head. Right now, he needed something that worked rather than worked perfectly. He could always modify it down the road when he reached that bridge.

  The generator needed to create sunlight and plant food for his deer and other animals, that was it. Freeing his mind of trying to plan ahead, he went to work creating the ‘sun’ flower.

  The core of the flower would generate sunlight, with the intensity increasing over time and development until it could sustain a small garden. It would grow vines full of nutritious leaves, sort of like the shards of living crystal from the crystal blooms, that would be able to feed his herbivores.

  He wasn’t going to turn it into a species yet, but he could take his time. Using some leftover scarlet teeth, he spawned the prototype sunflower and got a seed. He used the deer to grab it and attach it to the ceiling of a side room before using its blessing spell to help speed up its growth.

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  After the sunflower had been established, he moved the deer back to the ant queen to help it with the birth of the first crystal ants. Right now he needed only one to get started with the crystal blooms. The deer spent most of its mana blessing the queen ant, but there was only so much that a low-level spell could do.

  It would take time.

  Jacob sighed to himself. He admitted that he was going to be a little bored now that there weren’t waves breathing down his neck.

  Stor struggled to continually convince his friends to not return to the cave. Many of them had developed an obsession with that demonic place. The situation of the village had to be constantly brought up to keep them away and searching for food.

  With distance, the hold of that place on their minds weakened, though it never went away. The further away from the cave, the healthier the forest was. They managed to find fruit, vegetables, herbs, medicinal plants for them to take back.

  This wasn’t nearly enough to justify their trip. After talking with each other, they made a dangerous decision. They were going to go much deeper into the forest.

  They had already gone deeper than they would normally have. Any further would have been near suicide, but since the forest was now empty maybe there was food that they could find. They were worried about poisonous and toxic food, as there was no telling what strange plants lived deeper in the forest.

  However, they were desperate. They also had the help of the druid and herbalists to help figure out how to eat whatever they found. Together, they journeyed to one of the camps and rested as they waited for night to come.

  After sleeping a little to recover their strength and improve their awareness, they ventured deep into the forest where little was recorded or charted. There were still no animals as they went in, but they did find several odd plants. There was even a grove of trees with white bark and silver leaves full of strange, small fruits.

  They had found what could be a solution to their starvation. There wasn’t much food, and there wasn’t much time for them to harvest. Many of the plants they were seeing were poorly recorded if they had ever been discovered before then.

  They collected as much as they could and rushed back home. The lack of threats was liberating and they took advantage of it to put caution to the wind. In their haste, a few of them gained scraps or hit their legs, but they all pushed through.

  They had a mixed welcome when they got back. There wasn’t much food that the village knew how to cook, and while the new food sources they had found were promising, it would take time.

  Then many of the hunters started talking about that damned cave. That was a mistake. All of them were surrounded and isolated. The forest was the home to many different types of diseases and curses; this wasn’t the first time the Stor had been quarantined.

  He hated being quarantined though. They were kept in an old, slightly moldy shack at the edge of the village while the druid used them to test new medicines to ‘cure’ them. It took an entire day for them to be healthy by the, noticeably disappointed, druid, and for the story of the journey to be told and collaborated.

  The story of the cave caused another gathering at the village hall.