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  [A Quiet Island, Day 8, Morning]

  Anya was worried. Four of the ship’s crew had gone missing last night, and an exploration group had been organized to search the island for them. But Anya already knew where they were. She'd overheard Harold blabbing his theories about the dungeon to someone last night after a few drinks, and was certain that the missing crew had gone to check it out. Anya hoped that the dungeon was just as friendly as last time, but if the missing crew had attacked those ants she wasn't sure what could've happened.

  Besides that, her head was a little foggy. Anya could barely remember how the party had gotten back to the camp, and her memories ended at around the point where Harold's mana compass had started acting weird. She grits her teeth as a sudden headache overcomes her while trying to remember more.

  Anya sighed and massages her temples. She really isn't in the best state to think right now. Just as she stops to get up and go get breakfast, the camp falls silent. Everyone stops to look at the treeline, staring in shock at the new development. A dense purple fog is rolling through the forest towards the beach, obscuring the crew's view of the trees and flora of the jungle.

  It's too fast to run from, and by the time some of the crew turn to run, it's already swallowed several of them. There aren't any screams though. The fog easily overtakes the fleeing crew and blocks their view of the ship, and as Anya looks around in a panic she sees something out of the corner of her eye. It's that robed figure again, the one who led them to the dungeon.

  She finds herself unable to speak, her breath hitching in her throat as the fog makes breathing even more difficult than it already was, what with how thick the ambient mana here already was. The floating humanoid in the distance isn't as fuzzy as it was last time, and Anya can make out a few features more clearly now.

  The figure doesn't have feet sticking out from under the robes, it's just hovering a few inches above the ground. The face under the hood still isn't visible, but Anya can briefly make out a beard-like silhouette underneath. The figure extends one of its arms, pointing directly at Anya and causing her blood to run cold as she feels a sudden pressure bear down on her. The things hands are thin and emaciated, and where she would expect to be some gnarled, claw-like nails she didn't see anything.

  The thing doesn't say anything as it continues to point, but Anya can guess at what it means. The figure lowers its hand and brings it back down to meet the other, dissipating into the fog before a sudden whirlwind picks up and the fog rises with it, swirling and gathering into a ring around the peak of the volcano. The heavy ambient mana is pulled along by the current and everyone suddenly finds it easier to breathe, the thick purple mana from before no longer obscuring Anya's vision of the jungle.

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  [A Quiet Island, Day 8, Morning]

  Well I'd say that went pretty well! I'd noticed Miss Witch, or rather, Anya, complaining about a couple things in some of my newly translated memories, so I fixed those to hopefully make my island more habitable. I'm fairly certain that this is their last day here, so I'll just work on the third floor for now. This floor is already massive, a cavern that takes advantage of its depth to get to a size of 40 square acres.

  I've constructed the cavern in a dome shape, lining the walls with giant bricks and making the keystone into an inverted pyramid shape. At the tip of the pyramid I form a massive ball of that liquid mana I learned about from Miss Witch. I make a field of mana to shift the wavelength of the light it gives off to be yellow, and I make it so that when night comes the liquid gets sucked up into the pyramid and is stored there until daytime.

  The next thing I do is make a layer of sand on the bottom of the floor and move a few different trees and plants down there. While I'm on the surface, I notice that the humans have left, leaving behind their trash and the hastily built shacks they slept in. With a wave of my mana everything disappears and rots away, the beach returning to its original state.

  Anyways, I feed the plants mana with the intent to make them go through their life faster, and the plants grow rapidly before my eyes, before suddenly dying off and being replaced by the seeds they left over. I repeat this cycle until the entire bottom of the floor is covered in the leftover dead bits of various plants, directing my attention to the microorganisms responsible for breaking down dead material and supercharging them too. It takes a few hours, but eventually the entire floor is covered in a thick layer of soil, which I start mixing and swirling around like a giant wok, stopping once I feel that it's mixed enough.

  I spend a second to dry out the dirt and transform the massive field of dirt into a dusty flatland, adding a ring of red, sandy cliffs lining the walls of the room. I form a mountain range to cut off one corner of the room, leaving a thin valley for access to the walled off plot of land.

  Next I cut a few trees into planks, and set about assembling an old west styled town, mostly just a series of boxy wooden houses placed along a large main road that ends just outside of town. I use a few different metals I found while excavating this area to make nails and tools for decoration, before finally moving on to the wildlife.

  I fill the desert with a variety of different animals that I adapt to the heat, and spend a while making a plant similar to sisal, which I use to make the cloth and ropes needed for the town. The main enemy of this floor isn't here yet, so I take a small species of jumping spider that I found in the jungle and move it down here, growing it in size as I shape its body into something new.

  The two front legs are extended and turned green, a set of leaf-like bristles forming along their length. The rear six legs gain a flattened, pastel white appearance and the abdomen takes on the shape of a rose bud, the tiny head tucked between the two front legs. The spider sticks its two front legs into the ground and lifts up the rest of its body, roughly mimicking the shape of a beautiful flower. I grow it until the flower is as tall as a human.

  The final product is a small group of flower spiders with varying colors, all grouped up into a patch of giant flowers. I leave them to spread across the floor and move over to the walled off corner of the floor, setting it up as a boss arena. I set up a large pond that takes up most of the valley, letting a small stream flow out into a dried up riverbed. The shores of the pond I fill with greenery and tall trees, casting shadows over the whole pond and bearing fruit for the solar resident.

  The boss is a small lizard I found in the jungle, sized up to be as big as a horse and shaped into a crocodilian form. I make sure that it's just as fast on land as it is in the water and give it powerful legs to leap forward and catch whatever might wander into its oasis. The crocodile's skin is thick and leathery, hard plates scattered around its back and a long ridge forming down its spine. The teeth are enlarged and the snout is lengthened, the eyes improved and pointed forward.

  I'll call him Sobek. I'm sure this guy will be a fun fight for whoever makes it past the second floor and the flower spiders.