Dragonheart Core

That was a welcome break from the digging.

Back in the gladiatorial ring on the first floor, the first bug had struggled and clawed her way through the pool of violence, using her still-flexible carapace to slither and snake through the combatants. Then she'd managed to get to the top to claim her sip of the mana, which of course she did so immediately, and had promptly been consumed in the deep, glowing light of evolution.

I threw several protective strands of mana around her, helping to guide her off the platform in her last few steps before the light consumed her so the other bugs wouldn't kill her. A minute passed. Two.

A message finally crawled across my awareness as she collapsed in a lump of pale light in one corner of the first floor.

Your creature, a Praying Mantis, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Hunting Mantis (Common): Born and raised in violence, this creature ventures forth with a deep desire to prove itself better than its brethren, using its massive claws and camouflage to strike unwary foes.

I waited patiently. Nothing changed.

Well. Certainly a lot of potential paths, all one that was offered to me. I angled a glare at the mantis like it was her fault.

I thought I understood, though.

For humanoid races, they started at Unranked, then had to grow strong enough to be called Bronze; creatures didn't work exactly the same way, needing to go through evolutions to reach further levels until they eventually reached the fabled peak of five evolutions to achieve what was pretty close to perfection, but they didn't necessarily start at Unranked. Seros as an underground monitor had been Unranked, but with his evolution to seabound monitor he'd grown past that; same for the path from luminous constrictor to horned serpent or silverhead to armourback sturgeon, but that wasn't always the case.

Bugs in particular had a nasty habit of being Underranked, well below something that anyone with even a speck of mana would have trouble defeating. They had to evolve up to Unranked, where they could actually start their evolution journey. So I guessed that the pipeline from praying mantis went almost always to hunting mantis.

At least it validated my previous plan of just ignoring the bugs beyond as a food source. Even the gods were telling me they were useless.

With the bountiful options offered to me, I selected hunting mantis. She curled up in the little den she'd tucked away into, lesser wings wrapping around her body as she lost her outer edges under the glow. Judging by my previous history with smaller evolutions, namely the lacecap mushroom, I hoped she'd finish evolving soon.

Mainly because I needed a distraction from the digging. Gods, as much as I loved designing and building new floors, it was a right pain to have to actually dig the bloody thing. And it wasn't like I could scrounge on size, given as this would be the flying floor with all manners of room to flit around and about. Truly hell to dig. All my floors were behaving as perfectly normal, all my creatures were either resting, fighting, or dying as perfectly normal, and my entrances were quiet and dark as perfectly normal. Even Nicau hadn't woken up yet, the lump on his head a shiny, taut red.

So yeah. I'd welcome the distraction.

-

Which I received.

Turned out that the mantis had been a sort of motivator—two more species of bug managed to clamber past their fellows, three of one species of caterpillar that had been working together, using their strange, fuzzy antenna to somewhat hypnotize other bugs into letting them pass through or be tempted closer into a convenient charge from a lancer-style bug. The other was a massive, lumbering lump of a bug who seemed to peacefully ignore every attack laid over its back, occasionally curling up into a ball whenever something too fierce targeted it.

But all of them struggled and strove their way to the top and claimed their own sips of the mana. I then did my helpful overseer thing of guiding them away from the writhing mass of bugs for their evolutions. So kind I was, really.

I greedily dug into the messages.

Your creature, an Eye-Spot Butterfly, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Eyeblight Butterfly (Uncommon): Using the wide, eye-like spots over its body, it hypnotizes creatures around it, either chasing predators away or luring prey closer for it to feast on their blood.

Your creature, a Pill Bug, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Platemail Bug (Common): It grows ever in size and fears nothing. With its highly sensitive antenna, it meanders around scavenging for dead plants or bodies, hiding under its massive armour and surprising quick feet.

Huh. I'd still been holding out hope that I would get more options, but it looked like for Underranked creatures, there were only a few paths they could walk until they unlocked their hidden potential. Fine, I guess. Didn't mean I wanted that.

Although these options were very interesting.

The butterfly—although still technically a caterpillar for the moment—was another flying danger, perfect for my fifth floor, with more of the hypnotic or psionic powers I was rather intrigued at the potential of. Feasting on their blood, as well; a companion for my vampiric mangroves. I would be bringing those trees down to later floors eventually.

And the platemail bug; a familiar concept, like the armourback sturgeon. Maybe most tanks had similar basic forms, then their further evolutions would refine them further. That was my hope for Seros, at least. I imagined large, lumbering boulders—although more bug-shaped—trodding through the fourth floor, impossible barriers to fight around while something snuck up behind, and perhaps for the younglings, tripping hazards in the dark. I didn't know how intense their armour would be, but I was hoping for a lot.

Maybe Rihsu could enjoy fighting them. She had currently taken to beating the fresh shit out of the ironback toads whenever the opportunity presented itself, though not killing them. Just testing her own skills, I guessed. The toads certainly didn't appreciate it.

Of all my creatures, she was taking the most direct approach to training; Seros hunted constantly but he spent the other part of his time guarding me, wrapped around my pillar and staring out at the surrounding darkness. The horned serpent kept exploring the fourth floor, staking out her territory, but most of her training was in the form of summoning lesser serpents to her side. Only Rihsu tended to constantly seek physical fights. A reason she was a kobold warrior, it seemed. Proud of her.

I wavered there for far too long before morosely plodding back to my digging. The distractions had ended, it seemed.

Progress had definitely been made, though. I'd finished carving out the main chamber, over five thousand feet in diameter and using every scrap of my mana to carve; and then plenty on top of that, as I went around the edges and inlaid the limestone with great veins of iron ore just to hold everything together. Even with the few pillars dotted over the place, I could see a situation with an earth-attuned mage just so happening to collapse the entire cavern. Wasn't hoping for that, surprisingly enough.

So pillars and iron ore veins. Hopefully that would hold everything together.

Maybe I could reverse engineer an earthen elemental from my cloudskipper wisp, just to make doubly sure. I would be livid if all my hard work went undone.

But now that I had finished the overall room, I could finally start doing the actual design; I spent a while shaping out the rough outline, redrafting it enough times that even the bugs living in the walls must have gotten bored, but now I was ready to begin.

And what a floor it would be.

Massive and jagged, looming overhead with stalactites and hollows galore, I spent an indescribable amount of time digging through the schema of the greater pigeon, baterwaul, and now eyeblight butterfly in order to understand what would make for a perfect nest for them all, then recreating it up on the walls. For the pigeons, I bored at the limestone until the iron veins were exposed, poking out. I took inspiration from the stone forest I'd shaped at the center of my sprawling Jungle Labyrinth and made them like branches, hugging tight to the walls but with enough room for them to build nests along the roosts. The bats I carved thin lines over the ceiling, the butterflies I added impossibly thin iron "leaves" to the branches, ridged for them to sleep on.

From a distance, it was absolutely stunning. Silver-grey limestone took up the majority, as with my other floors, but snaking over the surface was deep, rust-red veins, poking through the limestone only to wriggle back underneath until nothing was exposed. Great faux bushes of leaves and vines clumped on walls, pitch black hollows between, stalactites glittering with crystalline jewels and golden ore. A myriad of treasures, forever out of reach, barely visible in the far corners of the chamber.

And that was just the outside.

For the entrance, I had the narrow tunnel widen out from its ten foot diameter, the thornwhip algae begrudgingly stopping its spreading tendrils and staying on the fourth floor. Maybe later. But it dropped for a few dozen feet, plenty of stable stone between floors to chase away fear of a collapse, before opening on one side of the newest addition to my halls.

Fifth floor. Kind of a milestone, really.

Once they left the tunnel, they emerged onto a ragged platform, sloping gently down to a fall several hundred feet below. No reason to make it easy. The landing extended a few hundred feet out in a rough half circle, the largest area of open land on the floor; I wanted something as a sort of introduction for my creatures, a place of not-quite rest and respite for them to meet as one large group and head forth.

As well as plenty of room for an assault to keep invaders from managing to leave. Because I was still very allergic to that idea.

But stretching on from there were a dozen… islands, for lack of a better word; massive pillars that extended upwards to expand out like mushroom caps, floating columns of stone dotting the endless expanse; they ranged from only twenty feet in diameter to almost two hundred for the largest in the center, all curved and sloping with no place for easy footing. I did keep them roughly flat, no raised beds or structures, just basic ledges all funneling people off the edges and various small clumps of stone for smaller creatures to hide beneath. Floating oases, if oases came with curved slopes and jagged rocks and all manners of various creatures I would only be too happy to put there.

Then, stretching between those islands, I layered great stone bridges. None were connected to the ground below but merely rooted to the island columns next to them, making them temporarily stable but certainly not structurally sound. That was a very notable advantage of being a dungeon architect, rather than a dwarven delver or elven carver. I didn't have to worry about making the bridge strong enough to last a lifetime. I could recreate it anytime I needed to. So it might be a strategy for my creatures to destroy the bridges to keep away invaders.

So a dozen islands with narrow, maybe five feet wide, bridges stretching between them; there wasn't one straight path, but about three branching routes, all the islands connecting to each other with multiple bridges extending off of each. It practically burned with potential for someone to slip on my sloped surfaces, tumbling hundreds of feet below.

I didn't quite know what to do with the floor yet, so it was just rough rock, flat with no way back up to the islands above. The fall would be enough for now until I came up with an idea.

But above…

The islands towered, impossible and beautiful, with bridges extending like spiderwebs between; and even beyond that, lit up by the layers of algae-light and quartz-light I'd studded liberally over the room—my flying things needed copious amounts of light, so unfortunately so too would invaders receive it—and glowing with all manners of precious minerals I'd placed around, open air ruled.

Beautiful, glorious open air, the kind where I could envision bright skies and pale clouds overhead, with the rich scent of fresh air and distant lands. Only the blue of the sky above and the blue of the ocean below, flying, flying forever.

Oh.

It'd been a while. The Underlake had given me a taste of it, a reminder of my elder days when I dove through water and currents and waves. But I had been limited by size, caged in by my growing fear of the invaders, and it had been freshwater, no matter if it was brackish now.

But this.

This was freedom, the wide skies and the impossible heights, the swoops and the thermals and the gliders. Gods, I missed flying. Missed it more than just being a dragon, more than my old life; I missed flight.

I couldn't help but remember that I could see through my Named creature's eyes.

Nicau would serve as a spy, once he woke up. I had demeaned him at first, but perhaps the greater pigeon wasn't a useless gift. Perhaps I did need another spy.

A thought for another day. I returned to my digging with thoughts full of flying.