Dragonheart Core

It had been so long since I'd carved out a new floor; while I imagined this would get old eventually, and quickly, there was still nothing quite like the joy of carving through stone to open new, beautiful pathways through my dungeon. Already my mana coiled and spilled into these lower openings, pooling richly through my twisting tunnels. My creatures had gotten used to the purest density of my mana on the fifth floor; I'd be curious if they'd keep up their little war when it moved down to a new floor.

And oh, what a floor it would be.

Last time I'd constructed an aquatic floor, I'd made it impossible to be in without venturing into the water; while that certainly had its place, I was still dealing with problems from that. My terrestrial creatures had to venture down to further floors in tunnels I littered through my Drowned Forest, and while I kept them small, there was still the ever-present threat that an invader would find one of the tunnels and head down themselves, skipping a floor entirely. No, that wouldn't do.

But at the same time, I hardly wanted someone to just merrily traipse their way through my sixth floor without so much as dipping their toe in the water. I needed a balance.

And thus, my genius plan.

Coral reefs weren't identical things matching across area to area—there were trench-reefs, atoll-reefs, plateau-reefs, scatter-reefs, pillar-reefs, tower-reefs, and dozens more found all over Aiqith. There was a minimal chance I could do all of those styles—and really, I didn't need to do them all—but I could certainly do more than one.

So my sixth floor would be divided into three sections, for lack of a more pleasing term. The first would be the smallest and mimic a plateau reef, with a wide bed of sand right on the entrance and a sharp, unforgiving drop into the water after; the second would be a barrier reef fashioned around an atoll, a crescent rind of sand bars studded with small trees and plants, though broken up so my creatures had ways to swim through it. Then the final would be a more wide, open space as a forest reef, sculpting great pillars and underbrush of coral to fill the space and add obstacles.

All in all, it would be glorious, devastating, and easily twice the size of my last largest floor.

I was increasing at a decently steady clip, I noticed now. From one thousand to two to three to the tunnels, which were harder than hells to measure, to five thousand feet long on the Skylands. This floor was looking to be some nine thousand feet—alright, not completely double the size, it was the principle of the thing—and filled with water.

Would I be able to maintain that growth moving down? Unlikely. Even as I kept increasing my mana regeneration, I only had so much mana to spare, and increasing my floors both in number and scale ate at the mana that existed on the higher floors. Now, don't get me wrong, I did enjoy how the density of mana decreased on my previous floors and spurred my creatures to delve deeper, but reduce it too much and suddenly it would be like they weren't living in a dungeon anymore. No, that wouldn't do.

The vast majority of my dungeon instincts had faded by now to mere afterthoughts of old stone and rumbling depths, having slipped to the background once I'd gotten my metaphorical claws beneath me and could manage to survive on my own, but still I knew I wasn't supposed to make too many floors, both at once and entirely. I wasn't approaching the limit now, but eventually I would, and I refused to let my upper floors suffer in the face of my own greed. And that was with my making my floors enormous and elaborate, fitting of a dragon's heart—those same, plain bastards who just chiseled rock and stuffed it with enemies could probably afford to make dozens more floors than I. No doubt filled with only goblins evolving into goblin-brutes evolving into goblin-warriors. Bah. Not a creative thought to spare between the lot of them. I still remembered those first invaders who had seen me for what I was, and how they had mentioned how different I was from High Lord Thiago's dungeon—they were damned right I was. As soon as I trusted Nicau's combat prowess enough, I was sending him straight to that upstart's dungeon just to see how much better I was than it.

But for now, I would continue digging ever down. There was more to be claimed.

So on I dug.

I had only just begun to shape out the first area of the floor, trying to keep a slower speed so I didn't outpace my mana regeneration and thus could leave more corpses for my creatures to dine on mana-rich flesh. It was a wider, looming room, reaching high but, more more importantly, reaching even further low. Right outside the entrance tunnel, I churned out quartz, grinding it into the smallest pieces I could manage—expensive, but the end result was instead of the silver-grey limestone of the walls, a sprawling beach made of pure white sand. I shaped it a bed of granite to hold a rough shape but otherwise let it spill over in great sweeping mounds, already glittering and blinding in the quartz-lights I strung overhead. A lesser beach, to be certain, only a couple hundred feet in diameter; but enough that invaders would have to worry about keeping their balance on my ever-shifting sands and my terrestrial creatures could make their way down here. Eventually, I'd add some granite pillars for contrast and ambush spots, but for now I wanted to focus on what came after.

Namely, the steep slope where my coral reef lived. Plateau reefs were built on a bed of stone and so I poured together granite covering the walls, anchoring it firmly with a few veins of iron ore—in a technical term, to be a proper plateau reef the little sandy entrance I had made should have been supported by coral, but I was more interested in using the sand as a trap to slow down invaders than complete accuracy to the wilds. So instead I threw up granite surrounding all the walls and the base of the sand bar, layering smaller plateaus through the center, the ground an endless plain of white sand. This was the smallest room, under two thousand feet in diameter, and only a hundred feet deep.

Which, again, the depth was not completely accurate to the outside world—but when I could make my quartz-lights powered by excessive amounts of mana to provide my much-deeper coral with the light they needed to grow, it was fine. I was a dungeon.

I kept the ceiling low, since I wasn't planning on adding many, if any, trees to this area—and it would make the entrance to the second all the more thrilling. Roughing up the last of the granite to give it little openings for the coral to root into, I gave one last glance over the room.

The room that was comparable to the Fungal Gardens in size, really. More simple, with merely differing layers of soon-to-be coral and one sandy expanse for terrestrial beings to stand on, but enormous and brilliant all the same. And it was merely the first—there were two more sections left, each going to be massive. But I needed this; my problem had always been that I had kept my floor sized to my largest creature.

Which. You know. Became a problem when they evolved. The fledgling sea serpent struggled to swim freely in the Underlake, let alone hunt.

So this floor would be several orders of magnitude larger than my previous ones. That was why I was taking my time carving it out; I wanted it to be perfect before I started the week-long process it would take filling it up with water. I'd be filling it from the cove at least, rather than the mountain river that fed my more freshwater floors. As I wrapped up the first area, I carved little outlets and overflows to keep it so the water level would stay exactly where I wanted it, a little above the coral line so even if I added some form of waves or currents, the coral would never be fully exposed to the air. I was considerate like that.

But with the first room done, it was time for the second.

This one took the full breadth of my mana, and I already started dissolving the corpses that had been eaten down to the bones; one, two, then all the way up to five thousand feet in length, much more irregularly shaped than the previous area. I kept having to split my attention between my active carving and the much smaller model I'd made in the Skylands, eating through the limestone in the broad, twisting shape I'd envisioned.

It was interesting, though. While I didn't run into any more fossils, I had found a new type of rock—basalt. It was a deep grey-black, made up of impossibly fine particles and a more rugged appearance. I hadn't found it insofar as it replaced the limestone, no—instead it trickled through the limestone in twisting veins, similar to iron ore. And as I dissolved it, I found out why.

This basalt was made from lava, and those tunnels were the ancient remains of a volcanic explosion.

It was perhaps a placebo, but I couldn't help but imagine that as I was digging deeper for this floor, the stone was warmer than it had been before.

But alas, I never found any lava, and I stored away my new building material for the eventual seventh floor.

Because this floor was taking all of my attention.

The five thousand foot long hall billowed up and down; there would be trees here and thus I needed height, scraping as much limestone away as I thought I could get away with while still leaving plenty of room between this floor and the Skylands. Not a chance I was risking some idiotic earth-attuned mage stamping their feet and collapsing all my floors in on each other. But in the end, it was easily some hundred and fifty feet above where the water level would be, stalactites crowding overhead and filled with gently glowing quartz-light. I'd fill it with green algae and other oxygen-producing plants later.

The real interest was below the water line.

I had shaped a bottleneck between the first and second room, a thin passageway only twenty feet wide to let all my creatures pass through but force invaders not to advance as one group. Then, once they came through, they would swim through into an immediate open area, dropping immediately to two hundred feet deep; much deeper than any of my floors before. As strong as I made my quartz-light, below would still be a deep gloom, impossible to see what was beneath. Perfect for some hungry predator to lunge up undetected.

But before them would be the islands.

Barrier reefs were just that, barriers; they were tall pillars that stood up from the ground, built on a base of rock—granite for me then, considering that was my most durable stone—that curved around the currents. Atoll reefs, however, took it one step further; the reefs stretched so high that they formed islands, sand piled on top and capable of supporting life. They were the hidden gems of the oceans, needing to be formed by ancient volcanos or the death of a sufficiently-powerful elemental, treasured above all else and intensely protected by whoever was lucky enough to have them in their territory.

I hadn't ever had one. So I would be having one now.

And it would be the best.

I pulled up great pillars of granite, curling them around in a crescent moon; I didn't want the atoll to be a barrier between rooms, instead allowing my aquatic creatures unlimited access to all the areas. So I had carved out an oblong room, with a divot pressing out on one side, and I wrapped the atoll around that instead. Each island was at a minimum of fifty feet across, piled high with quartz sand, and curled around my floor in an impossibly perfect ring.

Again. I wasn't shooting for a replica of a true atoll; this was mine, and I would alter it how I pleased.

And I needed them shaped in a ring, because beyond the coral reefs and the habitable islands, there was one more reason that atolls were so prized.

And encircled by the atoll and piled high with glittering white sand, sat my pride and joy.

A lagoon.

Ranging from as deep as ten to as little as three feet deep, it would be the breeding ground for fish and terrestrial creatures alike; the fractured ring of islands would protect it from stronger currents or waves and the shallowness would keep larger predators like the fledgling sea serpent out. Smaller fish would spawn there, fed by the bloodline kelp and small sections of coral I would seed throughout, and. Well.

For far too long had my kobolds stayed to their brutish fire-drake roots. Even when I had tried to influence them, I had only created a few stone-drakes, sky-drakes, and forest-drakes; all better than fire-drakes, to be very clear, but not enough. I wanted sea-drakes.

And with the new evolutions filling the tribe, they would need more room and more abundant prey. Something that my coral reef would have.

On the surrounding islands, I would be planting a combination of vampiric mangroves and cloudsire palms, finally using that schema Nicau had brought me so long ago. Plenty of wood for tools and traps—and on the final island, the one tucked against the outer wall, I would carve another den for them, larger and more sprawling, filling it with nooks and crannies for truly luxurious sleeping spots. Something that, even without the much richer and more intense mana on the floor, would appeal.

It would take a while, I knew. Even if I just dropped them into the water, that wouldn't make them suddenly know how to swim. Rihsu couldn't be my standard here, even if I would be recruiting her to help guide the other kobolds into learning how to survive in the water.

But I had little doubt that once they had made it to the sixth floor and the relatively safety of the lagoon, it wouldn't be long before they lost that garish red of their scales and gained true, beautiful sea-green.

And my lagoon would be the place for that.

The rest of the room I carved down, open and shining—this would be the most crowded area, the barrier reef sloping down on granite beds from fifty feet deep surrounding the atoll to two hundred in the furthest stretches. I wanted this a colourful, beautiful oasis, filled with hundreds of creatures all darting and schooling over a lush field of coral. Combined with the blood that would diffuse through the water and the predators looming overhead, this would be a haunting paradise.

Exactly what I wanted my dungeon to be.

I would need more creatures to achieve that, though. Once Seros woke up, I would send him into the cove to gather some smaller schemas, proper saltwater fish instead of the silverheads I had to brute force to survive this new floor, as well as anything else that struck his fancy. I trusted his judgment.

Mostly.

Somewhat.

But as the days crawled by, my floors recovered from the assault, my creatures eating the last of the corpses as I watched impatiently overhead to dissolve the leftover bones for more scraps of mana and the rest slumbering under the weight of their evolution. I kept hard at work on the second room of the floor, raising atolls up and building stone platforms for the eventual trees that would rest there, carving the beginning of a den in the farthest island. Five thousand feet long, shockingly, took a little while to finish.

But eventually, I got there.

It would be a paradise, I could already tell. Enormous, sprawling, ripe with potential for life and death in tandem; and the lagoon, my beloved lagoon, soon-to-be home of spawning fish and kobolds alike. I had specifically kept the second room shallower than my initial plans, only two hundred feet at maximum, to give the kobolds enough opportunities to hunt and swim at their leisure. The first and third room would be open to them, but the true bounty would be in the second.

Hm. Should I name the separate rooms? The first needed a gimmick of its own, mostly being shallow and separated from the other rooms; maybe I could plant a certain species there, let them reign over that space, and name it after them? The second was the hunting and spawning grounds, though I could certainly come up with a more creative name than that.

And the third?

I gave myself one last glance over the second room; the sprawling paradise, tall and deep, filled with glittering white islands and the eventual home of endless coral reefs. I had, perhaps, never felt prouder of a floor.

And there was still one more to go; one for my predators.

So far, the rooms had been a steady slope downward; hundred feet deep in the first area, up to two hundred in the second, but the third I immediately plummeted to five hundred. The Underlake was filled with murky waters, bloodline kelp, sand stirred up by Mayalle's currents, and was only lit by algae-light, which was much dimmer than quartz-light. It was easy to hide there, which worked with the relatively straight-forward room.

But here, I wanted crystal clear waters, lit by gleaming quartz-lights overhead; all the better to make sure my coral survived. So if I wanted beasts like the fledgling sea serpent to be able to strike from the shadows, I needed to give him depths to hide in.

So. Five hundred feet deep.

It was a twisting, spiraling room as well, technically smaller than the Underlake but the depth making it larger; plenty of hidden corners for my creatures to lurk in. Still filled with coral, but instead of previous areas, these would just be scattered patches, raised either on granite pillars or attached to the walls. I dug out rugged walls and bits of exposed iron veins, little patches of basalt just for taste, hidden nodes of jewels and gemstones hidden in the deep. Then, even further below, I carved great, sprawling dens, filled with all the luxuries that my schemas told me would be appreciated.

Not quite the depths, since I would be saving the true, properly crushing open ocean for another floor, but certainly similar enough that after the gleaming beauty of the second room, it was sure to give any invaders pause.

And then, at the final wall furthest from the entrance, I carved a tunnel leading upward and outward.

Originally my plan had been to carve the tunnel at the very bottom, forcing invaders to dive and swim through the sea serpent's den; but alas, I still wanted my other creatures to be able to venture further below for themselves. So the entrance to the eventual seventh floor would be at the top of the water.

It was still nine thousand feet of water to cross, so I wasn't exactly too nervous about invaders just merrily traipsing their way on over and out. I'd love to see them try.

But now I flitted around, smoothing out granite pillars and dumping more sand over the atolls and the base of the lagoon; I wanted it perfect before I carved an opening to connect with the cove, considering it would take forever to fill with water and I wanted to focus on my creatures while that happened.

My creatures. Speaking of.

Halfway through blooming a new patch of granite for a coral archway I was curious if I could make, something tugged at my attention; several of the points of awareness I'd left over my creatures were alerting my consciousness.

Because some were stirring.

Huh. I supposed it had been almost five days since I'd started work on my sixth floor, with how mana and time-intensive creating sand was—technically I could have just ground up limestone and been done with it, but having the pure white that came from using only quartz was infinitely more pleasing. For all that I was a dungeon core, I was still a dragon. I wouldn't use the boring grey sand if I didn't have to.

Which I didn't. So shining white shores it would be.

But apparently that was enough time for my creatures to finish evolving.

I immediately threw myself to the fifth floor; but unfortunately, even though I'd pretty much already guessed, Seros wasn't one of them. Still he slumbered, the light of evolution curled over his scales; and the empress serpent was in the same boat. It would take longer for them, I supposed. Ah well. I wasn't disappointed. Not in the slightest.

Not in the slightest.

The vampiric dryad, midnight cave bear, and horned serpent were stable as well, though I could sense they were right on the cusp; the kobolds as well, the light already starting to dim over their huddled forms. Not yet.

But on the fourth floor, deep in the Stone Jungle and the den I'd carved there, three lovely new creatures opened beautiful amber-gold eyes.

The jeweltone serpents.

From their previous grey-black appearance, they'd shed those scales and instead gained pure white scales, much larger than before. I was confused for a second—I was pretty sure their description said that they lost their scales in return for the gems they used to cast magic—until one of them lifted his head upon reawakening, and his scales shook.

As in. Physically moved at even the slightest motion.

It looked like they had to find gems to replace them with, but that the scales were not particularly difficult to remove when they did. At least I understood better how they were more stationary creatures; without their scales, or with scales that weak, it would be of no use to take them into battle. Perhaps a later evolution would give them more defense.

But in the Stone Jungle, where the serpent horde reigned, they would now be uncontested.

Perhaps that would be enough for an alliance—or at least truce—between the serpents and the rats. For as clever and powerful as the empress serpent was, she had shown no previous interest in gems, and that would come back to bite her if she wanted her jeweltone serpents to be at their best.

Although that question would be if she was ever able to suck up her pride enough to ask such lesser lifeforms for help. And some part of me was rather doubtful about that.

Ah well.

I guided the three jeweltone serpents out from the evolution chambers of the den, sending them out into the Stone Jungle proper. They were beautiful beasts, some ten feet long—shorter than their previous form, actually—with wide, triangular heads and brilliant gold eyes. Already a few scales had fallen off even in this short journey, though not any of the scales on their undersides; the wide, banded scales that protected their stomachs seemed much more securely attached. Perhaps they were fine to travel then, just not be in battle.

I almost wished the kobolds were on this floor. No doubt they would find some great tool for the white scales left in their wake.

But soon they were slithering over their territory, tongues flicking out in their search for gems. Even still groggy from evolution they hunted for their new source of power, slithering through billowing moss and stone trees.

Without hands or even the rough approximation of hands, they would need the mage ratkin. Yeah. That would be an interesting truce, for certain.

And speaking of rats–

On the first and second floor, more mundane evolutions finished, creatures venturing down paths that had already been tested. New ironback toads rose freshly-armoured heads, plodding around in search of dens to guard; crowned cobras slithered down tunnels I showed them on their way to the fourth floor; webweavers scuttled together and wove their fake trees. But on the first floor, in dens filled with bits of stolen armour and jewels and even a few daggers they'd manage to drag off corpses, just under a dozen shadowthief rats opened new eyes.

I was a sea-drake; I respected things draconic both in body and mind, so as much as the mage ratkin was not even remotely covered in scales, her hoarding tendencies and desire for magic was something I could respect. So I found her pleasing, even if I would prefer a few more horns and claws.

These little monsters, however, were rats all the way through.

They stayed about the same size, only a foot in length, but instead of muddy brown they were a sleek silver-grey, coat rippling over muscles on their lean bodies. They'd lost the forked nature of their tail but it was stronger now, curling as if almost prehensile; or if not that, then seemingly… grasping for something.

Perhaps a way to hold whatever they stole.

Their eyes, pitch black, gleamed with curiousity as they rose onto their hind legs, examining their almost humanoid paws and twitching their enormous ears. Already the shadows behaved oddly around them, slithering up their flanks and twining through their fur, though slowly and ungracefully. Another true magical evolution, one undeniably influenced by Nuvja's presence on the first floor.

And I could tell how much they wanted to use it.

I slipped into the largest one's mind, a female who had already moved on from examining her new body to scanning her surroundings. Almost immediately I was struck by how clever her thoughts were; she was noting the diamond and gold stalactite I'd hung in the middle of the floor as a distraction, wondering how she could get up there and what routes could get her there. And as much as she'd stayed on the first floor for all her life, her gaze slipped to the rock pond and the treasures that undoubtedly were further below.

Yeah. Shadowthief rats—these were burglars, rogues, bandits, collectors. I'd originally hoped they'd form another colony on the fourth floor, but now I saw them more as wandering threats, taking anything that struck their fancy and building their increasingly-powerful hoards. Something I would only respect.

As I dipped into everyone else's mind, though, the original rat I'd checked in on seemed the most bold. Already she'd poked back into her den, selecting a strip of silver that looked like she'd gnawed it directly from the wall, and wrapped her tail around it. There were little ridges built into her tail so that it was held completely securely even as she left her den, creeping through the whitecap mushrooms as she headed to the second floor.

Ambitious little beastie. I'd keep an eye on her.

On the second floor, I carved another tunnel down to the fourth just to make sure she had a chance to go lower. Likely they'd choose a lower floor for their eventual permanent dens.

But for now, I returned back to the sixth floor, twisting through the separate rooms as I examined everything present. I could already tell how much I was going to fall in love with this sixth floor. Shallow in places, deep in others, winding and twisting in a way that kept it from being a straight line; even now, without the water, I could practically taste the potential. Jewel-coloured schools of fish, darting to and fro; capturing coral alight with every colour of the rainbow, sprawling as far as the eye could see; beautiful sea-green kobolds, diving through waves with hunting spears; the lagoon, filled with baby fish and crabs, preparing to make the leap into open waters as they aged.

Paradise.

The floor was as perfect as I was going to make it. It was time to add water.