Given that the first floor had a goblin theme, led by a powerful orc, I decided on the second theme for the dungeon. It was a jungle.
Yes, a vast savanna-style jungle, with large trees, insects, wild animals, and above all, monsters.
To create the jungle, I needed space. Originally, I planned for the floor to be two kilometers long and one and a half kilometers wide, but that would be too small. So I continued expanding and expanding until I ended up with at least ten kilometers in length and about twelve in width. The ceiling remained at a height of three hundred meters after all the new modifications I made.
With the raw base ready, I began the decorations. The first thing I needed was something to illuminate the entire space so the jungle could function.
After searching the shop for a while, I found something called a Mana Star.
It was a mass of mana that shone like a star.
However, it was expensive—very expensive—costing almost a hundred thousand points. So that option went out the window. I didn't have, nor would I spend, a hundred thousand points on that.
So I decided to do it the old-fashioned way. Recently, I've discovered that enchantments are mana with intention. For example, releasing mana injected with the intention of making a plant grow would accelerate its growth exponentially.
The same happened whenever I altered one of my monsters, for example what I did with Bastion the Relentless and the mutated goblins on the first floor.
By injecting intention into something, the mana would naturally respond.
Raising a protrusion on the ceiling, I began to accumulate mana into a sphere. It was complicated, as I was using my own mana and not the mana I absorbed.
The mana concentrated into a sphere, beginning to weigh down and destabilize, threatening to explode. However, I held it all together with force.
I struggled and concentrated for a while until I finally did it. The mana stopped being mana and transformed into photons, giving off a bright light like a miniature sun that illuminated the entire cave.
After recovering my mana, I made the sphere larger until it was one meter in diameter, and then I anchored it to the ceiling, creating three enchantments.
The first was to make the mana star move from East to West across the entire ceiling. Once it reached the end, the second enchantment activated, raising a plate that covered the mana star, creating the sensation of night darkness. Finally, the third enchantment made the mana star move back to the beginning and repeat the cycle.
In the end, I managed to recreate day and night.
Now that I had an artificial sun, I focused on another aspect: water. After searching the shop, I found an enchantment that could generate water while being injected with mana absorbed from its surroundings, which gave me an idea for my third floor.
Carving a large strip of land that began at the upper limits of the floor, I created a river. The current would be fast, also flowing from East to West. At the upper limits of the floor, I carved an opening to form a waterfall that would empty into a deep lake, and the lake would connect with the river to make it all one unified system—or that was the general idea.
It took me some time, but I managed it.
Now I had a complete freshwater river.
Now I had light, water, and earth, and I only needed plants.
The seeds were incredibly cheap. There were all kinds, from pine, mahogany, fruit trees, plants, even vines and more. Buying a few dozen seeds, I scattered them. Using my mana with the intention of making them grow, the plants spread and grew at a surprising rate.
Within a few hours, the entire space was filled with grass, trees, bushes, and vines on the walls, forming the whole of a dense jungle. The fruit trees bore their fruits and other varied foods.
Along the river, I had to purchase an enchantment that I placed in the river, warming the water a bit to create a thin mist.
Then another enchantment to generate a humid environment on the second floor.
To prevent people who could see mana from quickly detecting the entrance to the boss room, I used the same moss, letting it spread to block that ability.
After the moss covered the entire second floor, I stopped it.
Now that I had the environment, I needed its inhabitants. For that, I bought insects of all kinds, spreading them across the ground. There were worms, ants, centipedes, beetles, spiders, and more.
As for flying insects, there were mosquitoes, wasps, and bees.
For them, I infused mana, changing their morphology slightly, making them a bit larger and more resistant so they would be a challenge.
Since this floor would have a survival-in-a-hostile-environment theme, I needed monsters, and the most adaptable to this type of place were kobolds or lizardmen.
After buying two kobolds that cost five thousand each, I modified their bodies to give them intelligence, adding wrinkles to their brains and knowledge to build tree houses and clothing.
Since these had genitals, they could begin to reproduce, although raising them would take a few weeks. I would have to accelerate the process until I had a good number of them.
They wouldn't be fighters; rather, they would be harassers, throwing spears or arrows at distracted hunters.
As for monsters, I had a few ideas. For the most part, they would be mammals with the occasional insectoid monster.
The mammals would be special tigers—a race called Assassin Tigers. They had fur that, instead of orange with black stripes, was dark pink with yellow stripes in different patterns.
These could use magic, though I hadn't decided what kind yet. I would also have to improve them later.
After the tigers, I summoned large insects: large spiders, one meter in size with steel-hard skin and tough thread with metallic properties; enormous beetles; and also, for fun, a giant centipede about eight meters long and one meter wide. I summoned two, a male and a female, so they could reproduce, accelerating their growth.
I needed the second floor to be ready before more hunters arrived.
Since I still had plenty of space, I began the most anticipated part: the creation of ruins. Here and there, I raised pyramids made of rock, half-destroyed, as well as ruins of an ancient civilization. On the rocks, there were crude drawings.
To add antiquity, I made them surrounded by vines.
I built a total of five pyramids in different points of the floor.
Likewise, I created five areas. The first four would be for the mini-bosses I planned to place, one of each species on the floor. Defeating them would give a key to open the boss room.
The boss room itself was an underground cave with water reaching ankle height, dark and humid. I added stalagmites and sharp rocks to hinder movement.
As for the boss, well, it would be a kobold—or rather, a kind of humanoid drake that I created.
I elongated his skeletal body. I also reinforced his skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nervous system, and brain.
His skin went from being smooth with small scales to being covered in scales hard as steel. His height reached two and a half meters, just like Bastion.
I put metal armor on him, as well as a halberd as a weapon. And of course, I added fire.
When I finished, I spoke directly to his mind.
"You are Cadmus, the Drake-kin," I informed him.
The drake knelt, his left hand over his heart, striking it as a sign of submission and respect, and growled something indicating understanding.
Leaving him to get used to his body, I focused on preparing the arenas for the other bosses.
Focusing on the arenas—one per race: Spider, Tiger, Ant, and Kobold.
And the last one was the floor boss.
Focusing on the outside, I noticed that I had been working for at least three straight days and still needed to finish details.