Aby had been experimenting with one of the wisps on its twelfth floor, trying to see if it could get another creature to consume it in the same way the wyvern had, when it had felt itself able to expand once more, a feeling always welcome by the core. It wanted to do something different, though. After seeing that it had succeeded in merging the sixth and seventh floor, it wanted to test this ability on two new floors, to learn more about what was, and was not allowed.

It created a basic cavern floor, one thousand meters in width, by sixty in depth. While not nearly the largest it could create floors now, it was still large, and for the cores purposes, that was good. It created a tunnel, from the ninth floor to the thirteenth, and then set about widening it. As it did, it continually compressed the limestone and clay walls of this hall, condensing them further and further by a mix of magic, and magically pressurized water.

The sides further condensed, then smoothed, then further pressed down, until a hole roughly twenty meters wide in the far side of the ninth floor, one that ran outward for a short distance, before curling downwards sharply, bypassing the floors between it and the thirteenth. The hole was smooth, as were the walls, though the entire distance downwards became dark quickly and obscured the unnaturally sleek walls.

The thirteenth floor itself was no longer stacked directly underneath the twelfth, and instead was off to the side, disconnected from the rest. This also meant that the entirety of the floor was completely submerged, and was experiencing pressures higher than above.

A smooth silt floor was created, one without any corals to go along with it, and instead it was given a similar source of light to the ninth, a mana fueled spot of shining ceiling, though much, much dimmer. The empty seascape and murky blue hue that it took felt barren, and lifeless. With the walls, floor, and ceiling being a uniform grey in color, and the visibility already being low, the uncomfortable pressures could become crushingly claustrophobic, yet also horrifically thalassaphobic.

Creatures needed to be added next, and while not nearly too high in pressure for the fish of the reef, they weren’t proper. Instead, Aby spawned a moderate amount of those Giant Mimic Octopus that it had gotten, and also a small army of an aggressive open ocean squid, the Common Humboldt. Both were no larger than a meter and a half, but their similarities didn’t extend much further beyond that.

The mimic octopus adhered itself to the bed of the floor, and mimicked any of the other miscellaneous creatures of the floor, be it using their tentacles to mimic some of the various baitfish that had bled down from the ninth floor, or flatfish that crawled along the bottom, and even walking along in the form of the few frogfish down here. They seemed unnaturally capable at mimicry, with parts of their bodies not only changing in size and texture, but even appearing to meld together or change size and mass freely.

The Humboldt squids behaved opposite to the passive hiding on display by the octopus, with violent, savage brutality on display from the get-go. Despite having no need for food, they were incredibly capable at doing so. When they did get it in mind that they should hunt, they would ravage the population of everything on the floor, including themselves. Shoals of baitfish were nearly eradicated regularly, and when they could no longer eat them, they moved on to the life on the bottom of the floor, and even one-another. And yet, despite the huge amounts of chaos they created when they fed, however, they were much more intelligent than they seemed. Using patterns of colored light created by their skin, they were able of communication, and even coordination to a frightful degree.

Other creatures on the thirteenth floor were much less inclined to the brutal feeding frenzies, and when one was starting, they would make it their duty to survive, somehow or another.

Due to the non-linear progression of the thirteenth floor, it had found itself nestled roughly beside the twelfth, and Aby decided to have both continue to the fourteenth. The shafts descending from each would be longer, then meet one another halfway down, becoming a single entrance into the fourteenth floor. This floor would be nothing groundbreaking, simply a large room filled with corals, much the same as the fourth and eighth. However, Aby decided to make the room shaped similar to a figure eight, with two decently sized pockets connected to one another, though separated by a small rocky divider.

The half on the side of the entrance would be populated by corals and creatures found in its Arctic Atoll, the temperature plummeting as it became populated. On the other side of the divider, it would be different. On that side, it would be populated by seaweed and coral, specifically fire coral. While useless against anything armored, the coral still stung to come into contact with by unprotected skin. Along with this, various jellyfish and even a few man-o-war were spawned in and around these waters. Aby also released a handful of wisps into this side, while raising the heat to uncomfortable levels, and allowed undines to populate the other side.

The result was a stretch of floor that was criminally cold, frigid and inhospitable to anything without protection, only to suddenly shift into nearly the opposite. While it was true that the hotter half wasn’t deadly by sheer environmental factors like the first half, it was certainly annoying to swim through a kilometer of uncomfortably hot water, if the steam rising to the ceiling of the floor was any indication of that, populated by unusually resistant strains of jellyfish, species ranging from the reef inhabiting cairns and box jellyfish, to the large man-o-wars and lions-mane jellies, and the stinging fire corals rounding out the roster of painful, even fatal stinging creatures present.

While the first half was a delicate color palette was the delicate blues and ethereal whites that is natural to these frozen reefs, the latter portion was a discordant mix of sickly yellows, hateful reds and milky translucence, and a closer inspection would reveal the entire body of water seemed to be pulsating, acting out some disgusting melody of watery flesh.

So aggressively clouded by tendrils, tentacles, and stingers was the water that any fish or other creature Aby tried to introduce found itself dead within moments. Even the wyvern, now recovered and back on his metaphorical feet found himself uncomfortable in this area, an impressive feat given his new steam affinity that he had taken upon his shift. After being enveloped by the myriad stinging appendages, he’d promptly turned around and left, slaying any creature that remained clinging to his body afterwards.

After settling the changes once more, ensuring that its halls were as strong as ever, Aby turned its attention to the nagging feeling of invaders, finding them to be sapients this time. It was an exciting prospect to the core, and it began to figure out their numbers and composition. Counting only a small group of two, an apparent mermaid and a biped of some description, scaled blue skin reminded it of the dragonkin on floor ten, but it was less substantial, overall.

They conversed with one another on the entrance floor, apparently coming up with some plan of invasion, and mentioning something about rewards, information, and other such nonsense like a father paying too much for an escort. Aby too began planning, coming up with ideas and strategies, along with testing creatures on various floors, should their performance be enough to get them to these floors. It didn’t notice any mages amongst their numbers, the mermaid wore an extravagant outfit of some material it hadn’t before seen, and wore an ornate harpoon on her back. The biped was outfitted in a well-worn suit of light plate armor, a short sword and buckler in either hand, clearly of decent make.

After finishing a drawn out conversation on the topic of fires and Faeries, they started walking, the imitation dragonkin leading the mermaid down the passages. He was quick to cut down any wandering fish, though was grumbling in apparent disapproval at the lax attitude present on his partner. Aby too was confused, she was simply doing nothing, not even trying to mindlessly flee like the fish. She simply followed, making exasperated noises and acting generally grumpy, if this behavior was truly synonymous with how Sela acted sometimes.

The first and second floors were passed easily, though, even a group of sea-boar hadn’t impacted the lesser reptile much. Whilst they were starting their trek through the third floor, avoiding the shrimp halls, Aby sent a call to the kobold tribe, as the core was curious as to how the two would stack up to them. The seven of them rallied astonishingly fast, forming into a coordinated group unlike any Aby had designed for them, though more efficient.

The warrior barreled forwards, leading the charge in his distinct form. He ran forward, slouched over and using his arms to carry the weight he had gained by simply existing. Behind him was the Chief-Mother, then two spear-users, two harpoon wielders, and the shaman at the end of the charge. Bolting upwards one of the hidden shafts, the eager warrior was using his overdeveloped limbs to fling himself upwards rather than simply swim like the rest, and they struggled to keep up with him due to this, though they managed.

The first and second floors barely counted as time-consuming, each of them had trained their bodies to allow them to pass the rather short distances with ease, and they found themselves on the third floor maze in short order. The two invaders had a substantial lead, nearing the end of the small maze, as the distance from the eleventh floor to the first was much greater than the first to the third. Still, the innate familiarity with the maze they had, along with real-time directions and information provided by Aby, by the time the two had actually gotten close to the fourth floor entrance, they heard the march of the tribe resounding through the halls, and though the warrior made it less uniform than it ought to have been, it was certainly imposing.

They tried hurrying their pace to the fourth floor, apparently more confident facing the wyrm than the unknown that was gunning for them, but Aby made sure to keep both fish, and a supply of snakes from beneath, hounding them, slowing them down before the tribe turned into view. Whilst the warrior wore next to nothing, and forwent weapons as well, the remaining six wore scaled leather vests and pants, or a leather robe in the case of the shaman. These clothes were a luscious ocean blue, and sharply contrasted the sandy yellow scales of the kobolds beneath.

The mermaid snorted, saying something about mere kobolds and berating the biped once more for something Aby failed to understand. The biped was focused entirely on the approaching tribe, however, and was able to react when the first two harpoons were launched at the duo, deflecting one and catching the other, though the kobolds had already grabbed another. The shaman began casting a spell, the waters rippling in response to her touch and her words, and even heating up in their fervor. The harpoon throwers were readying themselves for another volley, and the spearmen had already began rushing forward with the chief-mother. The warrior had finally gotten the chance to let loose, and had already barreled forwards, seemingly surprising the biped both by the speed it had displayed, and the unusual, animalistic gait with which he used. He positioned his buckler in front of him, shrugging off the impact rather easily and deflecting the kobold into the wall by leveraging the remaining momentum.

However, before he could capitalize on the opportunity, a harpoon made itself known, and he moved to deflect it whilst the mermaid finally brought out her own harpoon. She still seemed full of contempt however, and Aby noticed that there was magic within the harpoon, and a substantial amount. She pierced at one of the spearmen, digging into his dominant arm which had been unprotected, and the arm seemed to be far more damaged than was reasonable. She snickered at his shocked expression, and lunged forward in an attempt to drive the weapon into his chest, but found herself struck in her own left arm by the dagger wielding chief.

In her shock, panic, and rage, she hadn’t followed through on the swing, resulting in it simply bumping into his chest weakly, and then being grabbed by a now thoroughly incensed kobold. She started trying to wrench it from his grip, and was surprisingly stronger than he was, and able to do so, but her attention had been fixed onto the chief by necessity and she couldn’t wrestle her weapon free swiftly enough.

Using her unprotected hand to try and block or catch a dagger being wielded by a two and a half meter tall kobold worked out much worse than she’d apparently anticipated, if her shrieking and cursing at the chief was to be believed, and the harpoon kobolds had already directed another volley at her. By this point, with the magical weapon being occupied, her arm being cut and slashed, and another two harpoons making their way swiftly and accurately towards her head and chest, her anger and contempt had turned to a subtle horror, and she began calling for the biped, who managed to turn his attention away from the spearman he was in the process of trouncing, a feat made harder by the waters around him seemingly fighting every move he could make, doing their best to slow his assault while the warrior shook off his daze and stood up.

When he saw his partner doing much more poorly than he, he tried to break off and go to assist her, but the four meter distance between them was much harder to clear than it appeared. In the end, after receiving a flying tackle to his back by the berserk kobold, he was forced to watch her be cut down by a slash to the throat by the chief-mother. He tried to shake off his assailant to go assist somehow, but by this point, the two harpoon wielders had switched to joining the melee, and were nearly upon him, along with the spearmen. Whilst he managed to puncture through the deceptively resilient chest armor of one of the harpoon users, and fully amputate the arm of the wounded spearman, the numerical superiority had made itself known, and he left his life behind, kicking and struggling under the combined assault of six C+ and B- rank kobolds.

Aby was quite pleased by the results, and as three bodies decomposed into motes of light, and six more proceeded deeper into the dungeon to head home, the core started to look through what it’d learned.