“You sure this is a good idea, John?” The two soldiers struggled under the weight of a massive crate which they were barely able to lift with their tier three strength.

“For the last time Al, no, I do not think this is a good idea, but I’m not going to be the one to go back and say it to the captain’s face.” The other man stumbled and both soldiers cursed as they almost dropped their burden. Something in the crate threw itself against the sides of the container. Runes lit up around the crate’s outsides as they kept the creature within contained.

“Yeah, this definitely seems unsafe for our health.”

One soldier sighed in resignation. “You know what’s worse for your health Al? A pissed-off captain that’s what, don’t you remember the last time someone questioned orders? If I recall correctly, they weren’t around for much longer to voice any more complaints.”

The other man nodded, this made sense. “You’re probably right John, as usual, but still, it just does feel right to leave this thing right next to a village. What if someone gets hurt?”

That forced a dark chuckle out of one soldier. “I think that’s the general idea if I’m being honest. No idea why though, but whatever’s inside here, it's no puppy that’s for sure.” Both men staggered as the crate was jostled again from its occupant, nearly causing them to trip and fall in the dark.

One soldier squinted forward, just barely making out the few flickering lights of the small village in front of them. “What do you think John, this seems close enough to you?”

“Yeah, it should be fine.” The two men unceremoniously dropped their crate to the ground with the creature inside growling in protest at the treatment.

“Now we just leave then? The captain said not to open the box right, just leave it and something will happen on its own.” Unnoticed by the two men the runes on the crate began to fade as soon as the container touched the ground.

“That’s what he told us, let's get out of here, this place gives me the creeps.” There was a sudden burst of noise and motion and one of the soldiers screamed once high and shrill and then was silenced. “Al are you there? What’s going on?” It was almost impossible to see in the inky darkness, and the remaining soldier only caught the barest glimpse of motion in the darkness before he too screamed out in pain.

The monster allowed the cooling bodies of its kills to thump to the ground. It didn’t need food, but the feeling of increased strength that rushed through it was intoxicating, golden eyes turned to examine the village in the distance, as slight sounds drifted away from the village. The monster padded slightly forward; it was time to hunt.

Valens watched another adventurer party as they wandered into a small cave on the third floor. Originally this cave had been the staircase to the previous floor, but now it was just a cave. He might have added some bugs to freak people out, but still just a cave. It was really funny to watch to be honest, they went inside the cave, realized it was a dead-end, and then assumed that there must be some trap or hidden monster involved. Valens chuckled, paranoid humans, after they realized there was nothing there in the cave there was usually a hissy fit of cursing and storming out into the rest of the floor.

The core had made some widespread changes throughout his dungeon, for starters there were now multiple ways to get from each floor. Well, most of them at least, the bosses still had to be fought on the tenth and twentieth floors, but other than that there was now a myriad of different routes that could be taken. Some of them weren’t all that helpful for the humans, like the sheer cliff that he had made to encourage the movement of his more air-inclined monsters. Unless someone figured out how to fly, they weren’t going down that way.

He had also made a few rivers leading through the upper and lower floors, the core still had no fish, but he wanted to be prepared when he eventually bullied Magnus into getting him some. The rivers flowed down large waterfalls through the same areas that he had opened up for the flyers to use. Valens supposed that maybe someone could ride the waterfall down the floors, but they would still have to face his bosses, so it didn’t seem like that big of an issue.

He hadn’t figured out how to safely make a way for aquatic monsters to move past his dungeon bosses. If he just made another waterfall, say between the tenth and eleventh floor, then he was sure the adventurers would find a way to abuse it to avoid his boss. That was not going to fly with the core, so until he came up with a better solution, his future fish would just have to stay isolated to individual tier levels.

Speaking of tier levels, Valens still didn’t have any tier-three creatures, it had only been a few days since he had finished the twenty-first floor but still. Sora had reached level 97 even with him restricting her hunting, and he couldn’t wait to see her next evolution. His other creatures on the other hand weren’t that close to evolving at all. It might have something to do with Sora hunting down most of the high-level tier two monsters. Well once she evolved Sora wouldn’t be killing the tier two monsters anyway, maybe he could send her to wipe out the occasional adventurer party though. Just until he started getting a tier-three population established, humans made for good experience for everyone involved. Valens wondered if that was ever an issue for them, Magnus had described the surface as having even more weak humans running around. Apparently, most of them stayed in tier one or two their entire lives.

That was mind-boggling for the core, he was technically a noncombatant himself, but he had all of his monsters to protect him. He had also been nearly killed a few times right after he had just been born, so he had a healthy respect for how dangerous the world was. It seemed plain silly to him for a being who could learn how to protect itself and just not even try. The stronger humans must guard the weaker ones, nothing else made sense to the core, but what incentive would the strong have to protect their weaker kin?

Valens wasn’t sure, he had a hard time understanding the motivations of humans sometimes. Like why would one member of a team kill the others for shiny bits of metal? He knew that they could be used to buy things, but what could be more valuable than an experienced team to help you grow and thrive?

Well anyway, when he was restructuring the floors, he had also added in several shortcuts for either the over-leveled or the foolhardy. These shortcuts would skip ten floors down and take a party directly to the next boss room. There were only two such shortcuts right now, but he was planning on adding them each time he finished a new tier section of his dungeon. The tier one shortcut had already been used by a few parties. Twice by two-tier two parties and once by a tier-one party. The tier two parties had beaten the core’s chimera with only a few casualties, but the tier one party had been completely wiped out.

That was generally how he had assumed things would go, if the humans used the shortcut before they were ready, they would just all die to his bosses, problem solved. He was also hoping that it would encourage higher-tier parties to start skipping his upper floors. Most of them had stopped killing his tier-one monsters as it didn’t get them anything, but some people just had to be rude. The core watched angrily as a tier two party impaled one of his rabbits on a knife. Seriously, what did the poor bunny do to you?

The adventurer population had also been going through an interesting shift in recent days. More and more of the tier one individuals were classing up to tier two and attempting to push further into the dungeon. The chimera was getting a workout and was already proving too much more vicious, devious, and resilient than the hobgoblin ever was. The chimera wouldn’t be able to evolve again until Valens got to the next tier, but the new boss had started using its limited shapeshifting in interesting ways. The thing now had claws on the end of its ant legs and had been going through some more subtle changes as well. The random abomination that was the boss’ biology seemed to be synchronizing a bit better than before.

While this wasn’t very exciting it did make the chimera a better fighter than it was before. It was a little scary how good the boss was getting at fighting, and how quickly too. Valens still hadn’t come up with a name for the boss, he kind of wanted Magnus’ input, but the drake had yet to wake up. He has been asleep for days and the core is trying not to get concerned, sure the drake has slept this long before, but Valens was still slightly concerned. It wasn’t like Magnus to intentionally doze off right in the middle of a conversation like that. The core wanted his advice on another topic as well, the chimera had been growing well in levels, but it hadn’t been able to get any new mutations since evolving. The reason for this was rather straightforward, it hadn’t been able to go hunting throughout the dungeon since it had been made the new boss.

This wouldn’t be a problem for most other monsters, but the chimera needed to have other monsters to use as templates for its body warping. Valens was pretty sure that the chimera couldn’t use humans as templates for new mutations, probably because they were a tier-five race. It was either that or the chimera thought human bodies were too weak to imitate. Valens watched a particularly bothersome group as they made their way down through his swamp floors.

The core didn’t like this group for the simple fact that the leader would not stop whining about his floors. Seriously when they were on the forest floors, he complained about too many trees, now he was complaining about too much water. What did the human want, plain tunnels with monsters? That sounded like a lot of work to keep up and was awfully boring.

Valens firmly turned his attention elsewhere, hopefully, they would get eaten by a crocodile, he had better things to do than getting needlessly worked up over his food talking back. The core watched with pride as Sora ran down a greater lizard, easily slaying her lesser kin. Level 98 now, it wouldn’t be long before she evolved. The core’s first boss may not have been the strongest right out of the gate, but he really couldn’t complain too much. She had grown much stronger since her evolution and had become relentless with her hunting. The core was confident she would be a force to be reckoned with once her draconic blood started showing through more and more.

Still for that to happen she would need tier-three creatures to hunt which meant he needed to get back to work on his floors. Floor twenty-two began to gradually take shape, all the while the dungeon’s boss and monsters slowly pushed their way closer to tier three.