No Need for a Core?

Now that raid bosses were sorted, Mordecai turned to elevating zone bosses. The first two were easy.

With the changes that he and Kazue had planned, delvers were going to need trap finders and trackers, amongst other skill sets. They already had a mistress of arms and of magic, and it didn't take long to find a buzzkin interested in the new position: Mistress of skills and lore. Jiah would be evaluating non-combat skills to help send people in the right direction, as they effectively had three independent growth vectors now. This would apply to non-combat-oriented delvers too. An experienced herbalist shouldn't bother with the hunting grounds, while someone who was barely more than an enthusiastic gardener with a good reference book shouldn't be looking for exotic mushrooms in the deep fungal forest. And if it came to fighting, her skill set included stealth and poison.

Stealth was also part of the skill set for their new hunting grounds boss. Menhit was happy to take up the mantle of a boss at last. Mordecai enhanced her innate stealth skills with a bit of shadow blending and boosted her already ear-piercing scream to the point it could cause serious damage, though using that required her to recharge in much the same way as Belle and Freya needed for their flash attacks.

Her job was to mess with hunters who managed to take out either or both of the bats. The price of a successful hunt was the risk of becoming the hunted. With her enhanced strength and speed, she had her choice of single-target stealth attacks much like those of any large cat, or using her scream to disorient and deafen a group of foes before attacking. But barring invaders, she didn't have to be involved most of the time and had a well-hidden lair.

The first hard decision came as he considered their original zone. On the one hand, he needed to maintain the third route properly, not rely on wild organisms, so he needed to have bosses for it. On the other hand, he suspected he was going to use it far less often even after he opened it up for more routine use rather than only a punishment route. But he was also going to be adding a lot more in the way of dangerous traps, which increased the threat and challenge. Hmm.

In the end, he decided to mix and match. So long as he provided an appropriate challenge through every zone, having some floors not be matched with a sewer-oriented boss should be fine. And this would be one of those. There was a different challenge he wanted to pose, although at first glance this boss would be very similar to Ryohoho, as they would both be dracobits tied to Zushi's energy-draining powers. He got a volunteer almost as fast as he proposed the idea to their inhabitants, a flying dire rabbit named Haruka.

The first clue to the new boss's nature was going to be her coat, as her fur and scales had a dark but pastel-like iridescence. It was a beautiful, dreamy sheen, darker than but similar to the effect of a thin layer of oil on water. And a slick of oil was exactly what one of her breath weapons was going to be. The spray would coat people and surfaces equally well, viscous enough to cling while shearing in a way to make everything slide easily. Holding weapons and standing upright should become equally difficult.

Her other breath weapon was an effervescent cloud of rainbow colors that could intoxicate, befuddle, and induce hallucinations. Both breath weapons were also highly flammable, and a group faced with all three bosses was going to face quite a challenge.

In addition, she was faster and more agile than Ryohoho and had a toxic bite and claws. Where he rarely closed in so that he could wield magic from a distance, she often darted in as an aerial skirmisher. Mordecai thought that the fighting styles would complement fairly well and provide an interesting mix of challenges for people coming through this zone.

For the next zone, Mordecai decided to make a sewers boss that would also work well as support for Hildegard and Crios. He upgraded one of the bunbee queens; specifically, the one who had her hive in the sewers into a boss, and provided her with a path to both arenas she might need to fight in, both for her and her upgraded bunbee warriors. For the most part, the bunbees hadn't been particularly threatening outside of swarms, but these were going to be larger and stronger, with more toxic venom in their stingers.

Beeatrix needed to be more than just an impressive bunbee of course. Mordecai gave her the ability to tweak the vibration of her wings and give herself a constant discordant buzzing sound that was magically enhanced to not only affect the minds and ears of those close to her but physically assault their bodies as well. And her own swarm was of course immune to this effect, though not any other inhabitants, including Hildegard or Crios.

Additionally, he unlocked a set of psychic abilities for her, letting her use telekinetic abilities and wield aspects of the environment around her as weapons. The way that Kazue had shuffled around the zones' densities left this formerly 'floor two' zone with the mana density and power capacity he would normally associate with a fifth floor, and that gave him a lot more room to be flexible even as bosses such as Crios and Hildegard had their existing powers boosted.

There was a price to pay already for this sort of upgrade. Against a proper invasion, one or more zones could be bypassed readily, depending on the route an invader took. But that would also be leaving forces at your back, and against an invasion, a dungeon didn't have to hold back or play nice.

Mordecai also wasn't certain how stable the arrangement was. They were going to do their best to keep everything evenly distributed, but the zones were going to have some serious power jumps as zones got interleaved this way. Mana density should increase one more time for this zone before the power distribution started coming from deeper zones, if they did everything correctly. But that was enough musing.

He played with complimentary and contrasting ideas for a while before striking on one that could work in the sewers and provide a balance with Umbrowl and Betty. There were plenty of little crystal slimes slowly growing from the remains of the sewer creatures slain during the invasion and they needed to incorporate all the creatures that they could from here anyway.

The one he picked had a mutation that caused it to lean more heavily toward living crystal than ooze, which might normally have become a liability. Mordecai focused on its affinity for crystal and enhanced it while borrowing some concepts from their living crystal flowers. The conversion from crystal ooze to crystal elemental wasn't difficult for a creature that was used to not having a defined shape.

The result wasn't as amorphous, but Mordecai did give it some shape-changing abilities. It could disguise itself as a 'normal' crystal flower, roll about as a crystal sphere that was incredibly hard to damage, or fly in the form of a small crystal dragon. Like Cimbu, this new boss would count as dragon-kin and an elemental creature, rather than a true dragon like the wetlands bosses or a pure elemental like Enki. Such distinctions rarely mattered outside of scholarly matters, but upon occasion, there were magical effects where such differences could greatly alter the outcome.

Into this tiny crystal being Mordecai infused powers of light and illusion and found the results to be rather pleasing. The new boss's direct attacks were mostly limited to searingly intense beams of light, but when it changed shape it could choose to do so by 'exploding' into crystal shards that fell back together into the new form. The dragon form also had sharp claws and teeth and could spit a small cone of crystal shards, making it the strongest form for offense.

In addition, all forms were equally capable of wielding illusion magic. It was most skilled at visual illusions but it could also do audible illusions, though those came with the slight flaw of having a faint chiming sound to them if one listened closely enough. The elemental decided it liked the name Annur, but did not feel any inclination to assume a gender identity. Mordecai sent Annur off to visit with Umbrowl first, with directions to find Betty later to get to know her as well.

A third boss for the library zone seemed problematic at first, at least, if he wanted to make it fit in both the library and the sewers. Then Mordecai realized he already had the solution and even had a sample still hanging around with its mistress. And crystal was a great matrix for holding information.

The crystal spellslime that Mordecai forged out of a normal crystal slime was very deliberately made non-acidic, and he even made sure that it could slightly absorb acids. It also had a very high surface tension, leaving its surface completely dry. This combination would make the spellslime perfectly compatible with handling books and scrolls.

While it could generate an appendage to bludgeon a foe with, it hit with the force of a strong but not particularly skilled humanoid. The new boss's offensive skill set was simply going to be magic, and Mordecai carefully cultivated the potential to cast any type of magic, limited only by the strength of the spells it could cast, along with the ability to absorb a portion of any spell it was attacked with. That did come with a cost; which spells the spellslime was going to be able to cast refreshed randomly when the dungeon reset. That also meant that it was going to be harder for delvers to prepare for a fight with Aiden, as the spellslime had chosen to call himself, along with picking a male gender. Aiden was also deliberately made as a green crystal slime, in homage to Bip who had been the inspiration for his creation. As a final touch, he assigned a portion of their loot capacity to generate a spell tome carrying a copy of each of Aiden's current spells, to be changed or remade each time Aiden was renewed.

The mushroom forest was his next stop. Klastoria could already fit in either environment, and Sarcomaag could sprout mushroom trees in both locations simultaneously now that he was a raid boss. This left Mordecai feeling very free in developing a new boss. Inspiration did not come so easily, but eventually, it came in the form of spying a pixie talking animatedly with one of the fungal-focused bunkin druids.

A pixie 'shroom druid, that could be a fun way to mix things up. Mordecai had no sooner formed the thought and began composing his intent than the pixie in question spun in place excitedly at the idea. "Do you mean it? I can talk with all the cool mushrooms and plants and stuff too?"

His attention had clearly leaked across to her, no doubt to how keen she was on the subject. "Yes," he sent to her with amusement, "now give me a moment to focus please." She was already a pixie and had a tendency to leave sparkly trails of dust, so there was no reason that her dust couldn't also act like mushroom spores. He already had a solid template for her normal druidic magic, and he topped it off by giving her a beech mushroom staff with a selection of extra spells to make sure she had a wide range available during her fights. It would also double as extra loot if she was defeated, and if she had the chance to flee she was to 'accidentally' drop the staff as she fled.

Having their bosses concede defeat when their loss was imminent was one of the ways they'd been able to host as many parties each day as they had been. While the dungeon didn't begrudge an instinctive swipe at a fleeing boss, active pursuit after victory was clear was something they did mind and promptly punished. It fell under their general rule about respectfulness.

The tiny pixie immediately declared that her new name was Sporewhisp, then claimed a porcini boar as her companion and mount, and named him Glimmermold. Watching them head off to play made Mordecai happy with this choice and the chaos it would inflict upon delvers. In many ways, she was 'just' an upgrade of a normal druid, but between her natural pixie mischief and her pixie dust's ability to now cause everything from hallucinations to having mushrooms sprout all over the victim's body, she was going to quite the formidable and unconventional foe.

Checking in on Klastoria before he moved on to the river level, Mordecai discovered that the increased mana density was helping speed up her learning curve for fine manipulation of her body. She could now form a roughly bipedal type body from her torso and up and give herself the outline of floor-length robes to hide her lack of legs. She'd also created a diadem of crystals on top of her head, to denote herself as a princess (per Kazue's declaration). She could talk as well, and while her speech was quite intelligible, it did come with an odd mix of burbling sounds and chiming notes. He encouraged her to share notes with Aiden who had a similar interest in a bipedal form. Mordecai suspected that Aiden was going to have an easier time forming the shape he wanted, given his higher and more stable surface tension, but that lack of fast flexibility would also hinder how fast he would learn to find a way to physically speak. Though his wide range of magic would often be of use there.

For the river zone, there were two considerations Mordecai had been considering for a while. In the end, he chose not to upgrade a bunyip as that would make three aquatic bosses and feel like 'more of the same'. Instead, he chose to upgrade one of the feathered serpents. While an open sky flier like an alicorn would have felt out of place here, a jungle flier would fit in just fine.

The male who took Mordecai up on the idea was named Tohil. He became somewhat larger than his fellows, but more importantly, his scales took on the ability to shift their colors automatically, granting him camouflage in almost any environment. He was able to reuse both his magical darkness and dark 'smoke' abilities repeatedly after a short recharge period and could both spit poison that could blind and amplify his echolocation into brief bursts of damaging sound. As a final touch, Mordecai added a muffling aura that only worked on sound of a lower frequency than the echolocation and the ability to briefly go invisible.

Jasi and Kulle, the naga and kelpie bosses of the river zone, provided plenty of magical power and could be very dangerous in close combat, but neither were particularly stealthy. Mordecai wanted Tohil to be a sneaky and dirty fighter, at home both in melee and at short range. This would also make him devastatingly effective in the sewers.

The new boss for the wetlands was an obvious choice, though Mordecai would rather go fight in the sewers himself rather than try to get her to do it. He decided to not directly ask her either, and simply floated a line of mana tethered to the boss node for the wetlands in her general direction.

Carmilla started complaining about the burdens and added responsibilities of being a floor boss before she had even finished securing the connection to her soul. He listened with some amusement to her rantings as the additional potential of a boss was added to her. She had already been as strong as they could make a non-boss for the floor and had sort of the responsibilities of a boss without the powers of one. This rectified that imbalance.

And with that, Mordecai was done with filling out the new nodes on the existing floors. It was time to shift his attention back to the topside.