Chapter 2 – My Biggest Challenge

Once an intruder defeated the first zone’s guardian, they would be able to enter a system of small tunnels. I rerouted a small stream from the river to fill part of the tunnels with water. This would be my second zone. I had not yet decided what I would fill these tunnels with.
Though I had some ideas floating around inside my core.

For the third zone, I hollowed out three large caverns and connected them. The connecting tunnels would lead over and under water. This zone would be split into three drastically different environments. But I hadn't yet fixated myself on the specific habitats.

The last two zones were not yet planned. I wanted to first build and inhabit the first zones before I would begin building the last two. After I finished building the intertwined tunnels and hollowed out the necessary caverns to build the second and third zone I had decided.

The second zone, with the small and long winding tunnels, was to be inhabited by serpentine creatures. Fitting to its inhabitants and how the zone looked I named it the snaking tunnels. I send all of the snakes from the first zone into the second, freeing the mice of their predators and rivals.

While the snakes accustomed themselves to their new environment, I expanded the tunnels. This was to encourage specific evolutions I had in mind, and furthermore, I ordered the snakes to live through certain routines.

The largest snakes I wanted to become tunnel-sized serpents, that would consume anything in their way. I ordered them to roam down the smaller tunnels with their mouths wide open. This allowed them to catch insects or smaller animals that didn’t know of the danger or were unable to flee.

For the smallest snakes, I had an interesting idea I stole from a bush in the first zone. The plant had adapted to hunting small animals. It entangled the creatures in its loose hanging roots and bound them to the floor.

Using this concept, I instructed a large number of small snakes to live and hunt in a pack. They would move in a mess of tails and mouths, confusing their enemies. Once they attacked, the intruder would be entangled and then slowly bleed to death from hundreds of baby bites.

The last variation was the sea snakes. I mostly let them live on their own, already happy with how they worked out. But I wanted to experiment further and so altered the diet of some of them. A small group of snakes was ordered to hunt for crustaceans and mussels. In the hope of them developing armor and a crushing instead of piercing bite.

Together with the snakes, I ordered their prey to move into the snaking tunnels. Fish now inhabitant the flooded corridors and the eels fought against the sea snakes’ dominance.
To my surprise, the first evolution I experienced inside the second zone didn’t even come from my experiments.

The creature in question had a unique upbringing. A family of rats, had, instead of eating the snake’s egg, taken care of it. This led to the snake developing a hatred towards its brethren, which were hunting its new family. After a slithering rampage through the tunnels, it evolved into a rare species. A slitherat.

The creature was 2 times as large as the red mouse and longer than even the longest snake. Holding up its massive head, specifically design to hunt snakes, were two muscular arms.
With them, the slitherat would run faster than any snake could flee and leap at them.

During my excavation, numerous intruders entered my domain. Instead of my normal reaction to them, which would be to instantly kill them, my instincts led me down another path.

Now that I had my first evolution, I was significantly stronger than before. Most of the animals entering my domain didn’t register as intruders. Intrigued by this change I let the weak intruders inhabit my first zone.

This allowed me to absorb the pattern of a lot of new creatures. Instead of having to kill them, they changed ownership to me after living in me for a while. Though most of the animals entering, were duplicates of the ones I already had.

To my surprise, the number of creatures entering me was drastically higher than before.
After thinking about this I concluded. The quality of mana I had in my domain had increased when I evolved. This aided the creatures in evolving faster, thus luring in more animals.

Before, the creatures only invaded my domain because of the higher mana density. Now, not only did I have a significantly higher amount of mana, but also a better quality.

The creatures coming from the outside were very welcomed. They brought with them unseen before evolutions. Adding to that they also gifted me new information they picked up on the way.

One example of the evolutions was a variant of a fox that specialized in hunting squirrels. To aid in its day-to-day life, the creature developed a membrane between its front and back limbs.

This allowed the fox to glide after the fleeing squirrels. Furthermore, it increased its agility and let it jump from branch to branch. The creature was aptly named the “flying fox”.

Another evolution would be a snorm. A mixture between a worm and a snake, though originally being a snake. This slithering fella adapted to hunt more agile prey, not normally huntable for a snake.

Observing other creatures, mainly mice and rabbits burrowing into the earth, it wanted to replicate this. In its search, it found the path of the worm and adapted to its methods. The snake would dig a hole in the ground using its teeth-filled mouth. After the hole was dug the snorm hid inside. Once prey came near the hole the snake would jump out, surprising its prey and deftly kill it.

Something happened on the day I finished building the slithering tunnels. I was just about to finetune the ecosystem and have a once over. Some of the creatures inside had already evolved. And the guardian was luckily assigned. Something I was very proud of and a guardian type that I found very intriguing.

Just as I was about to analyze the different evolutions something scary entered my domain
It was a large animal with golden brown fur and 3 eyes that shone in the darkness of my entrance. It pressed its large paws into my cave and raised its nose into the air smelling for something. Once it found the scent it was searching for, it stepped inside.

The beast was at least 3 meters long. Its height of just 75 cm made its body look disproportionally long. To support its length, it had 2 front paws and 4 back ones.

Once it had adapted to the dark environment, it walked into my first zone. The monster’s feet allowed it to accelerate quickly and made it quite agile for its large size. The beast thundered inside the first cavern.

Looking around it let out a challenging roar. I had to hold back my queendom of mice. They wanted to immediately charge into battle. The long, furred beast, made its way into the largest cavern. Now dead center in the first zone, it came face to face with the “red mouse” guardian.

The mice kingdoms' rulers stood to the guardian’s side, their heads held high. Now that everyone was ready for the battle, I ordered the “Red mouse” to attack the monster and take its hits. Being quite adapted to strategic warfare the mice king and queen ordered their followers to work together.

The red mouse attacked the creature's face in a rage-filled furry. The creature brought its front paws up protectively and used them to defend against the guardian. The agile mice of the queendom attacked its long underbelly and raked many but shallow furrows into the softer flesh.

The furred beast didn’t like this and used its four back legs to trample the mice.
Luckily, due to their speed and a counterattack from the king’s forces only the slowest mice died to the stomps of the giant.

This back and forth continued for a while, when suddenly the centermost eye of the monster lit up. A beam of heat and light hit the guardian in the chest. The third eye of the long creature was now closed, and smoke came out of the lowered eyelid.

The guardian lay wounded on the ground and with a last spurt of energy, called forth its offspring. Together with his daughters and sons, the guardian put up a last defense. Jumping at the beast’s closed eye, it and its brethren successfully poked out the eye and left a deep slash in the monster’s neck.

In retribution, the creature lifted its four back legs and did a 180, slamming its backside down. A tremor ran through the ground, dislodging stalactites from the ceiling. An unlucky stalactite hit the guardian in the head and together with it, the defensive force fell.

The two kingdoms continued, frantically attacking the beast. But with the guardian defeated the monster rampaged among the mice’s ranks. The mice defended their rulers and tried to further damage the beast. But in the end, the rulers of the kingdoms fled cowardly, not being able to do anything.

The creature went further into my domain. On the way, it killed all the smaller predators. They were ordered to buy time for the next zone to get ready. Once it reached the slithering tunnels, the furred beast took to the broadest corridor. It led directly into the center of the zone.

I held the snakes back from attacking the monster. Instead calling them together in the middle of zone 2, planning to overwhelm the intruder with numbers. Once It reached the largest crossroad in the center of the area it was met with my remaining forces.

The guardian stood before it, looking quite weird. It was a host guardian. Building the main body was the slitherat, on top of the semi-serpent were the tunnels snakes. They had developed perfectly and were now very large with a humongous head on their body.

Holding together the host guardian were the small snake packs. They had fittingly evolved into one creature called the wirpent. Intermixed with the entangled snakes holding together the makeshift monster were my evolved sea snakes. They had finally evolved into their fated position and added a poisonous note to the snake abomination.

To protect the vulnerable entangled snakes from the beast's long claws the snushers were used as a sort of skin. Evolved from the snakes I ordered to only eat crustaceans, they had a hard and robust exterior.

The weird but intriguing host guardian I build even stunned my intruder. My protector used this opportunity and catapulted itself forwards with its muscular hands. The wirpents presented their abilities when they restricted the beast's front paws.

Only now reacting to my protector's attack the beast raised its, now glowing, backside and slammed it on the ground. The mana that had build up discharged and a force wave threw my guardian against the wall.

Some of the snushers were crushed in the collision and a lot of entangled snakes were ripped apart. Even some of the sea serpents were crushed or torn apart during the flight. Flooding the floor was a mixture of poisonous blood and sharp snusher shell.

Once the beast's paws, hurt from the attack and the shells touched down on the floor they were slowly turning purple. The poisonous blood was infused into the circulatory system of the intruder.

My defender used this weakness to slam against the monster. The intruder was toppled over, now laying on its back. The three tunnel snakes' heads on the top of my monster attacked.

The right and left one bit down onto the monsters’ shoulders. Fixated, the beast could do nothing against the center head throwing up stomach acid in its face. The fur sizzled away, and the acid began to eat at the skin. Having overwhelmed the intruder my protector got overconfident in its assured victory.

To my dismay, the monster slammed its black legs into the slitherat’s belly. The mana-infused talons ripped a hole into the underside. The monster heaved the body of my defender off of it and lay there, visibly weakened.

My defender laying beside the bear, breathing its last breath, exhausted after the fight and bleeding out. I watched with horror as the guardian died with the intruder still alive and prepared to collapse the cave.

All of my defenders were defeated and I had to risk collapsing my dungeon!!!!