Chapter 3 – The Sticky Threat

Seconds before I convinced myself to destroy the cave system I was nearly knocked out. An enormous amount of mana hit my core. The feeling was unbelievable. It felt like everything good I’ve ever felt was combined into one.

I rode this wave of pleasure and absorbed all the mana, reinvesting it into my domain.
After I calmed down and began to think again, a second wave hit me. The information contained inside the bear was so vast it overwhelmed me. I fell into a trance, reliving the most important moments of the sun bear’s life.

-

I explored the forest around my home. Hunted for salmon in the river, dividing the forest in two. After I grew up and left my parents' den, I relocated my hunting grounds to the forest past the river.

It was darker than the one I grew up in, it even felt eerie. Large trees covered the sun, separating me from my natural element. The ambient forest sounds were replaced with an unnatural silence. All the small critters were absent and no one lived here.

After wandering around for a while I stumbled upon a large spiderweb. Being creeped out by the size of it I hid in the nearby undergrowth and made my way back. Just as I was fully concealed by the bushes, I sighted the web's owner.

A spider, half the size of me, was checking its trap, following behind it was a swarm of smaller ones. The young were shifting around on the spider's abdomen screeching for food. I waited until the spiders wouldn’t be able to see me and turned around. Running from the spider forest, I returned to the riverbed.

I chose to locate my hunting grounds around the uninfested parts of the dark forest.
This event burned into my memories, it taught me a lesson. There was always someone stronger than me out there.

In the following years, I took my motivational sentence to heart and worked hard. I quickly became the apex predator on the darker side of the river. After a while, I evolved from a light bear into a much stronger sun bear.

Now with the second tier evolution, I felt ready to again visit the spider forests depths.
I stealthily made my way through the trees. Winding my long body along the undergrowth and making as few noises as possible. I, after many years, once again saw the large web before me. What shocked me however was how small the distance was to my own hunting ground.

The spiders had expanded their territory drastically and were slowly encroaching onto mine. At this moment another spider, similar to the first one I saw, appeared on the web.
Only this time I wasn’t scared. I lurked closer to the web and used my back feet to jump up.

At the apex of my flight, I reached the spider and bit into its abdomen. The spider screeched and purple blood ran down its open wound. The spider, now severely weakened ,could do nothing against me and quickly fell.

I continued my run along the border of the spider’s influence for quite a while. Repeatedly coming back to cull their population. About a year later, I was filled up with mana from the countless spiders I had slaughtered.

Once or twice, I came into some precarious situations. I had to either fight a large number of them simultaneously or duel the more powerful ones. But in the end, I halted the spiders' advance and was close to evolving again.

I took a little risky rest before the powerful spider's carcass I had just killed. I couldn’t await the evolution that wasn’t that far away anymore. As I woke up again I could feel something staring at me

In front of me stood my personal pet, an enormous spider, dwarfing even me in its size. After coming to my senses, I reconsidered the pet idea. The mother spider screaming at me, angrily shuffled its mandibles. I jumped up and fired my beam attack straight into her eyes.

She reeled back and I used this chance to quickly flee. I could hear the mother chasing me, ripping out the small trees and bushes in her passing. Even though I was faster than my pursuer, the spider was gaining on me. It used a special ability to shot sticky webs from its backside.

Even once or twice entrapping me, just to escape seconds before it all ended.I had to find a way to shake the mother off, and flee the haunted forest. Making my way through a clearing I saw a large tree standing in the center. I knew what this tree was.

Just after I had evolved into a sun bear and made my way into the spider forest I caught a glimpse of the tree. Intrigued by it standing alone in a clearing. I closed the distance to it.
The tree was filled with mana enticing me to sharpen my claws with its bark. Though the tree was tougher than I thought and not even a furrow showed itself.

Forming a plan in my mind, I ran straight at the tree. At the last moment, I shifted my momentum to the side and continued running. The spider mother though was too fat to change its momentum this abruptly. Intending to uproot the tree she rammed it. The tree however was evolved and used its mind-blowing power to stand still.

I could hear a crack sounding in the clearing as the spider's skull split down the middle.
Now fully enraged the mother locked onto my eyes. The looked she gave me could probably kill.

Using the mother's confusion to my advantage I quickly ran in the direction of my birthing place. The spider still rambled after me but I used the tree as a natural border to flee her clutches.

Once I jumped over the river dividing the forest the mother stopped and I heaved a sigh of relief. Now driven away from my territory I searched for a new place to live. Just when I thought about this, I noticed a mana-filled, gust of wind coming from the northwest.

-

The memories of the sun bear ended and had me cowering in fear and tingling in excitement. The complex ecosystem I experienced outside made me wonder what my dungeon could turn into. But the spider scared me, I knew her to be an expansionist and was rightfully concerned.

Now that the sun bear stopped halting the spiders' advance, they would eventually reach me. I had to prepare for this situation and make myself a formidable foe. With a goal in mind, I thought about what I could do with my newly acquired sun bear.

I tried summoning it as the third zones guardian, but something stopped me. Instead, I could feel the sun bear being assigned as the guardian of the fifth floor. I wondered why this happened and assumed an error in the summoning process. But once I filtered through my different instincts and feelings I noticed something.

Because the sun bear was very close to the third-tier evolution it was difficult for me to control it. To circumvent this problem, I instinctively assigned the bear as the Alpha guardian of the 5th zone. This special guardian mode allowed me to hold very powerful creatures. Without them breaking free of my control.

Adding to the control it made him my last line of defense, a quite formidable one at that. Because the bear was assigned as my alpha guardian the zone couldn’t be inhabitant by any other predators.

The fifth zone now only was a very large cavern. Dotting the earthy floor, were large trees and prey for my sun bear. To my surprise, the small forest was illuminated. A clear crystal was embedded into the cavern's roof. It shone down at the trees and encouraged their growth.

This crystal probably came from me assigning a light attuned creature as the alpha guardian. I wanted to, in the future, assign even more creatures as alpha guardians. This would allow me to get even more interesting things, like the crystal.

Sadly I notice that an alpha guardian could only be assigned rarely. This was because they needed an enormous amount of control and mana. After looking over the 5th zone I immediately wanted to begin building the third.

I started with spawning some small critters serving as prey, but was abruptly halted. My mana reserves were running dry. Most of it had been used to reinhabit the zones the bear had destroyed. And the rest contributed to the construction of my last zone, the shining forest.

Now out of options for what to do, I waited. To kill the time I meditated and watched new intruders enter my domain. Meditation was something I learned from the mouse royalty. Their higher intelligence allowed them to cultivate the mana around them. This made it so that they would be able to absorb more mana when in this state.

Slowly but surely my mana trickled up again. The process being hastened by the slowly increasing number of visitors. While my mana filled up over time I slowly build up the third zone.

One of the large chambers forming a triangle was inhabitant by stone-like trees. They snaked themselves around each other forming a three-dimensional mace. Living between their branches were numerous bats and other creatures. When the bats began to warm up to their environment, I noticed strange movement at the edge of the water.

The acidic batshit had mixed with the water forming a gelatinous mass. Most of the other creatures stayed away from it. Only the occasional insect fell prey to spicy substance. But in between the immobile filth, some things began to move.

They were Oozes. Small gelatinous puddles with acidic bodies. I was intrigued by the new creature and adapted the second cavern's environment to better fit their needs. Small slow-moving snails and insects roamed the ground. Occasionally they would walk into a puddle and die.

After a while, some of the oozes even started to evolve. Becoming more active and able to slither around on the ground. Similar to their most favorite prey, the snails. These new creatures were called slimes, they stood at the bottom of the tier-1 evolution.

Not wanting to lose myself too observation I started to form the third cavern. I enlargened the cavern downwards and filled it with water. Creating a bustling marine life with fishes, eels, crustaceans, and various corals.

The creatures adapted to the lightless depths of the water. Corals now had deep black branches hiding them in the dark. The fish grew black scales and the abundant mana let them grow larger.

Though the most interesting evolution came from the eels. Anguiliians were a more intelligent evolution of their originators. Then they would consume prey through their teeth-filled mouth and used sharp coral branches as weapons.

Now that all three caverns were inhabited I started forming the tunnel to the fourth zone
I wanted to make the tunnel to the next zone something special. So, thinking for a long time and filtering through my creatures' memories I came upon an idea.

In every single one of the three large caverns, a challenge guardian would stand guard over a special item. Only once the intruder would defeat all three challenge guardians would they be able to continue. This was because a stone door blocked the way into the next zone

The three guardians were quite diverse. The first cavern was protected by a small but fast bat. It had evolved from the normal bats but was very special. Most of the other bats had evolved into tier 1 dark bats. This bat though was a more powerful tier 1 peek death bat. It was able to kill any creature with just a drop of its death attuned venom.

Protecting the second key was a special slime. Through absorbing large amounts of mana, it had developed a core similar to my own. With it, the creature was able to regenerate its larger-than-normal body. Furthermore, it could form tentacles coming out of its body.
Its core also allowed it a controlling ability similar to my own, but vastly weaker.

The Anguiliian protecting my third key was special as well. Instead of wielding only one spear in its hands, it developed a special fighting technique. It used its tails and hands to fight with two spears simultaneously. This increased its attacking power drastically.

Happy with my new system for the third zone I started excavating the fourth. But I wasn’t sure yet, what I wanted it to be. It would connect my third floor to the fifth and challenge the intruders on their way.

I hit a natural cave system when I dug out the fourth floor’s tunnels. Instead of my more normal caves, this system was quite different. Deep ravines were running underground the mountain with waterfalls crashing down into rapids. A few hardy plants dug their roots into the cliffside.

The mist of the waterfalls created the perfect habitat for moss and mushrooms. The moss lined the walls and added much-needed grip to the slick rock. Contrary to this were the towering mushrooms emitting unhealthy spores into the air.

The environment was so perfect for the two that they started to evolve. Some of the oldest mushrooms turned into mushroom men. On the other side were the lumps of moss which turned into golems.

The two species fought a never-ending war against each other. Though this would not be noticeable to outsiders due to their “speed”. The rivaling inhabitants moved so slowly that the battles were hardly noticeable, if not observed carefully.

I liked the current environment quite a lot and decided to go with the flow. My tunnels turned into large ravines enlarging the area. I then rerouted some of the rivers and waterfalls to cover a larger area. This would boost the reproduction of the rivaling fighters.

The empty rapids were an eyesore, so I spawned some creatures to inhabit them. Using the fallen moss-golems and mushroom-men, I created the guardian race.

The rapids would reconnect the split forces and bring them back together. When the new species of moist warriors inhabitant the zone, life started to flourish. It was as if this was the missing piece in a puzzle that was now finally completed.

A cycle was created. The mist of the waterfalls would create moss and mushrooms. They would then, after absorbing their prey and the ambient mana, evolve into their higher forms. When they inevitably fell in their ancient battle they would sink into the rapids.
Once there the conflicting sides would combine into a new moist warrior. They protected the ancient cycle and acted as the guardians for my dungeon. Once a moist warrior died of old age or in its sacred duty it would return to the cycle.

I was finally finished with the construction of the zones. As a small celebration, I saved up the mana for a while, not using it for anything. I then let it burst out of my core in a wave of evolution energy. After finishing my little ritual, I looked at my dungeon.

My first zone held the ruling family of both mice kingdoms, aptly named the mouse kingdom. Protecting them was the savage god of war the “Red mouse” and its offspring.

Following down a corridor out of the first zone the intruder would be met by the snaking tunnels. There they were constantly attacked by the many serpentine species. But once they trotted too far, there was no turning back. The most powerful of my snakes would combine into a formidable monster, the entanglomination.

If the intruders somehow defeated my guardian, they would be met with the triangle challenges. Three challenge guardians protected the key forth. From three different elements, they would come. The guardian of air, the death bat. The guardian of earth, the overslime. And the guardian of water, the anguiliian warrior.

The three keys would then open the blockade into my canyons of the ancient cycle. There they would fall down the slick cliffs while fighting the zones inhabitants. Defending the pathway further into my domain were the moist-warriors. With their decade-long battle experience, they were perfect for the job.

As my last defense stood the shining forest. Protected by my sun bear, no one would be able to go further.

I was happy with how my first 5 zones turned out. While mentally going through the zones I fine-tuned the environment, fixed some mistakes, and went through their orders.
I was ready for everything, protected by my followers, that were willing to die for me.

I thought about all of this when I nearly fell out of the pedestal holding me!!