Matthias looked down at what was going on in his swamp in disbelief. A party of rather powerful individuals had taken a jaunt into his swamp. He had not sent any extra dangers at them, but they had deftly dealt with everything they had run into, even taking turns fighting solo to show off. But that all paled in the face of what they were doing now. The druid had made an earthen dome, and now they were having a party. A party in the middle of his dungeon. And it just so happened that his goblins chose that very moment to go to war with the turtles once more. So these people were getting dinner and a show.

  “Is my swamp really that weak?” he asked aloud in disbelief.

  “You may not have noticed due to how little experience you have, but they threw around a ton of mana,” Chloe reassured him as she rubbed his core soothingly. “I’m guessing these are all very important people. Probably the second evaluation team before they open things up to general delvers. The fact they needed a break is telling.”

  “Is it, though?” Matthias questioned. “That druid has been snacking the entire time.”

  “He is a druid of your swamp,” she reminded him.

  “If it’s my swamp, why did I not get to name it?” he asked.

  Chloe shrugged. “Naming places falls to the strongest entity around. So either a very powerful celestial named it, or you waited so long that the adventurers named it. But it is a fitting name.”

  “Really? You think Vitalmire is a fitting name?” Bafflement oozed from him to her through their bond.

  “For the swamp? Yes,” she answered with no hesitation. “My dear, you might not notice this, but your influence is odd.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, panic building within him.

  “Don’t panic, I will explain,” she cooed. “You know how you created that two-stage process to spread your influence? That is a very advanced technique. Most dungeons don’t figure out how to do that until they are higher tier. But the feel of a more dense influence varies from dungeon to dungeon. A dungeon with tons of spellcasters might have an atmosphere that feels charged, like the air before a storm. Your influence feels like vitality. Like your whole dungeon is alive, and stepping inside is more like exploring a living thing than a location.”

  “And what do you think caused that?” he asked.

  “You kind of went off the deep end with beasts,” she answered with a chuckle. “It is a common enough feeling from dungeons that focus more on physical threats than magical ones. It is not a bad thing. Elizabeth is an amazing overworld boss. And once her eggs hatch, baby hydras will be a pretty common monster in your swamps. I expect it will cause an explosion of activity.”

  “We don’t need more chaos,” he groaned.

  “I think you should embrace it,” she chided. “Has trying to stop it helped you at all?”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  “I got rid of the leeches,” he offered meekly.

  Chloe just clicked her tongue. “By filling their niche with something that outcompeted them. How are your swamp crabs, by the way?”

  “No one has noticed them,” he admitted. “Probably for the best. They need time to really start growing. We are getting a few bigger ones, but they are still objectively weaker than the goblins.”

  “I don’t care how big they get, the goblins will still eat them,” she sighed. “I mean, look at them. They took down that turtle. Two of them died? One lost an arm? For goblins, that is a good hunt.”

  “Maybe,” Matthias allowed.

  “Sweety, your goblins are terrifying,” she said, once again forcing him to pay attention to her. “If you had not ordered them not to drown adventurers in bodies, no one would ever leave your dungeon. You have hundreds of those buggers running about.”

  “But now they are being eaten by the trolls,” he pointed out.

  “Trolls eat everything, and if they could not absorb the losses, they would not let the troll stay,” she countered.

  “Then what should I do?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really,” she admitted. “Keep testing out monster fusions. Keep adding new forms of life. You seem to be missing the one thing your dungeon has that most don’t. Your monsters breed far too quickly. Any other dungeon with your kind of population would be sending out hordes of monsters to ravage the surrounding areas. They would be abusing your ability to soak losses to simply overwhelm and grow faster than they could be suppressed. But instead, you turned that advantage inward. You have them fight endlessly. You have them adapting generation by generation.”

  “But that can’t be that special,” he argued.

  “Matthias, no other dungeon does this because they can’t,” she said, stopping his spiraling doubt. “You have a catalogue in your mind of a seemingly endless number of beasts from your old world. Most dungeons either have to wait for unlocks or absorb a beast to gain the ability to summon it. That, or they need years of tinkering in order to stumble upon a stable but handcrafted organism. Matthias, other dungeons grow so slowly that new stages are measured in centuries, not months.”

  That caused his mind to pause. “You mean to tell me that other dungeons are manually trying to cause creatures to adapt rather than letting natural selection change the monsters over generations? But genetics are so complex that even the slightest change could cause any number of issues.”

  “Then you see the issue,” she continued. “Matthias, if you just let your swamp and natural selection do their work, you will be a king of monsters. You are passively doing what other dungeons take ages to do. The fact that you got a free, stable population of trolls before the guild could even begin to really delve is unheard of for a dungeon. Trolls are normally a mid-tier monster that dungeons like to use as a wall to separate lucky adventurers from good ones. Trolls are normally a brutal fight. You are just seeing the best the guild has to offer rather than the low-hanging fruit. You will see once the lower-ranking members show up.”

  “I will think on all that,” he promised. “But I would still like to make the swamp at least a bit less chaotic. If death is more likely than victory, then too many will never even try. If I am going to be a proper dungeon, then I will need to be a proper whetstone for the adventurers. And as I sharpen them, so too should they sharpen me and my monsters. It should be mutual growth. If there is one thing I know about people, it is that the unknown scares them. But if something is more profitable than it is draining or dangerous, then they will make any excuse to keep it around.”

  “That is a rather grim view of people,” Chloe noted.

  “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence or apathy,” he responded. “It looks like they are starting to clean up. We might actually get to see our very first boss fight.”

  And with that, they both turned their attention back to the party of delvers. At the base of the willow tree, Lucy snored as she napped among her horde of bunnies.