Dungeon POV

  I wasn't really expecting those five rooms to take as long as they did. Then again, I was filling most of the available space with stone which still takes time despite how fast I've gotten conjuring dirt and stone. Fortunately, the rest of the rooms on this floor shouldn't take near as long. They will be simulating above ground environments after all.

  I start off by placing the room itself, rather obvious really. Then I go through and start placing the dirt. I really like the rolling hills design for giving me more surface area to work with. This time I decide to bring back a mob I haven't used in a while. In the center of the room, I create a giant cave. It's more of an overhang really but I try not to get bogged down by semantics. This will be the home of a pack of 20 dire wolves. After the 9th floor I won't be able to use them anymore so I might as well use them while I can. Actually, I was tempted to use more but due to their rather impressive size I decided to stick with 20.

  Along with the dire wolves I also release a pride of griffons and some morning deaths. Finally, just to mix things up a bit I throw in some plant golems here and there. That should be a pretty good variety of encounters for one room. I don't bother with any trees or anything else in this room, aside from grass that is. The mobs in this room are all level 27. Just for kicks I decide to place a small chest containing anywhere from one to 10 gold coins with higher amounts obviously having a lower chance of randomly appearing.

  Stolen story; please report.

  I also include a random amount of health and mana potions with the chest guaranteed to contain at least two in total and a maximum of ten. It could be one of each or two health potions. it could even be ten mana potions. The only thing certain is that the chest will contain at least two potions.

  I know I said that I was going to stop giving out so many chests, but I figured the two paths needed more of a distinction. So along with the obvious difference in appearance I figure why not make this the loot path. I even go back into the cave path rooms and create a few more mobs so it can be the power leveling path. I do stop myself from going as crazy as I did with the forest rooms on the fifth floor as far as mob density though.

  In the meantime, Clyde's party is making progress clearing the forest rooms. They don't need to but for some reason they still insist on doing it. While I did intend for them to use the forest to help them gain levels quickly, I assumed they would find their way out of the forest eventually. Never did I think Clyde's party would walk the perimeter of the 5th floor. I never intended for the fifth floor to be a maze and in fact there is absolutely nothing maze like about it, yet they seem to be treating it like a maze.

  I'm not even really sure why, the first floor is the only one even vaguely maze like. Sure, the others have dead ends, but I would hardly call them maze like. Well, ok if you stretch the definition then the third floor might also count as vaguely maze like. Perhaps they think the entire floor is one big forest of death. I could ask but frankly I need the extra time to finish the sixth floor. Plus, having them on the fifth floor fighting at their peak has done wonders for my mana pool. Meaning progress on the Sixth has increased drastically. The ladies getting close to the fourth-floor boss and those few just now reaching the fourth floor helps as well.

  Actually, since I need to wait for my mana to build back up anyway, I should take a few days to review the memories from the various parts of my mind that are monitoring the different floors. It's hard to fix a problem I don't know about after all.