Chapter 21: Floor 2 (Part 2)

Zion continued shaping the route through the sulfur field, building narrow paths between mineral formations and creating sections where parties naturally compressed together before spreading back out.

He avoided making the floor completely linear, instead adding several branching passages that eventually reconnected farther ahead.

One route was shorter but passed through more sulfur vents. Another gave adventurers more room to move but placed them beneath a long stretch of low ceiling where slimes could hide overhead.

The third looked safest at first glance, so Zion put more slimes there.

By the time he finished the basic layout, Floor 2 already felt completely different from the pasture.

Floor 1 was bright, open, and easy to understand from a distance.

Floor 2 was deliberately unpleasant.

The yellow-green terrain made everything look slightly sick, vapor drifted through the narrow passages, and the sulfur smell followed adventurers no matter which path they chose. Some of the harmless-looking deposits along the walls were also monsters waiting for someone to walk underneath them.

Zion was pleased with the result, but the slimes’ fire weakness still bothered him.

They were perfect against the large number of swordsmen, archers, and spear users he’d seen, but one competent fire mage could potentially make the entire floor trivial.

After watching so many different parties on Floor 1, he learned that designing around one weakness usually created another.

He opened the trap catalog. Most of the basic options were exactly what he expected.

[Spike Pit]

[Tripwire Blade]

[Poison Dart Launcher]

[Collapsing Passage]

[Hidden Snare]

Those could all be useful eventually, but none of them solved the problem he had now, and they were relatively expensive.

A fire mage standing safely behind a tank didn’t particularly care whether Zion had hidden spikes somewhere else on the floor.

He kept scrolling until a small yellow crystal appeared among the cheaper passive traps.

Zion almost passed it because the preview looked more like a lamp than a weapon, but the description made him stop.

[Mana Leech Crystal]

1

[Classification: Passive Trap]

[Effect: Gradually drains mana from hostile entities within range.]

[Drain Rate: Minor]

[Effective Radius: 8 meters]

[Cost: 45 Essence]

He opened the preview and read the description again. The drain wasn’t strong enough to stop someone from casting or make a mage helpless on its own, but that wasn’t what interested him.

The slimes were weak to fire.

A mage entering Floor 2 could burn through them efficiently as long as they were willing to keep spending mana.

He looked across the sulfur field and started imagining what happened once the crystal was added.

A party that moved slowly and carefully to search for ceiling slimes would expose its casters to the passive drain for longer. If they rushed through the floor to reduce that loss, they became more likely to miss an ambush overhead.

Even if they found every slime in advance, using fire magic repeatedly would consume even more mana on top of what the crystals were already taking.

Zion liked that...a lot.

He purchased one crystal and placed it beside a sulfur formation. The yellow surface blended naturally with the surrounding mineral deposits, making it easy to mistake for part of the terrain unless someone already knew what to look for.

"Oh, that’s perfect."

Zion bought one after another, resisting the urge to cover the entire floor with them. Forty-five essence each was cheap compared to many of his other options, but that didn’t mean he needed to become careless.

More importantly, if the mana drain became too strong, the floor would stop being a problem adventurers could solve and simply become something magic users hated. He also didn’t want the mana drain to feel too obvious.

If a mage walked through and immediately noticed that their mana was being drained, they would proceed with a lot more caution or even identify the source of the drain. It was better to be more subtle about it, so they didn’t realize right away.

He placed the crystals at several key intersections and along the longer routes, then adjusted the surrounding terrain until each one blended naturally into the sulfur formations.

The floor was finally beginning to come together.

Piercing weapons would struggle against the slimes, while fire magic would kill them efficiently at the cost of mana.

Moving slowly would make it easier to spot the ceiling ambushes but keep casters inside the crystals’ range longer. Rushing through the passages would reduce that exposure but increase the chance of walking directly beneath something waiting overhead.

Even parties without magic could still progress if they found another way to deal with the slimes, but they’d have to work considerably harder than someone who brought the correct counter.

That balance appealed to him far more than simply filling the floor with the strongest monsters he could afford.

He didn’t need one creature capable of stopping every party. The floor only needed to find the thing each group was bad at and make that weakness matter.

His attention shifted toward the Hidden Cache he’d purchased earlier. He had almost forgotten about it.

The sulfur field offered far more hiding places than the pasture ever could, so Zion searched through the finished layout until he found a narrow side passage partially concealed behind a cluster of yellow stone.

It led nowhere important and could easily be missed by anyone rushing toward the end of the floor. Which was exactly what he wanted.

Zion placed the cache at the rear of the passage.

[Hidden Cache assigned to Floor 2.]

He opened the reward settings and hesitated before selecting anything.

The cache didn’t need another hundred-gold necklace inside it, but it should contain something slightly better than the cheapest rewards available from the Floor 1 boss chest.

If someone went through the trouble of noticing a hidden passage and exploring it, finding the cache should feel worthwhile.

He selected several modest rewards and assigned them lower probabilities than the ordinary Floor 1 items.

Nothing was extraordinary. And absolutely nothing cost one hundred and seventy-five essence.

He checked over the list twice.

"Okay. That should be good."

Satisfied, he closed the reward menu and surveyed Floor 2. The difference from Floor 1 was enormous.

He hadn’t simply bought stronger monsters. In fact, the slimes were weaker than almost everything else he considered.

That was what made the floor satisfying.

He had taken a six-essence monster most adventurers would probably laugh at and built an environment around everything it did well.

Physical parties would struggle against its resistances. Casters would burn resources dealing with it. The terrain concealed it. Ceiling placement created surprise attacks, and the Mana Leech Crystals punished anyone who took too long deciding what to do.

For the first time, Zion felt like he was actually crafting a dungeon rather than filling empty space with monsters.

He opened the Floor 2 status.

[Floor 2]

[Terrain: Sulfur Field]

[Theme Compatibility: 71%]

[Monster Population: Lesser Slime]

[Traps: Mana Leech Crystal]

[Treasure: Hidden Cache]

[Floor Boss: None]

[Status: Incomplete]

His satisfaction dimmed when he reached the final two lines.

How could I forget?

A floor couldn’t activate without a boss. Everything he had just built was still technically incomplete.

He opened the boss catalog and checked his remaining essence before looking back across the sulfur field.

The terrain, monsters, traps, and rewards were all in place.

Now he needed something waiting at the end of it.