Now that he had a much more solid idea of what he wanted, he needed to flesh out how these growable magic crystals would work. Ultimately, he needed to somehow create an organism that either is or can make these magic crystals.

  He struggled to figure out a way to create a simple organism that can create magic crystals on the wall. If this was a different type of creature, it would be easier for him to wrap his head around. If the bear was the one growing the magic crystals, it could have something like a turtle shell that had crystal spikes that occasionally fall out.

  Growing it on the wall though was different. The organism for this would either need a plant such as moss or a fungus like lichen. There was a plant back on earth that grew spikes made out of silicon as a form of defense.

  The issue lied in the fact that organisms grew and acted in ways that helped them with survival. Having an organism do something with no benefit, either directly or indirectly, made it fragile and easy to be killed or naturally mutate.

  The mana crystal would need to be an important element for that to work. The more mana would allow for faster growth and faster development of offspring, and the mana crystal would form an essential piece to help that happen. So, the organism would be creating a mana crystal because the crystal forms a needed organ.

  That meant that the crystal would need to be created within the organism. It was going to be much easier for him to have the mana crystal be made within this new organism and just make it look crystalline and shiny to attract attention. He was going to create something like coral, to use its mana crystal as a power source and skeleton.

  Now was the choice between plant or fungus. Plants have seeds with the exception of things like algae, while fungi create spores. Since spores have the nastiest habit of getting everywhere and growing out of control, he chose plants.

  How was this going to interact with the ants? It was obvious that they would have a symbiotic relationship with each other, but he needed to figure out the mechanics.

  Jacob recalled what he had learned about leafcutter ants, where they secreted a type of salvia that grew fungus for them to eat. His ants would need to control the reproduction of the magic crystal plants. The idea of the seeds needing to be eaten by them to develop had merit.

  A concern of his was that an adventure could take a seed from his dungeon and start a magic crystal plantation on the Overworld. From what he remembered of the game’s lore, that shouldn’t be possible. However, there was a mechanic called a dungeon break that allowed for dungeon animals to invade the surface, so he wasn’t completely sure.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Jacob pulled up the screen for creating the species and got to work forming the outline for both of them. He worked out the finer details for the magic crystal plants, which he will call {Crystal Blooms}, before he got to work on the ants.

  The {Crystal Blooms} will grow branches, the shards of crystal that juts out of the wall from a crystalline bed, that then form indiscernible seeds at the tip. The ants will harvest these shards, and then the seeds gestate and develop within either their stomachs or some other special pouch.

  The seeds will absorb and store mana to help them develop and sprout faster, with them being activated by an enzyme or some other mechanism from the ants to begin growing when they are planted.

  Ohh, he could make the crystal blooms have different colors and mana types! Some can have fire mana, others life mana, some strength mana, and then the ants could use those crystals to feed and nurture the different classes within the nest. These variant types that don’t have neutral mana would be much rarer and require much more mana to appear and grow.

  He kept refining and improving his designs for the {Crystal Blooms} and the ants, which he had renamed to {Crystal Ants} to keep up with the theme. He was only going to implement the basic worker ants just to get the ball rolling and add in the rest afterwards.

  Until there was enough food and he had implemented the nurse class, he couldn’t add the larva stage back in. As ants were born and died, he would gain a consistent stream of soul points. Using these soul points as a supplement, he would be able to flesh out the other aspects of the layer and eventually the second layer.

  After spending several hours reviewing and modifying the outlines to avoid all potential mistakes or unrealized issues, then he was ready. He spawned a single seed from a bit of scarlet rot, and then he mutated the queen ant.

  He looked at the ants that had survived the final wave. They all had lost their use, but until the first crystal ants were born, he would keep them here. After that, he would kill them to recover some more soul points.

  The creation of two new species had cost him over four hundred soul points. He kept trying to find ways to not, but the pain in his soul had become unbearable. Back when he was scraping by, he was able to ignore it. Now that he had plenty of soul points, he was struggling to stop justifying it.

  He understood that it was illogical. At this point, he didn’t care. He wanted to be free of this pain. It will only cost thirty-two soul points, he had plenty after all.

  Jacob ventured to the dungeon core. Compared to when it was level one, the color of it had become a much richer shade of red with a slight tinge of orange. The scars from back when he had first woken up as the dungeon lord were still there and still burning.

  He opened up the status screen and pressed the button to heal the core. Thirty-two soul points disappeared and the dungeon core glowed. The large scratches and chunks of stone missing were slowly devoured as new crystal grew and healed the wounds.

  For the first time in days that felt like forever, Jacob felt whole and fine again.