I thought about visiting the fourth floor to experiment until nightfall, but after a momentary consideration, I decided against it. I didn't have a realistic path to follow. Instead, I moved to the fourth floor, where my condenser lay, to improve my last remaining skill.
There were two reasons for this. For once, it would be my first Legendary skill. While my Meditation was leveled even higher, considering the way it changed, it had no real value as a benchmark. I didn't even understand what it was doing, let alone compare it with the other stages of Meditation to get a better sense of changes between levels. Improving Legendary Nurture would give me a better idea.
Also, I couldn't just assume that Nurture wouldn't be useful. It might not have an immediate combat impact, but that didn't make it useless. During the assault on the flame dungeon, things would have been far more difficult if it wasn't for the flammable trees I had grown in a hurry, allowing me to trick the army that Maria was there.
Chances were that something like that wouldn't happen, but considering I still had somewhere just under an hour before nightfall, it was a good way to spend my time.
"Let's start with the classics," I said and moved to the condenser, which had several different concentrations of poison water from the fifth floor, collecting for eventual usage. But, I didn't start with it. Instead, I broke a branch from the nearest tree, moved deeper into the fourth-floor swamp, and put my new skill to use.
[Nurture (Legendary) 1 -> 4]
"That's not as much growth as I had hoped," I said while I examined the fully-grown tree. But, it didn't surprise me. Just like how the Epic variant had been more efficient than the Rare one when it came to neutralizing the poison, the same was true for the Legendary one.
I grew a few more trees — which didn't even raise it to ten — before I returned to the condenser and started replicating the same with higher poison concentrates. It worked, for a while. When I was at the fifth level of concentration, Nurture had reached forty, giving me the hope that it could work.
Unfortunately, the other five levels of concentration barely improved it further.
[Nurture (Legendary) - 51]
"It looks like I have exhausted the potential of yet another method," I muttered. I examined the condenser, wondering if it was worth trying to improve it further. After all, its design was primitive at best. Building a better centrifuge, or a way to hasten the condensation further might help it further.
But, once again, it would mean dedicating some of my precious time. For all intents and purposes, the Legendary skill should be enough for my goals.
Instead of trying to examine it further, I focused on noting down my discoveries, the biggest one being the dense Vitality.
Legendary skills still used the same dense variant.
The lack of a superior variant was a mixed bag. On the positive side, it meant that the formulas Maria worked so hard to derive were still useful. However, it also meant that raising my Forge skill to legendary wouldn't be the transformation I had been hoping for to further put the game to my benefit.
"Well, not all hands can be winners," I muttered while examining the new forest I had created during the experiment, and focused on one topic I had been neglecting: How the dungeon was reacting to the plants. That and whether it was truly helping or not.
I tried to understand that before, but back then, I didn't have the Wisdom to translate the nature of the conceptual transformation. With it, I could watch the minute details of the energy breakdown better. After examining some, the answer was clear.
The trees slowed down the conversion process of the dungeon. Significantly.
The mechanic of that slowing down was simple. Where the dungeon mist touched the ground — or water, when the situation was like the fifth floor — it created a surface for whatever magical reaction was happening to propagate more mist, which was a very critical part of the dungeon operation. The trees pushed the dungeon mist back, which meant they slowed down the generation of new dungeon mist.
I took a note to warn Harold about not letting farmers expand the tree coverage too much. Ten percent of each dungeon surface seemed like a good rule of thumb.
Then, I turned toward the strategic implications. Having the ability to impair the dungeon's operation could be a decisive advantage in containing the dungeon breaks. Admittedly, I would have been more excited before learning at least some of the dungeon breaks were artificially induced, but it certainly couldn't be the case for every dungeon.
And, even if they were, this could give us an easy way to get them back under control. Including ones like the Flame Dungeon.
"If we could survive long enough," I added with a sigh.
The idea of sending an expedition was tempting, but two major problems stood in our way: One was my bond with the dungeon. While I was yet to truly test its limits, I doubted it would allow me to go that far away.
And, even if it did, the path was no longer safe. Instead, it was filled with lizards, which would no doubt get much worse the closer we got to the location of the dungeon. Going back would be a multi-day journey, one that held no hope of hiding, making us sitting ducks against any assassination attempt.
We won't be dealing with the source anytime soon.
With that done, I finally went back to the first floor of the dungeon. The nightfall was minutes away, and I wanted to be there when it started. The ability to level up further was tempting.
"Sir," Harold greeted me once I arrived outside.
"Give me a report of the defenses," I said, and Harold started giving the report. Admittedly, I didn't need a long report. Every part of the new encampment was covered with metal to benefit from their flame-resistant properties, which meant I could use my Observe perk to get an accurate glimpse of anything that was in a ten-yard radius around me.
It was certainly beneficial.
"And, there's the new highlight of our defenses. The ballistas," he said proudly as he stood next to one of the newly erected towers.
"They finished it?" I asked, pleasantly surprised. Earlier that day, they still had several major technical hurdles. My estimation was that they wouldn't have been able to resolve it in a day, but I just asked them to challenge themselves.
It was one topic I was happy to be wrong about.
"How about the claw stocks?" I said.
"We have collected about thirty thousand during the day," Harold said.
"That's more than we expected," I said, frowning slightly. "Did you send teams to hunt?"
"No, sir. Not yet," he said. "However, the number of lizards is increasing more than we expected."
"Meaning, either the dungeon is letting out even more than we realized, or…"
"They are somehow leading more of them toward our dungeon," Harold completed my thought, his expression confirming that it was the likelier option. "And, if that's the case, they might have a team ready to attack."
"True," I said, wondering what would happen if just one high-level mage got near us while we were fighting against the lizards. The answer was not good. "We need to upgrade our defenses significantly."
He paused. "There's not a lot we can do as long as we have to defend the dungeon from outside," he started.
"True. But, we have to —" I started, only to pause. We didn't have to, not anymore. Previously, we had to, because any lizard that entered the dungeon meant a loss of mana and dungeon energy. But, now that I could transform their tainted energy directly thanks to Wisdom, it meant that I could compensate for the losses.
Especially if I could combine it with the ability of the trees to keep the dungeon mist away. That way, a zone where we could kill the lizards while still making a net gain was possible. The only disadvantage was that I needed to be there to absorb the resulting tainted energy in real time.
"Actually, we don't have to," I said to Harold. "I'll handle the defense against the lizards tonight. I want you to build a strong defensive castle on the first floor, its immediate surroundings covered with trees."
"No, build it somewhere near the edge of the first floor," I said. "I can always shift the gate there in case of an emergency." I didn't want to block the natural flow of the dungeon energy any more than necessary.
For the next twenty minutes, we discussed the technical details of the new defenses, which also gave me ideas on how to build a similar defensive scheme for the fifth floor as well. We only stopped when the sunlight outside disappeared completely.
Harold went to build the new defenses for the alternative first-floor entrance, while I walked through the gate, ready to truly test my skills outside.