Boiling lava, scorching heat—this was a dead zone for life.
As soon as the Seventh Layer had been successfully opened up, Lucifer immediately moved all the treasures from the treasury to its deepest reaches. Before him stretched a boiling sea of lava.
The air continuously warped beneath the terrifying heat. Occasionally, a few rocks jutted out from the endless lava sea, baked red-hot by the heat.
"This environment, this terrain—it suits me perfectly!"
The moment Lucifer saw the Seventh Layer's environment clearly, his first thought was satisfaction. Extreme satisfaction. The endless lava sea was like the legendary Endless Abyss, perfectly meeting his needs.
With this environment alone, even if Formal Professionals entered, the several-hundred-degree heat in the air and the lava everywhere would become deadly factors that could kill them at any moment.
As for ordinary people, they would turn into cooked meat within a few minutes at most on the Seventh Layer.
Then, Lucifer's mental power swept across the entire Seventh Layer. Its terrain was quite simple. The first half consisted of lava caverns made up of countless caves, lava rivers, and lakes, while the latter half was an entire sea of lava.
"This terrain seems like it could use a few more adjustments."
After inspecting the Seventh Layer's terrain in full, Lucifer decided to make a few minor changes.
In the first half of the Seventh Layer, complex interconnected caverns formed a massive maze. The lava rivers and lakes scattered everywhere now began to boil, forming hollows beneath the ground at turns and inconspicuous corners.
Large amounts of lava poured into them continuously as the ground above gradually thinned. Rock turned into stone slabs, and Lucifer even added a hidden latch. The moment someone stepped on a slab, it would flip over, dropping whoever stood on it directly into the lava pool below.
To ensure that adventurers invading the Seventh Layer had a good time, Lucifer specially selected all kinds of sinister arrangements. What was solid ground one moment would turn into a trap the next, and to prevent adventurers who fell in from escaping,
Lucifer thoughtfully designed a small mechanism. Once an adventurer fell through, the flipped stone slab would temporarily lock in place.
"Love around the corner. I hope all you adventurers enjoy it."
As Lucifer spoke, his mental power began sensing out the relatively safe, lower-temperature areas in the caverns of the first half. In the end, he found dozens of caves made entirely of rock, their temperatures significantly lower than outside.
"They look like perfect places to set up temporary camps and rest. Let me lend a hand."
Passageways connecting to the bottom of the Lava Sea were opened one after another. Under high pressure, liquid magma rushed wildly into the passages, eventually flowing into hollows deliberately left above and around the various caverns. Lucifer left hundreds of Spray vents around those hollows.
Every Spray vent was fitted with a plug and a blocking plate, while the mechanisms for opening those plates were hidden in inconspicuous spots on the cavern walls and floors. As long as adventurers camped here to rest and accidentally touched the activation mechanism,
the lava filling the walls and ceilings throughout the caves would Spray out under high pressure, giving the resting adventurers a lava bath and thoroughly washing away the fatigue of the entire day.
"Seems like I can add a little more."
After thinking it over, Lucifer set up identical traps at the turns and dead ends of the various caverns. To lure adventurers in, he also placed quite a few treasure chests, with some trap triggers connected directly to the chests.
The moment someone opened a treasure chest, the trap would activate instantly, allowing the adventurer to die happily amid the thrill and excitement of uncovering treasure.
"I'm really too kind. I even considered how adventurers would feel before they died."
After perfecting the first half of the Seventh Layer, Lucifer turned his gaze toward the lava sea in the latter half. Sparse black reefs dotted the boundless crimson surface, their hardness under the scorching heat fully comparable to steel.
They also contained vast amounts of violent fire element. As long as another element intruded, the volatile fire element within would react and explode instantly.
In the end, Lucifer decided to name it Flameburst Rock.
"This material is pretty good."
With a thought, large quantities of Flameburst Rock rose from beneath the sea's surface, forming islands of varying sizes throughout the Lava Sea. These islands appeared to offer adventurers a convenience.
They could cross the Lava Sea more easily, but once they fought on the islands, if the dissipated elements caused the fire element inside the Flameburst Rock to become unstable, the entire island would instantly turn into a gigantic bomb.
As for its exact power, they would have to wait for future adventurers to experience it personally.
"The terrain modifications are more or less done. Next comes creating the monsters for the Seventh Layer."
Terrain and traps alone could at most catch the first batch of adventurers off guard. Once they had thoroughly explored the Seventh Layer and learned its details, with the average adventurer entering the Seventh Layer already being a transcendent, there would still be all sorts of ways to avoid the traps.
Therefore, monsters were needed to make up for this shortcoming.
"Why did these little guys come here?"
Just as Lucifer was about to see what materials the Seventh Layer had that were suitable for creating monsters, his gaze suddenly turned toward the entrance to the Seventh Layer. Groups of Puchi were running out from within.
Yet even Puchi that had already adapted to the desert environment beside the Sixth Layer were still no match for the lava hell of the Seventh Layer. The dozen or so Puchi at the front that stepped into the Seventh Layer burst into flames instantly beneath the terrifying heat.
In less than a minute, they had turned into piles of charcoal. Yet the Puchi behind them acted as though they had seen nothing, and before long, a thick layer of black ash piled up on the ground.
But during this process, the later Puchi entered the Seventh Layer, the longer they survived. The mushroom caps atop their heads, once varied in color, began turning crimson, while fiery patterns spread across their bodies.
When the first Puchi to fully adapt to the high-temperature environment of the Seventh Layer appeared, crimson spores began spraying continuously. Dark-red mycelium on the ground started growing wildly, constantly absorbing the violent fire element and high temperatures around it as nourishment for its growth.
Mushrooms visibly sprouted above the mycelium. Once they grew to half a person's height, they pulled themselves from the ground and ran on their short little legs toward the nearest lava, beginning a new round of Adaptive Evolution.
"What a terrifying ability to adapt and evolve."
Watching the Fungus Lord complete the entire process of adapting and evolving to the Seventh Layer's environment in such a short time, Lucifer was still astonished despite having witnessed similar scenes several times before.
As expected of a monster created from the only special resource that came with the Dungeon's birth. Its talent and potential truly needed no explanation.
"It's time to see what resources this layer has."
Retracting his gaze, Lucifer's mental power swept across the entire Seventh Layer in search of materials. As a brand-new layer, it was more than half again as large as the Sixth Layer. Its vast area was already comparable to a super-sized city.
Before you continue