Hm. That–

I was, by nature, a rather suspicious being, one formed from death and consequence; I knew the shadowed edges of things seemingly sunlight-bright and how poison could taste the sweetest. Many things had tried to kill me as a sea-drake, and few had been able to match my strength—so they resorted to the trickery and the darkness and the guile.

They had never succeeded, to be very clear, but still the threat lingered. Many times had I woken from a decade of healing slumber to be faced with something that seemed too good to be true, and it often was.

I ate those that tried it. I was not one to suffer deception.

But my current form had a regrettable lack of teeth, and so I was limited to merely watching as a gluttonous, hulking beast dragged itself into my dungeon.

It was large, and made all the larger by the light emanating from its sinewed skin. A deep burnt-orange skin, and a deeper glow, something fierce and scorching.

Scorching enough that the green algae around its body was curling and drying from the heat.

A being of fire.

And that led me back to my previous suspicion, to the hunger that gnawed at my sensibilities; because I had only just been carving out the final trenches for my seventh floor, the deep furrows where I had inlaid coal to burn as a substitute for actual lava. I had been prepared to wait as long as it took for me to either figure out a way to safely produce lava or find a way to reverse-evolve a cloudskipper wisp to try and get one of the fire elementals. Suffice to say, I had been prepared to wait as long as necessary.

But now I stared at the creature before me, and I hesitated.

Because I remembered, with a lingering kind of frustration, what schema choices had been presented to me upon my last evolution—how nearly everything had been those I hadn't chosen before, those I had rejected. Something that whatever god guided my powers knew I didn't want.

In the end, the only true option I'd had to pick had been the capturing coral. I had been pushed to pick that coral; and I would have anyway, considering it was exactly what I wanted, but there was still the confusion on why it had been presented to me. Why it was the only true choice from a list.

The creature before me felt similarly guided.

It heaved itself further into the Fungal Gardens, moving with the slow lethargy of a creature not used to moving; it was quadrupedal, low to the ground, dragging a tail nearly the same width as its body behind it and with a heavy, boxy head. Similar to the sarco crocodile in build, honestly, though a mere five feet in length and without scales.

Instead, it had a stretched, porous skin, from which dripped fucking magma.

Again. You can see why I was suspicious.

I hadn't encountered them often under the sea, as there were frightful few species from the line who adapted to my watery depths, but I knew the generalities—some kind of salamander, its orange skin speckled with black dots like cooled stone, craggy armour splashing up around its feet. No claws, as was unfortunately common, and its enormous maw looked similarly toothless, or at least no fangs large enough to care about.

It didn't seem to matter, though. There wasn't much defense that could be more effective than apparently being covered in lava.

In slow, methodical precision, in lumpy droplets that immediately started to harden upon meeting the air, it… bled? exuded? produced? magma with a viciousness. They weren't impossibly hot, not the white of scalding stone, but a deep, sluggish red. So.

It was a good thing that it was a salamander, rather than a lizard, otherwise this would be far too close to fire-drakes for my tastes—but because it wasn't, I wanted it. Badly. Down below, I had been halfway through carving out another vein of coal as my mana trickled back to full, the bounding deer herd already increased to eight and the darkness of the seventh floor absolute, but now—now it was looking like I didn't have to do that. That I could do something more.

And with that, I dug my points of awareness into the Fungal Gardens, sunk them deep into the marrow of my creatures, and angled my guiding probe into the trio in the far back, curled in their dens.

They were juveniles no longer, which was wonderful, and the lunar cave bears were the distinguished apex predators of this floor. Even now, the shadowthief rats hissed and flinched from the glow off the salamander's skin, burrowing rats fleeing for their dens, stone-backed toads freezing up in hopes of not being noticed, luminous constrictors stayed coiled and tense around their stalagmites. This was not their fight.

But it was for the bears.

Go, I urged, a silent voice overhead. They were twice-bitten with the raids they hadn't been able to take part in, too weak to fight the Silvers, and they took to this challenge with hunger bared. The eldest of the trio staked out of her darkened den, fur bristling, lips pulled back from ivory fangs.

The salamander, which I was beginning to realize wasn't very smart, because of course, hardly seemed to notice the new threat in its path. Just kept plodding on, endless, algae and mushrooms burning away in its wake. There were hardened rivulets of stone, prints where its feet had landed, a curving furrow where its tail dragged behind it.

If just one of these was doing this much ambient damage to my floor, I couldn't imagine what they did inside the mountain proper, with full populations of them.

Or, more accurately, what they'd do to my seventh floor. For all I was still… displeased at how the goblins were sticking their bulging noses into the Skylands and changing things to fit their needs, I would be slightly more lenient for these salamanders. It didn't seem like they had much of a choice, besides.

Either way, they would be joining me. The Fungal Gardens awoke, in hesitant, crawling figures, the deep and the scuttling and the strong, and my main help marched forward. She would be the one to take this down.

With a roar, the eldest lunar cave bear threw herself forward and slammed her claws into the beast's head.

And immediately bounced back.

Though I had no true sense for it, I could feel how the air filled with the stench of burning hair, the raw sizzle of cooking flesh—the mere presence of this salamander burned and scorched and completely negated all attacks against it. She howled, thrashing, and in blind ferocity attacked again—her claws sunk into its sinewy skin but cracked and charred from the heat. She fell backward with a whine.

Her other siblings charged forward, eager to prove themselves, and on the salamander marched—they hissed and bellowed but all they earned for their rage were more burns, more injuries. The salamander bled thick, molten blood, its black eyes narrowing in, but it hardly seemed to notice. Or even to care.

And then I got the uncommon privilege of watching one of my creatures have a thought for once.

In the front, her fur smoldering and skin burned, the eldest lunar cave bear paused; she looked at the creature and its relentless charge, slow and pottering as it was, and looked closer. Looked in such a manner that forced her to step closer, even as the air wavered and her breaths came hot and heavy—and to notice that there was no retaliation.

None at all.

This salamander was hardly even a creature, it seemed—more a force of nature, no thought paid to the outside world. It marched on, content in its magma-protection, seemingly unable to comprehend that any harm could be done to it. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Well. It wasn't that incorrect, considering my bears had bounced off it in fruitless attacks—but it wasn't impervious.

And she had, with the three brain cells to her head, figured something out. She was watching the algae by its feet, the fragile fauna that hissed and curled up; but only parts of it. The thallus clinging to the streams of water survived.

The parts with water survived.

A genius my bear was. Fire could not beat water. A basic law of the universe.

And it just so happened that in the back of my Fungal Gardens, a rock pond stood, swarming with silverheads and jagged stalactites; her gaze flicked to it even as her siblings continued to fight their useless fight.

I waited with bated breath as she seemingly put together this impossible concept. Fire… water?

On the salamander marched, unceasing, the drive of the unbothered; and she plodded beside it, glaring at its form as it scorched its way over my Fungal Gardens. I bristled my unfortunately few points of mana in its direction, already regrowing the green algae and whitecap mushrooms so the ecosystem wouldn't suffer in its wake. The other bears seemed to realize she had a plan and pulled back, nursing injuries and bruised egos. Not content to let her take the glory, but it wasn't like they knew what to do. Their minds were only full of hunger and battle. Nothing more.

But it happened that, once it had marched its way to the back, something actually made it stop in the way three enormous cave bears hadn't—it turned its dull black eyes downward as water lapped at its clawless toes. Through sluggish determination, I watched it puzzle this new obstacle on its way towards the mana it so clearly desired.

And in that moment of waiting, the eldest bear threw herself forward, ignoring the squelch of cooking flesh, hooked her claws under its enormous tail, and hurled it forward.

WIth a low, warbling cry that sounded entirely alien, the salamander collapsed forward, its enormous bulk moved, and hit the water with a scream of mist. Steam exploded upward, drowning the Fungal Gardens, searing the bear's skin even as she stumbled back. Silverheads fled in mindless panic, their little paradise upended, as the corpse of a salamander sunk through their midst.

The corpse. Because the mere second it had touched water, the cold had raced through its system, blood solidifying, and it had died.

A little worrying.

But I had more important things to worry about, such as dissolving its body and immediately consuming its schema. I did so with gusto.

Magma Salamander (Rare)

A beast of fire and flame, it lives deep in the only caverns that will survive it. It ever-hunts for volcanic salvation, where it can submerge itself in true molten stone—none have ever emerged unchanged from this. It is not known what happens, only that something does.