The insect specialization had turned a barebones artificial cave into a natural-looking sandy cave filled with bugs of all kinds. The change had been dramatic, but ultimately, it had still been a cave.

The pixie floor was different. The walls were gone, for one, but what replaced them was a thick mess of twisted branches, tree trunks and shrubs, all sitting atop an area of elevated ground about four feet tall from which twisted roots poked out. The branches were rich with leaves, but rather than being green, they were a transparent shade of white which formed a thin canopy overhead. There was a light amount of mist everywhere, along with floating motes of light which I couldn’t control and which gave the whole place the feel of a haunted forest.

And above that forest’s canopy was the sky.

Well, not the sky. Outside, the sky was a yellowing shade of blue and without a single cloud to break the monotony, whereas the sky in my pixie level was dim and covered by a gloomy overcast, like it was about to rain at any second.

On a whim, I made my Hasty Will-o’-Wisp fly over the branches, then as high as it could go. It bumped harmlessly into an invisible obstacle about twelve feet over the canopy, which still gave me a lot of room ripe for abuse. The entire level, such as it was, was visible from up there; nothing but grey branches and white leaves that stretched in a circle about fifty feet wide around my stairs room, then disappeared in a kind of fuzzy mist.

Speaking of which, I inspected the stairs next and found… complete nonsense. In the middle of the room was a tree; a massive hollow tree, with a wide opening more than tall enough for a man to walk through. Through the opening, the spiral staircase could be seen going up. But the tree only went up about twenty feet, even though the stairs themselves were about half again that long and led up to the floor of my bug level.

Dungeons were bullshit, decided I, the dungeon.