Chapter 197 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

It took a bit of time for the news to spread about a strange ant colony being discovered on both sides. The Ant Nations were the first to react with an expedition, but the United Ants weren’t too far behind.

They both sent their best champions who were close by, although the Ant Nations had a lot more strength. Overall, they also had more power as their civilization spanned multiple floors, while the United Ants only had one before this.

That didn’t mean the United Ants were weaker. It all came down to applying their power, and in that, the United Ants were united. The Ant Nations were separate, each their own entity. They did have a large governing body to handle war, the only thing uniting them a little.

It was fun to watch them slowly try to understand each other. Another big difference between the two groups that met about a week after the scouts first encountered each other was that the United Ants had so many more ant species compared to the other party. That, of course, made sense, as they had thousands of different species all intermixing.

There was a lot of tension early on, but the more they learned to communicate, the more they understood that they were incredibly similar. The first official contact seemed to have gone well, but as soon as the news spread into both civilizations, I started to get a lot of questions about what was going on. I just informed them that they should figure that out themselves.

Even with their efficiency, it took a while before proper diplomatic communications were opened. The more they interacted, the more they figured out how similar and dissimilar they were.

They had somewhat different values, especially when it came to working together. The United Ants despised war; they knew what devastation it could cause. So, when they learned that the Ant Nations had a whole council for planned war, well, it wasn’t the most pleasing news.

I honestly had no idea what to expect, so I was a bit surprised when nothing truly outrageous happened. There was no immediate war, but there wasn’t also overwhelming happiness or excitement about finding new intelligent ant kin and intermixing with each other. Instead, firm lines were drawn, yet there was still enough trust between the two civilizations to start trade efforts.

It was still a monumental moment, and perhaps I spent a little bit too much time watching all of this happen too closely, but damn, ants were my first passion, and I certainly enjoyed seeing anything new that happened to them.

My world just kept getting bigger and bigger, with more and more things happening inside of me, and I felt like I had finally achieved what I started so long ago. Yet, why stop here? I should now start to focus more on the 41st floor.

I had basically finished expanding the floor and had already started making the terrain of the playroom. It will be a challenge, especially in the water department. Floating islands aren't the best places to have rivers, and rivers are crucial for biodiversity and life as a whole. Without water, well, things get really hard. I also think it’s time to change the dungeon rooms a bit.

On my 40th floor, there are 400,000 dungeon rooms varying in size. Now, that’s a lot, but I don’t know if I want to continue increasing that number on every floor. It might be time to start making some bigger rooms that aren't safe places like hub stations. Yet, I don’t know if that’s the best course of action.

Fortunately, I have enough space to continue making more dungeon rooms on each floor and also increase the size of some of them to start testing if that would be something the adventurers needed.

There is still a lot of training I need to give them if they want to continue advancing further down, and proper survival in large areas that they can't simply get out of by using a gateway would be crucial.

While monsters are the main cause of death for adventurers, in the outside world, exposure is the second. It’s all well and good to teach an adventurer to survive any monster they encounter, but if they can’t properly make a fire or don’t know that they need to take off their clothes when they get wet and the temperature is cold. They would die as easily as they would to a group of goblins when they just started to adventure.

Up until this point, while the weather would be different to some degree and some places were dangerous, I didn’t have whole sections of the dungeon rooms under extreme conditions. That will need to change.

Of course, when I told the design team that, they basically started drooling as they envisioned all the possibilities and different design elements they could now incorporate. I was quite excited along with them.

While the design team and the Academy were separate, they now had a lot more contact with each other as a lot of information was coming from the Academy about the outside world, its different monsters, biomes, and, of course, reports on the designs other dungeons used. All of that was channeled to the design team, who started to incorporate the best the outside world had to offer.

Of course, I needed to temper their excitement on using every pattern I had been able to collect, as I wanted to test them in playrooms before adding them as monsters to get proper information about what they were capable of and their difficulty levels.

While I could get a lot of information about patterns, the way individuals acted could turn a weak pattern into something truly strong, or the other way around. That’s why I liked to use monsters based on creatures who had lived in my playrooms, as I could then quantify everything a monster was capable of.

We could also now play a lot more with verticality, as we had a lot more room on the ceiling to do different kinds of things. That was good news because in the low-gravity playroom, I hoped that we would get a lot more flying-type creatures, which I could then turn into monsters. Flying monsters were one of the more difficult opponents to fight against.

I was also wondering if I should open up the labyrinth project. I had made it to floor 35, covering the entirety of the ceiling with another layer filled with different kinds of ruins, creating a labyrinth that seemed endless. It, of course, wasn't endless, but I still had a lot of space to cover. The fact that someone from the 15th floor could enter and then come out on the 35th floor just by accident was going to be fun to see.

It was also incredibly dangerous, as even some of the playroom creatures could find their way into the labyrinth. For that reason, I was going to classify the entirety of the labyrinth as a two-skull area. Fortunately, almost every adventurer now knew what those warnings meant.

One skull meant that whatever was inside that room was as dangerous as that floor's guardian, but it wasn't overwhelmingly powerful. Two skulls meant an area that could have areas weaker or stronger than the floor you were on, meaning you could run into something you couldn't hope to defeat.

Three skulls meant that I would be trying to kill anyone who entered with everything I had, and the only thing with that designation was my core floor. Every new adventurer was now taught those meanings, and I was glad of it.

That didn’t mean that some new adventurers didn’t listen. It seemed like everyone underestimated me when they first got here, which meant there were a lot of dead adventurers I could absorb, especially their gear.

It was kind of unfortunate that my loot table didn’t include completed items, although adventurers could still get some form quest rewards. It was still a bit sad that basically all of the patterns I had collected for items were left unused, as some of them were really special, especially the enchanted ones.

That gave me an idea—multiple ones, actually. Could I separate the different aspects? I took one of the weapon patterns I had that included a few enchantments, and after a little bit of trial and error, I was able to separate the patterns. While I still didn’t want to give out completed items as rewards, perhaps I could give out blueprints and instructions on how to make them as drops.

This will take some time to figure out, as I want a clean implementation. What I imagine, and what I hope I can make work, is that someone could gain a blueprint that consists of how to make a certain weapon in a certain way.

That way, knowledge would never truly be lost. I have seen, even in my dungeon, plenty of times crafters discovering something new that would improve items in a way that is not a common method. While some succeed in bringing those new ways to market, some fail for various reasons, and some die when they go out to fight monsters or when a jealous rival ends their life.

What I also had access to was their name, so I could give credit where credit is due. That knowledge would not be lost. I have come to appreciate knowledge in a way I never thought I would, but now I understand the adventurer's saying that knowledge is power. Yet I think I understand it even more than they do.

Knowledge is what molds a civilization, and civilization molds its citizens. It’s one of the basic building blocks and something that binds together a civilization. Its value is immense, and I despise watching it disappear for no good reason.

Speaking of knowledge, the informants and spies of the Academy who are in the wider world have started to report back about the movements of the four great powers. It seems that they might be gathering for some reason, as preparations seem to be made for their most powerful leaders to move from where they currently are to someplace different.

It's a bit scary, but I think it will also present opportunities. It should make it possible for us to get more information that would otherwise be too well-guarded.