Chapter 190 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

It was nice to see my creatures making sure no one would mess with them. I did have to send one of my core floor guardians just to make sure that their platinum rank didn't interrupt anything. This will bring trouble, that's for sure, but they were up for it, and while I would like to keep them safe, they are their own beings who can make their own choices.

It's also lucky that the shape-changing rings don't lose their magic when the person wearing them dies. It was thanks to this that our secret was kept longer. I was under no illusion that this secret or many others of mine would be hidden forever, but it would have been really inconvenient if they had been discovered so fast, as I was barely ready for the fallout that would follow.

Things would have been a lot more difficult to handle if only I knew our creatures didn’t survive the actions of that horrible person changing in front of them to get them killed. The one to survive is one of the more unique creatures who has gotten this far. Originally a small mouse with a birth defect that made it even weaker, it didn’t learn to fight like many others but instead learned how to make himself disappear from others' minds.

Because of this, he’s one of the more unique killers—not the usual stealth kind, although he is still kind of good at that. But he can literally make you forget you had seen him, and then he would simply stab you in the heart, and all of a sudden, you can finally see someone was in front of you. Kinda scary if you ask me, but getting him to actually be angry enough to do something like that was really rare.

Of course, adventurers killing adventurers was, while not common, still something that happened almost weekly. When war was going on for a territory, those numbers, of course, went up a lot.

Most of the cases, however, were with adventurers who weren’t much stronger than each other killing each other, unlike what happened to my creatures this time. That’s why there was such an effort to find these people, and I even helped by giving them more information to put an end to this particular bad apple.

The timing was quite fortunate because if anything had gone wrong, at least I had finished my first layer of defenses. My dungeon as a whole was now a lot deeper, and the first layer of my fortress plan was completed. It was a simple defense: a thick dungeon stone wall, then a space filled with water, and another dungeon stone wall to keep the water in.

There used to be huge water crystals that I got from another dungeon that made real water, unlike the water I would be making that would soon disappear if it was taken out of my dungeon. I found a way to make real water without the crystals, but even to fill my ocean, it would have taken me 20 years of my full mana generation. That is why loot is so expensive to make for me because it’s not just real in my dungeon but outside as well.

The reason the water crystals were gone was because the water they created eventually was under so much pressure that the small imperfections inside the crystal collapsed, shattering them into basically dust.

They did their job, getting the water under enormous pressure. It’s hard to tell how much damage it does, but I found it interesting that sometimes when the temperature drops, especially during winter, the water seems to form into ice, but it’s different from normal ice. I put this phenomenon into the list of things to research later.

Now, whenever someone tries to breach me, they would get a really nasty surprise. The next big security problem is the pixies and their ability to teleport to my core floor. Some of my analysts pointed out that normally that ability of theirs should take them to the core itself. So there should be a way to change the destination. Because of this, I’ve been delving into my sub-dungeon skill to try to figure out how it does that.

Now, I’m not entirely sure just yet, but I think I have found a way to change the destination. It would just take me a while longer to make anything usable. When I’m done with that, I already have a destination in mind: between the first two walls of my first defensive layer and in the water that's under so much pressure. That should deal with anyone, and I’m pretty sure that even diamond ranks wouldn't survive that, perhaps with the exception of the underwater species.

In their societies how important you were, in large part, was built on how much pressure you could withstand. The deeper you went, the more important you got. Just a week ago, Claw was able to get to 1000 meters, reaching the first notable milestone and, because of that, getting more recognition, which should help expand our presence down there even more.

My project to get underwater adventurers to come here was also nearing its finishing stages. Down below, the ants had finished making a huge underwater tunnel to one of the underground rivers. We just hadn't breached into it quite yet.

The tunnel will take the water to my first layer of defenses and would go along it to come out in one of the mountains high above. Along the way, I have a few more water crystals to increase the pressure and water flow.

On the surface, where the river will come out, it will form a large waterfall. It will take a bit of time, but it will fill a large valley. Eventually, it will start to overflow and go down the mountain in a now much gentler decline.

After that, my creatures helped block off some lower areas outside my territory where the water would have flowed. With that change, a new river will be formed that will be quite large and gentle. It will eventually connect to one of the biggest rivers on this continent that is connected straight to the ocean.

This will give the underwater species a safe way to get to me and the valley in the mountain that will have a dungeon entrance. So, in about a year or two, I should be able to breach the underground river, and while it will take a while after that, eventually underwater species should be made aware of this development.

I think they would like the isolation and the fact that they would still be able to live underwater. Hopefully, they would like it enough that more and more of their adventurers, especially younger ones, would come to train in my dungeon and hopefully choose to live here and have some children so I could get their patterns.

The interesting thing that we have discovered about underwater adventurer species is that not every single one of them has protection against dungeons. I think that’s because they evolved after the end of the Second Age, so they don't have the same protections.

They aren't allowed to delve into dungeons and are treated as lesser in most cases. That also means that I only need to get a few of them to come here, and when they die like any other creature, I would get their pattern. This seems a lot simpler, and I kind of wish I could get every adventurer species as easily.