Chapter 184 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Since I started my labyrinth project, it has slowed my progress on the 31st floor, but I still managed to complete it in just under two years. I’ve already set up the experimentation rooms, but most things didn’t seem to like living in extreme heat or cold. For those reasons, I have surrounded this entire floor with experimentation rooms, and I think I will be doing that on every floor after this one.

Some rooms are smaller, some bigger, but they never take more than 10 kilometers away from the floor itself. These rooms are, however, needed and I already have a few plans that can tolerate being almost next to lava. Cold is a little bit more difficult, but I’m certain I will figure it out in time, or more specifically, some brilliant plant will find the solution. I just need to give them enough time to do so.

The adventurers already have access to the 29th-floor dungeon rooms although no one is even close to them. On the next floor, I should be able to sync up my expansions once again.

I won’t make the same mistake of not being awake when I announce my advancement, just in case there are more pixies hidden in other ways or some other adventurers who want to take advantage of my vulnerability. But I don’t actually think they could manage anything with my current defenses.

With everything prepared, I gathered my mana and advanced. For this floor's guardian, I picked a creature that could control both ice and fire. I didn’t even need to change the pattern much; it was already properly powerful for this floor's difficulty. In the skill selection, everything went into creature advancements. It was a close thing, and I almost didn’t have enough mana, but I managed to get it to S rank.

While I would like to get it to SS rank, with the current amount of mana I had for upgrading skills, it would take way too long and would mean my other skills would be lagging behind. There have been enough examples of adventurers doing so and messing up their chances of climbing the ranks.

While inside my dungeon, everything was going quite well, and we didn't even have any big problems with the missions my creatures were on except for the one where we still haven't heard back from the missing agent.

The above world was not doing so well. Ace was still missing, and while his wife was doing a decent enough job, she didn't have the prestige or respect that Ace could command, so it was a lot harder for her to do his job.

The prices for things were rising quite fast, especially in the main city, and it seems that with every passing week the government in charge was losing more and more authority to what passed as nobles in this country.

Ace would have normally had a purge about a year ago, bringing the lawbreakers to justice, but without him, the government couldn't do it properly as they couldn’t just do anything they wanted. Only Ace had the power to command instant action.

While I could see his wife being quite worried, she actually didn't seem to be worried about Ace himself, which was the only thing keeping me from sending out missions to find him. Time continued to pass as I started working on the 32nd floor.

The playroom itself I was going to make into a shallow sea, at a maximum of 30 meters deep. There would be some underground areas. On the surface, there wouldn't be any large continents, but small to medium-sized islands spaced out quite regularly, filling the entire floor.

The environment here would be quite perfect, at least near the middle of the playroom. At the edges, there would be more temperate climates and some even truly hot and cold ones. For the fun of it, I also made a decent amount of volcanoes, as I thought that would be interesting. A lot of the islands would be perfect for life, having food and other resources available.

Like this, I would have a nearly endless amount of free islands where I could bring the newly formed civilizations that were only one tribe large. This would be a safe place for them to grow, but of course, it wouldn't be completely safe, as there would still be strong creatures to hunt.

Still, this wouldn't be anywhere near the difficulty level of the 19th-floor playroom and would be close to a difficulty level of floor 10 to 15, with some places getting nearer to gold rank in difficulty.

It took some time before I was finished, but almost immediately I gave the chance to come here to nearly 13 tribes who all immediately agreed. I couldn’t, however, focus much on this because I felt one of my creatures returning.

It was the same one who had gone missing. He seemed to be in quite a hurry and looked like he was heading towards the entrance to the first floor but instead he quickly cut the line and used a gateway to escape into one of the hub stations.

Just before he disappeared, I sensed really strong platinum ranks entering my entrance room, obviously tracking my creature. When they figured out what had happened, they quickly retreated but didn't go far from my entrance, as there was a diamond rank waiting for them.

"He went inside the dungeon using one of the gateways." Before that man could continue to explain, the diamond rank stopped him.

"I already know. Everyone of my rank already knows of this dungeon. It's a clever way to keep yourself hidden, rat, but we will eventually find you. There’s no need to worry about him leaking any more information. I was close enough to him to be able to block it with a spell."

"It's just unfortunate that this particular rat was slippery enough to evade my more deadly traps. Let us go back. We will put a bounty on him, so there is no need to be here with so many others of my kind."

They left almost immediately, but that was one of the weakest diamond ranks I had felt. What he said was a bit worrisome, but fortunately, I had other ways of finding out information without being told.

He was fast, but I still managed to thank this particular creature of mine before he killed himself, allowing me access to his memories. It was sad in many ways, but it seems that on his mission, he was actually able to achieve platinum rank, becoming the first of my creatures to do so.

This was incredibly annoying. I wish that he didn’t have to die. Yet, when he did, the memories flowed into me. The revelations it brought made me stop every expansion I was currently doing, as I needed as much of my mind as possible. Only the essentials I still took care of while I mulled over what I learned.

In the meantime, I remade this particular creature with all of its memories. "I thank the Father and wait for a new mission in excitement." He immediately communicated. He had always been an eager one and quite literally one of the best infiltrators we had. Yet I will give him a bit of time to relax and go through our updated training program.

We were still missing a lot of information, but I could put the pieces together. Now I knew why dungeons were so important. We were the ones who advanced this world.

Not much was known of the first age, but from the information agent gathered, it was indeed the longest age, most likely billions of years long as this world slowly developed. There are truly only two concrete facts known: one, no being was above the bronze rank until one dungeon reached the end of the bronze rank. Now, I don’t exactly what happens or how it works, but it's called the Making.

The world was made new, with most that was old destroyed, yet now everything could get to the silver rank in the second age, or what it's called by everyone, the Monster Age.

I presume the same thing happened: the Monster Age ended when a dungeon finally reached the end of the silver rank, triggering another Making, destroying most of what was. But now everything could advance to the gold rank in the third age, or as it was named, the Age of Civilization.

There was another piece of information that’s quite crucial. It appears that there was a winner for the second age, and that was the dragons. Now what that meant, I wasn’t exactly sure, but I could guess. There was more information about the third age. Apparently, at the start, dragons ruled every civilized species, but eventually, their slaves grew strong enough to fight back.

I do not know exactly who won the Third Age, but someone did, bringing us to the Fourth Age, the Age of Heroes. Now everyone could get to platinum rank, and in this age, nearly all the dragons were hunted and killed along with other strong monsters who had plagued civilization from the start.

Yet eventually, a dungeon must have reached a limit and triggered another Making that destroyed almost all that was, with the world having to start anew with the limit of diamond rank. We are currently in the Fifth Age, but it doesn’t seem to have a name yet.

So that’s what everyone is fighting for. I am guessing that the improvements I see in some of the species are because they ’won,’ so to say, in a particular age.

Now, I don’t know exactly how that works, but I’m guessing that the First Age was won by the ant species that has the first-rank body. Most likely, what changed the entire adventurer species population happened at the end of the Second Age, but I’m not entirely sure.

Who won at the end of the Third Age, I don’t know, but I can now see why the pixies have the best improvements out of all of them. If they truly won at the end of the Fourth Age, they would have had the knowledge from the previous ages, so they could probably make better decisions, although it seems that didn't work quite perfectly as they are not the rulers of this world.

Although if they won this age, they could probably achieve it. Now the bigger question is what happens to me if I were the first to reach the end of the diamond rank and triggered the cataclysm. Or what would happen if I wasn’t the first?

There is still so much that's unknown, but we are slowly getting there. At least this explains the timeline and why there doesn't seem to be any civilization older than this age. It seems that the Making doesn’t leave much behind; most likely only the powerful or lucky survive it.