Chapter 163 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

I watched as more and more of my creatures left my dungeon. It was nice that I could still see them, but soon they would be out of my range. Why did this feel so sad, yet I was also proud of them for wanting to go out and experience the wider world.

Hopefully, eventually, I could be so big that no one would want to leave me, but even then, I know that some would, simply because it would be something different than being inside my dungeon.

It didn't take me long to accept this and move past it. It seems like we dungeon cores feel like any creature does; the difference is that our minds are so much larger, and there are so many things happening at the same time that those feelings that I see adventurers struggle with sometimes for years just go by in a few moments for me. This time it seems that it’s taking a little bit longer than normal, which most likely signifies how huge this moment is for me.

Most likely, I would not have such a problem if I knew every single one of them would return. That wasn't possible. I simply hope that our luck holds for as long as possible, but with the number of missions planned in the future, it is impossible for everyone to return. It is also the reason why this is completely voluntary, and everyone has been made aware of the dangers.

The thing is that all of my creatures always lived in danger, as my dungeon was not a safe place. So for them, being in such danger was not a new thing.

Another one stepped through. She was Enn, an ant champion who is quite famous. It was a surprise to me that she wanted to join the Academy, but I guess she had enough of being famous enough that almost everyone recognized her. Now she can once again be anonymous while exploring where none of her kind has ever gone before.

Days continued to go by as more and more left, and by the end of the month, over 100 disguised creatures had left my dungeon on nearly 80 missions. There were two types of missions: one to go to a specific location to gather unique patterns and resources, and the other to set up long-term outposts for tasks that couldn't be completed quickly and needed time to be set up.

During their travels, every single one of them was instructed to delve into as many dungeons as possible. Because of the pixies, I did not expect anything special in most dungeons that I could use, but there were seven dungeons that I was most interested in.

They were either called wild dungeons or free dungeons. The fact that there were only seven in this world was sad, and while there were most definitely undiscovered dungeons, they would be too small to provide me with anything meaningful.

It will take years before most of my creatures start returning from their missions, and I absolutely couldn’t wait to find out what they discovered out there. I had plenty of reports and books that I have consumed, so I have a fairly good idea of what’s out there, even if a lot of facts contradict each other. One of the biggest contradictions is that basically no one knows that there are adventurer species that live underwater. How could you hide entire civilizations?

Even I wouldn’t have known this if it wasn’t for the shape-shifters in my dungeon. They usually were quite quiet, but that was only because their minder was there. He periodically left, and that’s when I got the juiciest pieces of intel I had gotten in a long while. The fact that they were bringing more of their young here just meant that I would have more opportunities to learn about this world in the future.

Because of this reason, I have actually made a few upper floors that currently are inaccessible to almost all adventurers, and you could only enter them if you could completely survive underwater. It was a passion project for now, as I had basically no idea how adventurers who lived underwater delved into dungeons and how underwater dungeons even looked like.

That is why one of the most important missions was gathering intel in the only contact point that I knew where land adventurers and water adventurers traded. Once again, this information was learned from the shifters, and currently, they would only go and do recon.

Hopefully, the information they bring back will allow us to develop plans further to eventually be able to infiltrate the underwater adventurers and even run some of their dungeons.

Time passed surprisingly fast, and only a year later, the creatures on the underwater adventures mission returned. Immediately, I made copies of their patterns and delved into those memories. Watching how they carefully located the town and then how they infiltrated it was nerve-wracking, but the fact that they had made it back made it tolerable.

There were so many close calls, and only thanks to the shapeshifting ring and their natural instincts as ambush predators, they were able to gather enough information and then sneakily get out of there. The most important fact was that we now had a few rings that could turn their wearers into underwater adventurers.

It was time for testing. There was, of course, more information and even a tentative plan on how to proceed, but right now, we needed to learn more about their actual species. A few volunteers put the rings on, and I watched as they morphed into the fish humanoid creatures I had seen.

They had gills and scales like fish, but they were otherwise quite humanoid. Apparently, there were many species, but my team was only able to get copies of two different types as they didn't want to attract anyone's attention.

It seems that they are able to survive for a little bit out of the water, but the time they spent above ground in that town was too long. That meant they probably had air-breathing potions or perhaps even some artifacts. What was unfortunate was the amount of trade that was happening; it was quite low. It should be enough to get us permanent residents there.

Our guild was building up quite nicely as we literally had an endless amount of members wanting to join. We now had a proper presence on the surface as well, unlike most guilds.

In my opinion, every organization was a little bit too focused on the dungeon itself and not enough on the outside world. They could get so many advantages which would actually help me as well, but I wasn’t going to force anyone. Hopefully, seeing this guild of mine starting to prosper will change their minds.

It will take some doing, but we should be able to set up a merchant outpost in that town, thanks to the fact that this city of Ace’s is quite literally the biggest trade city on this continent and arguably the world. Still, it will take some time, and we need to be careful not to reveal ourselves and the amount of information we know.

Well, I now had a better idea of the capabilities of underwater adventures. It still felt a bit too early to start making changes to the lower floors to accommodate these types of adventures that I didn’t even know were going to come here no matter what I did. It was the first time that I regretted my location being so inland.

I had also finally finished expanding the 27th floor. It was 20,000 kilometers in length, 17,000 in width, and 2200 meters in height. It was a huge floor, but the floor sizes will continue to get larger.

Once again, the playroom would be a mixture of biomes, as it is for bugs once again. With this, I would have finally given a chance to all of the bug patterns I had gotten. It would be fun to see who would come out on top this time.