Chapter 162 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

The 26th floor was officially done. Everything is triple-checked, and while I’m sure we will find mistakes when adventurers start testing everything, that's part of the process of making an excellent experience for them. The real problem is that they haven't even reached the end of the 25th floor yet, though they are getting close.

Even on the 25th floor, only the truly powerful adventurers push forward. Currently, the main mass of adventurers has only reached the halfway point of the 24th floor. Fortunately, I can now continue to make floors without announcing when a new floor is out.

This might become the norm as I continue to progress faster than adventurers simply because of the ridiculous number of dungeon rooms on every floor. It just takes them so long to go through them all.

Still, it was time for a breakthrough, and then I could make another bug playroom. The current one was a mess of constant fighting, even with the amount of room they have. But they weren’t the only amazing playroom to watch, as basically every one of them was.

The goblins were now making properly large nations, and finally, the kobolds were reclaiming the surface that they were driven from so long ago. Their fortress towns provided enough security for them to start getting used to living on the surface and in the sun while slowly expanding outwards. It was fascinating to watch them evolve like this.

The orcs were one of the more interesting ones, as their main focus was actually in the 19th playroom. They were one of the three civilizations that had established proper settlements in that playroom, the other two being the ants and the bees. That being said, the orcs were actually doing the best.

I wondered how long it would take for civilization to make it to the 20th playroom. There were more and more creatures making it there as they continued to grow stronger, making them too powerful for the 19th-floor playroom.

There were actually a few extraordinary individuals who are starting to get a bit too strong for even the 20th playroom. That was mainly because of one of my skills, Creature Advancement, which was at C-plus rank, allowing all of my creatures to go beyond my power ranking.

The further they went, the harder it got for them to advance, but I hoped that with this breakthrough I would be able to lessen their burden.

While the next playroom will be another bug playroom, the one after that will be for creatures beyond the 20th playroom. Currently, the creatures inside the 20th playroom were at the danger level of about floor 30 to 40, and I kind of wanted to reduce that to about 38 max. Fortunately, with the speed I’m going right now, the timings should match up quite nicely.

I think when I reach floor 30, my creatures could finally advance to the platinum rank, although only a few of them would be good enough to reach so far with such a disadvantage in ranking up. I guess we will see what happens in the future, but it is now time for a breakthrough as I have gathered the mana I need.

Because the large room was relatively safe when you were flying, I decided to make the floor guardian a flying monster. It took me a bit of time to decide what monster I wanted to use but ended up going with a giant eagle. They were terrifying creatures, and the pattern I had in mind only needed a little bit of adjustment to make it suit this floor’s power ranking.

After that, it was time for the skill selection, which I used to upgrade Creature Advancement. I was pleased that I was able to get it to A rank. Every single advancement gave me more and more mana to use during my breakthrough.

It will still be a bit of time before I can start upgrading my Space Expansion skill beyond the S rank, but it will eventually happen. Just imagining how big I will be then was amazing.

When I came out of the breakthrough, I reestablished control over my dungeon and relished once again in my improved capabilities. The time had also finally come when my academy would start sending out individuals who had missions all over the world to bring back information, resources, and patterns.

No expense was spared, and the Academy vaults were filled with platinum and gold coins. There was also a lot of monster loot, as the bug guy explained to us that selling them at auction would be a better idea than just turning up with endless amounts of platinum.

One thing I didn’t compromise on was that I didn’t simply make the loot; the Academy members needed to fight those incredibly strong monsters to get what the adventurers called legendary materials.

Pov Enn

Listening to this lecture was as interesting as always, but my mind was on my mission. My notebook was open as I was taking notes of important things to remember, but I was still not used to seeing human hands that were mine.

This ring was truly amazing, but I missed my own body. My feelings, however, weren’t that important as I could go explore and work beyond the father while continuing to strengthen the father by doing so.

"It is important to understand that while most uneducated will think that these monsters are dragons, they’re not. They are technically wyverns. There are a lot of different species of wyverns, but almost all of them have a set of back legs and front legs that double as wings. True dragons have four legs and a set of wings separate from their legs. The only place that currently still has dragons is the Shadow Lands."

"Currently, our targets are different species of wyverns, but eventually we will also start targeting dragons. Currently, we are simply too weak as dragons are the strongest species in this world. There are species that could be argued are stronger, but every single one of them lives in the deep sea. Of course, when we're talking about strength, we assume an average base of a peak silver rank."

I quickly wrote all that information down, but the rest were a bit more technical details, which fortunately didn’t need to be written down word for word. The lecture ended about 30 minutes later, which was once again weird as I needed to start keeping track of time in minutes as most adventurers did. When I reached my room, all my packs were already packed. It was time to leave.

My bags were filled with a lot of valuable resources, but I would be needing them, especially the huge expanded backpack that was designed to keep different kinds of monsters alive during long journeys.

Before I knew it, I was in front of a gateway and selecting the entrance room as my destination. While I had been there before, this would be the first time that I would be stepping beyond the dungeon.

The entrance room was filled with so many adventurers, and there were so many market stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Whenever someone glanced towards me, I always thought that perhaps they could see through my disguise, but that never happened.

Something inside me wanted to hesitate before stepping through the pillars that separated the world I knew and the wider world, but I wasn’t going to give myself away so easily. We had been better trained than that.

The moment I stepped through, I needed to blink my eyes while walking as the sun was so bright. It was one of the features of the human body I appreciated the most. Simply being able to close your eyes was amazing.

The weakness came as was explained, but I was ready for it. In fact, it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but I was about 30% weaker now. Still, I shouldn’t have problems unless I run into true powerhouses.

My first destination was a large auction house where I would be selling off a few pieces of loot. There will be others who sell as well, as I will not be the only one leaving the dungeon today, but only a few as our departure dates are staggered out.

After that, I will be purchasing a ticket on one of the airships to go to the eastern continent. My destination is a very specific beach that has blue sand and an entire ecosystem built around it.

Mine was one of the more desirable destinations because of its uniqueness, but the top mission was to travel to this continent's most southwestern tip. That was one of the connection points where trade between the adventurer species that lived on land and the ones who lived underwater was located.

One of Father’s goals was to collect all the adventurer species, but to do so, he would need to get them to live in his dungeon and breed there, which was not an easy task.