Chapter 154 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

While I was expanding the 25th floor, life in my dungeon and around it didn’t stop. It was absolutely wonderful. I could never imagine how boring it would be if I just had adventurers to look at, and a lot fewer of them than I currently have. Thanks to everything I have achieved, I have a tremendous amount of adventurers to observe, not only during delving but also while they were living their normal lives.

It could be argued that their normal lives would be boring compared to delving; I didn’t agree, it was interesting in a different way. That’s why I was also so glad that I could see what was happening around me, so I could see how the people who lived on the surface, who weren't all adventurers, lived.

If that wasn’t enough, I also had my playrooms filled with creatures with their own wants and needs, living normal and extraordinary lives. All of this made me feel what I suspect adventurers call content. Yet, I still wanted more, even if I was happy with what I had. That is why I was so excited about the Academy and what that meant.

One unfortunate part was that I couldn’t join my creatures when they went to explore the world. That problem could be fixed with some artifacts, but it was agreed that those artifacts would be too noticeable.

There was at least one upside, and that was that when my creatures returned, I could make a copy of their pattern and view its memories. At least like that, I would still be able to experience what they have.

What I was even more excited was the fact that with the disguising ring, my creatures could also go into other dungeons without triggering an attack response. While coming up with every idea, even with my helpers, was viable, getting fresh ideas from other dungeons and taking their best ideas and using them to improve my own dungeon would be a smart move in the long run.

When I finally finished expanding to the 25th floor, it was over 13,000 kilometers in length, 11,000 kilometers in width, and 1900 meters in height. It was wonderful to see how big I was getting, but I couldn’t wait until I was truly big.

While this floor would be mainly ocean, I still wanted land masses. A lot of the patterns I have also require more shallow areas, especially because nearly 2 kilometers of water blocks out a lot of the sunlight.

It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to do this. What made this even better was that the idea of how do it came to me from the first floor. Nowadays, I stick the dungeon rooms into the ceiling of the floor, but back then I made the dungeon rooms in the middle and connected them with pillars to the ceiling and floor. I was going to do the same thing here but for landmasses.

Entire continents would be held up by pillars from the bottom and above. They would not just be empty pillars but would be larger, with empty spaces and not uniformly thick or smooth, so if some creatures and plants wanted to live upon them, it would be not just possible but they might actually prefer it.

A large portion of the landmasses would be underwater, creating shallow areas so I could make something called reefs where mainly different types of coral would live. At first, I thought that they were plants, but they should be classified as animals. There were a few exceptions, as some of the corals have learned how to produce their own food like plants, but that was a small percentage of the different types I had.

What was going to be harder was to make proper currents, but making the north and south colder with permanent ice on top and at the equator warmer helped, but a few strong dungeon rules made the currents stronger and more complex.

When I used for the first time a dungeon rule to simulate the effect of the moon to give proper tides to the ocean, for the first time I truly saw how alive a world could be.

Most of the continents were smaller in size, but there were a lot of them; perhaps a better description would be a world of large islands. No island reached the bottom, which made about 1000 meters of ocean basically cover the entire playroom. With the amount of life above, there would be a constant amount of food drifting towards the bottom.

What I also needed to do was make thermal vents at the ocean floor because apparently there were quite a few of them, and there was always a lot of life around them because of the higher temperature. So now that the floor was done, I marveled at what I had created.

The ocean floor was not uniform; sometimes it rose a few hundred meters, which allowed me to create caverns and other underground features. There was rocky ground, but a lot of the ocean floor was covered in sand, with the deepest spot being 1700 meters.

The lower level of the ocean was a huge expanse of water covering the entire floor, the only thing that stood out in this layer were the different pillars reaching upwards from the ocean floor.

After that came the bottom of the continents. These were filled with caverns, sometimes reaching the surface. I suspect that eventually, the entire bottom would be covered in vegetation.

The large islands themselves were only about 50% above the water, sometimes even less. The rest of them were what I was calling the shallows, although sometimes those even reached 100 meters in depth, most of the time the depth was close to the single digits.

The surface islands were of different biomes, from deserts to jungles and everything else in between. Some would even be inhospitable to normal life. When I was done, I was incredibly proud; this was one of my favorite playrooms. Now it was time to start inhabiting it. The islands would be filled with normal patterns, but the question was whether I wanted intelligent life on them or not.

The answer was that I kind of did, but not right now. Perhaps I could make gateways into the many islands and connect them to the other playrooms. It was time that some others would have a chance at expanding as well and not just going into a more difficult playroom, but simple new land to colonize. Using the same idea as in the 19th playroom, all of the gateways to this floor would only be connected to one other gateway.

That would bring up a huge problem. It would mean that luck would play a big role in whoever would be able to get here. This time, I didn’t want it to be up to luck, but what else could I do? As I continued to think about it, I continued to make the 25th playroom while also now starting to properly build out the dungeon rooms for this floor.

It took two days, and finally, I had it. It was time to make another class of quest. We were going to call this a civilization quest. If a nation would qualify, they would be given a quest, and once they completed it, they would be able to connect to one of the gateways of the 25th floor.

During all of this time, the academy was also able to make a proper guild that currently held one-way station. Everything was progressing nicely. I was so excited to see all the new creatures and how they started to interact with each other. It was going to be a fun time.

***

A man was walking down a busy road. Many travelers passed him, looking at him warily, but all of them had pity in their eyes as well. This man had lost both his right arm and leg. While the missing leg was replaced with a peg leg, the arm was simply missing. Those were not the only injuries, as even the left hand of this man had three missing fingers. Every step looked like it hurt immensely, yet he continued to walk.

What made this sight even stranger were the numerous bags this man was carrying. His face was hidden by many scarves, and behind those scarves was skin that looked like it had been eaten away in multiple places.

The man himself felt incredible pain with every step he took, yet when he finally saw his destination, he finally smiled after many years. He tried to pick up his pace but could only speed up for a little while.

For a normal man, the journey from where he was to the city would have taken only eight hours, yet two days had passed when this man finally reached one of the gatehouses to the eternal city.

The guards were long ago ready for this man to arrive; many of them bet that he wouldn’t get into the city. Yet, when the man arrived in front of the guards, he pulled out a platinum coin and pulled down one of his scarves to reveal a part of his face.

While before the guards were dismissive, even looking down on this unlucky man, all of them immediately straightened their backs and got into proper form. "We greet the hero returning," they said all in unison. The man had confirmed his identity as one of the people who defended this city before it was named the Eternal City.

His journey continued as he walked the busy streets. No one stopped him, and many came by to offer food or water. One thing the city respected above all else was the heroes who helped keep it free. The man had not expected this kind of generosity and only wished that he could have returned sooner.

When he reached the dungeon entrance, he looked wishfully at the stone pillars. As soon as he entered and had taken a few steps, it was almost like the wind changed suddenly and felt so welcoming. The man continued and waited in line until he reached one of the gateways. He put his hand on the gateway and, thanks to the necklace, was able to view all the other gateways where he could teleport to.

Most of them had nonsense names, but some saved under his favorites were places he remembered where he trained so long ago. He was about to choose one of them when a new option became available.

‘Welcome back, Bug Guy.’ Was the name of the destination. In his youth, that name was something others used to mock him. Now, he smiled wildly while picking the destination. He had so many bugs to give this wonderful dungeon.

End of Book 3

This is the idea I had for the map of ETG