Chapter 152 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

So, that didn’t go as I thought. But I understand why the orcs decided to join in on the fight. Safe zones were really valuable in the 19th-floor playroom.

It did take them quite a while to figure out where all of the safe zones were located. When they chose a location, I decided to grant them mercy and make that first destination the end of their quest.

It's still a bit annoying that I need to micromanage multiple-choice quest ends like this, but there is nothing else that I can do. It was around floor 18 when I started to notice a problem. Adventurers were starting to choose the correct option out of multiple-choice options too often. Things continued to get worse as I got deeper.

To solve this problem, I started to switch the right choice when the adventurers had already made the correct choice. While there should be no way for them to tell that something was wrong, slowly those kinds of quests started to become the least liked. The solution turned out to be to make it so that the correct option was only made possible when the adventurers had already chosen a pathway to follow.

Normally, I waited and would have let Carl and others go to two wrong destinations before I made the correct choice available to them. Now, since they are allied with the orcs, the quest is no longer dangerous for them.

It's a bit disappointing that halfway through the quest was made trivial, but that was one thing I refuse to punish adventurers about. If they find a better solution, then they should be able to reap the full rewards for it.

I was pleasantly surprised when the orcs decided to stay out of most of the fights, so I at least got to enjoy that. This quest that this adventure party is on has also allowed me to see so many of my mistakes. The list of things to fix was constantly expanding, and I was extremely glad about that. While it was more work right now, it also meant less work down the line.

It took them a whole month to finally reach the target location. They were completely exhausted but still hopeful. I could feel myself wanting to mess with them, but I had seen Anna cry a few times and even some of the older children they had. It was unfortunate how this quest turned out, but at least they were able to use the necklace to get out of a deadly situation.

Things could have gone better, but they could have also gone a lot worse. So overall, I was going to count this as a win. It took some time, but they managed to get their gateway to work and connected it to their own base. I expected them to leave immediately, but they had a proper goodbye with the orcs, and only after that did they step through.

There were two guards at their base's gate station, and both of them looked at the five people who came out of it in utter shock. Carl didn’t even wait a second before he started to rush towards his home.

The moment he opened his door, Anna, who was serving dinner, dropped a plate and rushed to Carl, giving him a tight hug and multiple kisses. "You're finally back," she said, but then took a step back and I could see anger in her eyes.

"This is for not coming back sooner," she said and slapped him. "This is for making me think you were dead," she slapped him again, "and this is for missing your child’s birthday," she said and slapped him one more time.

Then she hugged him once again. "Please never do that again." "I promise," Carl answered, and the next moment his children rushed him as well, giving him hugs.

Tristan made it there soon as well, after which a celebration was held. The three other people were introduced and quickly they were taken in and showered with thanks as they had helped bring back Ziiipe and Carl to them. They celebrated for three days and, while Carl didn’t know this, he was now going to have another child.

I was pleased when, after the celebration, they decided to temporarily at least stay as a party and keep what they found a secret. It seems like they wanted to try to build an outpost and to find out a bit more about me as a whole before they even thought about telling anyone else what they found. I was fine with that decision as it would give me even more time to get stronger.

I continued to focus on the 24th floor as there was still a lot to do. While I wanted to focus on the shape-shifting rings and the fact that I could start learning more directly about the outside world, it was too soon.

It wasn’t a thing that I could simply rush, although I had quite a lot of volunteers, mainly ants willing to go outside the dungeon to explore. The problem was they knew too little about the outside world.

The solution we came up with was to make an Academy where the creatures who wanted to serve me by going outside the dungeon would get used to their new forms and learn basic knowledge required to survive out there.

I could have already started to make this Academy as I had plenty of places where I could build one, but I decided to wait and put it on the 24th floor ceiling alongside the dungeon rooms.

This will give us more time to figure out what we actually needed to teach and what sort of area and facilities were needed. Of course, my architects also enjoyed the new challenge of creating different kinds of structures.

In fact, that gave us all an interesting idea to start making more ruins and put them in dungeon rooms. It should be a nice way to tie in a lot of quests while giving more history to certain zones.

It would also give me a nice chance to start using the stone golems I was able to finally test. The reason I was able to make them so big was that they were not made out of a normal rock pattern but instead a rock pattern that was showing signs of gaining consciousness. Currently, the original pattern was in the 14th-floor playroom. It was taking its sweet time in advancing, but I guess I could wait.

The nice thing about this stone and golem design was its flexibility. Basically, I could mimic or create any shape I wanted, give it more intelligence or less, and basically do anything I wanted. They would be perfect for a lot of rooms, especially ones heavily focusing on ruins. For their basic strength level, I think I can start using them on the 25th floor.

There was going to be so many exciting things in the future that I simply couldn’t wait. Yet, I had to wait, as time was something that I couldn’t control. Or could I? Eight days later, after researching the topic as thoroughly as possible, the answer was that I wouldn’t be able to do anything useful with it.

It seemed like time didn’t like being messed with, and while there were time mages that could turn back time a few minutes, it was only localized, and when the spell ended, time snapped back to where it needed to be quite violently.

Even slowing down and speeding up time came at the same cost, although it was more manageable. So, in conclusion, it was only useful for fighting and even then should only be used sparingly.

I was a bit disappointed, but also not, as otherwise, I would have needed to focus on this too much. It was time to get comfortable so I could work as efficiently as possible, finish expanding this floor, and finally start building it out.