Chapter 199 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Ace

Why was there so much paperwork today? Just report after report that I needed to read and give orders on how to act upon them. But I guess things have been busy for quite a while now. It's because so many adventurers are coming here, which means a lot of management is needed to keep everything functioning properly. Thankfully, we have many towns where we can send a huge portion of newcomers, so we don’t crowd up the main city.

That being said, we had to expand the main city once again. There are now three walls separating the dungeon entrance from the wider world, with the third one being immense in length. It’s been especially hard to keep a poor district from emerging. There are a lot of people who have failed in their businesses here. This isn't just a nation of adventurers, but also students of many crafting arts.

Just a bit ago, we also opened up a school of magic. That paperwork is annoying, and it seems like every day, including today, there’s an inch of papers I have to go through just regarding that place.

Fortunately, we didn't build that school in the city but a bit away from everything else, halfway up the mountain. This way, at least we don’t have to worry about the fallout of magical experiments going wrong and hurting the public.

What still amazes me the most is that if I see correctly, I have, in a week, another ceremony to name airships, as we have finished another batch of cargo and transport airships. If I remember correctly, our trade fleet should be reaching the 1,000-ship mark. I took out my notebook from my pocket and wrote down a reminder to find out the exact number of ships we have made, so we don’t miss the 1,000th.

Most of them aren't here; they're out in the world transporting goods for my nation. But lately, a lot of airships we've built are for transporting a large number of people. We’ve even made some riverboats for the new river that is connected to the ocean. But the number of people coming through the river is so low compared to airships. A lot of people are also leaving, especially adventurers who have reached their limit.

It is another statistic that's amazing in its own way. Every one of us can reach a wall when our instincts just aren’t good enough to keep up with the speed of combat, and we haven't gotten strong enough to push past that limit.

There are other ways of running into that wall, but that's the main cause. At that point, normally, there’s a spike in adventurer deaths as they try to push forward, yet no matter who tells them they can’t, they still try. That’s basically unheard of here.

ETG is amazing at training adventurers. I do not know how it got so good, but any adventurer leaving here is called the "gold standard" nowadays. In fact, so many adventurers have been trained here to be so good that civilization is effectively pushing back the monster population of the Wilds, and it seems like almost every corner of the world is getting safer. ETG is single-handedly changing the whole world.

As I finished another paper, I looked for another one and found a fancy-looking envelope on my desk, one that wasn’t there before. "Well, isn’t this creepy. Whoever delivered this, if you're still here, please use the normal way of delivering mail."

No one answered, and for a moment I thought perhaps someone hadn’t actually put it here. There were magics that even I wasn’t familiar with, and from the people who sent me this, who knows what they were capable of.

I opened the letter to read through it and frowned. It wasn’t from the masters or the beasts; it was from all four powers. What this was, was a fancy invitation to what they were calling the Half-Century Ball. I mean, they were right, we were about to reach the halfway point of this century, but this was something more major. While it was an invitation, from the context, I didn’t have any option but to attend.

I guess I should go and ask my wife about this. Or should I pop into the dungeon? It would be too out of the way to go there right now. ETG's resistance training to diamond rank was going incredibly well.

About two years ago, I stopped announcing my entrance at his request. Nowadays, while I can still feel his presence almost suffocating me whenever I enter, I don’t feel the instinctual malice I used to feel. I think when he reaches platinum rank, he will have no trouble with any number of diamond ranks inside his dungeon.

My wife was doing paperwork, but she looked up with a questioning look. "There is no way you finished your paperwork before me. Is there something you need help with?" Of course, she would ask me that. Instead of saying anything, I walked in front of her desk and showed her the invitation. At first, she was a bit confused, but her eyes widened as she continued to read.

"Well, that hasn't happened in a while. It's kind of weird they named it that, considering the last time they had such an event was nearly 400 years ago. It was when they made public the 6th and 7th free dungeons. But this dungeon being free is already public knowledge? Maybe it’s a regular thing. I don’t know much more than you. But look at it this way—it’s a good opportunity to have your war fleet go on its first maiden voyage."

That brought me up short. She was correct, like she always was. We had built warships—we currently have 18 of them. They've been going through testing for quite a while now, and training the elite soldiers who would be sailing these ships has been quite a long process. Yet they still haven’t left for a proper journey. "Well, that made me feel better. I hope I can leave the fancy stuff to you, as I’m guessing we need to be fancy when we go there?"

She just gave me a small nod. There was something off about that. "We don't need to be fancy," I saw her grimace just a bit. On the other hand, I had a huge smile on my face.

"Don't worry, you can be as fancy as you want to be. There will be no limit to the expenditure, but only if I get to be my normal self." She looked at me and made her puppy eyes. "Fine, two meetings and one public event, but that's all." Immediately, she smiled that lovely smile of hers. Damn it, why do I give in so fast?

She was probably already thinking about what kind of suit I should wear and what kind of accessories would match her perfectly. When she first got here, she wanted to get away from all of that, but it was so ingrained in her that she continued.

But when we got married, she asked me what she should wear, and I told her, "Whatever you want." She looked lost for a bit after that, but when she finally got to decide everything for herself, she started to love being fancy, especially on big occasions.

What I should do is go to the Admiral. We had a bit of time, but we also didn't have so much of it that we could postpone getting ready. The meeting location was inside the dark ocean, which was a bit eerie.

If I’m right, it would take us about six months to get there if we were traveling with normal ships. But our warships were not normal—they were the best ships in the world, and for them, the trade wind should be like a breeze that would help them move faster. She was right; I was quite excited about all of this.