Chapter 71 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Time continued to fly by while I was having quite a lot of fun. Making the 17th-floor dungeon rooms was quite enjoyable, especially designing the raid rooms. Out of the 60,000 rooms, 118 will be raid rooms, with three of them being secret ones that require difficult quests to be completed before an adventurer can gain access.

10 will be meant for 200-person raids and will only be available twice a year. They will also have basically the best rewards you could get from my dungeon, and I honestly think they are actually harder than floor guardians or even boss encounters.

The placement of them will also be quite important, as every one of them will be connected to waystations directly. The choice of where to put them will affect the entire adventurer population of the floor.

Speaking of the adventurer population, we were getting close to having 20,000 adventurers living inside my dungeon. I have noticed that every other species ants, goblins, as well as all the adventurer species, celebrated milestones. So perhaps when I actually reach that mark, I should do something as well, at least give a quest completed for perhaps being the first 20,000 adventurers to inhabit my dungeon.

Overall, quests were still quite rare if you take monster-killing quests out of the equation. With this floor, I wanted to change that a bit more, so I started to make regional quests where the goal would be to kill a mini floor guardian in a room otherwise inaccessible if you do not complete the quest chain.

You could complete this quest once, so I could actually make the reward a bit better and specific, as everyone would only be able to get it once. This will not be the best loot I can give, but they would be more niche and perhaps for some, could actually be better than a more general but higher quality loot drops.

Skill-enhanced monster parts to do quite a lot of things besides giving better protection or being made into a sharp weapon. It all depended on what skill enhanced that part of the monster. Fortunately, I didn’t just have to use monster parts from the monsters that I put into the dungeon rooms.

There were so many creatures that had died out or just weren't suitable for dungeon rooms, but some of their parts would be incredibly useful for loot drops. I still didn’t want regular monsters to drop stuff that wasn’t from them, but more specialized monsters or quest endpoints. I had no problem giving drops that were not originally from that monster.

The overall focus for this floor was more intelligent species, so I found it quite interesting to make more complex, large rooms with actual structures that were used for habitation. For example, one of the larger rooms had a goblin village where the adventurers would need to carefully take out roaming patrols before they could challenge the rest of the village's forces.

Now, I didn’t want this to be a moral quandary, so I didn’t make any children or anyone else who didn’t fight. These places would also be good practice for some of the raid rooms; however, there the monsters would be a lot stronger.

There was also going to be a new type of raid room, one where adventurers would need to siege a fortification of some type. Two of the 200-person raid rooms actually had proper fortresses, and since the timer for a refresh of the room was six months, I made it so the adventurers could be a lot safe if they took enough time and even built themselves siege equipment.

It would be a large time commitment for them, but the rewards would also match the challenge. All of the 200-person raid rooms were designed to take longer than just a singular fight that could be finished in a few hours or days.

Sometimes making the dungeon rooms didn’t take a lot of effort, especially when I was just making the overall structure of them. During those times, I refreshed the dungeon rules I had previously made because the skill now made them more powerful.

I also made more sub-dungeons, and that was quite a bit of fun. I even allowed some of the more brilliant ants to fully design the small dungeons. Of course, with the sub-dungeon skill rank increase, I could also make my core floor larger.

Currently, I was still working on growing out the maze, but now I could expand it even more. I also made the underwater area even larger. I wondered if I should make a proper underground area on the 17th floor, something out of the way, just to give another way for adventurers to train.

As I contemplated this, I sensed something just at the edge of my dungeon area. What was that? I concentrated more on the spot. The spot was in the airship port above me. Whatever it was, it was shielded and it felt like it was purposely shielded from me.

I pushed a little harder until I felt what was inside. Immediately, my instincts screamed like they had never screamed before, telling me to kill, destroy, consume. I was flooded with those feelings, and it was hard to hold myself back as I wanted to do those things, even without my instincts telling me.

I started to expand my area towards there, but I didn’t get far before I became a bit confused. This confusion finally allowed me to properly take control of my instincts and start to think things through.

One thing is certain: there was a box full of dungeon cores just above me. But they were not trying to claim land, nor did they seem to radiate consciousness. From my parent inherited memories, I knew what other dungeons would look like, and whenever we got close to one another, only one could survive.

I took a moment to just relax and then continued to observe. The reason why I instantly thought that they were proper dungeon cores was because they did have life, but as it turns out, they were however not alive like I am.

It was at this moment that the annoying person rushed into me and started to yell that I shouldn’t attack the dungeon cores that had just arrived. "I won’t, if you explain why they're here," I said. That at least stopped him from yelling, and he took a few moments to gather his breath, as he seemed to have sprinted here.

He seemed a little nervous before he started to speak. "We thought that we had more time before you found them, but they are not living dungeon cores like you. They're from conquered dungeons and are used as ingredients to make artificial realms."

Now I understood why he was so nervous and actually winced when he mentioned conquered dungeons. I guess I could understand somewhat, because if it were humans and someone used other humans to make leather armor, for example, it would be incredibly disturbing.

There was no need for Ace to be worried. The only thing I was sad about was that I couldn’t consume those dungeon cores properly when they were still alive. Perhaps that wasn’t completely true, as I didn’t really feel the need to consume every dungeon, only the ones that would take my land.

"I am glad that you can control yourself, as otherwise it would have been quite unfortunate. You see, the dungeon cores are owned by one of the people we were able to get to move here, who collects all kinds of rare creatures and plants.”

“The artificial realms are where most of them live, so they can be in an environment suitable for them. With him here, there soon will be a market for all kinds of animals and monsters. There are two more influential people like him coming to live here, which should increase the market even more. This should mean that we should be able to more consistently start to bring you new creatures and plants."

This was incredibly good news, and I was glad that I was able to stop myself. Perhaps I could still consume the dungeon cores and get their creature patterns inside of them, but it would not be beneficial in the long run.

No, I will hold myself back and see how things develop. "Will there also be creatures from the ocean?" I asked, to which Ace actually stopped breathing for a moment. "No, not to my knowledge," he said, looking incredibly nervous.

"I would like a similar package like I did with The Cave, and I would like it as soon as you can deliver them." I really wanted my oceans to be filled with life. While some fish could now survive the salty water, it was only a few species, and I still had only one plant that could survive inside the ocean.

"Please tell me that you are not planning on making an underwater floor," Ace said, sweating and looking like someone had just punched him in the stomach. "No, I will not make an underwater floor," I said, but that was a lie.

A playroom that was entirely water sounded interesting, but I think he more meant dungeon rooms, and I was never going to make an entire floor full of underwater dungeon rooms. That just sounded stupid and something I knew adventurers would not like. Now some dungeon rooms underwater, definitely.