Chapter 65 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Did I go overboard? Yes, absolutely. Now I have 50 sets of first-floor dungeon rooms. Not only that, but the same went for the second and third, and so on, although later I did lower the number a little bit, but the 10th floor still had 15 versions of it. I blame the adventurer’s guild and that little fucker, Tristan, for me going so overboard.

When I was still a small dungeon, the adventurers didn't come during the night. But that had changed over time since the lines for the delves got too long. How could I surprise them with the amazing expansion I made when there were always adventurers fighting on my upper floors?

Then, of course, there's Tristan, who isn't in my dungeon anymore. When we finally finished translating and writing the paper he did, I expected him to publish it here. Now I know that was the wrong assumption on my part.

He left for some smart people's city. So I didn't have the distraction of watching them try to complete the quest me and my ant helpers worked so hard on. He kind of makes me want to create a cursed item that will bring him terrible luck when he puts it on, but no, that would set a bad precedent.

Fortunately, it will take only three more days until I can make the changes without anyone knowing. Some sort of celebration was going to happen that, from my memory, happened every year on the same day.

Everyone stopped working and even delving, and just got drunk and celebrated. That meant that I could work, and I would kind of want to see the annoying person's face when he has what the adventurers call a hangover when he finds out about the changes.

I am pretty sure that he doesn’t want this to happen because he hasn’t asked me personally, although the shadow guild's information indicates that to the upper city, he has issued statements multiple times that they are working on a solution and would inform them whenever they find a suitable way of extending the upper floors.

Now, I knew nothing about this, which made me wonder why they wouldn't want that. Well, we didn't have any deals that I couldn’t do this. That was also the reason why I wanted to make it all at once. He wouldn't be able to convince me, no matter how much he wanted to change things back, as otherwise, his city's population would riot against him.

As time ticked by, I rechecked that everything in the new versions of the upper floors was perfect. The regular rooms didn't cost more upkeep than the regular upper-floor rooms, but there was a notable exception: the floor guardians and bosses. Now, the more I had of them, the more they cost. I determined how many versions of the different floors I had when the final floor guardian or boss mana upkeep reached the 15th-floor boss.

POV Ace

I was woken by loud shouts and banging at my door. My head hurt so much. Damn it, who brought those other bottles, and what kind of alcohol was in them? Why was one side of me burning and the other freezing?

I sat up, which for some reason made the hot and cold sides switch. Holy hell, I don't know if that was good or bad, but I do know that the loud sound needs to stop. "Stop that," was all that I got out, and my own voice was way too loud. Son of a bitch.

Fortunately, the loud noise stopped, and I was about to lay back down when I heard the door open. This was so bad. I turned my head towards the person who walked in, and the motion somehow switched only my head's cold and hot, not the rest of my body.

And why is it so bright? I looked towards the curtains, but they were closed, and those didn’t let in any light. "What?" was all that I got out, but it seems that my head servant took that as a cue to start.

"Ace, there's trouble," but then he stopped, his mouth wide open while he was looking at me. "Sir, by any chance, did you perhaps drink some Animagus whiskey last night? Because your eyes are that of a cat."

Shit, that explained so much. Who the hell was it that brought that? I’m going to slap the shit out of them. Well, fortunately, the changes shouldn't last much longer. I indicated for my head servant to continue.

"It seems that there is a new gateway on the 1st to the 10th floor. It seems that somehow they connect to new versions of the corresponding floors, including the floor guardian and boss. The news has already spread throughout the city, and they all think it's a gift from you to celebrate the festival," my head servant said in an apologetic voice.

He understood that this was horrible news for us. That was the only thing that was keeping us from being a generational city where people would be willing to raise their children. "Help me dress up and get me something for the headache."

The tonic worked well enough, but I still needed to hide my face as I rushed through the city. Why did the dungeon do this or even how. Did it get a skill for instances? That would be really bad. There was no way it could have the mana for its copy its lower dungeons.

There was a team of guild guards waiting for me so there was no problem getting in and to a gateway that took me to a remote corner of the 14th floor. “Why did you do this” I asked the dungeon. “I want more adventurers.” Then it told me the numbers of the new floors. Every word was like a dagger to my heart.

Two hours later, I was in the meeting room, and I could swear when I was walking out of the dungeon, I heard it laughing at me. Fifty for the first floor alone, that was just madness, and the way he just... ‘But wasn't that what you promised your people’? When I was going to get my hands on whoever was informing the dungeon, I was not going to do morally acceptable things to him.

"While this disrupts our plans quite a lot, I must say that the timing couldn't be better, and your approval is at an all-time high, Ace. As not having different instances of the first few floors was the only thing that anyone could complain legitimately about you," one of the meeting members said, and while I agreed, it was still going to be troublesome to change our plans. The discussion continued while I was lost in my own thoughts.

We wanted this to be a city for adventurers and an Academy city for adults, where we were only going to allow the teaching of professions and not general education. A few other cities have done that, and we were taking their example.

So having a low amount of first floors meant that the city wasn't good for beginners. That would also mean that the people here wouldn’t want to raise children here. This would keep the population at a manageable level and would also mean we would have a lot fewer beginners and orphans on our hands.

Everyone wasn't doing that well after the celebration, so the meeting was quite short, but we all agreed to divert funding to start making more residential districts, especially for apartment buildings that would be cheap to live in.

So many beginner floors meant an influx of farmers and people even worse off trying to find fortune. That will also mean a lot of new children who will lose both of their parents at an unfortunately high rate. "Divert a bit more for the orphanages, and perhaps even a school for them," I said, and everyone else quickly agreed.