Chapter 60 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Finishing up the labyrinth the way I wanted was going to take longer than I expected, and I was probably going to finish it during the time between the next breakthrough and the one after that. I didn’t mind as no one should really try to go through the water section of my core floor.

The 16th-floor playroom was also coming along quite fine, as I was quite close to finishing the endless amount of caverns. Some of them were quite large, and my upper floors could easily fit into them, but that was necessary as I hoped some of the inhabitants of this floor would continue to grow bigger.

I found that making a proper water network was the most difficult, and I also needed to add heat that would radiate from the bottom; otherwise, it would be freezing. Fortunately, a few dungeon rules later, that was fixed, but then there was another problem: water vapour.

I needed to do quite a lot of redesigns, lower ceilings, or even close some of the caverns, as otherwise, some places would get so humid that it looked like there was rain underground. I did leave a few of the places like that, but I didn’t want most of the upper caverns to be like that.

Air quality was also an interesting problem, as I could make it so that there would be perfect air quality everywhere, but once again, I felt like it would be interesting to see if that wasn’t always the case.

Because I was going to add intelligent species, there was also the need to add a lot of minerals, and I did put absolutely every kind of plant here that could survive. But most of them died quite quickly because of the lack of sunlight. The luminous mushrooms and moss helped a little bit, but I wasn’t going to add them to the entire floor.

A huge portion of the caverns were mostly barren, as I wanted to see how the plants would spread. In the few places that I used mana to grow out a proper ecosystem, I also started to add creatures. A large portion of the patterns that I used were the new ones that I had gained, but I did use some that I thought could survive down here, whose patterns had failed to survive in other playrooms.

So many of the new creatures were bugs, and it almost felt like this entire floor was a new bug floor, but it wasn't. The most interesting new creature to me was the bats. They had a natural way of seeing without eyes, and I had only experienced this with creatures who had achieved the same effect through skills. I had a feeling that they might do really well inside these dark caverns.

When most of the divisions and a large portion of the 16th floor's playroom were done, quite a few months had passed, and quite steadily, the fastest of the adventurers were getting closer and closer to the end of my dungeon.

It truly was correct that space was one of the best protections because the longer it took for someone to make it through, the more you could go and prepare. This also meant that I had quite a lot of time before I needed to breakthrough, and that I could finally start playing with my sub-dungeons.

It was immediately different, as making the smaller dungeons inside of me felt exactly the same as when I started off making my first floor. It was quite fun to make the smaller versions, yet there were fewer options for opponents because I didn’t want to use creatures that were too big for the ants. Fortunately, I now had access to a lot of new bugs, so I could create quite a lot of different monsters for them to fight with.

The dungeons I made were quite simplistic, sticking to the limitations I knew from my parent for the difficulty and the number of rooms. When the first was ready, I found it satisfying for it to be delivered.

While I only got a small fraction of the benefit I did from my normal dungeon rooms, that wasn't the goal of these dungeons. It was to give my creatures a way to fight and improve themselves without having to slaughter themselves.

Making one still required quite a lot of precision, but I was glad that I was able to automate it, similar to my own dungeon, so I didn't have to spend too much mental capacity on remaking the monsters. I stuck to making a few more dungeons on the 4th floor.

When I started to make the 6th one, I felt resistance. So that was the limit with my current rank. That was a bit disappointing, as I would need to make quite a lot of them so I could have enough for all the truly sapient creatures in my dungeon.

The number was truly low, and I was about to destroy the 5th dungeon of the 4th playroom so I could make a bigger one for the orcs, but then I stopped. I tried to make one on the orc floor without destroying an existing dungeon. There was no resistance.

Almost a week of experiments later, I found that I had a limit of four sub-dungeons, plus one per two floors deep. But I also found out that the lesser resistance I got on the sixth dungeon just indicated that that was the last one I could make, and if I tried to make another one, there was quite a lot of pain.

What I suspect is that the base limit and probably the number of dungeons per floors would also increase as I continued to rank up my skill. This meant that I had quite a lot of sub-dungeons to do, but I did skip the floors, at least for now, where there weren’t any truly sapient creatures.

I believe that every creature could gain benefit from dungeons, but for evolution, I believed it would be better if they would fight other creatures inside the playroom and not fight inside a dungeon.

The designs were quite basic, and on each floor, at least one dungeon mimicked the first five floors of my dungeon. After the five floors, I kept to a more regular design indicated by my inherited memories.

None of the dungeons that I made were beyond floor 10, as I also wanted them to grow more naturally, and if they weren’t delved, there was always the possibility that monsters might start leaving the dungeon. That should add an interesting element, especially because some of the dungeons might be quite hard to find simply because of how large the lower floors are.

Of all of the sub dungeons I made one was different. On the orc floor in the centre of the floor, I started to make a really large dungeon and for the surrounding lands, I declared war free zone as I did with the ant academy I made. There will be a lot of rooms and this dungeon will be most like my current idea of my main dungeon. A lot of dungeon rooms and varied difficulties so some can push themselves.

I was interrupted while I continued to play with my sub-dungeons. It seems that a part of my mind that was set to inform if an adventurer was about to discover something interesting found an adventurer who seems to fit the profile of someone who had the chance to make an interesting discovery.

I focused on his location and found that he was at one of the special ruins where there was a stone tablet that would have what he was after. Hmm, it was a large room; would he get lucky enough to stumble upon it? I guess we will have to see.