Chapter 57 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Everything was going perfectly. I had finished with the dungeon rooms, and while there were still some changes to be made that would take a lot of my attention, it was basically done. Now, most of my attention was on expanding the upper floors.

Then something happened that literally made me freeze for a few minutes before I came out of my shock. The 6th floor, full of apple trees and bees, was my most peaceful floor, where the only deaths had been from natural causes or accidents.

Now, however, for the first time, two different beehives were actually fighting. The fighting was clumsy, yet the aerial battles did have a certain charm to them. Obviously, they weren't accustomed to fighting, and most of the evolutions didn’t help with it. They had been at peace for so long, so while it was novel to watch this happen, I really wanted to know why.

I did have to admit to myself that this was one of the floors that I paid the least attention to, and sometimes only the smallest part of me was keeping this place functional with almost no active monitoring.

Obviously, this had been a mistake, as it seems that the bees were now a lot more intelligent than before, and with intelligence comes desires other than just instinctual needs. It seems that one of those desires was for better material for honey.

They were fighting over a small patch of land that held an interesting-looking flower. No matter how little attention I paid to this floor, I still recorded every significant pattern, so it didn't take me long to find the original pattern for this flower.

It seemed to be a dandelion, a quite pretty yellow flower with an interesting way of reproducing. This evolution didn't reproduce like this because the yellow flower was always blooming. It took me only a few more minutes to find out why this flower was so desirable.

If this flower was used as a base for the bees to make their honey, the honey actually had the property of extending lifespan and granting excellent health. This shocked me once again, so much that I was frozen for a few minutes before coming out of it.

OK, I need to do a proper inventory of this floor. So many of my basic functions are automatic, and I finally found out why I hadn’t been informed of this development. The smaller parts of my mind were ordered to give reports if something significant happened, like the war with the bees or something else interesting.

Yet, everything on this floor gradually developed, so nothing was truly that significant to make it up to my active mind. Even with the life-giving honey, it gradually got better and better. Well, this needs to be fixed. So, for the first time ever, I decided to do a full inventory of my entire dungeon.

That took me 1 weeks, and during that time, I actually didn’t do any of my main projects as I just needed enough concentration to do this fast. It was also more disappointing than I hoped because, on the more interesting floors, I had kept a better eye, so I already knew the changes that had happened. The biggest changes were the plants, trees, and even some rocks that had a weird symbiotic relationship with a few of the plants.

Especially on the upper floors, the plants had enough time to evolve quite far from their original patterns, and while most times it was just not really that significant, a few of the plants had some significant changes that made them a lot more interesting. There was even a plant that had learned to eat insects. I didn’t know how to feel about that particular change, but I did save the pattern, like with everything else.

I could see the potential of some of the evolved plants, so I decided to do a redistribution. A lot of new patterns were introduced to different floors, so everything could have a chance at a bigger biosphere, and of course, I wanted to see how other creatures would use these evolved plants with special properties.

After all of this, I got back to work, but the bee war was still going on, and it was continuing to expand as other hives started to also mimic the actions of the first two.

It took me about six more months, so 11 months before I opened the rest of the 16th-floor dungeon rooms to the adventurers, to finish the space expansion of the upper floors. Everything was over 13 times larger, which, while not that significant, especially compared to my lower floors, was still 13 times larger.

I felt like celebrating by making some sort of holiday like the adventurers sometimes had, but there was no need to wait, and on a completely random day, all my upper playrooms expanded, and what a wonderful sight it was to see how everyone reacted.

The upper ant floors had been very densely populated. What didn’t help was that they had also grown bigger, especially when the empires started to bring larger ants from down below. But now, in just a few moments, their horizon expanded by a significant amount, and once again, the Ant nations found themselves needing to start expanding. The new area was more like what was on the lower floors, complex and dangerous.

The bee wars stopped, and immediately the different hives started to explore the new area. They hadn't reached the point that multiple hives cooperated, but I wonder if they will eventually start forming nations as well. The rest of the playrooms were not so exciting, as most were inhabited by non-sapient species, the exception being the kobold floor and the orc floor.

It took the kobolds a lot longer to notice that where there used to be dead ends, there were now open tunnels leading to who knows where. The orcs had an immediate reaction. Their tenuous peace only continued because of the completely unknown situation. Yet, it only took them a few days to understand the true extent of what had happened. Their floor went from a small about 1.3 kilometres in length floor to an over 15 kilometres in length floor.

I started to finally work on the 16th-floor playroom, but carving out cave networks wasn't that hard, and most of my attention was on the changes happening on the upper floors. A kind of reverse colonization was happening as from the lower floors, a lot of ants moved upwards to start exploring the new land. It was so wonderful to watch how my creatures reacted to such a change, and I wonder what changes it might bring.

In all honesty, the kobolds were quite disappointing. Even two months after the expansion, they had barely explored the new tunnels. It seems that they are quite scared of change, and since their primary form of strength are traps, it would be quite hard to explore a new area safely when your best combat ability is something you need to prepare ahead of time in a place you have already been to.

There were a few brave individuals who went to explore on their own, and I am guessing that they will be future leaders if they aren't killed by the current one. They were a weird species, and I didn’t really know what to make of them. Hopefully, they will start developing in a more interesting direction.

The orcs, however, were a completely different story. It didn’t take them long to explore and then start claiming their land. Many tribes split apart as there were quite a few disagreements between different orcs, even amongst the same tribe.

I would expect that it wouldn't take long before wars started, but they would need to start expanding their population; otherwise, they might actually wipe themselves out. What I’m most interested in is to see if their society changes from the tribal one to something different.

What was interesting to see was how much potential their pattern actually held. In the expanded area, I put some more powerful creatures and even some spawners so they could continue to fight. Eventually, I would like to put dungeons here, but it’ll still take some time before I start properly experimenting with them.

In the meantime, the creatures spawners should work well enough for some excitement and hopefully be able to distract them enough so they won't start killing each other before their population becomes more stable.