Chapter 54 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Time continued to pass by, and even though a lot of me was concentrating on working, I couldn’t get the conversation I had with the annoying person out of my head. Most of all, I concentrated on the fact that what would happen if someone actually tried to kill me.

I could summon the creatures I have to defend myself, but even though I have made my core room larger, I wouldn’t be able to leverage the vast number of creatures I have. This is simply because I would, at best, be able to summon 100 at a time, and even then, they would be so crowded that no one could actually fight properly.

I mean, that would be a strategy on its own, something I’ve seen bees implement when they swarm an enemy and basically cook it with their body heat while they themselves also cook. Usually, the enemies that attack them are in lesser numbers, so it works out.

I guess I could do the same, but I haven’t really seen anyone truly high-ranked. They probably have stronger defenses and probably wouldn't even be bothered by this strategy. So, I should do something different.

Making my room larger is the obvious answer, but it also could have negative effects. If more than one person tries to kill me and there are many of them, a bigger room might actually be an advantage for them.

I spent quite a lot of time thinking about this, but I was often distracted by the happenings in my dungeon. It will soon be time to open another section. This one also has a huge waystation, but the adventurers have been calling the one on the 15th floor a ‘hub station’, which I guess is a bit better than just calling it a huge waystation.

It was only slightly bigger than the previous one, but in reality, it could be a lot smaller because the adventurers haven't even used 10% of the previous hub station. Eventually, this floor will have two of them because it is quite large, as I still want it to have 50,000 rooms.

It was incredibly interesting to create the different biome areas. One of the ones I’m interested in seeing how the adventurers tackle is the swampy area that covers about 3,000 rooms. It’s the closest thing to a water area I have, although there aren't many proper fish-type monsters there.

One of the rooms I'm most proud of on this floor is 500 metres tall, covering the entire floor's height. What the adventurers need to do is descend the cliffs where there are air-type monsters. There are also land-type monsters in the caves situated in the cliffs, but there aren't really a lot of them.

When they finally reach the bottom, there's a sandy area with an oasis. I'm pretty sure that's what they call those places where there's a lake teeming with life surrounded by sand. Then, they will need to climb up another almost 500 metres to get back up to the other dungeon rooms and continue their exploration.

I've also wanted to experiment with the sub-dungeon skill, but I literally don't have the time if I want to stick to my schedule. That, however, gave me an idea. What if I transformed my core room into my core floor and made it the most dangerous place in my dungeon?

With the deadliest traps and my most powerful patterns pushed to the limit, anyone wanting to see my core would need to push through all of that to reach me. Before my actual core room, I should also create a vast space to leverage the large number of creatures living in my dungeon.

I really like that idea, but I'll need to wait a bit. The expansion of the 16th floor's space is nearly complete. After that, I can focus more on the dungeon rooms and finish them. Then, I'll complete the rest of the upper floors.

I still need to finalize the 16th floor, but with everything else done, I'll have plenty of concentration for other tasks. There's also no rush for the next breakthrough, and I do want a period where I can relax a bit more.

It took only a week to finish the space expansion, and I immediately concentrated even more on the dungeon rooms to finish them ahead of schedule. However, I wasn’t going to open them before my planned schedule, as I still wanted to observe the current 16th floor.

This way I could make adjustments and continue to refine the danger level of all the rooms. I announced the change of plans to my ants who were helping me design rooms. It was amusing to see their panic, as everyone thought they had longer to add the finishing touches to their designs.

I opened the next section that gave them access to 10,000 rooms. It didn't take long for the information to start to spread, but it was even funnier when they figured out that it was a lot more than just a few rooms.

What was different, however, was that the new section didn’t make the adventurers look like they were an anthill that had been under attack. This was simply because on the 16th floor, and even on the upper floors, there were so many fresh adventurers who weren’t quite dialed into the information network of the more established adventurers.

I have to admit, I quite enjoyed watching the adventurers interact with the territory system. About a month into the opening of the new section, a proper territory war was going on. It wasn't just two shadow guilds fighting for dominance; it was five different ones who all wanted the waystation and area to themselves.

The reason was simple: there was a raid room connected to the waystation. Having sole access to this seemed to be worth the sacrifices of lives, but it did seem that they were trying to keep the dying to a minimum as they had their own rules about engagements.

I was so concentrated on watching their engagements that it took me a while to notice that a familiar and welcome face had returned to the dungeon. It made me incredibly happy to see that the bug person had returned, and it looked like he brought me some new presents. He took some time to get situated back into the dungeon and get familiar with what was happening on the 13th floor, where he last was.

It took him a few days until he seemed comfortable enough that no one would discover what he was doing. The current location he was in was rarely visited, but I’m guessing that's what he wanted. "I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to release a lot of bugs in this large room.”

“I also brought a few books about the bugs I’m bringing you, so you would know their names and the interesting features they have. I truly love all the different bugs I’ve already seen you make and can't wait to see what the lower floors have in store for me."

Then he opened one of the bags, and hundreds of bugs rushed out. I did feel he used some kind of skill, probably to keep himself safe because some looked quite dangerous. I was quite impressed and sent some of the nearby flying monsters to start hunting them down while I concentrated on getting their patterns.

I didn’t, however, miss that he continued to open bag after bag. Wait, how many did he have? He just continued to reach underneath his coat and bring out a new bag. Was that 2,000 bugs? I mean, not all of them were different, but still.

He had gone well past what I expected, and for some reason, I don’t think he’s working with the annoying person. It didn't stop, so I had to create some new birds to cope with the number of released bugs.

Just the bags alone would be quite the expenditure. I didn’t even know what the expertise and knowledge would cost to be able to catch all of these, as some of them looked quite magnificent yet incredibly dangerous. Some of the venoms the new bugs had are among the deadliest I have seen. Just one mistake and you would be dead, like one of the birds that just died because of that.

A bit further away, I created a new treasure bird and its nest, but I loaded it up with a lot of gold coins and some more precious materials. This should definitely be enough. When he was finally done opening bags, I made the bird fly near him to get his attention.

He was a bit wary of it, but I bet he had heard at least a few rumours about this bird because it was one of the most talked-about topics in different establishments. Eventually, he got the idea and started to follow it.

He looked at the nest in complete shock and multiple times looked between it and the bird. "Thank you," he said, falling to his knees, and I could see tears falling from his eyes. Judging by the state of his clothes, he most likely spent his money on his hobby, and he probably never had this much money at one time. However, he wasn't like that for long, as I saw determination blossom on his face. "I will delve your dungeon to get stronger, and then I will bring you all the bugs I can catch."

He collected the treasure and then started to prepare to delve deeper. What I needed to do was continue hunting the bugs, as they had spread quite a lot, but an army of birds was doing their job excellently.

In only three days, I had gotten every single one of them to receive their patterns. The books were also quite informative, as I now had a better idea of what their natural environment looked like, which was actually a lot more useful than the rest of the information since I was able to learn the names by myself. Perhaps the next floor would need to be another bug floor.