Chapter 52 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

The last three months had been some of my happiest. I still remember when the adventurer Val spoke my name. As soon as I heard it, I knew that I was the eternal training ground. It just felt so right. I was eternal, I offered training to all who wanted, and I was going to have so much ground that an adventurer would die of old age before he could explore it all. Every time I thought about this, I felt my core shake a bit from happiness.

It was also time to finally add the first waystation to the 16th floor and then open up a larger section for the adventurers to explore. This was the first time the territory system was going to be activated, and I was kinda nervous about it.

Now, I kinda regret the territory system because, thanks to Val, I decided to do a bit more observation of individual adventurers, and what I learned was not everyone liked the shadow guilds who claimed territory.

When thinking more about the future, I personally think that the territory system will need to be implemented eventually anyway, so why not start right away? It should make things a bit more interesting, and besides that, it feels good to do something so significant for the 16th floor.

Speaking of floors, the third one was finished, so I started to expand the 4th one. I honestly couldn’t wait until I could reveal extra space all at once to my nine floors. It was going to be an extremely interesting time.

I wasn’t the only one who was satisfied with getting a name, as it turns out. While the three goblin races didn’t have exact counterparts in the real world, they did have something close to them.

The 14th floor goblins were the closest to actual goblins, and the most similar species to them outside was called Arden goblins. Apparently, they were named for the region they appeared in, and currently, there's a city-state run by those goblins as they are no longer considered monsters but a civilized race.

The underground goblins were incredibly similar to kobolds, so I named them that. They were still a monster race even in the outside world, but there were a few differences. For example, they didn't have the scaly skin, but it seems that their mannerisms and other features were quite similar.

I didn’t have a lot of information, but I kind of felt that perhaps these two species might be a bit too different. But I guess if I have named them, I can also unname them if necessary. Hopefully, things won’t come to that. It will also be interesting to see if they can actually claim some above-ground land in the coming floor expansion.

The tribal goblins, who use shamanic rituals to make themselves stronger, seem to be similar to orcs. But again, like kobolds, I didn’t have all the information, and there seemed to be a few inconsistencies.

The orcs that I had seemed to be a bit larger than the descriptions of the orcs I found that live in the outside world. Also, the orcs outside seemed to have a darker green color, while my orcs have a lighter and brighter green. They might also be a lot more muscular than the outside orcs.

While I was most looking forward to what ants would do with the expanded space they were going to get, the second thing I was most excited about was the orcs. They had been in such a small space for so long that their civilization was so different from the other goblins.

I was getting more and more interested in civilization building than just seeing the evolution of creatures. It seems that different environmental pressures change so much about how civilization develops. It was exciting to think about, but that will need to be a long-term project.

My thoughts were interrupted by the first adventurers reaching the waystation and finding the new device. Currently, they couldn’t see anything else except that they needed to register their necklace, and they saw that the display showed 5/100.

It didn’t take long for them to go through the gateway and then start bringing people here. This was a bit out of my expectation since all of the people were coming through from the same shadow Guild. It didn't take long for them to reach near 100, but before they could, another party had also reached the waystation.

The Shadow Guild had nearly 100 people here, and while they seemed to be successful in keeping the new people away from the territory device, one of the newcomers was a sneaky type. He managed to get to the gateway and pass through it before they could stop him. It came quite close to a real fight for a few moments after that, but the Shadow Guild backed off, as they didn't want to start a real fight over something unknown to them.

Then they finally reached the 100 people required to activate the territory device. They immediately started to read the information that their necklaces displayed. They also triggered their claim of territory since they had 100% membership of the territory device.

Their faces turned feral when they grasped its implications, and I watched as the other adventurers took a step back. Almost all of the 100 members of the Shadow Guild turned their heads to them simultaneously and with the crazy look they had it would scare anyone.

"Stand down immediately!" was heard as the current leader of the Shadow Guild ordered everyone to back down. He seemed to be a competent leader. This Shadow Guild was one of the largest, and he didn't want to act without discussing with other leaders.

However, he was also the one who noticed the one-week timer and read a bit more about the population system. "We can’t hold this place, but since we're here, scouts, return to headquarters, report everything, and bring back supplies to start exploring the connected tunnels."

Immediately, all the Shadow Guild members disregarded the other adventurers present and began following their leader's orders. I was quite impressed. I had expected this first place to become a graveyard after a few days, but it seemed that, for now, there wouldn't be a territory battle.

It didn't take long for the territory claim countdown to end as quite a few others reached this waystation. It was fascinating to witness all the information spreading, and this time, it appeared that the surface also mobilized, with many more official adventurers heading downward.

I also saw the exploitation of the party system for gateway travel. I had done it so party members could use each other’s gateway saves. Now I disabled that feature.

I just made myself comfortable, continuing my work and enjoying the mayhem. To my surprise, the annoying person actually came to contact me. He demanded an explanation about the territory device a day after the discovery of it.

He demanded many things, like the names of the people telling me to do this, to take the device away. He also warned me that someone very strong didn't like this at all. This was the first time the annoying person even hinted at a threat.

He ruined my good time, but I reminded myself that everyone acted out when something unknown happened. I was incredibly happy about the counsel the ants gave me, as I was learning quite a lot. Otherwise, I would expect I would have gotten really angry and probably done something I shouldn't have from being threatened like that. Still, I didn't like it, and the annoying person was still being annoying.

"This is not your choice to make. Now leave me alone and bring more creatures and plants," was the response I gave him, which shut him up. He would just have to deal with that. I was really annoyed that basically all I had gotten were variations of the animals and plants that I already had.

I hadn't even gotten a new bug since the adventurer who brought them left a while ago, and he hasn't come back for quite some time. This entire situation made me sad, and I kind of missed that crazy adventurer and how he would spend hours studying the bugs I made.

"Sorry," I heard the annoying person say before he sadly walked out of my dungeon. At least he apologized; that made me feel better. What made me feel even better was the 12-on-7 adventurer fight that happened because of the territory system.

Now, none of them actually had any territory because the week-long timers still displayed the number six, but that didn't stop them from fighting outside the waystation to stop the others from reaching the territory device.

The fight was quite spectacular. While these weren't the strongest adventurers, they were quite high up and already close to reaching the silver rank. They were already experts at multiple skills, so I was able to witness many barrier skills and different attack skills dealing quite a lot of damage.

The 12-man ambush did quite well. They ended up killing three before the others could escape. I sensed a Shadow Guild war coming, and I couldn't wait to see and experience the skills they would use so I could study them and possibly give them to some of my creatures.