Chapter 50 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

It took a bit more than a moment to see that everything in my dungeon hadn't burnt down and still worked as it should. Now, it was time for the interesting part: to see if I had succeeded with this skill endeavour. I opened up the skill list to see two new skills: ‘Dungeon Rules’ rank C-plus and ‘Sub Dungeons’ D rank. I had done it, so immediately I had to test out my new gains.

Just in case, I refreshed all the information I knew about the oceans and the currents that govern that body of water. Not everything was in that book, but I could come to conclusions about how things should work.

I started to form the most complex dungeon rule I have ever tried. The last time, it simply didn't work, but this time I could feel that I could continue past the point where I last failed. Still, it was incredibly complex, and when I was reaching the end of this rule, I felt that I needed to truly push myself. Even then, I needed to make it a bit weaker than I originally wanted to, as the skill just didn’t have enough boosting ability to make it truly work the way I wanted it to.

When it snapped into place, I could finally relax. Pushing it that far drove up the mana cost, but currently, it wouldn't be a problem. I can always boost the skill at the next breakthrough and then redo everything once I’m stronger.

Still, I was incredibly happy, even with the weaker version, as the ocean now felt alive and not just like sitting water. Hopefully, it won't take too long to get creatures into this ocean. There already was a good candidate: one of the fish that isn't doing that well in the madness of this floor's lakes and rivers has been pushed to the edge of the freshwater.

I can see it swimming into the saltwater to eat the seaweed and then swim back into freshwater so it wouldn’t die. It's a struggle for it to survive, so its evolutions have been going in the direction of being able to survive in saltwater.

I also refreshed all my other dungeon rules, as I could now make them even more complex or just require less mana for upkeep. Next came the ‘Sub Dungeons’ skill. It immediately made everything easy as I could now make the mini dungeon without problems but testing this out properly will need to be pushed back as I had many other things to do.

It was now time to start claiming the 16th-floor area and then expanding it to be ridiculous in size. I devoted a lot less of my mind to this task than I usually do, but I made sure that I had plenty of room for dungeon rooms in the meantime.

A large part of my free focus would be devoted to making dungeon rooms, and I was glad that I had more capacity thanks to the breakthrough because I wanted to make quite a few more rooms this time.

I had heard adventurers continuously worry and talk about how many other adventurers they knew that were headed this way, especially silver ranks. So, it seemed like I would need a lot more dungeon rooms so that the territory system wouldn’t be overcrowded and so adventurers wouldn’t feel the need to go away because they would have to wait too long for their turn to fight.

This required quite a lot of planning, but the ants and I have been working on the blueprints for this floor's dungeon rooms for quite a while. We had many variations planned and different sections, but since I felt like I wanted something grand for the first silver rank floor, I decided to do something crazy.

Why not go with 50,000 rooms? With that, we could use most of the ideas we had come up with, and we could also hide a lot of rooms behind complex and difficult quests. This was going to be really fun. That being said, I would also need to strategically plan the beginning.

I planned to make rooms slowly that the adventurers could access, and this would be the introduction to this floor. When they reached the first large waystation, I should have 2,000 rooms prepared that they could access all at once.

That should be good enough for the first six months at least, and by that time, a lot more would be ready to be released. Let's say about 10,000 rooms by that time, and then I should have a year or two before I can open the rest of the dungeon rooms up.

It was going to be quite different to what I normally did as I would be putting more of my mind to work on dungeon rooms than I have ever before, but I think this is a pivotal moment. Even then, I would have plenty more free mind to use to expand all the playrooms to the maximum size that my skill allows.

Fortunately, I figured out how to do it so I could give all that extra space to the inhabitants of that floor at once when all the floors were done. It would be amazing to see how the Ant nations respond when all of the five upper floors would now be about 13 times larger.

It will also be interesting to see how it would affect the other playrooms, especially the one with goblins that use shamanic rituals to change their bodies. I guess I will find out sooner than I expected if their civilization could advance past the tribal stage.

The other goblins, however, are doing quite well on that front, and I could already see some iron tool-making. They now also have proper villages, but it will still be a long journey. Although now, I really can't call them goblins anymore as they are taller than their beginning race and a bit smarter.

In fact, I wouldn't classify any of the goblin civilizations as goblins any longer. It's quite interesting that the three times I've given goblins a chance, the race is no longer recognizable. I should give all three of them new race names, but I'm quite hesitant to do something so significant.

I mean, they did evolve in my dungeon, but to give an entire race a name, that's a huge responsibility that right now I'm going to ignore. And honestly, quite a lot of the other creatures have also evolved so much that I should also be giving them new names, but the same goes with them.

Then I had an idea: if they could evolve here, they probably have evolved like that before, so perhaps there are names for these kinds of creatures. That requires some investigation, but not right now. I have too many other things I need to do.

I settled in to observe as much as possible, but I did have to pull back on my active observations simply because I needed the mind power to do other things. For a space expansion, a large portion of my mind was used on the 16th floor, but another part was used on the first, which was going to finish a lot sooner. Then, I was going to move on to the second floor and so on.

Currently, the largest portion of my mind was working on making dungeon rooms and the territory system that I hope will work the way I want it to.

Pov Val

I looked up to see the sun and walked a bit faster towards the gateway hub. I was incredibly glad that the 15th-floor hub waystation mirrored the outside world exactly like every other waystation, so it would be easy to tell what time it was.

While we didn’t have to be on high alert in waystations, since the quest we had just finished a difficult section, so Agnes wasn’t able to sneak up on me this time. "Why are you following me?" I asked her with a raised eyebrow, finding her actions odd.

"Don't give me that look. It's because you're acting weird. Why the vacation when the rest of us want to go into another section?" She was going to find out anyway. "Follow me then. I’m running a bit late."

That made her even more curious, and she started to walk behind me as I picked up the pace. She managed to stay quiet only until she realized we were heading to the gateway hub. "So where are we going and who are we meeting?" She asked, prompting me to sigh out loud.

"You'll see. And if you don’t like that answer, you don’t have to come." She mimed zipping her lips shut, locking them, and throwing away the key. "Funny, but we need to hurry." There was always a line to use the six true gateways, but fortunately, it wasn't as busy as it was a few months ago.

I used the necklace to choose a gateway from the list of hundreds I had, and then we walked through it. We found ourselves in a familiar way station, but it had changed since our last visit, now resembling almost a proper town.

"Why are we in the beginner village?" I didn’t answer her, but I did like the name this place has gotten. It's the first waystation of the 12th floor. And while the 11th floor already has the style this dungeon has used during its latest floors, you don't really get hooked on this design until you reach the 12th.

When someone reaches this far, the percentage of people who go back up to the surface drops significantly. Also, quite a lot of adventurers, who have reached this far, have never gone back up again.

That's why this waystation has been named the beginner village: because this is where your addiction truly starts. I mean, look at me. I should have met my younger brother a year ago, but when he made it here, I told him we'll meet once he reached this far.

We reached the tavern where we were supposed to meet. I took one of the outside tables and quickly sat down, then looked up to see what time it was. Agnes sat down next to me, and I could just see how she was holding herself back from asking questions.

Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw my brother. "Make it look like we've been here for a long time," I said, positioning myself to appear as if we had been waiting for a while. Damn, he had grown, and it seemed like he had a proper party as well. That was his business, but damn, I missed him. Forget this ‘being cool’ act. I stood up and shouted, "Look at you, little brother! You actually look like a man now!"

As I walked towards him, he was frozen in place. I couldn’t help myself and put him in a headlock, messing with his hair. "Finally made it here, took you long enough," I teased. He came to his senses and pushed me a bit away. "Stop that," he said, but I started to laugh, and he joined in. I hadn’t noticed the huge backpacks they were wearing.

"Did you guys just come from a hunt or something? Your bags look so full." He looked around us quickly, and I guess I was being a bit too loud, but damn, I was happy to actually see my brother. I shouldn't have waited this long. "No, we just came from the surface. We are planning a longer stay, so we wanted to bring more rations this time and other items we will need."

"That makes sense. The more you're here, the less you want to leave. This place truly is the eternal training ground. You know, I haven’t been up there for over two years now?" My words stopped as soon as my brain realized what I had just said.

Agnes had joined us at one point and looked at me in shock. "The eternal training ground? That fits way too well." I looked around, and while the newer people, including my brother, didn't really understand, I could see a few other older people mulling the name over.

Every adventurer here has been trying to think of a name for this dungeon, but none had fit. And then we felt it: a strong but pleasant wind picked up, almost like the dungeon approved of the name. I smiled wildly. “Let’s go and get you a drink little brother we have a lot to catch up on and celebrate.”

End of book one.

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test number 2 how does this ending feel?