Chapter 42 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

POV: Ace

We were once again sitting in the meeting office where we once again had to worry about the dungeon and how it decided to mess with us this time. At first, we received reports that the 14th-floor guardian was within the expected range of difficulty.

But we started losing more people than expected until a huge 35-person group, despite the Adventurer Guild's recommendations of a maximum of five people at a time, decided to challenge the floor guardian. When none of them returned, we had to declare the floor guardian temporarily too dangerous to be challenged until a proper investigation could be done.

I tried to ask the dungeon, but all I got in return was, ‘Don't like big groups’ This confirmed that something was going on, but none of the adventurers were going to believe us without evidence that something was wrong. Finally, all the members had arrived, so we could hear the report about what's actually going on. A person from the dungeon research division stepped up and started to speak.

"Over the course of the week, we have run multiple experiments, all successful, thanks to many volunteer adventurers from the front runners who have made it to the floor guardian. Unlike previous times, similar to the early floors, there is a simple environment and a singular monster.”

“We ran multiple instances of a 5-man party, and their reports corroborate the earlier reports of the floor guardian. No matter how many times we run it, there was no indication of a no-win scenario that sometimes dungeons start to use if they want more mana."

"At that point, a powerful adventurer who delved solo volunteered, and we finally got a discrepancy. After more testing, we found out that if you enter the floor guardian room alone, the monster was weaker.”

“Going on a hunch, we started to send in teams of two, then three, and four. The monster got stronger the more people entered, but it was completely to be expected. One thing to note is that at this point, the best loot drops to happen with the 5-man team."

The speaker took a few moments to shuffle through the papers, then started to more thoroughly go through all the drop rates and the difficulty of the floor guardian. I was a bit confused, and I could see others were too.

If the floor guardian adjusts its strength for how many people enter, then why were we having this discussion? Shouldn't this then be perfect for every group that enters, offering enough of a challenge but something they could overcome? I didn’t have to think about that for long as the speaker had an answer to that.

"When we, however, sent a six-man party in, things changed. The only reason they were able to come out alive and get healed was because of how strong these people were. The monster’s strength was way over expectations, and after this party healed a bit, we sent them in once again, but now with seven people, and the monster's strength still seemed to stay the same. It stayed the same until we reached 11 people who entered."

We could see a slight tremble in the speaker's hands as he lifted up the next paper. "There was another jump, an extreme one, and the monster could easily be classified as low silver. Once again, the only thing that saved those 11 people was how good they actually are.”

“We continued the same pattern until we reached 20 people, and the difficulty stayed the same. We don't have confirmation of drop rates, but the current theory is that the more you bring, the less you receive."

"From what we learned, we decided not to do a 20-plus member fight as we couldn't be certain how much stronger the monster could become, and the Adventurers Guild couldn’t be seen sponsoring a floor guardian fight where possibly all or most were going to perish.”

“Against our wishes, a group of 27 was put together, and they entered the floor guardian room. They were able to escape, losing 2 members, but the readings were quite clear: it was at least a mid-silver ranking threat for a standard party."

"That is truly dangerous, and I’m surprised only two steel-rank adventurers lost their lives. I would like the names of all that went into that room," said the Guild master. The discussion continued as we needed to decide on a lot of things and how we wanted to present them to the adventurers.

It was at this moment that everyone heard a small bird's call, something similar to a barn swallow. Simultaneously, all of our heads went downwards to the necklace that allowed us to save and move through the different gates in the dungeon.

I picked it up, and similar to when I was viewing my skills inside my mind, red text appeared: ‘You have received a quest. Kill a person in a waystation.’ My face drained of all colour, and my hand started to shake so much that I lost connection with the necklace, and the text vanished.

I looked around and saw similar reactions to my own. "No, we have to stop this; they're going to kill each other!" Someone said, but I was so panicked I couldn’t figure out who it was. But he was right; we had to do something.

It was at that moment a powerful voice rang out, making me freeze. "Stop your quivering and read the quest rewards." Immediately, I obeyed this voice, touching the necklace once again. Active quests: Kill a person in a waystation. Reward: Lowered drop rate (repeatable), opportune monster aggro, all around you will be notified that you are a murderer.

My heart finally started to slow down, and I looked up to see that it was the guild master who had commanded us to calm down. There were so many answers that we needed, but it didn't take long for us to get one of them.

A secretary rushed in, bringing a paper. She was confused about our current state, and quite a few people still hadn’t recovered their complexion. "We just received a report of a huge fight that happened in one of the waystations; at least 40 are dead." Understanding came to us all.

There had been more and more murders in waystations, but it was hard to punish people who never came out of the dungeon. It seems that the dungeon itself finally had enough. This was good news, but what in the living hell was this quest system? I felt defeated, probably going to be stuck in this meeting for the next 10 hours.

POV dungeon core

I felt quite happy and proud about that quest; it should mean that not many would want to kill again inside the way station. Now, it was time to get back to watching the battles of the Ant nations.

It looks like a combined water-air battle was about to happen on a huge scale, with both forces combined fielding almost 500 ships and nearly 1000 aircraft. They were fighting over a central island on a lake that was quite important for supply lines.

There weren't many soldiers on the island itself, but that was to be expected because this wasn't the first time there was a fight over this place. This would be the 4th one, and already hundreds of ships and planes have sunk beneath the waves.

Close to 3 million ants have lost their lives fighting over this piece of land. The number probably would have been much higher, but since even the smallest of worker ants were now the size of a big rat, it made sense because the island itself wasn’t that large.

The war has been going on for a little over three months now, and the current number of dead soldiers has passed the 100 million mark. I expect this number to continue to grow as armies keep expanding.

It didn't take them long to understand that sending undertrained ants would just lead to horrible morale and most likely a bad defeat. Unfortunately, not all of the nations have understood this, and the more populous nations still use older tactics since they have the ant power to spend.