Chapter 33 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

POV Ace

It was quite early in the morning, and we were waiting for the Adventurers Guild master to arrive so we could all hear today's reports and the summary on the 12th floor. We didn’t have to wait long until he arrived, but the person in charge of the report looked quite nervous, especially when the guild master walked in.

If it was a person that I didn't know giving the report, I might have hoped that perhaps he was afraid of the guild master, that was a normal response. But she has been working here for quite a while, so the only reason she might be acting like this was bad news. I so hoped that it didn’t have anything to do with the 13th floor.

She cleared her throat before she started, and I could see the guild master wince when we all heard the nervous waver in her voice. "I will start today with the newest information and summary of the 12th floor. The current count of the number of rooms is 15,982, with the recommended path being 4,342 and the shortest path being 2,788." The Guild master immediately spoke up, "I was under the belief the recommended path was around 5,500 rooms. Explain?"

"Yes, Guild master, I was about..." She coughed to hide that she was about to correct the guild master and then continued, "Last night we received a report that shortened the way considerably. A singular adventurer reported that if you failed one of the puzzles in a certain way, it opened up a different path that turned out to be a lot shorter path that had the recommended path requirements. The adventurer had apparently known about this for about 3 weeks but he hadn't reported it in because he hadn't known it was the shortest path."

One of the people in charge of the dungeon guide struck the table in anger. "Those bastards! They would have kept that entire area a secret if they hadn’t been compelled to report to us the shortest path. I am guessing that we are missing a lot of rooms that have been kept secret and there might even be more that no one has ever found. Also, I would like permission to take the shortest path out of the guide and just leave the recommended path."

That took everyone by surprise, but I gave him a nod for him to continue. "Thank you, Ace. The recommended path, while a lot longer, isn't that much longer than other dungeons of this level, and the death percentage is way less than average, only about 10%. However, the shortest path has about a 30% death ratio for first clearers. Now, while this isn’t the worst, it is definitely above average.”

“The main reason for that is what the adventurers are calling sub-guardians. They are rooms that resemble the floor guardians room, and while they aren’t as dangerous, they're definitely a spike in difficulty from other rooms," he continued a while longer, breaking down the problems the shortest path had and why it shouldn’t be in the dungeon guide.

Adventurers were, by their nature, risk-takers, so I could understand why most would just skip over the recommended path and just follow the shortest; some probably didn't even read the warnings.

The decision wasn’t hard to make, and everyone agreed that the future dungeon guides that we put out won’t include the shortest path. The only concern that was brought up was that this would encourage the secret dungeon guild even more because now they could keep this a secret amongst themselves, and while we would still know, no one was going to get that information from us.

Now the report for today could finally continue. “The 12th-floor guardian is easier than expected, and even more so because you could get the help of the Mountain Lion that first appears," she continued, but that was news to me. When I fought the floor guardian, I killed it, so I didn’t even know that was a possibility.

What an interesting choice, and as she continued to list off statistics of clears and the difficulties of the floor guardian, I saw that everyone else was in thought about what this could mean. Was it possible that in the future not every monster would be hostile? While incredibly rare, it wasn't unheard of for dungeons to do something like that.

On the 13th floor, there seem to only be two sections open, totaling about 200 rooms, but fortunately, the difficulty curve has remained the same even with new plants and animals, which was good news to everyone. The report finally looked like it was about to end, but then she brought up a completely different report that we received yesterday, which made me sigh once again. "We have another request to build an airship port," she started, but I cut her off.

"Just reject it like the last three ones; we simply don't have the capital to do something like that." She didn’t look convinced. "But Sir, I’m afraid that excuse won't work this time." Those words she spoke made me fully concentrate on what she was about to say next.

"Last time, the request was made by four Dukes, and we believe it's because they want to bring a large amount of their troops here to be trained in the dungeon. This time, however, there were 8 Dukes, and they have all raised enough capital which they are willing to send here so we could build a proper airship port."

Almost everyone cursed at that news. I ran all the possibilities I could think of, but there was literally nothing we could do to reject this request and not insult 8 Dukes at the same time. I looked in sadness as the Guild master left because he didn't need to be here for what was about to be a multi-day meeting about how we were going to build this thing. This would be the largest project ever for this town and would also need a lot of high-end resources that will need to be shipped here. I could already feel my headache starting.

POV Dungeon Core

It took a while, but I was finally finished with expanding my 13th floor. It was once again stupidly big, the length being about 3700 kilometres and the width being about 2000. That was thanks to me keeping the height at 500 metres once again.

I did contemplate if I wanted to change the oval shape of the floor, but I liked it, so I’m probably going to keep it. I already had done quite a lot of dungeon rooms, and this time I’m planning on making more secret areas as they seem to be quite the hit up above.

This time, for the terrain, I was going to create a lot of different ones: from a regular forest to swamplands. There was also going to be a desert and a forever cold area as well. I could do something fancy and section these places off with mountains so I wouldn’t have to use so much mana to keep the different areas at the right temperature, humidity, and whatever else I needed.

But I was just going to use dungeon rules. These were going to cost a lot in upkeep but would make the interactions between the different species of bugs a lot more interesting. And I already had a stupid amount of regeneration I needed to channel somewhere.

Digging out the upper area of the floor always took a lot of time, and this time was no different. I made an extensive cave network down below. For the vegetation, I used everything I had, and for the more extreme areas, I needed to forcefully keep them alive until they evolved enough to survive on their own.

All of this took years, but I never stopped making dungeon rooms or observing what else was happening on my floor. But now, it was finally time to start introducing bugs to this floor, and I couldn’t wait to see how they would evolve.

But before I started, there was just one thing I needed to do. I made another dungeon rule to change the percentage of oxygen to be 40%. This way, they should be able to evolve to be a lot bigger, and perhaps I might actually get some more creatures for my dungeon rooms. It was going to be a fun time watching what was going to happen.