Chapter 100 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

It took two weeks, a little bit longer than I was expecting, before the news of the two big changes was announced. The tattoo information went out all around the world, but I had no idea how they were reacting to that.

Here, people were having mixed opinions. A lot of people just saw this as the more fortunate ones with bigger mana pools getting even stronger, while the weaker adventurers were now even further behind.

The portion that was excited about this news were the people wanting to dive into this new field and figure out how it worked and what could be done with it.

I was quite certain that this topic would have dominated the conversation between adventurers for months to come if it wasn’t for the second announcement. But this one was just done here and would only change how the Adventurers Guild operated in the Eternal City State.

Almost immediately, I could see how almost all of the conversations changed and how the information spread like wildfire. There was about an hour between these two pieces of news, so I also waited an hour, enjoying the madness of how every shadow guild was having emergency meetings to determine their way forward.

Every one of those conversations stopped when they felt the tremble of me entering my breakthrough and simultaneously opening up the 19th-floor dungeon rooms.

Some creative curse words were thrown out, but unfortunately, I was soon sucked into my breakthrough.

Collecting all the mana needed and pushing myself to the limit was ridiculously easy. I wondered how far down I could make it if I continued to break through using the mana reserve I had gathered.

Making the floor guardian was incredibly simple, as I just made a copy of the floor guardian room above. The only difference being, this time I used the other twin Mountain Lion. They were basically the same, but they did have a few differences, the biggest being the skills that they used.

Their skills complemented one another. And while they were still fearsome alone, they were on another level together. I even knew their talents as they had broken through, but I still couldn’t add any talents to my patterns.

Then came the skill selection. I upgraded two skills Dungeon Rules’ rank B+ and Outer Vision Rank E. Both of them ranked up. This would mean that I would once again need to refresh all my dungeon rules.

It also meant I could see better outside my territory. Hopefully, eventually, I will get closer to the vision I have inside my dungeon because looking outside still gives me a weird feeling.

When I came out of my breakthrough, I was immediately bombarded with emergency notifications. It seems that the part of me that runs my dungeon when I’m going through a breakthrough ran into some trouble.

I looked through the memory of the emergency and saw a dungeon fairy appearing on my core floor. It had wanted to appear inside my core room, but it seems that everything was working as intended.

It looked around, incredibly confused, but then entered the water. It had a determined look in its eyes that didn't last long, as the waters were not a safe place for anyone.

I was amazed at how easily it could traverse in water, but when the fish started to attack, its further progress stopped, and all it could do was defend itself. When one of the fish got one of its wings and ripped it off, it seemed that it decided it had enough and tried to teleport out.

If I had a face, I would be smiling wildly. It couldn’t get out, thanks to another dungeon rule. There was panic in its eyes, and it tried to make its way back, but it couldn't. There was no trace of the fairy left, every piece eaten by the fish. This made me feel incredibly satisfied and happy. Serves those bastards right. Other than that, it seems that everything else was working as intended.

It also seems that the adventurers were still acting in panic. They could now act openly with their shadow guilds, but they didn’t have the time needed to figure out how they were going to operate. They still need to rush into the 19th-floor dungeon rooms so they can claim new territory and, more importantly, gain access to more raid rooms.

I got more comfortable while getting familiar with my increased power. During this time, I did enjoy watching how the adventurers operated.

It only took three days for a relatively new shadow guild to be the first to notice the similarities between the 18th and 19th floors. While they weren’t exactly similar, it was close enough that you could predict where raid rooms would be located.

Their strategy was to rush those raid rooms but not claim territory, simply clear them and leave them with a cooldown. I’m also guessing that they are searching for a good territory that they can defend and that would have access to multiple raids. It was a good strategy, in my opinion.

In all honesty, I already should have started to work on the 20th floor, but I was a bit hesitant. The reason was that I was considering changing how I did things, at least for this floor.

I, of course, had good excuses: so many interesting things were happening in my dungeon, and it was ever so exciting to see how strong creatures would act when I transported them to the 19th-floor playroom.

More and more creatures found themselves there, but not enough to currently worry about overpopulation. It should take a while before that becomes a problem. This was also the reason why I think I could change how I did things.

The original plan for the 20th-floor playroom was to make an even stronger version of the 19th-floor playroom. However, there was no hurry. I could change it and make it into an ant floor, but I was planning to do that with the 21st-floor playroom.

If I waited, I could use my increased strength to make the 20th-floor playroom even better. With that final thought, it was decided. I wasn’t going to make a 20th-floor playroom just yet. I was going to put all my focus on making and finishing the 20th-floor dungeon rooms, which I will need to make 100,000 of.

Then I will break through without doing anything else, and get whatever trait I’m going to get, and also get a lot stronger by doing so, as this breakthrough would also be a qualitative change like with my creatures and adventurers when they reached the gold rank.

POV Carl

Anna looked at me quite angrily. I didn’t like that look, but I wasn’t going to explain myself or even apologize. I had just finished my fight with the 19th-floor guardian, and it was a tough bastard.

The way it moved was really similar to the 18th-floor guardian, and at first, I was kind of disappointed, but people said to be wary, so I was. Which was a good thing. It was so similar, yet not, that if I wasn’t paying attention, it might have actually gotten me.

When I adjusted, the fight was a bit easier. It still managed to get its claws into my left arm, damaging the armor I was wearing and leaving a nasty wound behind. That attack cost it its life, and the healing potion had already ended the bleeding.

The wound, however, would have taken another half hour to heal completely, but since I was done for now with the 19th floor, I wanted to return to our home base and my favorite new bar that I was finally able to convince everyone we needed to build.

Unfortunately, Anna was here, and as soon as she saw the wound, I knew there would be trouble. None of my friends liked that I went and fought alone, but I enjoyed the challenge, and I felt it helped me hone my combat ability.

It took me a year and a half to finish the 19th floor after its unfortunate opening date. It must have done that on purpose, I was certain of it, but many thought I was mad.

“Two more shots for me and Anna,” I said to the bartender, which got me an even worse glare. How was she able to make it even worse? “Whatever you’re doing, it's a talent you should teach others,” I said to her, which cracked her menacing image just a little as she couldn’t keep one corner of her mouth from slightly smiling.

My attention, however, was taken off her when I heard the bartender talking to another group of our friends.

“I know that we can't trust every single piece of information, and that’s why I went and verified it. There are quite a few rooms that I can confirm are basically identical between the 19th and 18th floors, the only difference being the creatures inside. Those rooms also break the conventional hardness of the area they are in, usually making those rooms easier than normal. There's definitely something weird going on.”

Those words made me think back, and while it’s been a while since I’ve run the 18th floor, I could finally put my finger on why some of the rooms felt weird. "Do you have the list of rooms that others claim to be like that?" I asked the speaker, who pushed a stack of papers on the bar counter towards me. "Here, take a look, there are so many of them."

Anna gave me a weird look, but I ignored her. I quickly flipped through the papers, luckily they seemed to be sorted into regions. I quickly found a region called the Amber Road. It was one of the regions I traveled on my last run.

One of the reasons I was able to get through it so fast was because it was so familiar to the Black Rock region of the 18th floor. I hadn’t even visited half of the rooms listed there, but the descriptions they had matched the suspected corresponding rooms on the 18th floor.

"Fuck me, they actually match. Okay, there's something really weird going on, and it would be a good idea if we figure this out before the 20th floor opens up." As soon as I finished saying that, our emergency tokens went off.

Something really big had happened, and we all looked towards the barman, who was taking out a device. The words on the device were quite clear: "20th floor is open."

"It must be doing that on purpose," but no one listened to me as we were all finishing our drinks or meals, as it seemed that we would not be able to rest for a while.