Chapter 85 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Now I had a choice to make. It should have been a difficult choice, as I wanted to stay low-key, so to speak. Advancing too fast might be problematic, but my labyrinth was done, and the Cave playroom continued to produce such deadly substances that they made me shiver.

While there were a lot of those bugs and creatures inside the library now, just living their lives waiting to attack anyone who made it that far, I also decided to make terrible traps as well.

One of my favorites was to take those substances that could kill my core floor guardians in just moments, fill them with even more mana, make them more dangerous, and then use them in traps that spray them.

I made them so that anyone could breathe them in, and even made it so touching walls could mean your death. I also decided to make even more dungeon rules, as I had so much more mana generation to spend.

Those rules flipped gravity, some made it a lot stronger. There are now large areas where there is no air. Of course, the never-ending darkness that was already there. One of my favorite was dungeon rules and traps put together.

The air blades are so sharp and strong that they could even damage my dungeon stone, and they can move pretty fast if the trap is triggered. Of course, a good mana sink remains that dungeon stone, which I was constantly reinforce with additional mana. I will make sure that my core floor will not be able to be damaged by anyone.

Gathering enough mana for a breakthrough was simple; I just needed to wait about half a day before I was so full I thought I would break at any moment. Of course, when I triggered the breakthrough, it felt so good.

This time I already knew what floor guardian I wanted to use. It was going to be one of the core floor guardian Mountain Lion twins. The 19th floor will have the other one, and the 20th will feature both of them.

Mimicking a lot of other rooms where the strong pairs of creatures would be separated for the 18th and 19th floor and then come together for the 20th, posing extreme danger to anyone willing to push through them.

Of course, I need to lower the difficulty and make it adjustable for the different number of challengers for the floor guardian. The room itself will be a simple mix of mountain and forest, but I think I will make it snowy to make it a bit different. When that was done, it was time to move on to the skill part of the breakthrough, and here I would need to hope that I could get this correct.

I, of course, want to go for the skill that would allow me to see beyond my territory, but I’ve also noticed how I’m holding my creatures back that are trying to advance in my playrooms. It looks like they can push to a rank further than my current one, so none of them have reached the gold rank or even gotten close to it.

They are slowly getting there, but it's very hard for them to continue advancing. But I would like them to, so the second skill I will be trying to get would be to fix that problem so they could continue to grow even if I had been holding them back.

Making skills is not an exact science; that is why a lot of the time, the skill patterns are stored in crystals. The ants had many that they used for this purpose, and if I understand it correctly, the Adventurers' Guild had a huge one at their headquarters in the city above me.

If you didn't use those patterns as a guide, the skill you might get might not be the one you were after. You need to be really careful and really clear in your mind about the skill that you wanted to make, and if you try to reach too far, it might backfire quite badly.

That’s why, when I was thinking of the skills and making it clear what I wanted. I didn’t push for a skill that I could use to see thousands of kilometres outside of my territory. I focused on a smaller distance but a clearer picture and without leaving any trace that I could see outside of me.

For the creatures, I focused on that I wouldn’t be able to use the skill to push the creatures beyond myself, but only that the creatures could themselves continue to advance, and even then, not endlessly, only that they could push further than I was able to allow them currently.

When I came out of the breakthrough, it seemed that 6 days had passed, but everything had worked as it should. I was once again bigger and reveled in the better control I now had. I opened up the 18th-floor dungeon rooms and for a few days just enjoyed the mayhem I caused.

No one had expected me to finish the rooms so fast. Many were even preoccupied with the exploration of the 17th-floor dungeon rooms, but I didn’t care. I suspected that if things continued as they currently are, it would take a special effort from a group of people or some really special individuals to continue exploring all of me.

I looked inside of me to see the two new skills: Outer Vision Rank E and Creature Advancement Rank E. They felt like powerful skills, one having an immediate effect as I saw many creatures hover at their absolute limit but just couldn't get to the next stage of their current ranks and immediately broke through.

It made me feel happy, but they could have done that anyway after a few more days when my entire dungeon would be inundated with the mana of my current rank. It felt quite amazing to see them advance so quickly, and they will continue to do so.

Then I tried to use the other skill, but everything was quite hazy. It seemed that I needed to practice a bit to get used to this properly. But just being able to see the sun, the real sun, was a surreal experience. So that’s what it really looks like. I couldn’t wait for the night so I could actually see what stars really look like instead of using illustrations from books to mimic what the night sky should look like.

Wait, why could I see the sun and the sky properly but not the city? Then I realized I was trying to look at the city outside my territory like I would try to look at things inside my territory. This skill was amazing, but if I’m understanding it correctly, it only allows me to have the vision of a normal creature, something closer to the adventurers than my own that could look so closely at things. After a little adjustment, everything was a lot clearer.

Just outside of my cave entrance, which seemed quite unassuming and small, I realized I might need to fix that. It was hard to see how many people there actually were. That will be hard to get used to, as I can’t just understand everything I can see.

Inside my dungeon, I wouldn’t have any problems understanding how many blades of grass there were in a certain area; outside my dungeon, it seems that I could only make an educated guess.

The city itself was a lot bigger than I expected, and there must be at least 30,000 people living here. So many of the streets were filled with people going to one place or another, or trying to buy or sell things, a lot of them drops from killing my monsters.

It also looks like they are building walls around the city, which are quite near to completion. Of course, it helps that one side of the city is protected by the mountain, but it also looks like they have done quite a lot of work on the mountain itself so armies couldn’t use it to get to the city. Were they preparing for a war?

I had seen how ants prepare, and it kinda looked like that. That was less than pleasant. No matter how annoying Ace was, he seems to be holding up his end of the contract, although I now could see the market district for animals, and there were some that I didn’t have, actually more than some.

Of course, then I was reminded that I only had one entrance. Perhaps I should talk to him and make an entrance to that market district so they would have an easier time getting creatures inside of me, and I could also make a specific area so I could capture their patterns without any problem.

There wasn't that much of a hurry for that because I already had plans for this playroom and probably the next two as well. At the start, they won't be filled with creatures, but eventually, when more and more creatures get to a certain strength level, they would be moved there.

So, I guess it’s time to start expanding the 19th floor and see how much space I have to work with. So much to do, yet I loved every moment.