Chapter 77 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

I was having some difficulty deciding on what dimensions I should be expanding on the 18th floor. I mainly wanted a desert environment with oases all around, but did I also want mountains? Mountains would be a good way to connect to the underground tunnels because I couldn’t make loose sand.

Well, actually, I think I could if I used dungeon rules. I will definitely make a few underground caverns like that; mostly, I would still want to make them into solid rock, but they would just look like every other cavern.

This was getting critical. I really needed to start choosing the size of the floor because if I’m not going to make mountains, then I should lower the height, even with the caverns I wanted to make. That way, I wouldn’t waste so much space with empty air.

I started to go through the books I have on different environments. Unfortunately, the bug guy was still in the dungeon getting stronger. He has given me reports that he plans on going to a different continent to get some more exotic bugs, and one of those destinations has a large desert. So, I would get a lot more information from him, but that will take a while.

I could, of course, change my plans. Maybe not make a desert floor and perhaps wait for more information. The information I currently have seems to be only the basics, but there was a mention of sandstone and it not being a very strong stone.

The description in the book was weird, and sometimes reading it kind of felt like listening to someone who wasn’t all there. Should have figured it out before now that even if something’s in a book, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to have correct information.

What about the memories from my parent? It was unfortunate that the memories were chopped up, and the only clear ones were the ones with important information on how to actually be a dungeon. Then I found it.

Similar to the inherited creature patterns, there were patterns for plants and different kinds of minerals and rocks as well. The reason I hadn’t found them before was because they were deemed not that important, and I guess I could agree with that, but this would certainly be helpful.

About 5 minutes later, I had to disagree with myself; this was not helpful. Literally every pattern from my parent I already knew, so there was no help here. So, a change of plans. Let’s lower the height to 750 metres. Or will that be too small?

Let's do 800. 400 for both above-ground and underground. Caverns will be rock with a small mountain, or perhaps a hill would be a better word. This time I will not connect all the caverns because I think that would give more chances for different creatures and plants to thrive.

The area would be quite a lot larger; this would be my widest floor. Also, need to be careful with water; too much and it would no longer be a desert floor. Now that I had a more certain plan, I felt quite good, but there was still a lot of expanding left to do.

It felt quite satisfying to make myself larger, even if I was just making my inside larger and not my outside. Claiming outside territory, now that was even more exciting.

I felt upwards and I could still vaguely sense the dead dungeon cores, but they were now quite the distance away from my territory. Apparently, Ace owned a larger area than I originally believed. I kind of wanted to expand my territory; it would be so awesome to see what's happening outside my territory.

I wonder what it would feel like, but I knew that I couldn’t do it. The only times dungeons had done that in the past, someone was controlling the cores, trying to conquer the land around them using the dungeon's strength.

No, I was already doing a lot of questionable things, and that would be pushing it too hard. Still, I could learn so much. Perhaps a skill could fix this issue. I know plenty of adventurers who have skills that allow them to see further; even ants have some specific skills that improve their vision and even give them completely different ways of seeing. I should also be able to do that; it would be quite fun to see what's happening up above.

That being said, this shouldn’t be a priority because I have plenty of things to look at inside my dungeon. For example, Carl just got back to their special hideout after finishing a raid room with the Runners Guild.

What was weird was that he was reading books, not the ones that taught him to read, but the books I put in for the atmosphere of the boss room. Wait, what books did I put there again? Oops. Well, that's not good.

One of the books there was written by an orc. Most of them were just stories that I translated into their language and then added to the bookshelf, but there were actual books used by the shamans for their experiments, especially how to use mana runes to enhance the orcs' bodies.

It seems like Carl is quite interested in that. Hopefully, he doesn't try to use those instructions because I have no idea if humans could even handle them. Well, I guess we will see what will happen.

In the ant nations, there was trouble once again, and it looked like a larger war was going to happen, not anytime soon, but it was going to happen. Currently, diplomacy was winning, and even if war was going to happen, it was going to have a lot of rules and probably a restricted area in where it would happen.

It would be a lot bigger than the smaller-scale wars under these restrictions that have happened in ever-expanding numbers. The ants can be quite prideful, and usually, their first instinct is to attack. Fortunately, they are smarter now and can control their instincts better.

The biggest problem currently is actually the orcs. Even with the expanded floor, it's just not big enough. I guess I know what the 19th-floor playroom is going to be, and of course, the 20th-floor playroom, which I’m going to use as an end destination for quite a few quests. So many plans, so little time. This was just all so wonderful. Why did I want to look outside? Do I really need to when there's so much going on?

Obviously, the answer was yes, because with every floor, I am capable of doing more things at once, looking at more things at once. That meant I needed more things to look at. I wondered if there was a skill that I could get where I could accelerate time inside a certain room, or perhaps even a whole playroom.

Creatures took time to grow, especially larger ones. There were even now monsters I have introduced into playrooms who were still alive, and while they acted sort of like real animals because I told them, they weren’t. Only the smaller and faster breeders had multiple generations.

Some of the floors will take quite a while before they are filled up. One of the densest floors is the Caves, but that’s because most of it is filled with fast-breeding creatures. Another problem is that for some reason, the offspring amount lowers when creatures start to get more intelligent.

It's super weird, and the perfect example are the ants. Now, they can breed fast if they want to, and sometimes when they’re expanding a colony they do, but otherwise, they are laying eggs at a fraction of what they are capable of laying.

Unfortunately, I had to admit I just don’t have the information to understand what's happening. Well, we will see what will happen in the future, and I guess it’s going to be better not to have a lot of weak creatures, but instead have fewer but stronger creatures.

That being said, the amount of creatures living inside of me is actually insane. The number one species, of course, being the different ants, with the 12th floor the most populous, but close after that is the 16th floor. The caves truly are dangerous and filled with a lot of bugs.