Chapter 11 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Carving out the 6th floor playroom was coming to an end. I wasn’t planning on making this accessible to the ants. The population density they were currently tackling was good for their empires, so from now on, until there’s a better designation for the room, it will be called my playroom. I will be playing in it and testing new things, so I think the name fits.

My next goal was to make more apple trees. They seemed to be quite excellent for mana generation and gave me a chance to test out another bug species that I had access to, called bees. They seemed to be the ones responsible for honey, and I honestly just wanted to see the process. It will be fascinating to see how they take something that is seemingly almost worthless and make it into a highly sought-after resource.

My musings were interrupted by a sharp pain that seemed to be getting worse and worse. It was hard to think straight, but my instincts seemed to be helping, and started to make things on the 6th floor that seemed to alleviate the pain a bit, but it was still there. At least I could now think a bit. Making stuff requires mana. So, is there something wrong with my mana?

Nothing jumped out. It wasn't corrupted, there was just a lot of it. Of course, I guess I was wrong. You do have to trigger a breakthrough. You can’t just endlessly collect mana. This is a problem. I think breaking through is a bad idea, but I can certainly get rid of mana better than my instinct can. I didn’t have to search for it as I already had a possible choice. While testing with copper coins and silver coins, I also tried to make gold coins, but they required a lot of mana.

The few gold coins that I made already helped a lot, but I wasn’t comfortable with just being on the edge. I started to grow pure gold throughout the lands the ants were currently occupying, and that quickly dropped my mana towards my breakthrough amount. With room to breathe, I calmed myself down and started to run a few calculations.

If I kept making gold, I would start to approach ant habitation even before my planned breakthrough. This was unacceptable. I could use my 6th floor, but this wasn’t a solution. If I wanted to use the 6th floor, I would need to reclaim this gold, and that would just make the same problem. I remember that when I wanted to try to push my territory limit outwards, and that took a lot of mana, but doing so felt uncomfortable.

The current 6th floor in the physical world was a bit bigger than my third floor, but because of the space-stacking effect, it was about 40% larger than my fifth floor. When I started to make the 6th floor bigger, it did feel uncomfortable, but it consumed a lot of mana. A better solution was actually easier than I imagined. Just a single test of expanding not the physical size but the space size fixed all the problems I had. It didn't feel uncomfortable and still consumed a lot of mana.

Feeling quite proud about my solution, I dedicated a few portions of my mind to constantly expanding the 6th floor while I finished digging it out. The room was big enough that the trees should have plenty of room to grow without the dungeon rooms causing any problems. With the dungeon rooms themselves, I also had a decision to make. Do I stop making new ones until I can breakthrough, or do I continue until I breakthrough?

I had time to decide, so I started to work on the 6th floor playroom. First, I needed to add plenty of dirt as trees lived as much underground as above ground. Once again, I made a day and night cycle rule, as well as a rule for rain that would happen periodically. Just for variety, I decided to make a few dips in the dirt so decent-sized ponds would naturally occur.

I traded some honey to get some real apple seeds from the ants and planted them as well as some patches of grass. After which, I started to sift through my memories and started planting any plant that might have flowers on them so that the bees could use them for honey.

It was weird that some plants that seemed to have special properties, I could only make in their adult stage, but that was also some good news as that would mean that the bees that I make will have some food.

Currently, I only made 22 queens and a few workers for each. Even with so many queens, the place seemed empty. But eventually, there should be hundreds of them and hundreds of apple trees and other plants that should all give me mana and would be a different kind of interesting to observe. Time went by and it was quite interesting to see how the bees made their homes. Some made them into the dirt while others made them up high.

While the process of making honey turned out to truly be a wonder, enough time had passed that I needed to make a choice. I had the minimum amount of rooms, but in the end, I decided to continue as I wanted the delvers to also have an opportunity to get better.

For that, I started to grow another hallway out of the first room that will have a more difficult challenge for them, and not just by making the creature stronger, but I will also be changing the environment. A warrior should always practice fighting in different situations.

After more calculations, I figured out that if I just sped up my room-making by just a small margin, I would be able to make the same amount of rooms as the regular path, but do it twice over. For the difficult path that I'm currently making, I will make the floor loose dirt and make some more obstacles so fighting will not be so straightforward and larger groups will have more difficulty coordinating. I will not be giving extra rewards as this will just be something to challenge yourself, not try to fight for better rewards especially if you are not ready for it.

I already had some interesting plans for the third path as well but it will take some time before I make it that far and perhaps I will have thought about something else I wanted to do. The final room on the 6th floor currently has 7 mountain lions. That was something that most weren't ready for, but I believed I could see some truly wanting to push themselves to become better when they finished the regular path and not just go through the motions of gaining mana.

It was rare to have such ants as some of these delvers were. I didn’t really understand why would they not try their best to constantly improve if they were already in the dungeon. The ants like that didn't go out and try to cause trouble, they just tried to do as little as possible even while they were being forced into war as an example. Hmm, were some of these delvers being forced to come down here? That was an unpleasant thought and something that I decided I didn’t like.

With these thoughts running through my mind, I had started to observe the different ants a bit more. This helped me discover something weird yet interesting. Some of those lazy ants were really good at innovating but only because then they could do less work. What a wonderfully opposing force. One force was wanting to do less work but other parts were causing that work to be more efficient, meaning you can do more of it.

That occupied a large portion of my mind for a while until I noticed that the first real queen bee had been born. How long had I been distracted? Perhaps I should make a time-keeping device. Unfortunately, I only have descriptions of them and what they can do, and that isn't enough to actually make one. The second path was already over half done, so it must have been three months, perhaps. That feels close enough.

My new path to the final room of the 6th floor was not going over well with the delvers, at least with the large majority, but I didn’t care about the large majority. I cared about the few who wanted to truly get better. Those few were as rare as my ant champions, so they have earned my respect. Time went by and it was time to start the third path which was going to be even more difficult.

For every room, I will add a random type of goblin that will be different every delve. Now one goblin will increase the difficulty but not by much. The real difficulty came from the floor which I made a bit smoother and then covered in one inch of water. This should definitely up the challenge and make it a good training opportunity for any fighter, as keeping your balance is one of the most important things.