Chapter 10 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

POV Ace

The dungeon was simple, even with the changes. Being an iron rank made this delve incredibly easy. When I finally saw the boss, I was impressed. I readied myself and rushed in, which almost cost me my life. As soon as the boss noticed me, the three-legged stool that it was sitting on was used as a throwing weapon that would have definitely hit my head if I hadn’t dived down. Luckily, I was fast enough to get back up and defend myself against the two spear wielders.

I finished them off quickly, even with the improved spear. All that was left was the butcher. While it was fat, it was deceptively fast. I also learned that I shouldn’t block that cleaver with my sword. The cleaver was meant to chop through bone and this one definitely damaged my blade. After a quick change of tactics and changing my weapon to my war pick, I started to overwhelm the boss and soon disarmed him from his weapon.

Confident of my win, I almost took a hit to the stomach as apparently, the boss had a backup weapon. Not wanting to make another mistake, I finished the boss off. When it only dropped a few copper coins, I was worried. While the dungeon didn't disappoint with the fight, it once again left a lot to be desired with the drop.

I looked further in to find the gateway in a hallway, but it did seem that the dungeon might turn this into a proper room. After that came a stairway that was quite long, but it was usual for this dungeon. There was a hint of a room being made, but it would still take a while. Using the gateway to exit was so simple. I was quite thankful that it finally had one.

The next few weeks brought surprise after surprise. When the 6th floor's first room was done, we found out that mountain lions were the next animals. But an even bigger change was the drops were fixed, well not entirely, but they were a lot better now.

The boss now dropped silver and the best pieces of meat, which was interesting but also nice. The even better news was that every animal now had a small chance of dropping other things than meat, which still seems to be at 100%, and I was kind of grateful for that.

The dungeon still wasn't going to become an adventure magnet, but the population should start to grow larger thanks to the better drops and the promise that it would continue to grow. Hopefully, whatever stopped its expansion for so long didn't happen again. There are so many dungeons out there that hit their limit for growth, and I just had to hope that this dungeon isn't going to hit that limit anytime soon.

POV Dungeon Core

I was feeling quite frustrated. With my breakthrough, there was a lot of new information, even entire books full of magic theory and everything else imaginable, probably collected over hundreds of years by my parent. It was nice to have the information. The problem was I can’t understand or make anything that's in these books. For example, there is a magic circle that can be used to summon monsters. There are steps written in it that need to be done, but I just couldn’t understand.

It took me a while to figure out why I can’t understand. It was because I am not good at creating something new. I am perfect at learning what I can observe and recreating it, even modifying it, but doing something and learning something that I can’t see actually being done is impossible. This made me angry and sad.

It took me quite a while, while I continued to observe the delvers and my ants, before I came to an understanding. Everyone must accept their limitations and learn to work around them. I know my limitation: I can’t learn theory, I need to learn practically. But for that, I need someone to practically do something.

One possibility is to use the delvers. I can make different kinds of traps, perhaps design those traps so delvers would need to solve them by doing the things that I want to learn. It would be time-consuming and if I do something too weird, it could get troublesome.

I had enough time to think, so I continued to carve out the new rooms. Currently, I have decided not to make an ant room on the sixth floor as the current overpopulation is making the empires innovate, which is interesting to watch.

They are even teaching the new generations what they have discovered how to do, like farming and how best to use their water network. Even the champions are teaching the new generations what they have learned. There are even ants that could use some forms of magic, but it was really primitive, still fun to watch.

Wait. I am stupid. There are empires of thinking creatures that could learn the information from the books that I have and possibly even add to that knowledge. But more importantly, perhaps they could do some of the things so I could learn how to do it myself. I almost started to give knowledge to the ants but I stopped myself. There is a better way, well perhaps not a better way in the short term but in the long term, it should pay off better.

My memories indicate something called an Academy that teaches knowledge. What if I created something like that for the ants and made a library full of the book knowledge that I have so they could learn it themselves. This way they could fill the missing gaps when they learn stuff themselves and I am quite sure that I have a lot of missing gaps. But how to make books that ants can read. They communicate through clicks and vibration, but their main mode of communication is pheromones.

Could I make some sort of a book library that would use those pheromones to describe the book and what’s written in it? If I tried to do it before the ants evolved the answer would be no but right now it is certainly possible for them to understand, although I think it would cost a lot of upkeep, but that cost will be minuscule compared to the possible gain. Then there’s the problem of what ant language I will choose as there are hundreds but objectively looking at it there is only one good option.

While any of the languages that the eight major powers use would be acceptable, one language is the one that is spoken the most. It originates from one of the first ant cultures and one of the cultures that has been incredibly successful. Three of the major powers originate from it and they all speak the same language. One of those major powers is the most powerful trade power amongst empires so this language is used by many.

My choice made, I started to design The Academy and the library. Actually making it work took a lot longer than I expected, so long that I was over halfway done with the dungeon rooms for the 6th floor. One of the things that I changed was that I made an archway at the end of every floor but none of them could be used to get back down, you could just go up with them, except for the 5th floor gateway which you could still use to come down.

For the Academy, I was using the 4th floor as that was the most central by population. I needed to displace a few colonies but they were compensated with plenty of honey. When I finally announced what I had built and what it meant for them, plenty of empires planned to go to war to acquire this resource. I needed to announce that no war was to be held over this place and no fighting could take place near it. They would need to politically figure out how to use it.

All empires quite quickly agreed to send some of their smartest ants there while they continued to discuss how the academy can be run. When they received information back about what and how useful that academy could actually be, the discussions got heated and it would have gone to war again if it wasn't for my warnings. Eventually, they decided that every empire can send ants there based on their population and standing.

While some of the ants would stay there for their entire lives learning, some ants would be there to teach those learnings and then there are the ants that would be learning from the teachers who would go back to the empires and try to apply those learnings. It was a decent enough of a system but it will take a while before they truly start learning things.

Time went by fast and even before I was done carving out the 6th floor rooms, I was close to reaching my breakthrough. Luckily, I didn’t actually have to trigger it if I didn’t want to and while my instincts would like me to advance, they also wanted to keep me safe and that would be hard if I was advancing too fast, so it was staying quiet which was good news.