Chapter 8 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

The Age of Empires is still going strong. It's been about five years but they are still developing and learning what it means to be an empire. There are now a lot more humans and a few other species that are constantly delving.

I don’t mind because they are actually a net positive in mana which is a good thing because the ant population is troublesome. The empires are more cautious about going to war as two major powers have fallen and three major powers have risen.

This has caused the population increase which is taking me dangerously close to negative mana generation. I’ve actually tipped into negative a few times. Interestingly, during what the humans call autumn, my mana generation picks up quite a lot. I figured this detail out during the winter and I have been now waiting so I could see what is different.

Slowly I could see how my generation is going up but I don’t see what could be different. Ants still fought for territory and for food, there's nothing really that different. Well, there is a lot more movement because their trade routes are fully active because of the apple harvest.

Wait. Is it because of the apples? Finding a possible reason, I picked a random apple and focused on it. The apple itself didn't seem to help but when I decided to observe an ant that was able to eat some apple, I found that its mana upkeep reduced to almost nothing.

I looked at another ant eating an apple and the same thing was happening. Why? I remember back to the very beginning when I was observing the ant colonies who constantly went out not just to fight but to obtain food that they needed to survive.

These ants were born from my dungeon monsters and while they were still my monsters, they were more. They had their own desires and needs. I was the one who had been supplying those needs as mana upkeep but if I were to physically supply those needs, the upkeep should disappear.

I dived into my memories so I could learn everything I needed to. Not only do living creatures require sustenance, they also need to cycle the air. Otherwise, they would suffocate like I would without having access to the outside world.

This allowed me to find another thing I can do, I could set rules for my rooms or even entire floors. The first thing I did was make all my ant rooms have breathable air. While this took mana upkeep, it was a lot less, a stupidly lower amount than what I spent on keeping my ants alive.

When I added the day and night cycle to my ant rooms, it was net neutral for my mana upkeep. If I were to add a lot more apple trees, it would become a huge positive and that’s what I did. I directed my ants for the first time as I taught them how to use the apple seeds that they have gotten to grow new apple trees. This immediately made an apple seed the most valuable commodity amongst the empires.

Now for the rest of their needs, the first thing was water. I didn’t just want to make everything myself, that wouldn’t be so interesting, so instead, I made some water spawners and just let gravity do its job. The amount of water I made the spawners produced wasn’t large as I didn’t want colonies to drown. They had enough time to build dams and divert the forming rivers if needed. It took months for the water system to properly settle down and I constantly had to readjust the water spawners and absorbers.

Now all ant rooms had working water systems, some that even went from one floor to another. My upkeep was already so low that I was gaining mana at a more reasonable time frame but I could still lower it by a lot if I also provided them with enough food for them to live.

Over the course of me learning about their needs, I also found out that I could completely remove my upkeep from them, meaning that they would actually die if they didn't get enough food or other needs.

Currently, the easiest solution was just to add spawners for other bugs that I have collected and let them hunt them. It was an instant success. Most of the war stopped as the empires were exploring new prey and food sources.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that that wasn’t going to work. Ants started to monopolize and fight over certain spawners. I was never going to be able to stop them from doing that, but I could stop them from making defenses around the spawners by making them appear randomly in areas between colonies.

I also added some rare spawners that wouldn't even spawn every cycle. The most prized was the one that produced honey. It didn't make a lot during its lifetime but serious battles were fought over the right to claim it.

To my surprise, some of the ants even started to farm some of the fungus that grew from the spawners. Eventually, the ants started to capture some of the more docile bugs and started to farm them for meat or what the bugs could produce.

It was excited and within a year I was able to completely stop my upkeep on my ants. I was fast approaching my mana requirements for a breakthrough and only a few days were left until I could get another room.

Ant society has changed, having fewer wars now but they still happen. There are also a lot more individual ants what will just travel to different colonies to learn about different cultures and how they do things.

Compared to the delvers who fight in the regular dungeon rooms, the ants are a lot more interesting to watch. The fights that happened between delvers and my monster were usually quite boring because of the repetitiveness.

That was, however, my fault as I could make the fight more interesting by not just having the creatures waiting in the room and only attacking when they saw something. I started to make changes so the rooms weren't so uniform and making more features like a big rock where enemies could hide behind.

I couldn’t believe that it took me so long to figure it out but the delvers were doing the same as my ants, they were fighting to get stronger. They were especially similar to the ants that I called champions who were the backbone of the colonies. They would defend and attack, bringing devastation everywhere they went. This wasn't something easy that they achieved, it was hard work, constant training, and endless battles.

For a while now, I just thought of the delvers as distractions but if they were doing the same, they deserved some respect. I looked back on the memories of the delvers I have. Now I know why my instincts wanted weaker monsters at the front and stronger at the back, it was so that the delvers could train to become stronger.

This made a lot of sense, the only thing that didn’t make sense was that my instincts were also telling me to not let them near my core room and I should continue to make floors so they would eventually not be able to make it there.

In my opinion, if I wanted that, I should make the strongest monsters I could on every floor in every room so they would never reach it. But perhaps I’m missing something and overall I can respect someone wanting to get stronger. I didn’t change the challenge much but they did make my monsters a bit smarter. It also didn't hurt that when delvers died, I received a huge amount of energy.

The delvers were excited about my changes but some were worried and for a good reason as one of them did die because of an ambush made possible with the room features I made. This, however, brought me over the edge and I could finally activate the next breakthrough. This one felt different as soon as I activated it, it felt more substantial, like it changed more. This time I needed to make a boss monster, not a floor guardian, and I chose like I always did.

However, there was a problem. The goblin was just too weak as the boss monster was supposed to be a more significant jump in difficulty. So while lowering the amount of mana I was dedicating to the boss, I also started to modify the goblin pattern. I made it almost as tall as some of the humans but made it fat as well, like it had plenty of food. I drew inspiration from one of the more interesting delvers that I have seen, someone called a butcher.

Apparently, the fact that meat drops so often is a constant complaint amongst the delvers, but they still pick them up. The butcher sometimes accompanies delver teams and teaches them about the different cuts of meat that can drop.

It seems that the butcher is in charge of evaluating how much the meat drops that they get are worth. He also seemed to be quite strong and used his cleaver to deal serious damage whenever he needed to.

So I made the goblin wear a similar leather apron with blood stains and made him a meat cleaver from iron as a main weapon. He also had a smaller iron knife that he would use if he lost his cleaver.

Then I made the boss overall stronger but I was pushing the pattern to its limits. Instead, I had a better idea and pulled back a bit and added two spear goblins with iron-tipped spears as his minions. With that, I was satisfied with the strength of the boss fight and finished my breakthrough.