Chapter 7 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

POV Ace

It was just a simple cave entrance, but it was so obviously a dungeon. My own dungeon. When that realization hit me, I fell to my knees. This will start everything. It will now be so much easier to get people to come to this village as adventurers always meant profit, which meant regular villagers will also come. It was also a chance for me to keep advancing as the trip itself already cost me my extra lifespan I have gotten from my current advancement.

It would be weird to dive into a dungeon that I didn’t know everything about, but I readied myself as best as possible and entered. My torch lit the way in where I found a singular horned rabbit. It charged me immediately, but I just killed it with one strike. My war pick made quick work of it. I especially like this weapon because it could pierce quite deep, but I could also use the other end as a blunt weapon. This weapon saved me countless times during my journey here.

It dropped a piece of meat. That was unlucky and weird as it didn't have anything to protect it from getting dirty. The first floor was incredibly easy, having five normal rooms and the floor guardian room. That was a low amount which was unfortunate, but even more unfortunate was that none of the monsters had dropped anything besides meat. Was I just that unlucky or was there something wrong?

The next floor was foxes and nothing else. This floor had eight rooms which was worryingly low, but the thing that scared me the most was that nothing else had dropped but meat, not even a single piece of copper.

Only adventurers around this area would come if the only thing this dungeon dropped was meat. The third floor was a bit more interesting. The floor was still only wood rank, but I did need to start using some of my mana skills so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed and so that I could actually do damage to the floor guardian.

I didn’t think about the drops and the third floor only had 12 rooms. The next floor had wolves and while the disappointing drops remained, the fighting at least got interesting. By the end of the floor, I was actually sweating.

This floor only had 18 rooms for a fourth floor, that was low, but at least the monsters were something of a challenge and the floor guardian proved to be quite cunning. It was able to get a proper bite on me, but nothing a healing potion couldn’t fix.

The next floor was goblins which was quite standard. They only had stone weapons and when I killed the first goblin, thinking that it would drop a piece of meat, but it didn't drop anything. I hadn’t expected to be even more disappointed. That disappointment ended two rooms in when the goblin that I killed actually dropped a copper coin. When I looked at the design, it seemed to be an older coin from about 100 years ago, but a coin is a coin.

A few rooms further in I was surprised when a stone hit my helmet. A slingshot, that was unique. The fighting here was also good and excellent training. The later rooms really pushed me but I could already see the pattern, there wasn't going to be many more rooms. For the last two rooms, I had to use healing potions as the amount of goblins proved to be problematic. But in the end, I won, but I could already see the glow from the next room.

This was going to be the end of my dungeon. Just five floors. It was deeper than I expected. The core itself was high in the center of the room and getting there would be quite troublesome and it even had defensive protections which made me smile. At least I didn’t have to worry about any thieves stealing the dungeon core. Unfortunately, the 5th floor wasn’t finished so I needed to walk back up.

Outside the dungeon, I prepared myself to wait for the time it would take for the monsters to respawn. In doing so, I thought about the dungeon. I only got enough coppers for a decent meal in an average inn. It would bring few adventurers, but at least it did drop some coin. The item drops were interesting. Every monster besides the goblins dropped a piece of meat every time. While they got dirty from the floor, that could be fixed with just a bit of water.

Normal dungeons didn’t drop meat and when they did, it was rare. This dungeon could not be called normal, it was quite odd. There was a possibility to set up an industry using the meat drops, perhaps making rations, but I wasn’t too familiar with that industry. There was only one strong benefit to this dungeon. The fights were challenging but not overwhelming, which was perfect for training. Another benefit was that this dungeon was copper rank.

The first three floors were wood rank, but the last two were definitely copper, which would mean that I would be able to get to the iron rank with my own dungeon. Hopefully, this dungeon will keep advancing.

After almost four hours, I needed to put another negative to this dungeon. Usually, dungeon monsters respawn around three hours, but here it was almost four. That was unfortunate, but I could only use what I have access to. It was time to go back to the town and get everything needed to set up.

POV Dungeon Core

The fourth age of exploration and expansion was coming to an end, and I already knew what I would call the next age. There was a moment I wanted to reduce the number of ant floors on my 5th floor, but they were just too exciting to look at, and I wanted to see what more space would do to the changes their society was going through. This unfortunately lowered my mana regeneration quite a lot.

I was still making positive mana, but the next breakthrough would take quite a while. The number of ants were the main reason why this breakthrough would take so long, another reason was the amount of mana I needed for this breakthrough. It seems that the 5th floor is a milestone of sorts. I even found out that I wouldn’t have a floor guardian here but a boss monster, which was supposed to be even stronger than a floor guardian.

With the ant density I predicted, it will take me about 20 to 30 years to accumulate enough mana for my breakthrough. That was a lot longer than I have been alive, but my instincts didn't indicate that anything was wrong. Probably because I could live forever. Now that I found that out for certain, I was quite excited as I could just keep observing my ants.

While I was deliberating if I should announce the next age, I was interrupted by another delver, but this time it was a new creature. It took me a little longer to figure it out, but this was a proper delver, at least that's what my inherited memories told me. Gaining information about this creature was difficult, but when it reached the third floor, I finally knew that it was called a human.

While it was interesting to see it fight, my ants were more exciting, so I only used some of my attention on it. This human was quite strong, the strongest delver I’ve ever had in my dungeon, and he was the first one to reach my core room, which was exciting and scary.

It didn’t do anything, it just looked at the core room for a little bit and then exited my dungeon. It kept interrupting me as it constantly checked the first room, probably to see when my horned rabbit would respawn.

I had pushed the time back as much as possible long ago when a wolf pack was constantly delving into me. If I wanted to, I could decrease the time to about 2.5 hours, but constantly respawning takes mana and the longer I wait, the less it takes, which is nice. When the human finally stopped, he didn’t killed the horned rabbit in the first room, I decided that I liked him. But this was also a perfect opportunity to finally declare the next age.

The age of empires had arrived. It happened slowly. Before, when a colony was conquered, everyone was killed, but then over time some of the ants were left alive. Eventually, the colonies were no longer conquered but occupied and forced to work for the stronger colony. Now there are colonies which consist of multiple species and have different cultures in them. Everything has gotten a lot more complicated, which is exciting.

There are many different ways colonies are being ruled, the most common being royalty, but there are some where leaders are elected by a common vote, which is quite novel in my opinion. There are many different ant languages, different colonies value different things, and overall it's a complicated system where even trade routes have been established. The most valuable commodity are apples. The ants that control an apple tree are amongst the most powerful.

One of the major powers fell during the previous age, but another one was able to take its place. So currently there are still only seven major powers, but there are 48 minor powers who have colonies spanning four full floors, which is still quite impressive. There are even more lesser powers, but usual, they are under the influence of stronger powers. Just now another queen was assassinated. It looks like another big war is about to happen.

The design of ant colonies has also changed a lot. They are now a lot more defendable, every one being a fortress that requires attackers to have a big numbers advantage. This has slowed down fighting quite a lot, but I am interested to see how everything develops.