Chapter 6 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

I was quite excited to make an even bigger room for my ants, so I didn't wait any longer. Once again, I had to divert a lot of mana away from my floor guardian. I followed my current pattern and made a deer for my floor guardian.

I gave it a lot of general improvement but also made the antlers as good as I could. With the third floor officially finished, I started to expand my territory downwards, eventually finding that I was able to expand my territory around 50% more than my third floor.

After surrounding the fourth floor with a thick wall of dungeon stone, I began the process of emptying out the regular stone, but I did find ore that could be processed into iron. Making a note of it, I continued to clear everything out and form the new rooms. The minimum required was 18, so I stuck to that. For the monsters, I chose wolves, with the first room having one and the last having five.

It only took me about eight months to finish the regular dungeon rooms. I kind of felt like I was getting better at doing things after every breakthrough, which, when thinking about it, made sense as 50% of my breakthroughs' mana went into overall improvement of me.

This was also where I figured out my mistake on the third and second. There was too much open space doing absolutely nothing. So, for the second room, I added another a floor in the middle, and for the third floor, I made two new floors, and for the fourth, three more floors.

When I was finished I announced this the third age of expansion and exploration, and this was the biggest to date. With so much new room, colony against colony warfare stopped, and while skirmishes still happened, it would take them a while to colonize everything.

Getting comfortable, I got ready for another long mana accumulation session. This time, I was distracted a few times by invaders, but to me, that wasn't more interesting than watching my ants.

As months went by, a new age arrived for my ants. The second age of alliances. Once again, you needed allies to be able to protect your colonies. While there were hundreds of different colonies, there were seven major ones.

Those were the ones who were able to secure land on all four floors. The first floor became something of a status symbol, and only the seven majors held ground there. But expansion for them was hard as many defensive alliances were formed against them.

My current mana generation was at its peak. The amount of ants was in perfect balance with maintenance, but I could already see that sometimes my mana generation started to go down when there hadn't been a huge war in a while. If the 5th floor doesn't fix this curve, then I might need to be careful so I wouldn't go into negative mana generation, which would mean death.

I would need to wait until I finished the 5th floor for that answer. That wasn't going to take long as I was fast approaching my breakthrough. Only three months have passed since I finished the 4th floor, and I was already over halfway done accumulating the mana I needed.

The next three months went by even faster, but I did notice my ants starting to act a bit different. I could see a few different species and cultures starting to mingle a bit, which was weird because otherwise, they would always be fighting or having a standoff.

Perhaps when the 5th floor is done and they have more room to expand, it would create another change for them. With that thought, I triggered my breakthrough. I was getting quite good at changing my allocation of mana. Thanks to that, I was done quite fast, only taking a few days. The floor guardian was a wolf and got a lot of general upgrades, but I made its teeth and claws especially sharp and strong.

When I started to expand my territory into the 5th floor, I found it to be about 40% bigger than the 4th floor. The length of the 5th floor finally exceeded half a kilometer, and I felt incredibly proud about that. The height was also increased further so that I could easily fit five extra ant floors besides the main one, which was exciting but also a bit scary as I didn't know how much of an impact that would make to my mana regeneration.

I could dig out my territory a lot faster now, so making the minimum 26 rooms was quick, only taking around five months. Digging out the rest of the ant room would take a lot longer as I focused on finishing the 5th floor dungeon rooms as fast as possible so my instincts would stop bothering me.

I was a bit eager in opening up this much space for my ants, and perhaps it would be better if I didn't add so many extra floors, but then again, I can always just remove them later.

For the 5th floor monsters, I didn't know what to use. I did get the bear pattern, and I could use that, but it would be too big of a jump from the wolves. On the other hand, I could use one of the felines I had gotten, called a lynx, but that was too similar to a wolf, and I didn't want to upgrade the pattern so much. Doing so would increase the upkeep quite a lot. I spent a few hours thinking about the problem. Finally, I remembered that I might have a pattern that would fit from my inherited memory.

Looking through it, I found a creature called a goblin. While it was weaker than a wolf, it had the ability to use weapons. Luckily, they didn't seem too good at using them; otherwise, I would have the same problem as the bear. Looking around a bit more, I found a few patterns that would fit them: a stone-tipped spear, a stone dagger, and something called a slingshot.

The first room had one goblin that used a stone dagger. For the next rooms, I gave different weapons and added more and more goblins until I reached the last room where there were six goblins: three that wielded a spear, two that wielded a slingshot, and one with a dagger. With that sorted out, I went back to working on my ant room.

POV Ace

Five years. It took me five years to get close to my land. Yes, I wasn't even there yet. I was in the closest town to my land that was a month away, and the closest village was a week away from the edge of my land. It's been a miserable journey. I was even interrogated by the kingdom's enforcement agency about why I wasn't improving my land. At the start, they were quite intimidating, but in the end, they seemed sympathetic.

At least I was able to get two breakthroughs in my copper rank. I was still two away from achieving the iron rank. Those two breakthroughs didn't come easy. I literally went through everything from a broken wagon wheel to being pressed into battle for different nobles. Luckily, most of the time, I was able to get out of those because technically, I was a noble, but just everything took time. I was even captured for a time by some bandits.

I had two options in front of me: do I use the rest of my inheritance to buy everything I need to start setting up a village that I am required to make, or do I go and scout the land before I risk the rest of my inheritance without knowing what dangers lie ahead? Some part of me didn't want to wait and get this over with, but I couldn't be so reckless. I only took out a small amount of coin so I could resupply and buy some better gear, at least what was available in this small town.

To my disappointment, the dungeons here were low rank, and just a bit too far away from my own land. There was still some excitement as I was finally at the end of my journey. A little bit more than four weeks later, I finally stepped on my own land. There wasn't anything that happened, but it did feel a bit better now that I'd reached it. I'm actually a bit impressed by my father that he actually managed to win this large piece of land and actually keep it.

Well, there was nothing else to do but start exploring and see if I could find a good place for a village. My journey had taught me a lot, enough that I could accurately survey my land. The soil was good enough, but the bigger problem was that there wasn't much open land for farming as most of it was forest. At least I wouldn't have to spend extra coin on building materials, and making a wood industry would bring some coin, but this land wasn't the only one abundant with wood.

I also owned a large portion of the mountain, and there was hope that there would be valuable metal, but I honestly had no clue how to look for ore or what to do about it. There was an abundance of animals, which was good and bad, as we would need defenses to keep out the stronger animals. Luckily, I hadn't noticed any evolved creatures or monsters. It was a relatively safe area, but it would be hard work to build something out of this forest.

My survey took about a month, but then, when I was heading back skirting the mountain edge, I smelled a familiar smell. It was dungeon mana. While technically dungeon mana wasn't different, it did have a distinct smell to it, and I'd been in dungeons long enough to not mistake that smell. I scouted the terrain and found that there were stronger creatures here, which was a good indicator of a dungeon, and eventually, I found it.