Chapter 149 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

I needed to pull back my focus on this historic event. Vinny seems to be quite good at sensing when I focus too much on them, but I’m pretty sure that Sandy and Ziiipe were able to feel me as well. It's just that this is so exciting. When their first conversation finished, they started to walk back to their kills. The orcs guided them, which helped their party learn how to deal with proper corpses.

This also helped me see one of my mistakes. Right now in my dungeon, whenever someone kills a monster, it disappears quite soon afterwards, leaving behind its loot. These five have had quite a lot of trouble dealing with this new situation of real creatures.

Right now, I didn’t have time to think about a solution, but this problem went to the top of the ‘make training better’ list, and I pumped that list up amongst other lists, so I will try to think of a solution in a reasonable time frame.

At the start, they didn’t seem to talk to each other much, and the only talking was questions and answers about their current task. When they were about halfway done, the spell Vinny cast fizzled out. It was amazing to see the confusion when all of a sudden none of them could understand each other. After Vinny cast the spells again, they started to speak more; I think adventurers call it small talk.

Eventually, Carl asked a more serious question. "Where did you learn about the runes on your body?" The leader of the orc party stopped working for a moment, but eventually, he answered, "I was taught by my clan shaman, but only a little bit. It is important to know what the runes do and how they function, but I do not have the skills to tattoo the large portion of the runes on my skin."

Carl was about to ask another question, but the orc raised one of his hands in a stopping motion. "There are some common runes every clan knows. There might be a chance if you are ever welcomed into one of our settlements, that you might get your hands on them.”

“Most of the runes that I know are made by my clan shamans and are our clan's secrets. If you were to ask me to reveal those secrets, then I would be honor-bound to fight with you to the death." Almost all had stopped working to listen, but those last words halted everything.

"Well, it's a good thing that I didn't ask then, isn’t it?" Carl asked in a cheerful voice, breaking the tension that was building. The orc laughed, and soon enough everything went back to normal. While it would be truly sad if these two groups fought, I also wasn’t going to interfere. This was their journey, even if I did put them on it.

When everything was harvested, Caspian proposed a trade. "We have no use for most of the crafting materials or the food, at least in its current state. So, would you be willing to trade the fresh meat and most of the crafting materials from our kills for some longer-lasting foodstuffs and perhaps some survival gear?"

I expected the orcs to disagree as they didn't really need such low-quality materials for food, but they surprised me.

"We can come to some sort of an agreement, but most of this stuff would only be useful for our young. We will give you 1 survival kit and a week's worth of food. Well, a week's worth for us four, so that might be a bit more, about a week and a half for you five. Your species seems quite a lot smaller than mine."

Caspian usually seemed quite charismatic, but even his composure was broken by that last comment. "I guess that makes sense," he managed to slowly speak out. I’m pretty sure that the orcs didn’t mean anything by it, but from my understanding, Caspian used to be an actual prince, and other adventurers seemed to use backhanded comments quite often to get a rise from others.

When all the business part was over, they finally started to celebrate by making a large feast. Because most of my drops and the abundance of meat on the 19th floor, absolutely everyone knew how to cook a piece of meat 100 different ways. Everyone started to cook the way they liked the most, criticizing others and arguing about how their way of cooking was the best.

This wasn’t a heated argument as everyone understood that different people had different tastes, but it was sort of a tradition all over the dungeon to act like this during smaller celebrations. This one was a little bit more fun as there were more differences than normal.

Orcs normally liked meat that was cooked as little as possible but still had that wonderful crust, while the adventure party enjoyed the more precise temperatures for different pieces and types of meat.

It was also nice to see everyone except Carl gag when orcs showed how they ate delicacies like balls. This was fun and different as in the dungeon rooms balls were a punishment drop, but for the orcs, it was a delicacy.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure there are a few adventurers who actually seemed to be hunting these types of drops. Perhaps some changes are needed in the future; another thing to add to the list.

Now that things were slowing down with the first contact, it was time to get back to work. One thing was, however, certain: tomorrow was going to be an interesting day. Not only would the orcs help the adventure party, but they would also most likely reach the next quest location.

While many of the quest locations are just simple landmarks, this one is a bit more special. I think that tomorrow the adventurers will be a bit bolder and start asking questions about the place they found themselves in.

Currently, the fun was over. Once again, I felt the disappointment returning. I have been feeling off ever since I finished off the pixies. At first, I thought that perhaps they still managed to do something to me, but eventually, I figured it out. It all felt so meaningless. So many adventurers died and while my core guardians did get some experience, that was about it.

I waited for years while preparing myself, and it was all over in less than a day with nothing to show for it. While killing pixies is kind of fun and I did enjoy that part, still, I wanted to gain something out of this as well, not just defend myself. There was a brief moment when I thought that perhaps I might be able to get a pixie pattern, but that will never happen, quite literally never.

I do not know why, but their bodies are a lot more resistant to my ability to get patterns. They are exactly like adventurers; no matter how many I kill, I would never be able to get a pattern. The only chance I have is to claim an adventurer when they are born, or wait and do it like I did, getting a small portion during every birth.

The Pixies seemed even more resistant to that. This wasn’t an exact science, but I was pretty sure that I would need about 10 times more births to gain a Pixie pattern, and I wasn’t even sure if I could claim a Pixie during its birth.

Thanks to the fact that I killed many of them, I also found out the main reason for those facts. Their bodies seemed to be, for lack of a better word, higher rank. I’m not speaking of their adventurer classification or how strong they are, but the body itself just seems overall better, which is really weird. At least that helped me understand why they were so dangerous, even while being in their small bodies.

I felt like a lightning bolt went off in my head. How could I have forgotten this? Immediately, I focused on the list of item patterns I have, which was immense. Most of these were taken care of by other parts of my mind that focus on automation. It seems that it took me a bit of time, but I had the full pattern for the ring Pixies used to disguise themselves.

There have been some artifacts lost in my dungeon, but the rings are the most complex and currently the artifact with the most potential. Quickly, I started to test their functions, creating them in different sizes, and I was even able to change the start and target races of the ring. Currently, I felt like I wanted to be one of those crazy wizards, laughing madly.

With the first contact and this discovery, it was literally one of the greatest days I’ve ever experienced. One of the things my advisors complain about the most is that we were not able to go out into the wider world to gather crucial information and bring back important resources.

That's why we had deals with Ace and some other adventurers. Even with human creatures, everyone could still tell by the energy signatures that they were off the dungeon; this ring even disguised that.

For the first time in my life, I could safely send out my intelligent creatures, have them properly start gathering information about the world, and more importantly, start bringing back resources in quantities Ace never could.

Also, we should be able to find out what has happened to the bug guy. He has been missing for quite a while, and I’m starting to get worried about my favorite adventurer. There's much to do and to start out, I need to inform all my advisors about this new development.