Chapter 146 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

After having brought back my core floor guardians and watching the last of the rebellion's strongholds being destroyed, it was time to start properly expanding the 24th floor. However, there was one large distraction remaining: the five adventurers on my 19th floor, more specifically in the playroom of the 19th floor.

Carl, Ziiipe, Vinny, Sandy, and Caspian have been surviving in a place more dangerous than themselves for a bit over two weeks now. I kind of felt bad for them, as they did not know if the war was still going on and how their friends and family were doing. That being said, their fights have been magnificent. They haven’t run into the truly dangerous creatures, but that's by this playroom’s standards.

Their start was especially difficult as they were down two of their members, and they were all quite exhausted. Normally, I would have expected this part of the quest to happen when the adventurers were at their best, ready to challenge anything. Instead, they used the necklace as a way to escape.

It was designed so that the influx of mana caused by the activation of the necklace would bring a lot of creatures to welcome the adventurers to this part of the quest.

It's always annoying when you think you have thought of everything and the quests were just perfect. Then adventurers start doing those quests, and you start to understand that you could have never prepared for the madness they can bring. Fortunately, they were able to escape the worst of it. That being said, they still came close to death multiple times.

Now, things were a bit different as they had all members fixed up and were taking regular rests. An even more important factor was that they were starting to get used to fighting with each other. This made their combat power soar. There was one surprise that I didn’t see coming: I had expected Carl to become the leader, but instead, Caspian became the group's leader.

He didn't do it by force but by ability. He really knew how to lead, and the way he could see battle was different from the others. All of them were geniuses, but only Caspian was a genius at tactically leading their small group.

The way they could fight together made it seem like this group had been a party for years, not weeks. They were, right now, without question, the strongest party of five in the dungeon.

A larger portion of was concentrated on them than needed, but I did not want to miss anything. Normally, I should be going over my dungeon rules, bringing them up to my current strength, but with so many of them, it would take some time that could be better used elsewhere.

There were other maintenance tasks to do as well after getting stronger, but those could also be left for later. I didn’t want to mess up my upgrade time plan too much, so it was time to focus on the 24th floor.

First, it was time to start truly expanding it. It was going to be another massive floor. The number of dungeon rooms was going to be 240,000, 10,000 more than the last floor. I still think that’s a good number of extra rooms per floor. That number will start to balloon out of control eventually, so perhaps I will reduce the number when I finally reach the platinum floors.

Then came another question: what to do with the playroom. I could do another specialized environment, but I feel like that's not the right move right now.

Over the years, Ace has brought me a lot of creatures that have simply been too weak or unsuitable for use. The problem was either they were too strong, too weak, or simply didn't fit the environment I had currently available. Having so many unused and untested patterns was distasteful.

The problem was there was no way to use them all on one single floor. Too many of the patterns occupied the same position in nature. I had seen it happen many times before: there were simply creatures more efficient and better at that position, and they would always win over the weaker ones. But I have also seen how the weaker ones could become strong if they just had a chance and just a little bit more time.

There was no way to introduce them to already established ecosystems without a huge intervention on my part, which I didn’t want to do. I took a bit of time to think about a solution. I quickly got inspiration from the dungeon rooms. The answer was what I was calling microbiomes. It took a little bit of testing, but I found a perfect way to create my microbiomes.

Implementing them would need to wait until I finish making this playroom, but with the dungeon rules, I can create invisible barriers and separate this playroom into multiple smaller areas. In one large forest, there could be multiple different areas with completely different creatures. Thanks to the size of my floors, I could still ensure that each of those areas would have a proper ecosystem.

Just thinking about all the weird and amazing creatures that could come out of this playroom made me excited to see what would happen next. The problem was, I still needed to build the playroom and the very floor itself. There was one thing that I still needed to test out, and that was to see if I could now understand my trait fully.

Entering my core, I appeared in my mana space. It was quite similar to the ones adventurers entered, and here I could see the list of my skills and my trait. I focused on that trait so I could delve into it and understand it fully. The first part I already knew: intelligence-leaning evolution and enhanced. This time, I could feel what was to come next; there were two words.

The excitement of me finally knowing my trait fully built. It was so close—the words were fuzzy, but slowly it was like my vision was getting better, and then I saw those two words and finally fully knew what my trait was: intelligence-leaning evolution and enhanced pattern combining. What? I was completely confused, and all my excitement disappeared.

I believed if I had eyes, they would be twitching right now. So, one of the things I am truly talented at and have only used on two creatures so far is to combine patterns. I was pulled back in time to when I learned about pattern compiling and how that felt limiting. I had done so many things to get more creatures so I wouldn’t have to ever combine patterns, yet it turned out I was talented in it.

So that's how it feels when I mess with Ace, Carl, or anyone else. There was a difference: I didn’t have anywhere to channel my anger and frustration. What did the adventurers call this? Self-burn. Finally, I understood what they meant by that. Well, this sucked. As time went on, I also saw the humor in this.

Normally, I believe adventurers and creatures would have taken a lot longer to come to terms with this development, but that's where the dungeons differed. For us, time passed a bit differently; at least that was the best description of the difference between how my mind worked and how other minds worked.

I never would have expected anything like this, but then again, I never actually thought about what the second part of my trait could be. At least this explained how I was able to make the moss and fungus work so well and make them so complex. Apparently, I was good enough in this aspect that I even got a trait for it. Well, it was time to get back to building the 24th floor and think about the implications of this later.