Chapter 107 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Carl

I stepped out of the gateway and was immediately bombarded with the sounds of a busy market. The entrance room to the dungeon had changed quite a lot since the war. Now, almost every piece of free real estate was taken up by stores where people were selling all kinds of things. The only seemingly empty areas were the routes that were used to move heavy things onto the lifts or out of them.

My first destination was to climb to the airship port so I would have a good overview of the city and how it had developed and restored after the war. When I reached the top and looked over the cliff, I could see a city fully repaired and constantly expanding.

There were now many buildings being built outside the walls, and when I looked to my right, I could see a huge complex being built, with parts of it already completed.

It was a new initiative from the city lord. Not only were they expanding the already huge airship port, but they were actually building proper dry docks for ships to get fully repaired and, if the rumors were true, they would actually start building airships here as well.

All of this was quite interesting, but my main concerns were in the dungeon. My gaze shifted towards the adventurers' guild hall, my real reason for coming to the surface.

Before I left the cliff and headed back down into the city, I took a deep breath of air. I did not know how, but the air didn’t smell as clean or as welcoming as it did in the dungeon.

My journey today to the guild hall was quick, and not even the smell of street food tempted me because, honestly, the street vendors in the hub stations seemed to offer better-smelling food.

The lines in the guild hall were enormous. At least it seemed like they were expanding, as they surely needed the extra room.

Just a few days ago, I had my final minor breakthrough, now putting me only one step away from the gold rank. It has been a long journey, but I believe when I reach and defeat the 20th-floor boss, I will finally be able to break through. Then, after that, I would need to help Tristan and Anna get to the gold rank.

In the early silver ranks, our differences weren’t that big, but now on the 20th floor, they continue to become more noticeable. They can still handle themselves perfectly fine, but only if they do the research and prepare for the monsters and rooms we will face.

No longer can they be like me and challenge the unknown. This has become a real problem because even my other friends, who I adventure with, are starting to fall behind.

Once again, I was completely certain that they could catch up eventually, but I didn’t want to wait for them. I wanted to continue to push myself forward. It seems that an obvious hierarchy is starting to form between the people who can push into the unknown and the people who need to follow and fight in already explored areas. It was a bit of a sad realization.

This minor breakthrough did come with a nice surprise. I was able to get two medium-sized skill slots. It was always quite difficult to guide a breakthrough to get more slots. This time it was even harder, mostly because I was aiming to get a large skill slot. Getting those before ranking up to gold rank is extremely difficult, and I was glad that I had one of them.

Before I got deep into the dungeon and even before I came to this city, we were always taught that you need to make sure when you breakthrough to allocate a large portion of it to enhance yourself, and while I think it's actually necessary to do that when you start out, as you get stronger and especially in this dungeon, you can just grind by killing a few thousand monsters and reach the same strength.

Skills are definitely a better investment, and the more you can get, the more synergy or a wide range of capabilities you can achieve.

When my turn came to touch the skill crystal, I was immediately flooded with information and a list of the skills available. It had only continued to grow as more people came and accepted the guild's offer to buy their skills.

It was an expensive process, requiring some expensive components for the ritual and empty skill stones. This skill crystal, however, was the only thing that kept the Adventurers Guild in charge. The list of tens of thousands of skills and their variants was simply something that no shadow guild could match.

If I had gotten the large skill slot, I would have wanted to get some sort of elemental attack that converted some of my physical attack strength into elemental damage, as I have seen more and more monsters that were less susceptible to pure physical damage. I could get the skill that would fit into a medium slot, but it just wasn't good enough for my liking.

Anna gave me a good alternative. I had been complaining to her that I had not been able to properly fight in the underwater sections and that the constant need for water-breathing potions was simply too expensive.

Getting a dedicated item would fix that but it could be destroyed during a fight and that didn't sound pleasant. Simple water breathing is a common skill, but I wanted something more extensive, something that could definitely supply me with enough air so I could go all out underwater.

After searching for a little while, I found something that fit my needs. It was a skill that was kind of passive but only activated when you were underwater. Not only would it allow you to breathe underwater, but it also made extra gills on your neck, making breathing even easier.

The next skill I knew by name and it was a direct recommendation from Tristan. I didn’t much like the name of it, but its effects were undoubtedly what I was after. Water dancing was a movement-type skill, very popular in elven kingdoms where the upper echelon enjoyed water ballet.

Apparently, Tristan had once seen a performance and said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. After that, he did a little bit of research and found the main skill every performer needed.

It allowed them to dance on water, dip into it, and easily come back to the surface. However, that wasn’t the extent of the skill. It basically allowed you whatever kind of movement you wanted underwater.

If you wanted to seem like you're walking underwater, perfectly doable; want to run underwater, same. Basically, everything you could do above ground, you could now do underwater but with the added bonus of being able to swim faster if you wanted to.

With my selections done, I now had two new F-rank skills that needed learning and ranking up. When I made it back to the entrance room, I used a gateway to get to our own little slice of the dungeon. I went to my room, only to find that Anna wasn’t there.

It didn't take me long to find her. She was in Tristan's study, helping him figure out the device I found that seems to be the key to the next part of the quest that had originally brought us to this place. But it was a quest that we didn’t seem to be able to advance to the next part. That was until, on the 20th floor, I stumbled upon a ruin that made the quest finally update.

There, we found a curious device that seemed to be kind of a puzzle. Tristan has been working on it for the last three months, but he has not made any progress.

My eyes turned from the device to Anna and a small belly bump that was now showing. She gave me a warm smile when she noticed where I was looking. It was still hard to understand that I was going to be a father.

“Carl, I can’t figure it out. I could spend maybe a year on this and still not do it, but even then I’m not certain. We need to find someone who could help us,” Tristan's words made me snap out of my musings.

It was so unlike him to admit defeat, but I liked that he was capable of admitting it. “Then we will find someone who can help. Do you have any ideas?” I asked Tristan, but Anna was the one who spoke up.

“A while ago, I treated a young girl for quite bad burns and a few piercing wounds. I had never seen that particular combination, so I asked what monster did it. She answered that it was a device that she made and that someone had bumped into her while she was making it.”

“Turns out that she was making a complex device while walking down the street. I, of course, reprimanded her for being so inattentive, but even while I was treating her, her fingers never stopped working on complex devices, but fortunately, those weren't the explosive kind.”

There was a brief silence before Tristan spoke up. “It's as good a place to start as any other, and if she can't do anything, perhaps she will have the contacts we need to find someone who can solve this frustrating puzzle. Do you perhaps know where she is?”

Anna thought for a little bit before answering. “I think she has a small shop in the first hub station, but the rumor I heard said that it was quite rundown and that she had barely been seen there.”