Chapter 106 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Dungeon Core

Flexing my new capabilities was awesome. Literally, everything about me was better. The only problem was I was quite certain that I could now make my floors a lot larger. To confirm this, I took some time to enlarge the first three floors.

I made sure that none of my inhabitants would see that I was expanding the floor. It didn't take long, only about a week before I was done, and the results were mixed.

The first floor I was able to double in size, the second floor, however, I was only able to expand by 30%, while the third floor I was able to expand by 40%. This was really strange. Normally, whenever I could enhance something, I could enhance it equally no matter where I did so.

It took me a month to figure it out. There might have been a better use of my time, but I knew that this would have kept bothering me constantly if I didn’t figure it out.

The answer kind of disappointed me. Whenever I reached my limit on a specific floor. I could still spend a lot of mana to slowly expand it.

Because of my milestone breakthrough, my understanding of space expansion was taken to the next level, which also made my previous effort of expanding the floors past my soft limit pointless. Because the effect wasn’t cumulative. Pushing past the soft limit did not help make the floor bigger with my current understanding of space expansion.

When I reached the new soft limit, I could push against it similarly to the last soft limit, but knowing now what would happen, there was no point in wasting mana on this.

The gains had always been small, but now whenever I would have a milestone breakthrough, it would wipe all that progress away in an instant. It wasn't all pointless because it gave me knowledge, and it allowed me to get my space expansion skill to S+ way before I should have reached this rank, but it would not help me in the future.

I was reminded that the annoying person was going to leave today to attend some sort of big national meeting. He had bothered me for quite a while, so I was calling him the annoying person once again.

He really wanted to know what my gold rank trait was, but I didn’t want to tell the truth because that would have revealed too much. Fortunately, I knew I was bigger than my dungeons' depth would normally suggest, so it was easy enough to get away with that lie.

The problem now was that I would have to demonstrate that I was bigger. The truth was, I actually was, thanks to their milestone breakthrough, and I had quite a lot of wiggle room in the number of dungeon rooms I could make. To make sure that everyone believed the lie, floor 21 would have 210,000 rooms.

The number sounded crazy, but I was reminded that size was also a form of defense. It would be easy enough to shut down almost all of the gateways, making any invader travel through monstrous distances.

That made me feel a bit better, but the news didn't go over so well with the design team. There was also a reason why I was no longer calling them the ant team.

We now had a new member, a brilliant kobold who had recently almost died. She was a truly brilliant trap designer, and I had borrowed her designs for a while now to improve my own. When she was almost about to die from a swarm of ravaging bats, she wished under her breath she could have finished the current design she was working on.

Now, normally I didn’t like to play favorites, but the choice I gave her was also not an easy one. She couldn't return to her floor; what she could do was descend to a more difficult floor or join the design team. When I explained to her what the design team did, I’m pretty sure that I could visually see her forgetting about her previous life and wanting to focus on the new challenges ahead.

I could also understand the worries the design team had. They had just worked overtime to get the 20th-floor dungeon room done and then worked with me to fix any mistakes we might have made.

Now I was announcing that we would need to not only make the 110,000 rooms we originally planned but an extra 100,000. This was unacceptable to me; they were not like me, and their facilities showed that.

They had every facility imaginable; they only needed to come up with it, and I would make it for them. The area they occupied was actually now larger than the first floor, and I had no problems continuing to increase that space with whatever desires they had, as long as they kept doing as good a job as they had.

Because of this, I announced to them that they would have a vacation, like the adventurers like to call it, where they didn't need to work and could just enjoy life. Now, that didn't mean that they couldn't work; it was just that there wouldn't be any deadlines.

The reason I could give this vacation was quite simple. There was actually no need to push myself to make the 21st-floor dungeon rooms. The adventurers had only just reached the first hub station, and it would take them a while longer to make it to the boss room. Not only that, there were a lot of smaller things to do, like updating all my dungeon rules. I also needed to expand every floor and make the 20th-floor playroom.

It was decided that before I started to make anything on the 21st floor, I would get the rest of my dungeon in order. So much to do, and there were also so many sub-dungeons I could now add.

While some of the tasks were going to be fun, some were going to be tedious, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for me because I had so much to observe. What a wonderful time to be a dungeon.

Pov Ziiipe

My eyes snapped open. I was halfway done throwing my bed covers off me before I realized what day it was. That dampened my mood a little bit, but it also excited me because this would begin the next phase of my life. This was the same room I first rented when I got here. It was nice that I had grown so much; now, doing everyday chores was so much easier.

Normally, I didn't make my bed, but after today, someone else was going to call this place home, and I hoped they would appreciate this seemingly small and insignificant room like I did. There wasn't anything to pack; I had done all of this already. But before I left, I checked the old mirror once again.

There was still quite a lot of youth in my face, but I had grown to be a more reasonable 5 feet, but I already knew that I would not grow by much. Hopefully, I can still get 3 or 4 inches.

There had been a rumor that a few generations back, there had been a halfling in my family, but I didn't believe them because, even if we were generally shorter than average, we certainly weren't the smallest humans around.

I began to believe the rumor when, in my naturally blonde hair, a few purple streaks appeared. Halflings had a lot more natural hair colors than humans, although they paled in comparison to gnomes.

I didn’t care about this, and actually, I kinda liked it; it complemented my green eyes. Fortunately, this dungeon was, in some ways, incredibly safe, so I had grown out my hair quite a lot, but I did need to put it in a bun if I did any crafting or got into a fight.

After a few more minutes of looking at myself and the changes that had happened, I picked up my bags, left the room, and closed it for the final time.

Two days ago, I had finally reached the 15th-floor hub station, the first of its kind in the dungeon. Now, I wasn’t certain if I wanted to make a shop there or keep pushing downwards. I was leaning towards pushing downwards.

I felt the power in my hands when I flexed them as I walked down the street; being silver rank was amazing, and I couldn’t believe that I had already reached this far in only two years.

This dungeon was beyond my wildest dreams. It felt like it was a place perfectly made for me. Not everything had gone smoothly, especially when some nosy individuals figured out that I hadn’t ever used the Guild skill crystal.

I shouldn’t have been so naive and at least should have pretended that I needed it. Hopefully, they will stop their investigations now that I used it for the first time last month. It took all of my accumulated Guild points to get the skill that I wanted and the only one in the Guild skill stone I would actually be willing to accept.

With a smile on my face, I walked between the entrance columns and entered the dungeon. There was always a line to use the gateways, but fortunately, I no longer needed to use the upper floors.

There was a huge line to use the gateway to the first floors, as the influx of people into the city seemed to never stop. Just before I walked into the gateway, I put away the gadget I was using to keep my hands busy. It was time to start and explore deeper into the dungeon.