Chapter 87 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

It was quite fun to expand the 19th floor. This time, things went even faster, as they always did when I had my breakthrough, but it also seemed like I had a lot of interesting things to observe. Enn was released after being in prison for a few weeks.

The Champions organization and the nations' governments were a bit scared of this development that she had discovered, especially of the largest mammal head they had ever seen coming with her and her team through the gateway.

Eventually, she was able to convince them to try the portal stones they had brought back. It was difficult to find a way for them to understand that they can't use all of them right now. I needed to be really careful because I didn’t want them to get into a floor that was too easy and that they could overrun.

The problem was I didn’t really have the playrooms that I wanted made right now that I wanted them to have access to. So, I compromised and made it so that at least one of the stones would work.

They should understand thanks to the writing in the abandoned city that some of the stones can only be connected there to a gateway at a certain date when celestial objects are in the correct positions, but since they’re in the dungeon, they don’t know the correct date.

In all honesty, that was something I just made up. This way, I didn’t have to hurry and could just make it available whenever the floor was actually done.

The one floor that I was comfortable giving them permanent access to was the desert floor. They were incredibly disappointed when they were able to connect to one of the gateways, but as I knew, they were clever enough to change the runes on the other side so they could have access constantly, bypassing the celestial time lock, which was actually just a lock.

Now, I was still certain that they were going to send champions to explore this place and probably build an outpost, but I wasn’t really worried about anything else as the only truly livable places were hotly contested, and I did not think that the ants could get enough momentum going to start conquering them.

If they did, I think I will just ask them to leave while giving them rewards and perhaps making this like a quest to them with plenty of rewards, so they would hopefully not be too mad that I asked them to leave.

It might also soon become necessary to make another ant floor, but we will see. They have the largest population they have ever had in history. But on the lower floors they occupy, their population density isn’t that high because there’s simply so much space.

Yet, my first priority should be the orcs. They just never have had a lot of space, even now. I mean, they basically lived on top of each other from the start, and while now there's more space, the surrounding vegetation and animals still can't support their population without me spawning in their food sources.

I could use the 19th-floor playroom that I’m going to make a place for stronger creatures to also be a place where the orcs can live as well. But I’m worried about the children.

The older ones can handle this floor, and the truly strong ones could even thrive here, but the younger generations and the weaker ones would most likely be killed off, even if they have protectors. This is not something I want to happen.

I still have some time to think of something. The best solution would just be to have a few more floors. Unfortunately, I can’t do that immediately. I put a small portion of my mind to the problem as I looked into my dungeon rooms and more specifically to where Carl was.

He was currently working on a research paper with the help of Tristan and Anna. At least they had come up with a plan to do with their knowledge, but their plan required quite a lot of extra work that would take a few more years.

A while back, they had quite a large argument about what to do, and Carl was the one who wanted to give the information out immediately as it could save lives. But the others convinced him that they needed to do proper research.

If they already found out all or at least the main dangerous things that could happen, many would not die trying this if they just heard some rumours from someone shady in a tavern. They're going to make a proper guide and are going to use the adventurers' guild, the only true worldwide organization, to help spread this information.

It was a good plan that would give them recognition and probably a lot of gold from the sale of this information, even if it’s dirt cheap, as Tristan would call it. Now, not many people could use it, but I think if their entire civilization knows about this information, they will soon start to advance it at a scary speed.

Perhaps new tattoos more suitable for the standard adventurer species would be discovered. But right now, only people who had reached a silver rank could get the basic tattoos; otherwise, they would need to wait until people reached the gold rank.

I was beginning to get more and more curious about the gold rank. First of all, many adventurers seemed to think of this as the pinnacle that they could reach, yet I was going to start making floors for gold ranks quite soon after the 20th floor.

This didn't make much sense. Was I just going to have a drastic decrease in adventurers after the 20th floor? Currently, it certainly didn't look like this; a lot of adventurers were close to the gold rank, so I didn’t understand what the problem was.

I knew that I didn’t have the information from my parents' memories or the many books I had copied. Then, in the 16th-floor hub station, in a small village where a lot of people were raising their children, a 12-year-old boy was getting a lecture from his father.

I focused on it as it seemed to be the father scolding the boy about something, then starting to lecture him. "Now, what did you do wrong?" the father asked, yet the boy still looked defiant. "I didn’t do anything wrong; he pushed me. I just pushed back. That's the way you taught me, never let a challenge be unanswered." At first, the boy was angry, but by the end, he was confused.

The father let out a tired sigh. "It’s because you used too much strength, my son. If we weren’t in this dungeon, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but you have already advanced a rank thanks to the slightly higher mana concentration here. I think it’s time for the talk."

The boy immediately went red in the face and started to shake his head. "No, not that talk, but perhaps it's also time for that, but later. It’s time I properly explained to you about your inner power. You ranked up a few days ago when I told you, remember I told you not to fight other children for a while. I should have explained better. That’s my fault.”

Now, the argument you had with your friend, he was actually correct, but that was my fault again. You are not actually bronze rank. No one counts the current rank that you have it doesn’t even have a name because humans naturally achieve the next one the bronze rank if they live for about four decades and don't do anything else to speed that time up."

"Now, you have been incredibly diligent; you’re constantly playing with the other kids, sometimes coming home completely exhausted. This helps, and I know that you have sneaked into the forest to hunt squirrels; that helps as well. Of course, being an adventurer and hunting monsters helps a lot more.”

“That's why your father is in this dungeon. Up on the surface, it's really hard to find so many strong monsters, even if one of those monsters is worth at least 10 times more in growing my rank than any monster down here."

"Sorry, Father, I will try to be more careful and not use all my strength, I promise," the boy said and tried to rush towards the outside door. "No, you will listen; this is important and will help you get stronger." The boy stopped after hearing the last word and even faster made his way back to the chair. The father, with a smile on his face, shook his head.

"Let's continue. Everyone has at least 5 minor rank-ups per major rank. So, what you experienced a few days ago, you will still need at least five to reach the bronze rank. That will continue until you reach the gold rank, which is a bit different. Every minor and major... Why is the gold rank different?" The boy interrupted his father's explanation with his own question.

It seems that the father was about to reprimand the child and just continue onwards, but he sighed once again. "Fine, you know how everyone can get skills like your father has shown you?" The boy nodded.

"Well, when you reach the gold rank, not only will you get the usual rank-up advances, which are more significant than any other, but you also get a talent. It’s something different than a skill, a lot stronger in some cases, and it's said that it represents you like no skill can. Now, I will get back to the explanation that’s relevant to you," the father said in a harsher tone.

"Every rank-up requires mana and a portion of it you can spend on gaining or advancing skills. Now, I want you to close your eyes and try to go inside your own head. Try imagining that you are looking at your head, and then, like diving into water, you dive inside your own head. You should find yourself in a blue bubble that looks like water," the boy nodded. "Good, it took me three tries to get to where you are."

"You should see a water ball moving around inside the big ball where you are as well. That's the excess mana from your breakthrough. That can be used to make a skill or strengthen it, but never touch it without being connected to a skill stone or skill’s crystal. Making a skill without them is impossible and could hurt you or even kill you. Now, come out and open your eyes."

The boy did so, and you could see stars in his eyes. "Yes, it's truly a wonderful place. For example, the many skills I have I’ve actually made them into a list that I could see, along with a few other things, like this necklace here that can give quests that are readable inside that space.”

“To understand how much stronger you have gotten, now that’s a lot harder. The big ball that you were inside of will get larger, but it’s hard to tell. The best way to find out how much stronger you have gotten is by testing it by lifting heavy things."

I stopped fully listening from that point. Will I also get something like that when I get past the 20th floor? Perhaps not; it seems that we aren’t exactly the same. From my understanding, about 80% of an adventurer's rank-up goes to improving their overall strength, and 20% is left for the skills.

For me, I started off with 50% going into general improvement, and 50% split between floor size and floor guardian. After the 10th floor, that 50% was changed to 40% same with the general improvement. The rest of the 20% would go into skills.

What was going to happen now? Was I going to get a talent or something similar? How was this going to change me, and was my mana allocation for a breakthrough going to change once again? Well, now I was even more excited to get past the 20th floor. The surface was as interesting as always, but Ace had left, and he had been gone for quite a while, which I was a bit worried about.