Chapter 15 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

While portions of my mind were occupied with making the dungeon rooms, the rest of me started to work on the eighth-floor playroom. I had a lot of material to get rid of as my 8th floor was quite large. The width was just over 1.2 kilometers, the length was closing in on 2 kilometers, and the height was over 200 meters. It kind of felt useless to have the height so high as not even the largest trees were as tall. Perhaps it would be better if I made a different kind of terrain than I originally thought.

I could make a mountainous area where there would be a valley and many caves, and I could even make large areas inside the mountains that could still have a day and night cycle even underneath all that rock.

This all sounded so interesting and it will take a lot of work to make it good enough for my liking. I also wish that I had some better bird patterns. The ones that I have are small and not meant for fighting, but I guess I could add them anyway so there would be more creatures on this floor.

POV Ace

Another stack of papers was placed on my table and I finally cracked, "No, I will not have this." I looked towards my employees who were all looking at me with startled faces from my outburst. "I will not do this any longer. Find me competent people who can handle all this paperwork and running of this town, and I want them found as soon as possible."

I wanted to scream and storm out and just dive into the dungeon, but I knew I couldn’t. When my secretary gave me a firm nod, I sat back down and started to once again read the paper I had tried to understand three times before.

While I could understand a lot. The town had grown a lot and things were starting to get over my head. Why couldn’t things be as simple as holding your war pick and facing down a beast? That's so much better than whatever this is. But I grinded through it and finally, late at night, I went and grabbed something to eat and drink a few beers. The tavern was full, but I was quite good friends with the owner, so I always had a place where I could eat in peace and drink a few beers.

There were so many more people now and we had officially crossed over the 1000 people mark who lived in this town. I still remembered when the dungeon didn’t have the 5th floor boss. Days when there were only about 30 adventurers and the only thing I had to worry about was if the dungeon was going to advance. Sometimes I wish it hadn’t.

It went from having one of the lowest room counts per floor to one of the highest. And it did that in the most frustrating way possible. Usually, when dungeons make more rooms, it lowers the overall difficulty jump from one to another, which means when you are approaching your limit, you can still continue to push a few rooms to make more coin.

But this dungeon didn't do that. Why would it? No, it had to make a completely different route to the next floor that was way more difficult than the original, and it barely gave any more reward for completing it. Just thinking about that water on the floor making everything so slippery makes me shiver.

While the extra difficulty isn't good for our economics, it's certainly good for getting stronger and not just by accumulating more mana. I've even had a few adventurers who left here come back because the dungeons they went to delve into were too easy.

We were getting a good reputation because of that, and it helped bring in more adventurers who actually want to get better and not just delved for coin. Those people are usually more respectful and act properly as well, which is great news as this town is quite safe thanks to that and of course the guards who I’m paying quite well and who are quite good at their job.

Before I could finish my last beer, a runner approached me. "Mayor Ace, I have a development report for you from the guild regarding the dungeon." I took the report and passed the runner a silver coin, after which he left in a great hurry. I wondered what this could be.

Opening the report, I felt a headache start. The dungeon had made another floor guardian, which was way too fast. The earliest estimates put the dungeon about a year until its breakthrough. If this speed keeps up, we might be in trouble. Whenever stronger people start to show up, things get messy. I will need to allocate more funds to the guards and I will need to get more delve slots for them so they can keep ranking up.

As I continued to read the report, my eye started to twitch again. The floor guardian was two wolves and, a suspected, hobgoblin. How the hell did the dungeon get access to that kind of monster? Was it before we arrived? Because we were being extra careful that no one sneaked in any other monsters so the dungeon wouldn't have more monsters to work with.

Eventually, they will start combining monsters to continue to make their floors stronger and those things are a nightmare to deal with. It's best if they're not smart, and high goblins are too close to that threshold for me to feel relaxed. There just had to be a never-ending stream of crap that I had to swim through.

When I reached the end of the report, I shattered the wooden mug my beer was in. The actual staircase split in the middle, there will be two distinct routes through the next floor. This was different but even more worrying as I haven’t heard of any dungeon messing with the staircases.

The next few days were a nightmare as many adventuring parties had saved up contribution points to get a priority delve slot so they could try the latest floor guardian. It is reported to be a tough fight, but only for those who didn't go through the harder route. For the harder pathers, it was a good fight.

Overall, everyone was pleased with this floor guardian as its drops of quality meat and coin were decent for this dungeon. My hand was already itching as I have wanted to fight it myself but I just couldn't take the time off.

Towards the evening when I was once again doing what seemed like endless paperwork, my secretary walked in with a group of seven teenagers who all looked like nobles. I didn’t know how my headache was able to get even worse, but somehow it did.

"Mayor, may I present Ludwik Mark Wolfenstein and his party of adventurers?" So I was right, they were nobles, but why were they an adventuring party? That was weird. I stood up and greeted them back.

I wasn’t well-versed in noble etiquette, but it seemed like they also didn't want to practice it. With that out of the way and Mark sitting across from me with his other party members standing beside him, we began.

"Once again, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ace. You have a wonderful town here and you might think that I am just saying that, but I actually like the more utilitarian style than the nobles usually like. I have just turned old enough to be able to delve dungeons and well, this one seemed to fit what I’m looking for the best."

It was hard not to openly show my shock, but I somehow managed and I just listened as Mark continued. "While we and my party members are officially registered as one party, only one of them is truly good at fighting. The others were forced upon me by my mother or father as a noble needs to have servants. They might look young, but they are more educated than some nobles. So, I want to make a deal. I will get more delving slots and I will give you their services to help run your town."

He seemed to be earnest, but you never know with nobles. The main reason I'm willing to believe him is because he's here. No noble would come here if they didn't want to train. The only good thing about this place is a tough dungeon. I also believe him when he said that his servants were well educated and would probably be able to do my job 100 times better.

Even if this wasn't going to be a long-term situation, I should be able to make this work and perhaps find some local people who the nobles' servants could educate while they work for me. This sounded better by the minute. I looked up and agreed to his deal, although there were still quite a lot of nuances to work out.