Chapter 14 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Time flew by as I continued to create new dungeon rooms and observe the rest of my dungeon. Occasionally, I added more traps, keeping them as simple as possible for now. However, I already had ideas for later floors with truly difficult traps that would require masters of disarming to get past. The second route was already finished and, like on the previous floor, the third route had an inch of water on the ground. For the creatures, I simply increased their numbers slightly.

For the ants, I had declared a new era - the era of champions. The champion who began this had recently died, but he died with sadness, not pride. In his last months, he came to regret teaching skills and sharing the knowledge how he developed them.

Over time the champions got better and better at using skills. Many empires were hesitant to use them, but a few weren't. While some champions already fought with the skills, they weren't too good at it yet. But then for the first time, two major powers fought with top-tier champions.

Strong champion fights could cause great devastation, but this fight was on another level. The destruction they caused completely wiped out five colonies, killing millions of ants. That wasn't all - their fight changed the very terrain. This caused one of the major rivers to be diverted, flooding dozens of colonies before it could be stopped. From that point, if you didn't have such a champion, your place in the world wasn’t guaranteed, and many smaller empires continued to lose territory to the ones that had.

Everything was a lot more political now, at least I believe that was the correct terminology. Wars between the larger empires almost never happened and if they did, it never really came to a fight. What seemed to happen more were proxy wars where larger empires backed smaller ones who were backed by different large empires. It was truly a different kind of playground and I wasn't certain I liked it like this.

It was hard to keep track of time, especially when the boredom started to creep in. The delvers were doing their thing and while there were some interesting ones showing up, there also seemed to be a lot more of them. They usually fought the same way when they finally figured out the best ways to defeat rooms. I could start changing things more, but honestly, it didn't sound that exciting and they would soon figure everything out once more.

The bees and trees became boring long ago and by now their population was quite stable. Perhaps if I wanted to add some predators here, things would get more interesting, but the mana generation of this floor was incredibly high and I didn’t want to mess with it.

The 7th floor playroom was a bit more interesting as things continued to develop simply because the creatures here were slower to advance. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t have my 8th floor dungeon room creature patterns already developed.

The goblins had evolved enough that I started calling them high goblins. They had a tribal structure with a chief and a shaman that could do magic, which was incredibly interesting to see. I was a bit worried about their population, but they soon started to fight each other as well, and that helped stabilize the population. They were quite a lot stronger than regular goblins and more importantly, smarter. One thing that I have learned is that being intelligent is incredibly important for survival.

But that, of course, wasn’t always the case. A simple demonstration would be the horned rabbits. It took a while before their bodies truly started to become stronger and their horns grew longer and sharper to truly be a danger. But before that happened, most of the evolution went into breeding faster. Luckily, the constant pressure of overhunting finally started to produce rabbits that were a bit smarter and eventually strong enough to fight back when they had enough numbers.

They seemed to get incredibly good at mass assault tactics. They didn't mind losing some of their numbers if it meant that they would be able to defeat the predators that came to hunt them. This, of course, helped the goblins to become even smarter, leading to the eventual high goblin evolution. The foxes found it hard to keep up with the others' fast evolution, so they became incredibly good at hiding themselves and striking from hidden positions.

It will still take some time before I can pick one from the foxes patterns for the newer floors, but I had great hope for them. For the 8th floor, I had something different in mind and I was quite excited to start with my next floor. I could already breakthrough, but once again I waited until it was more appropriate and currently, I was spending my mana overflow on expanding my 7th floor. As the floor continued to grow, I also added some apple trees and a few bee colonies to the wooded areas for more variety.

I kind of liked the different interactions with different species and I think I will continue to explore this in later floors. The pressure of survival seems to affect evolution a lot, but I also think cooperation affects it as well as I have seen some flower species make bigger and more appetizing lures for the bees that help pollinate them. Those are long-term projects but interesting developments nonetheless, but I still like fighting more. That's why I decided to think about and fix the champion problem for the ants.

It took me months to figure something out and when I did, I felt kind of stupid as the answer was quite simple. I needed to make a place where champions could fight without having to worry about casualties. Often large battles didn't happen because champions fought one versus one or some variations of that.

So if I made a place where champions could fight, that would mean that regular armies could once again march without having to worry about champions destroying everything around them when they start to fight.

For every ant floor, I created a large area on the ceiling that looked like a regular dungeon room, just a bit smaller. There, champions could go all out without having to worry and they could even fight in large numbers if needed as there was plenty of room. Making that was simple enough and as soon as I announced it to the empires, everything started to move again. Armies started to be deployed and you could often see champions practicing fighting in these new rooms.

The last month before my breakthrough was a fun one as I could observe many champions fighting and wars once again taking place on every ant floor. But now it was time to start my next breakthrough and then begin making my eighth floor. It was an exciting time and as I watched my stored mana close in on the maximum I could hold before pain, I prepared for the work ahead of me.

Everything went the same as previous times, but for the floor guardian, I decided to use a high goblin and have two wolves with him whose patterns were pushed close to the limit to have the proper challenge for this guardian room.

The room itself I made a forest environment and made it quite large. Done, it was finally time to start on the 8th floor and I couldn’t wait. This one was going to be different from all the others but first, I needed to claim the new territory.

It was once again a bit bigger than the third floor in physical space but inside it was about 35% bigger than my 7th floor. After I finished that, I started to carve out the next floor. The first change already happened with the staircase. At the midpoint, it split into two different paths. At that point, I basically made two symmetrical dungeon hallways and rooms that would eventually look like a snake path that would overlap four times before the floor guardian room.

This would create two distinct paths that would have connections between each other four times, allowing delvers to choose which opponents they want to fight for the next stretch. One of the paths would have high goblins while the other would have horned rabbits. I still hadn’t thought up a better name for them, but perhaps the delvers will think of one. I would be making the rooms simultaneously, not like on the previous floor where I finished one path and then started with the next.

Both paths would have a lot of opponents. But the high goblins would have access to iron weapons and leather armor. The first room started with two creatures. The horned rabbit's first room started with five horned rabbits and would eventually have quite a lot more. They would be the easier enemy to defeat, but their numbers would cause problems. The goblins would be more difficult to fight, but their numbers would be lower than the rabbits. I think both will have their own challenges. The rooms themselves would also not just be empty but would have obstacles and a more natural environment.