Chapter 12 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

I was getting a bit restless. I needed to keep waiting and waiting until the correct time when I could initiate a breakthrough. If I didn’t have so many different things to observe, there was no way I could have survived without going mad.

The ants’ progression was slow because of their warring nature as wars and skirmishes still happened. None of the major powers had fallen, but they were certainly heading that way as they were overpopulating their empires. Their pride wouldn’t let them stop expanding. The smaller empires were a bit better at population control, but they were all at fault. I suspect sooner or later there will be a massive war involving them all.

The apple trees were already at, 3 to 4 meters tall, and the ground was full of flower-bearing plants that all fought for a spot under the sun. The floor was noisy as the constant movement of bees made the ambient noise a lot higher than my other floors. There were now hundreds of beehives and while the bees didn’t fight each other by destroying other hives, there were still some battles to claim better food sources.

The honey itself was everywhere. I’m guessing because of the mana-rich environment, the bees produced a lot more of it especially when the bees themselves started to slowly evolve similar to their food sources. The honey itself started to have different properties which made it even more valuable, not just for ants but for the mana value I can get from it by absorbing it.

At first, I didn’t want to absorb it but I couldn’t give the quantity produced to the ants. The situation got so bad that the honey was just flowing out of the hives so I started to absorb it, driving my mana generation even higher.

This allowed me to continue making the 6th floor larger and now I had reached 67% larger than the 5th floor size, up from the original 40%. One thing that was good about expanding the space side of the floor was that I didn’t have to continue to dig out extra material.

The floor just expanded how I had made the edges. So currently, it was just making a lot of empty space with a thick dirt floor. That area, however, didn't have apple trees as the seeds couldn’t fight the quickly expanding grass and other plants.

I need to continue to say to myself that there were only two more rooms that I needed to make before I was finally done. The harder path on the 5th floor seemed to be slowly getting more popular. It looks like more and more people are willing to brave the harder difficulty to improve themselves. That was exciting to see, but most of the time the people that delved were still beginners at best.

The last room and the tunnel connection were finally finished, but I might have sped up a bit by the end. Before the breakthrough, I made a promise to myself that I was going to start speeding up my breakthrough times.

The long wait times as my memories indicated, that with each floor it was going to get longer and longer and I didn’t want to wait for decades before I can trigger another breakthrough. Still, I can’t be too fast so I might need to experiment some more with my playrooms to entertain me some more.

The breakthrough came fast like always and I felt that half of my mana was directed to upgrade the base me while the other half was split between adding more space to the next floor and making the floor guardian. This time, however, when I reached the percentage that I usually use, my floor guardian was still too powerful. The answer was quite simple as to why. I had more mana to use than I should have. It seems like going over the breakthrough limit actually helps you improve more.

So much wasted improvement. I could have if I had known about this. Well, whatever, it was time to continue making the floor guardian. I decided to make two mountain lions the floor guardians, upgrading both of their general strengths and adding even deadlier claws. Extra challenge of this room would be the design of it. I made it larger than normal and gave elevation that the mountain lions could use. I even added some large boulders so the line of sight would be even more difficult.

While delvers wouldn’t need climbing gear, it also wasn't going to be easy to get from one elevation to the next, and these mountain lions weren't just going to rush you. Instead, they were going to hunt you. I didn’t want to make them too passive, but a little suspense was a good thing.

The 6th floor was officially done, and it was time to start claiming territory for the 7th. Its physical size seemed to be around the same size as the last floor, but inside it seemed to be once again about 40% larger than the current 6th floor.

Even before I finished claiming my territory, I made the customary gateway to get back up to the gate room on the first floor and a stairway downwards. I needed to start making the first room, but the bigger question was what I was going to do about the 7th floor creatures. Using the bear was still too big of a difficulty jump, but I didn’t really have anything else. I guess that this means that I needed to start upgrading the creatures that I have.

I wasn’t the most pleased about this, but it needed to be done. I liked the combination of Mountain Lion and goblin as it makes things a lot harder, so perhaps something similar. Using Mountain Lion again was, well, it just felt wrong.

I decided to go with wolf and goblin but make it so that they actually seemed to be working together. The first thing I did was make the goblins overall a bit taller and stronger. Then I mimicked some of the leather armor I had seen delvers wear but made it a bit cruder.

The slingshot I upgraded to a short bow and iron arrows. The other weapons I also upgraded into iron. For the wolves, I made them also a bit stronger overall, but I had seen that most fell because their necks were targeted. For me, it made sense that the goblins would try to protect that area, so I used a collar that was on the wolf-like animal brought in by one of the delvers who helped the delver fighter. I, however, made the iron spikes smaller and made the leather collar a bit wider.

It took a bit for me to finish the first room so I could add the creatures in. The speed of my room making I also sped up as I wanted to speed up my breakthroughs. This was the first time the first room had two creatures, but I suspect it won’t be the last. The problem still remained, but before I started to think about that, I fixed the drops of the monsters on this floor, so what was left was to continue making rooms and adding creatures whenever those rooms were finished.

I was a bit tempted to make another ant room, but I liked how the overpopulation made them try to study faster to fix the problem of overpopulation, and I needed to fix the problem of my next floor's creatures. For that, I needed something similar to the ant room or the bee room. The real creatures that came from my created creatures had the capacity to evolve, which means that their pattern was stronger than the original creature I could create.

This means that the 7th floor will need to be made into a more realistic place where creatures could live. With my current time frame, trying to evolve wolves and anything larger would take too long, but I had two excellent candidates: the horned rabbits and goblins.

Decided, I started to excavate the stone from the 7th floor. I already had a floor design in my mind so I didn’t clear out all the stone but made the ground go up and down gently. Then I started to add dirt, making it quite deep but not uniformly.

The terrain I was going for was rolling hills, but I added some patches of forest with fully grown trees. A couple of lakes and rivers will also eventually be a part of the floor. The process was going to take some time as I had a lot of area to clear.

But as soon as I had enough room, I started to make goblins and horned rabbits. Then the realization hit me: the foxes would also go quite well with this floor and while they will most likely not be ready before I make the next floor, getting the process started was a good idea.