Chapter 127 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground” (Patreon)

Pov Ace

I waved to the crowd, something I was unfortunately used to by now. However, this was my first public appearance inside the dungeon. Today was the last day of the celebration the dungeon threw for its 100th birthday.

I still can't believe it actually did this. I was also pretty certain that it was well past its 100th birthday, but it was nice that it chose its own 100th birthday five years before the city's 100th birthday.

It was getting more and more used to how us adventurers thought. Still, never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to do something like that. Hopefully, it will not hold a grudge as I was getting the recognition for throwing this event.

To the wider world and almost everyone inside this dungeon and above, I was the one in charge of this dungeon. That has brought me nothing but headaches most of the time, but there were some exceptions like the currently event.

It was still hard to believe everything that was happening. A good example was what was happening right now. In these colosseums, there were no VIP seats, but simply because of my influence, even this current completely packed Colosseum had a decent-sized free spot left just for me.

The extra space was needed for security, and nowadays, I basically couldn’t go anywhere without having people constantly following me. It was necessary as there were plenty of assassination attempts on me simply because of who I was.

Lately, however, there have been a fair few more than usual. I have tried to figure out who was putting these bounties on me, but even coin couldn't get you everything. Perhaps it was because two years ago, I was announced to be the fourth wealthiest person in the world.

Mostly, it was because I completely ruled and owned the Eternal City State and the Dungeon Eternal Training Ground. Of course, the coin coming from the trade routes was amazing, but I was spending a huge portion of it on the constant improvements we were doing. Then I heard the announcer start to speak, and I actually got excited about what I was about to see.

Just two days ago, I took the challenge myself and made it quite far into the gauntlet. Fortunately, the dungeon was clever, and you could register under any name you wanted. This helped me keep my anonymity, but the people who were currently walking in the arena were not trying to hide anything. They were currently the strongest team in this dungeon.

They would probably not stay here; their current involvement in this celebration was a complete accident. They had been traveling to go to some deeper dungeons, but when they heard what was going on, they decided to stay here for a little bit.

They were what adventurers called black gold rank. Technically still in the gold rank, but it would be disrespectful to put them on the same pedestal as gold ranks who just achieved their new rank.

Adventurers who were called black gold ranks were the ones who have reached past the 35th floor. They were halfway towards platinum rank and could not be compared to simple gold ranks. Most of them had a century or two of experience just in a dungeon alone, or they were true monsters who could reach that far in a shorter term of time.

This team of five was quite well balanced and more importantly, knew how to fight together. The first few monsters died laughably easily. It took them 3 1/2 hours to reach a point where no one else had reached. Still, it didn't seem that they were struggling. That was until a familiar pair of monsters appeared, the ones who guarded the 20th floor.

At first, it seemed weird because the previous monsters were stronger. Then absolutely everyone, including me, realized these were a lot stronger and probably what you would face if you reached the 20+ challenge.

They seemed so much smarter. It was scary to see how efficient these monsters were. It was against these monsters that the adventure team truly started to take damage.

Fortunately, they had a brilliant healer, which made the monsters quickly start focusing on him. It seems, however, that the adventurer team was used to this, which was kind of scary. Were monsters on deeper floors truly that much more intelligent? They, however, used this fact against the monsters and laid a successful trap which eventually led to the death of both of them.

It was still an incredibly hard fight, but the gauntlet didn't give you a break or end until you surrendered or were teleported out. The adventurer team had only gotten back into formation when the flash of a new monster coming in blinded everyone for a moment. I looked in confusion; there didn’t seem to be any monster, but then one side of the arena was illuminated by small creatures.

I swallowed in nervousness, and more than half of the arena went silent. There were a lot of new people who hadn't seen what these tiny monsters could do.

The adventure team, however, seemed to be informed, and they immediately started to change their formation to a more defensive and mobile one. The tiny glowing bugs rushed towards the adventurers, and to my surprise, one of their damage dealers, who wielded a huge battle axe, instead rushed towards the bugs.

I watched in amazement as his battle axe cut through four of the small bugs, killing them. Then, however, something happened that almost broke my brain and my understanding of this world.

The axe stopped when it hit the 5th bug. Apparently, it had spent all of its momentum and just hung there in the air as the fighter was trying to push his axe through the bug.

The next moment, however, a small chip flew off the battle axe, and the fighter quickly retreated with a frown on his face.

The battle was brutal, but the healer was able to keep up, and the team, actually being able to somewhat protect themselves and kill the bugs, allowed them to eventually triumph. It was, however, a hard fight, which was beyond scary.

This meant that this dungeon currently had access to monsters that were meant for floors 35 and lower. Where was it keeping these monsters and why?

At least it seems like the dungeon was keeping the difficulty consistent because I was quite certain it could have killed us all if it wanted to. The gauntlet, however, wasn’t over. After a flash of light, a new creature appeared. It seemed to be made out of swirling sand and giving off a weird mana signature.

I wasn’t the only one who was confused as I didn’t know what creature it was, but then someone yelled out loud, "Holy shit, that's a sand elemental!"

Immediately, there was complete silence in the area. These monsters were rarely seen outside of dungeons, but inside dungeons, they were monsters that appeared near or after the platinum floors. There's no way.

Then we all heard the adventure team leader speak out loud, "Do not despair; this is a young and weak one, but still, it will be a challenge we might not overcome. We don’t, however, give up."

The other members cheered, and they quickly got into formation and started to fight this monster of legends. It didn’t take long to see that they were getting overpowered, but they were still doing some damage as even I could feel the creature slowly getting weaker.

They lasted longer than anyone expected, but one by one, they were teleported out, the last one still fighting being the axe wielder. In the end, however, he dropped to one knee out of exhaustion, and seeing the wall of sand approaching, said out loud, "I surrender."

The next moment, he was teleported out, and after a flash of light, the sand elemental disappeared. Everyone was cheering as we were able to see an amazing fight.

I, however, could already feel a headache approaching. How the hell was I going to explain any of this? There’s no reason to even ask the dungeon as there was a good chance it wouldn’t answer, but I was kind of more afraid if it did. It only took it 100 years to reach this far. You are truly scary, my friend; you are truly scary.