Chapter 110 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground” (Patreon)

Pov Dungeon Core

I have decided that I do not much enjoy going through all the old floors and updating everything. It was unfortunately something I needed to do, but because it was a bit boring, I was also spending more time watching my creatures and the adventurers.

This, of course, made the work go slower, which also extended the time I needed to spend working on everything. I have not yet decided which approach would be better.

It was at least fun to do more upper floors and then, of course, wait for the perfect moment to mess with Ace and open them up to the adventurers. I made quite a lot of them, so hopefully, there won't be any similar problems in the future. Just the thought of adventurers not being able to delve into me simply because I was not big enough was horrifying.

During this time my favourite creatures didn’t let me down. It was almost like they knew I was not having the best of times, so they decided to try to conquer a part of the desert floor.

Their first attempt failed horribly. They were still trying to use the same tactics they were using on other floors: just getting some colonies up and then producing so many ants that they could swarm any opponent.

The problem with that strategy is that when your opponent is strong enough, no matter how many weak opponents there are against it, you simply can't defeat them.

Their second attempt was a little bit better; they used more champions, which allowed them to claim more land and make more colonies, but the same base weakness remained. And when the champions were too tired or were off doing other things, the regular ants, who only had a skill or two, were simply not strong enough to defend against such strong opponents.

Their current attempt, however, is going a lot better because they changed their base strategy. What they’re currently doing is using champion queens. It takes these queens longer to produce new ants, but it’s not that much longer. The benefit, however, is that the newborn ants are, from the start a lot stronger.

Thanks to this, they have been able to secure quite a large amount of territory, and while they still need champions, the large population of strong ants are able to defend long enough for the champions to arrive. The stronger base ants also seem to have a higher chance of becoming champions, which I think they should focus more on.

While currently the strategy is working, that’s because they have not truly met the more dangerous creatures, although there are many on this floor that could challenge their current defenses. Now, if they were to try to use the same strategies on the 19th-floor playroom, they would simply get wiped out. There are just too many strong creatures on that floor.

It took them a long time, but they eventually managed to claim an oasis. What followed was, however, an even more bitter fight to keep it. For a time, they were also cut off from the gateway back to their own floors when a sand elemental found their colonies and started to feast. They needed to bring in some of the champions who I had offered a choice to go to the 19th-floor playroom.

That fight was truly big; it took three days, but in the end, I was able to see what happened when a sand elemental died. They released quite a lot of mana, but their crystal cores shattered. The leftover pieces were quite valuable loot.

It seems that the elementals change the crystal they started out as and give that crystal the properties of their element. It was quite interesting, and it seems that mages especially liked those crystal shards for their equipment.

Getting the supply lines back stabilized the oasis colony, and after a few more months, they were stable enough to keep out any creatures who wanted to eat them or get access to the oasis.

When they started to plan another expansion, it was time for me to interfere. I did not want this floor to become another ant floor. So I announced to them that they would need to retreat but also gave them plenty of rewards for completing such a task.

When the nation that had funded this expedition saw the resources they got, they immediately wanted to launch another expedition, but I made a time limitation of three months before anyone could try again. I also moved the gateway on the sand floor to make it a bit more difficult.

When other nations found out about all that had happened, it almost led to another war. While another war would be interesting to observe, I quite enjoyed the new challenges the ants faced. It also seemed to help their society grow stronger, so I worked some of my magic.

Totally coincidentally, another champion found some ruins with another gateway. However, this one didn't lead to the same spot on the desert floor but to another location.

When the nation's leaders found out, the next day, almost every champion rushed into the wilderness to find more ruins, as the bounty for finding any of those ruins was ridiculously high.

Slowly, more ruins were found, and the leaders of the nations agreed upon a rotating schedule for access to the gateways. A nation would have its chance to claim an oasis and the rewards that came with it, but if they failed, another nation would have their chance.

I had kind of hoped that would happen when I decided to create more gateways, but it was still nice to see a plan come together. During all this time, I was also able to finish expanding the upper floors, finish updating the dungeon rules, and updating and adding new sub-dungeons.

I had also finished expanding the 20th floor to its limit. It was now 1,500 meters in height, a bit above 7,200 km in length, and just under 6,000 km in width.

It was a monster of a floor, but mainly it was because of my gold rank. All of my other floors also expanded by quite a lot, but I was holding off on opening them until I had finished the 20th-floor playroom.

This one was going to be an even more dangerous playroom because, into this playroom, I was going to transport creatures who were too strong for the 19th-floor playroom. Hopefully, this will give me plenty of breathing room so I could make even more interesting playrooms as I go deeper.

I also didn’t want this playroom to just be like any other. While I did want it to kind of look like a proper habitat for creatures, I think it’s going to take a while to achieve my vision for this playroom.

First, I was only going to use the very best of the plants I had. At least Ace was nice enough to donate a lot of high-end plants for me to use. There were, of course, a few that fit my needs that had naturally evolved inside my dungeon.

Some even had a higher mana density than the special plants Ace gave me. However, I have found that mana density isn't everything. I think a perfect example is a birch tree that evolved inside my dungeon and now has a mana density comparable to one of the trees Ace gave me. Yet, if you were to test the wood you get from those trees, there would be a clear winner, and that would be the tree Ace gave me.

But for this floor, it wasn’t strictly necessary to have the best properties to be allowed on this floor; mana density was good enough. The floor will look quite sparse compared to my other ones, but I want to see what these plants can do on their own.

When a creature finally gets strong enough to be worthy of this floor, I’ll ideally have the capabilities of making smaller creatures strong enough to serve as a food chain.