Chapter 115 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground” (Patreon)

Pov Vinny

In the distance, I heard the bell that called for a clan meeting. Those normally happen every month, but during the past six months, they have been at least a weekly occurrence. I was a bit too young to be a part of those meetings, at least according to our ruling members.

They were keeping me out on purpose because otherwise, the voting could get too close, and the correct ruling family might find it troublesome to keep themselves in power.

I didn’t care much because we were still a clan, and no family tried to hurt the others; we were still working together towards the common goal of surviving.

Living in the floating ocean was tough. Our clan was able to get about five generations back, a decently sized floating island with enough greenery and even a crystal mine to survive and even thrive.

My ancestors were tough people, but they were also smart. They figured out that the crystal mine would run out in two generations. And while we could make enough to survive thanks to the green land, we would slowly get weaker over time, and some other clan might come and forcefully take over this floating island.

In two generations, my ancestors learned how to make airships. We started out small, making fishing vessels. Because we could get 95% of the raw resources from this floating island, we could actually make quite a good profit. Thanks to this, the crystal mine would take another 10 generations to run out, and we have enough land to keep the supply of wood constant.

It's all thanks to the small skills crystal we own that contains 3 skills that every clan member learns. One helps us grow plants faster, so we would not have to wait 20 years for every tree harvest.

This skill also ensures that we never starve and can even sell food to other neighboring floating islands. The second skill helps us work the wood, making it stronger and so we could better shape it to fit the airships' designs.

The third one, however, is my favorite. The skill is called basic magic, and it allows us to learn basic magic spells that help us in everyday tasks and give us the versatility to survive in this place.

It’s one of our most valuable treasures, as getting skill stones is near impossible in this place, not to speak of skill crystals.

I quite enjoyed this life, but now, as I sat on the edge of our floating island, I looked up towards our doom. The floating ocean is the largest ocean in this world, covering almost half of it.

No one knows exactly what happened, but smarter people than me theorized that an entire large continent, in some sort of disaster, broke apart and started to float. There are still some parts that are connected to the ground, but 95% of the land mass is in the air.

The floating islands move up and down and drift around in constant motion. That's the problem. In the floating ocean, the average mana density is larger than anywhere else in the world. But large portions are still quite close to the rest of the world.

The problem is the places where the mana density is a lot higher. In those places, it's normal to run into gold-rank and even platinum-rank monsters.

This higher mana density area is where we are currently heading towards. While we could survive running into even a pack of gold-rank monsters, we could not survive running into multiple ones, and of course, a platinum rank would annihilate us.

I myself was close to gold rank, and when I achieve it, I would be automatically made a member of the council. That, of course, didn't matter anymore.

We were busy mining out the last of the crystals, and we were only a week away from finishing the last of the transport ships we were building to take us all away from this place.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, having to leave the place where I grew up, but there was no other option. What was even worse was what was ahead of us.

The best we could hope for was to become workers in a larger shipyard, but out here in the floating ocean, being in someone else's employment was not a good life. Fortunately, our airships were famous enough that, after reaching out, we received several job offers. Currently, they were deciding on which one to take.

Minutes went by agonizingly slowly, so I started to play with magic. It always came easily to me, and I could push our basic magic skill harder than anyone else. I lost track of time and only came out of it when I noticed someone approaching.

"Good evening, Father." There was a moment of pause before my father answered, "I must once again ask a lot of you, my son. We need you to strengthen the ships even more than you have. They need to be able to survive the trade winds."

Immediately, my head snapped around to look at him. He looked quite saddened. That was a tall order. The ships were big. We had over 1000 clan members, and all of them were coming with us. It seems that my father understood my questioning eyes as he started to explain.

"One of the job offers was too good to not take. It is, however, quite far away. At first, we suspected it to be falsehood, a way to get us to go a certain route to ambush us, but the place is famous enough that we think it’s a legit offer. The clan has decided to accept a job offer from the Eternal City State and its City Lord."

"Wait, isn’t that where the Eternal Training Ground is located? One of the hardest dungeons in the world and a place rumored to train the best adventurers in the world. A dungeon so large it has multiple cities inside of it and, of course, the Adventurers' Guild that gives free access to a national-level skill crystal. Do you think those rumors are true? Wait, why would they need our services?"

"I do not know if those rumors are all true, but what is certain is that that place is slowly transforming into the second trade capital of the world and that they have started to develop an airship shipyard. They are searching for experienced workers, and that City Lord is willing to hire all of us."

That fact blew my mind. What sort of shipyard is he planning to build that he would be willing to hire over 1000 skilled workers from so far away? I was pretty sure that my eyes were currently shining from excitement.

I had multiple free skill slots and if that skill crystal rumor was true, I would finally be able to get better skills to improve my magic even more. I stood up and dusted myself off. "I guess I should get to work."

The next six months were busy. The sleepless nights strengthened the ships. The harrowing journey out of the floating ocean. We were attacked three times by pirates, but they didn't expect the strength of our ships or the ferocity of our clan members. Entering the trade winds was an amazing yet scary experience.

All the ships only suffered minor damage, which was better than I expected. They were simply too large and not built strongly enough to be used to travel the trade winds regularly.

The speed at which we were able to travel was amazing, and it took us less time to make it from the edge of the floating ocean to our destination than it took us to make it out of the floating ocean.

The first thing we noticed was how the trade winds were slowing down and slowly pushing us downwards. Then we saw a small mountain range. The closer we got, the slower the trade winds became, and eventually, it was easy to slip out of them.

There were a few other airships that were going in the same direction. It didn't take us long to see the Eternal city. It was nestled against a cliffside, and above it was an amazing airship port.

I could also see an area that was almost as big as the city itself that was obviously a shipyard where ships were currently being built, and it seemed that it was still being expanded.

I could feel the magical vibrations, meaning that someone was trying to contact us through our communication crystal. Almost immediately, we changed our direction and headed towards the shipyard.

When we started our final approach, there were a lot of people waiting to meet us. My father pointed out someone who was ahead of everyone else waiting for us. "That’s the city Lord, Ace. Be on your best behavior around him."

As I looked at this city Lord, I was a bit disappointed. I had expected either a tall muscular man or a really fat man. But he seemed like just an ordinary man.

After the initial greetings, thanks to my father's position, I joined a tour led by the city Lord himself. He seemed so friendly and unlike anyone else I knew who had such power. Actually, scratch that, I didn’t know anyone even close to who had that much power. What surprised me the most was how laid back he was in dealing with us.

He didn’t even care if some of us wouldn’t be working in the shipyard; he just wanted us for our expertise so we could teach what we knew to his other workers. That surprised everyone.

Immediately, I looked at my father, and he gave me a slight nod. Now, I was even more excited. Father just gave me permission to join the adventurers' guild, which would give me access to the skill crystal.

It still took another month as the clan leaders wanted to give a good impression before those who wanted to join the adventurer's guild were allowed to. I had only been inside the city proper a few times, but currently, it was packed with high-rank adventurers.

Apparently, it has been almost 8 years since the 20th floor opened up. A lot of adventurers were taking a vacation as they were waiting for the 21st floor to open up. They say that it was expected to happen any moment now, but I was more excited about finally getting more skills and trying my hand at delving.