Chapter 24 - Experimenting

Day 26

When Neo finished compressing his core, all of his goblins were back home. The first thing he did, was to send nine of the shamans into the research facility, after that he had a look at his dungeon.

The first floor was full, the goblins even brought some of the bodies and trees into the second level. When he absorbed the copses, he got another 8000 life energy. He sighed for a moment, this would be the last of it that was easy picking. All bigger animals in the near vicinity were dead, even if not, animals didn't nearly give as much life energy as wiping out a goblin tribe. After finishing this thought, he opened his status menu and used the gathered life energy to level up again.

Upgrade dungeon level -> 12 Costs: 9000 life energy

Upgrade dungeon level -> 13 Costs: 16200 life energy

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: E-7

Level: 12

Structural Integrity: 64/64

Mana: 41383 /41383 (56717)

Floor area: 100200/352200 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 2445 m

Mana Regeneration: 7800 /h *8*50000% = 8666.67 /s

Life energy: 3127.1

Life Energy generation: 397.6/d

Again his floor size didn't double, it seemed like this would be the new normal. But, as long as the cost for a new level stayed proportional to the extra floor size, he didn't really care. For a moment, Neo thought about expanding his dungeon again, but he was not in a hurry. He had time, until the first adventurers arrived, to figure out what to do with all the new area. Instead he decided to do some creature development.

Neo's plan was to figure out, if he was able to combine two of his creatures into a stronger one. For this, he visualized the blueprint he got from the goblin chieftain and one from his strongest wolf at the same time. When he put them above each other, at first, nothing happened. A few seconds later, Neo noticed the blueprints started to change. It was a little bit like when he changed the form of his dungeon core. There the reality slowly started to adept to his design, here the blueprints slowly started to merge with each other to become one.

It took him a while and he had to keep his concentration high, but he got a new blueprint. He had a look at it. The creature went from E10 to D0, in a way it got weaker, but it was the first time for him to increase the rank of one of his blueprints. Neo wanted to figure out the limits of his options and started to increase the size of his creature. After reaching a height of 1.9m, he was not able to increase it any further. Then he had a look at the result of his work.

Black weregoblin

This creature is a mixture between a black goblin chieftain and a mutated forest wolf. After this, the end result was altered with mana. The creatures body is trapped between a wolf's and a goblin's, as a result it became a little mentally unstable, on the other hand, it's strength and speed improved greatly.

Rank: D2

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Traits: strong(rank 5); resilient(rank 5) merciless(rank 3);fast(rank2);magically altered(rank2); unstable(rank1)

Costs: 30k mana ; 120kg animal material

The mental instability wasn't very good, but Neo decided he wanted a creature that could fight and not a roommate. Although, in a way every dungeon dweller was his roommate. After finishing the weregoblin, he tried to experiment combining other creatures, but most of the results were weaker than their base material, or they were completely insane. Especially combining other animals with his snake brought some bad results. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't one of his best ideas to combine a snake with a bear. The two designs he decided to keep were the squirrelling and the brown bear boar.

Squirrelling

This creature is a mixture between a black goblin chieftain and a squirrel. After this, the end result was altered with mana. The creature looks like a one meter large squirrel, walking on two legs. It is strength decreased compared to the goblin, but it got a lot faster. It is able to use small weapons with its hands.

Rank: E6

Traits: strong(rank 2); resilient(rank 1) ;fast(rank5);magically altered(rank2);

Costs: 7k mana ; 30kg animal material

Brown bear boar

This creature is a mixture between a very large brown bear and a wild boar. While it has the strength of a brown bear, it is a lot faster and more aggressive. Its head mostly consists of boar parts and its tusk are especially distinct. The rest of the body looks like a brown bear without fur but with a thicker hide.

Rank: E12

Traits: fast (rank 1); strong (rank4);sturdy(rank3); thick hide(rank 1); mana altered(rank1);

Costs: 14k mana ; 750 kg animal material

Neo decided to create the creatures and then present them to Luna and ask for her opinion. Before he could do so, he noticed something. The weregoblin was at rank D2 and should have 3000 life energy, but instead of generating 30 per day for the dungeon, he only got a little more than 15 from it. It seemed like with every rank the percentage of life energy, that was radiated over time, decreased. Thinking about the issue, Neo decided that there wasn't much he could do. Only creating weak creatures for more efficient life energy creation, wasn't an option. His dungeon would be far to weak and way to overcrowded this. After contemplating the issue, he visited Luna at the training facility.

"Luna, do you have moment?"

  "Do you have a gift for me like the last time?"

"No, sorry, I want to ask your opinion about our new creatures."

As soon as he showed her his new creations, Luna flew to the squirreling and started hugging it.

  "Oh, so cute. Almost as cute as Mr Floppy."

"I see you like it, I want to create our first boss monster for the tenth floor, do you have any opinion which one we should choose?"

Luna stopped hugging the squirrelling and started to look at the other two creatures.

  "One moment, let me think about it. I don't want the bear boar, it's ugly and we already have a large bear on the fifths floor, we don't need the same type of monster on the tenth. The squirrelling is too cute and too weak to be a floor boss, so the only option is the weregoblin. We should name he Bearon Furington."

"I think you are right, but I won't name a wolf Bearon!"

  "Ok, then how about Wolfgang Furington? Pretty, please?"

Neo decided to just go with it, in the end, he didn't really care about the name anyway.

" Ok Luna, here's our first boss monster. As long as the tenth floor is not ready and we don't have any visitors, I put him in your capable hands. Oh and Luna, no bonesaws you hear me? He is unstable enough!"

  "Ok, but it would be waaay faster!"

"Wolfgang meet your new boss, Luna."

The weregoblin immediately ran over and licked Luna's face. When he saw Luna getting angry, Neo decided it was time for him to leave, after all, he didn't want to interrupt their training.

After this, he went on to expand his dungeon again. His plans for the ninth level were not complete right now, so he decided to create a 50000 m² large cave as a placeholder, he could change it later on.

For the tenth floor, he just copied his fifth, but he increased the boss room to 1000 m² to give his new boss enough room to use his speed. After this, he moved his core level further down, so it would be his new 12. level. It didn't take him very long, all the practice was really helping to speed things up.

When he was finished, he still had almost 200,000 m² left. For now, he didn't know what to do with it, but he didn't want to forgo maximizing his mana capacity. So he decided to dump it all in one big room on the 11. level. He would later fill parts of it back up, when he needed to floor size.

While he created the large room, he noticed that with a ceiling height of above three meters, the room needed 50% more floor size to be controlled. Neo was kind of reassured, he was only at level 12 and started to run into problems about what to do with all the available floor size. He could've just increased all of his existing floors, but he didn't want to change his floor designs all the time. Especially if they were never visited by adventurers in the first place.

After he was finished, he created 80 goblin chieftains, grouped them into four teams and the games in the arena began.