The 45th floor was coming along nicely. The only problem was that it was a bit too big. I was definitely going to have to increase the height soon so most of the volume of the floor would simply be air, which was a lot easier to manage and meant that I wouldn’t have to spend so much time on a single floor.
Currently, the height is 14,500 meters, the length is a bit over 124,000 kilometers and the width is close to 106,000 kilometers. The playroom was going to be filled with danger, but I think that the platinum ranks that reach this far and actually want to enter this playroom will enjoy it.
That brought up another problem, not all of the platinum ranks wanted to continue advancing like they have been. By this time, every single one of them had intelligence, and some wanted to pursue other matters.
Currently, their only real option was to join the Academy, but that meant another kind of commitment, and some just wanted to enjoy life without obligations. I think I can give them that, but they would need to wait a bit longer.
I kinda wanted to make the dungeon rooms have more sub-bosses to have a better synergy with the playroom. While we added a few more of those kinds of rooms, I couldn’t add too many, otherwise there would be even more platinum ranks running around faster than we wanted to. There were still going to be 450,000 rooms, and over time, all of those rooms were getting bigger, but that didn’t really matter much. I still had so much extra space.
There were now quite a few hub stations, as I wanted one for every 50,000 rooms or so, and of course, there were so many more way stations. There was still the recommended path that Ace and his government maintained along with the other big three organizations inside my dungeon. With every floor, while that area expanded a bit as the pathway to the end of the floor got longer, a lot more space opened up for other organizations to claim land further away from the recommended path.
In some cases, some guilds held more land than even the recommended path from the beginning to the end of my dungeon combined. It was hard to maintain so much land, but I think I had made things a bit too easy.
Currently, all the land was claimed, and while there were wars, no one really wanted to mess with the truly big guilds. So, they were able to keep their land just by their reputations, even if they couldn’t hope to protect it all.
So, it was time to change this. I was about halfway done with this floor, so I faked the breakthrough and opened up the 44th-floor dungeon rooms. There was celebration, but only for a moment, as anyone who held land received a notification through their quest crystal. To continue keeping land, you would need to have a presence in the way stations and not just claim it and then leave it empty.
The cursing was quite entertaining to witness. Many of the large guilds simply didn’t have the members needed to continue holding on to so much land, but that was the whole point—if they couldn’t use it, why would they have it?
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I think this will help smaller guilds start getting land, as the big guilds simply couldn’t conquer everything and then keep it. My analysts said that they would still hold claim over those areas and no small guild would be able to claim those areas without the big guilds' say-so.
I was also certain of that, but I think things will work themselves out to the benefit of everyone. And while they are cursing at me right now, they will come to understand the benefits of this change. It also means that there will most likely be more lawless areas, which would make things more dangerous for some, but there were kinds of people that like that kind of danger.
Watching the scramble of the guilds was amazing. Everyone tried to hold on to their land, stretching themselves thin, yet even then they couldn’t manage it. All of this was fun to watch, but I still needed to figure out exactly what I was going to do to get enough platinum ranks to keep going the way I like to. Time continued to move forward, the adventurers started to settle down, and I was reaching the end of the 45th floor without a solid plan.
The adventurers did find a way to manage this change, and I think it was brilliant. The big guilds basically started to rent out the areas they couldn’t hold, as they didn’t have enough people. The smaller guilds rented them. Mostly, it was a percentage of resources collected, but every guild had its own rules about that.
What this did was give smaller guilds an opportunity to own their own land and make more coin, while the bigger guilds—who didn’t even have the manpower to make use of those areas—could now get passive income thanks to the rental agreements.
While it wasn’t a perfect system, and I already saw some abuse of it, it was still a lot better than what was happening before. While there were still unused areas, that number went down a lot, and even the recommended path cleared up, leaving more chances for smaller parties to advance at a steadier pace.
Wait, that was the answer! Everything seemed to click into place, and faster than I could express, I was already done with the large picture of how the farm project was going to need to look.
It was going to be a hell of a lot of work, but as I continued to work on the problem, the more I saw that it could be viable. At minimum, I could do this with two floors, but I think the best results would be with three. Yes, that would give me variations. Damn, this was good.
First, let's finish this floor and then advance and start working on the 46th. With a clear picture in mind, and no longer having to work on the problem, I worked to finish the 45th floor as fast as I could, while not cutting corners—especially in the dungeon rooms.
It didn’t take long for me to reach the end of the 45th floor and another breakthrough. Before I triggered it, I looked over my skill list and was a bit disgusted by how low the skills I needed were.
Pattern Strengthening: Rank S
Creature Making: Rank B
Creature Quantity: Rank S
Dungeon Modification: Rank S
Space Expansion: Rank S+
Dungeon Rules: Rank S
Sub Dungeons’: Rank A
Outer Vision: Rank A
Creature Advancement: Rank S
Ever-expanding mind matrix: Rank S
Planned Evolution: Rank C
Dungeon Gateway: Rank F
Extreme Environment: Rank D+
Aura Crystal: Rank E+
My World: Rank E
Ever-expanding quantity: Rank D
Creature Making still in B rank was disgusting. What was even more disgusting was Planned Evolution at just C. Hopefully, I could get both of those to A rank. I triggered the breakthrough, and I decided to select a simple-looking wolf as the boss. It was seemingly a regular wolf, that was until it moved.
It was incredibly powerful, and the creature I took from this pattern was one of the strongest platinum ranks I had because of one simple thing: it didn’t have skills that were good for attacking, but the skills it did have made it basically impervious to anything but physical attacks, and for that, it had its strong body.
For the boss monster version of this creature, I made it so it wasn’t completely impervious to anything but physical attacks and made its body even weaker. Otherwise, it would be way too strong. I wanted to start introducing opponents that would be nearly invulnerable to some types of damage, as that was the case with many of the stronger monsters even outside my dungeon. Now that that was done, it was time for the skills.
I didn’t have to add much to get the Creature Making skill to A rank, and when I started to add mana into the Planned Evolution skill, when I reached A rank, I still had 2% left, which I simply added to that skill.
Fortunately, I won’t need to use these skills right now. I can get one of them to S rank in the next breakthrough. If I work fast, I should be able to change the patterns up a bit to have both of those at S rank before I start the last floor of this three-floor farm plan.