The 46th floor, and more specifically its playroom, was going to be for platinum ranks, but it was going to be a nice place to live. While there would be dangerous areas for those who would want it, this playroom was mainly for the creatures who have already reached platinum rank from the two next following playrooms that I will designate Farm One and Water Farm.
I started work on it immediately after I finished expanding it, but this time I didn’t open up the 45th-floor dungeon rooms as I usually did. I will need to start stretching out my dungeon room release schedule, as I will most likely need to wait quite a while on Floor 50 before I advance to Floor 51 and to the platinum rank.
This helped me calm down. I felt that I was in a rush, and taking just a few moments to not do anything special helped me recenter myself. This playroom didn’t deserve me rushing it. It was going to be for creatures who have achieved much, and so they could have a place where they could just enjoy their life.
While the main goal was for this playroom was to house the creatures from the farm playrooms, I could also use it for my other platinum-ranked creatures who didn’t want to continue the struggle of getting stronger.
While the floor wasn't ready, I still gave the information out so they would know that they would have a place soon enough where they could go. What I didn’t expect were the questions that followed, more specifically, why I was doing this. While some knew what I was doing, most didn't, but when I informed them, they immediately started to work on solutions.
The first thing they asked me was if I had skills to help me gather more mana and make it more efficient. I then had to explain that dungeons ruled their space fully. Getting such a skill would literally do nothing, as we were already perfect at gathering mana, and if there was a more efficient way, I would be using it.
While every living thing made mana, I had to explain to them that most of my mana regeneration wasn’t actually mana I was collecting, but it was mana I was able to generate from life living, even that wasn’t actually what I was doing as putting it into context a single mind creature could understand was difficult.
It was even difficult to try and explain the concept of advancing to my creatures, and even the smartest ones had trouble fully understanding what I was doing or how I was doing it. It was like I was constantly using mana to refine myself into a better version of myself, with the breakthroughs being the walls of advancement that you need to break down to become a better version of yourself.
Now, I wasn’t sure, but I think that’s what the first dungeon gave every single living thing on this planet when it first broke through—a way to continue advancing the way we dungeons do.
It was fun to watch my creatures’ facial expressions when they finally started to understand what this meant. That didn’t seem to stop them from wanting to help me further.
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Many new research projects were written up, and I was glad enough to approve the resources as most of them were on the topics of trying to figure out the underlying magic system, as they called it, or trying to figure out how to get me more mana without me needing so many creatures. I would let them have their fun, and who knows what they might come up with.
A few months later, while I was busy working on the playroom and the dungeon rooms of the 46th floor, I was alerted to a really interesting conversation going on in one of the taverns of the 43rd-floor dungeon rooms.
“Yes, the renting is fine, but I still think it’s too little. It’s so hard to get a good rental agreement nowadays where you don’t have to work 16 hours a day grinding mobs just to keep up with the payments.”
The group that was discussing this was quite well put together, but one of their crew members was incredibly drunk, and they had already shushed him when he started to speak about how there should be more traps in the ceilings.
“You know what, the whole way station system is too easy. They should be riddled with monsters, and only when you complete multiple quests could you get it to be monster-free, and you would have the ability to claim it. And you know what, there should be more traps in the ceil…"
Not only were the members of this group completely white-faced, but the entire noise of the tavern had stopped. The group’s rogue was the first to act, but even he was too slow, as the man was simply too drunk and passed out, hitting his head loudly on the table for all to hear mid word.
The silence continued as the crew, with the drunk man quietly, without making much noise, took their fellow member upstairs to sleep it off, while everyone else tried to pretend that nothing had happened and returned to normal.
I’m pretty sure everyone else tried to ignore what happened because they didn’t want extra commotion, just in case I would focus on them, but I’m also sure there were many who would have wanted to kill that drunk person. There were quite a few patrons of that tavern who were holding their weapons, white-knuckled. Unfortunately for them all, and especially for that drunk man, it was too little too late.
I wasn’t going to put more traps in the ceiling—that was just needlessly cruel—but making adventurers fight for safety, now that sounded a lot more appealing. I ran this over with my design personnel, and they all agreed to this change, but wanted me to wait until I reached platinum rank.
If I didn’t wait they would need to redo a literal decade of planning for the next few floors of dungeon rooms that we had planned. I was fine with that, and I hope for that drunk man’s sake that no one would remember this incident in the future.
I went back to making the playroom and trying to figure out the exact plan I had for the farm playrooms. While having the overall plan ready, making that plan a reality will not be as easy. Already a lot of my mind was working on and shifting through all the patterns I had so I could make a perfect one for my plans—or more specifically, two perfect ones for both playrooms.
If I can pull this off, it is going to be magnificent, and the number of new patterns I would get would be wonderful. The closer I got to the end of the 46th floor, the more excited I became. I would still need to make the 47th floor, and I would need to complete it fully before I could start messing with the new pattern I was still working on. But the main thing was that I wasn’t going to need as much vertical space in the next playroom.
It was going to be a pain, but if I want the most out of this, I’m going to have to lower the height and extend the length and width. That would mean I would need to make a lot more rock, and I would have a situation similar to what I had with the underground world.
Fortunately, I had plenty of entertainment to keep the boredom away, as the adventurers were always up to something and my creatures and civilizations continued to get stronger and grow larger.
I simply couldn’t imagine living life like other dungeons—it sounded so boring. How could they simply do nothing for so long or not experiment?
I still remember, as I literally can’t forget anything, the terms of the contract the Pixies first offered me so long ago. Just thinking about how I would have needed to live makes me shiver. It also helps me focus more on the outside of my dungeon, as I still need to keep looking out for problems like the Pixies.