Pov Dungeon Core

I concentrated a bit more on Ace and his hideout. It seemed like he was finally starting to fix his skill problem, and it seemed like Ziiipe was willing to help. They will need the resources in the coming years as the adventurer situation was starting to heat up.

Smaller guilds, newer adventurers, and solo adventurers won’t see much change, except perhaps fewer good items on the market. While no one yet knew what was about to happen, I had a different point of view and could see the changes happening day by day.

It was all because of platinum rank. It was a qualitative change when someone reached it, and so many were reaching it. There was some good news as quite a few left my dungeon to seek fortune elsewhere, but many more, it seems, wanted to build up their fortunes in my dungeon a different world compared to the outside world.

To their knowledge, platinum rank is the highest rank that could enter my dungeon, perhaps for a century, which means that they would be the top dogs. But many are coming to learn, especially the outside platinum ranks who hadn’t been in my dungeon when they were gold rank, that they weren’t the top of the food chain anymore.

Many of those people who came from outside and started to take over guilds were killed in duels or even assassinations. They might have been powerful outside, but the people who clawed their way through the ranks in my dungeon were made of different metal. But they weren’t perfect—no one is—and I could see their desire to be their own leader and to lead others in a way they think is the best way.

Who knows if any of them are right, but I think that the time of big guilds is over. It’s just that no one knows it yet. I suspect that the three big guilds will still remain, as their existence is not just needed for the adventurers to function properly, but they simply have too many members who believe in their goals and are strong enough to weather the storm that's coming.

Clans will also have a hard time, as they were usually left alone by the big guilds simply because it wasn’t worth it to fight over so little land with people who were so strong and united. The fracturing of the big guilds that is slowly happening will change that fact, as those small guilds will be more concentrated and will want to get the best hunting grounds for their members that they can hold on to.

Also, I don’t know how this will affect floors with less presence of platinums and, as you go upwards, less golds and even silvers. I think it would affect the upper floors in a similar fashion, except it will be of lower impact.

But almost everyone who has lived in my dungeon and climbed the ranks knows that recruitment is one of the more important parts of running an organization, and the best prospects are the ones who climbed the ranks instead of coming from the outside world already at higher ranks.

It was fascinating to watch, and I was ever so thankful that with every breakthrough I had, my ability to concentrate on more things increased. Yet more and more, I learn of things after they have happened from the reports I’m getting from myself.

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I once tried to explain how I think to one of the Academy members, but after about 10 hours, we both gave up as I couldn’t even properly explain the concepts of how I think to a person with a biological brain.

At that moment, I’ve never felt more separated from the creatures and adventurers I observe. I’m still glad that it seems like I can still understand them, even if they will have a hard time understanding the deeper me.

Nevertheless, so much was happening, and even while I was struggling with the water farm playroom, as I couldn’t get the pattern I was making for it as good as I wanted it to be, I could still distract myself with the endless situations happening in my dungeon.

I especially liked witnessing how civilizations rise and fall. In fact, I have taken up a bit of a hobby. It all started a few months ago when, on the goblin floor, one of the larger and stronger kingdoms messed up.

They had a gateway to the 19th floor where they had quite the big presence. They were taming the wilderness around their connection point and pushing quite far in, fighting the many creatures who made their lives near that area.

Unfortunately, they attacked and killed the wrong creature’s offspring while it was away hunting for food. The rage I saw in him was terrifying, but what followed was a true slaughter. If they had the chance, I think they would have recognized the need to keep their treaties and not break them, but the creature destroyed their outpost yet still left a few alive.

Normally, creatures so strong wouldn’t be able to use the gateways to get to the other playrooms, but this particular creature had a few skills that allowed it to hide itself in the shadow of others. When the goblins escaped, they thought they were safe, but then that creature jumped out of the shadow of a goblin, killed it, and roared so loudly that it shook a large portion of the city he was now in.

At this point, I was properly made aware of the situation. And was about to transport this creature back to where it came from. I could have stopped what he was about to do, but decided against it.

There were only a few times I would actually intervene in the lives of my creatures, and while going to other playrooms they weren’t supposed to was one of them, this creature was not going to be there long enough to destabilize the whole playroom.

It was still hard to watch what followed. While the goblins and their kingdoms were now larger than a few major cities, they still had a tendency to focus on only one city. This made them more vulnerable, and there have been points where entire kingdoms fell apart because their capital was taken. This creature used some combination of skills and true magic—the kind that you didn’t need skills for—to kill itself in a truly devastating way.

I have read of volcanic explosions, and the way this explosion spewed fire so far up and melted so much stone, reminded me of it. It did not only destroy this city but the surrounding landscape, towns, and villages.

One second it was one of the stronger kingdoms in this playroom, the next it was dead land where nothing survived. The explosion was heard literally everywhere in this playroom, with no one knowing exactly what had happened.

And that was the problem—no one knew. The goblins as a whole were quite secretive as well, so all the knowledge, the events, the heroes, and the villains of this civilization were gone in an instant. While I would remember their lives and stories forever, I decided to write a book on this civilization's history and its end.

I really liked doing it, and it was quite challenging as I decided that I could write a singular book with no more than 500 pages for 10 years' worth of history. I may make exceptions in the future, but writing that book was quite fun, so I decided to start doing it with every civilization that lived in my dungeon.

As for the pattern of this creature, I did make it but decided not to bring it back with its memories. If it was hurting so bad it was willing to die, I didn’t think it would be right to bring it back. But I still needed to learn more about its skills and talent that allowed it to be so strong.

Unfortunately, the secret spice for this pattern was the creature’s mind itself. It was a true genius, where the memories and experiences were the things that made this pattern so special. It was sad to see such a loss, but it wasn’t the first or the last time something like this will happen, although I suspect the explosive end would be a true rarity.

Speaking of geniuses, there were a few that have come out of the Farm One playroom, which was something I didn’t expect to be so frequent. The playroom itself was getting closer to my target goals as more and more platinum ranks were emerging, enough that I was starting to see an uptick in my mana generation. It was time to figure out the Water Farm playroom and its pattern so I could get another one going, as it takes quite a while for them to properly start producing platinums.