It was finally time to get rid of the water-making crystals. They were attached under the floor of the dungeon rooms and on the ceiling of the playroom. They were massive, but they had too much potential to be left in this playroom, as they could mess up the ecosystem. So, I dissolved them, taking back the mana it took to make them. Below them was the huge ocean, my biggest water area to date.
The floor itself was almost 189,000 kilometers in length, 160,000 kilometers in width, and 14,800 meters in height. 1,000 meters from the ceiling of the floor was dedicated to the dungeon rooms, and 500 meters after that was open air, then the water started and went all the way down.
The water itself didn’t have much nutrition in it, as I didn’t even put plankton on this floor. So, the only food in this playroom would be the singular pattern that was hopefully going to dominate it.
There was one exception to the food rule, and that was in the pillars. They were made of dungeon stone and raised above the water level. Inside the pillars was an endless amount of pathways, some bigger, some smaller, but they all led up to the top of the pillar, where there was a shallow pool at the very top, with water constantly cascading downwards into the near-endless water below.
Steam was constantly rising from those pillars. The reason was simple: the water was incredibly hot, even still at the top, and it got even hotter down below. I needed to put in some dungeon rules to make this function properly and needed to redesign the pathways inside so that the small eggs, that were the first stage of the pattern, would fall down to the depths. Down below the temperature was incredibly hot and filled with nutrients similar to underwater thermal vents of the oceans of the outer world.
It has been quite difficult to get this pattern enough nutrients. Any other pattern I made for extra food, like the ooze on the previous farm floor, always found its way outside, where it started to expand itself, giving the main pattern too much food, and that would decrease the time new platinum ranks emerge by a huge amount.
The solution turned out to be simpler than I expected. I just needed to make a plant that would literally need the hot water temperatures inside the pillar and would simply start breaking down whenever it came into contact with anything that was too cold.
It took quite a bit of time dialing in the pattern, but finally, I had a pillar that should have enough extra food without it spilling into the outer water while not just sustaining but allowing for exponential growth of the main pattern.
This playrooms pattern was quite similar to the previous one, but I did make adjustments based on what I learned from the first farm playroom. I started to make the monsters in a few pillars one life stage before they would start producing eggs.
They also had a protective coating that would slowly lose its effectiveness against the high temperatures. That would cause them to move upwards as they grew older, and when they finally reached their final stage, they would reach the very top, which would still be too hot for them, causing them to escape off the edge into the water below.
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I needed to do quite a lot of adjustments this time, and I even needed to raise the water temperature above what should normally be possible, but thankfully, dungeon rules were wonderful things. Even at the very top, the water should have been boiling off quite fast, but it wasn’t even boiling, thanks to the dungeon rules, while still being around 150 Celsius.
Here as well, every creature that should come out the top should be quite different as they would have already made five modifications to their bodies. I adjusted how fast their protection disappeared as they grew stronger with every minor breakthrough.
This pattern also had access to a lot of different body parts, but they were mainly focused on what would work underwater, although I did give this pattern more options, as you could get quite creative underwater.
Now that I think about it, I should probably make some platforms so that the water wouldn’t go all the way down to the bottom. Simple dungeon stone platforms supported by pillars should be enough to minimize the loss of playroom volume while still giving creatures that perhaps started resembling crabs a place to be so they wouldn’t be crushed by the water pressure at the very bottom.
Well, I will have time to build those platforms as I currently watch the few pillars I added the pattern into as they developed. Time moved fast as I worked, and I watched as the pattern did exactly what I expected it to do. As soon as it reached maturity, a lot of the biological energy it was gathering was spent on producing eggs that constantly fell out of it and then sank through the pathways deeper.
The eggs need quite a high temperature to start hatching, which meant that when they hatched, they would be safe from the later stages of their own development. It was impressive how fast the numbers have started to go up; it was a lot faster than in the previous farm playroom.
It still takes a few months for the first creatures to escape the pillar and into the cooler waters of the rest of the playroom. They struggled at first as there wasn't food for them to consume, but it didn't take long for more and more of their kind to find themselves prey whenever they escaped the pillar.
Everything seems to be working as it should, so I started to add the pattern, though I did have to make some minor adjustments, to the rest of the tens of thousands of pillars. On a clear day, you could see multiple ones, especially their steam pillars rising high above the water surface.
One thing I didn’t account for was the amount of steam that was being released, creating constant storm clouds and rainfall. It was an interesting development, a development that I liked. Although I did have to intensify the sun dungeon rule so it could shine through the rain clouds a bit better. Can’t let the surface water temperature drop too much.
The number of creatures that were going to live in this playroom was going to be crazy, and while it will take longer for this rule to properly get working, it should easily rival and exceed the previous farm floor with enough time. All that was left now was to observe that nothing went wrong and then enter the next breakthrough, which will give me access to the next floor. After that, it's just one more before I will become platinum rank.
The better question was what I was going to do with the next floor. I had plans for the 50th-floor playroom. It was to make a playroom similar to the world that was above me. I was even going to have a mountain range that would have a one-to-one recreation of my entrance room with all the gateways that could be used to enter the rest of my dungeon. Around it, I was going to build an exact replica of their eternal city-state nation, without the people.
They would also have a whole world to explore and, more importantly, a place to go when the outside world seeks my destruction. So, while I have the exact plan for the 50th-floor playroom, I literally had no idea what to do with the 49th-floor.
I didn’t want to make another farm playroom, as I really want more time to observe the current ones to see if there were going to be any problems. The calculations were showing that I shouldn’t need another farm floor.
When I reach platinum, if I can, I should figure out how to make a farm floor that could produce diamond ranks, and I will most likely have to do that fast. But once again, that would be something I would need to deal with after floor 50, which, once again, doesn’t help me with figuring out what to do with the 49th floor.
Well, I have some time to wait before I advance, and then I will still have to expand the floor, so I have some time to hopefully figure out what I want to do with the 49th-floor playroom.