Pov Dungeon Core
The 49th floor was done. Unfortunately, the gateway device meant to hide the gate's activations was still far from being completed. It's just incredibly difficult to move such valuable materials quickly into one of the most secure and monitored areas on the planet. I helped as much as I could, but the small portal and its hiding device were close to being burned out, so I couldn’t send any more materials through.
Ismael was excited when I announced that the world for the dragonkind was finally done, and I even showed him images as best as I could. He seemed quite excited, but we didn’t communicate much as he was incredibly busy trying to get the materials needed and help keep our activities hidden.
I do not know exactly how he influences the other Dragons, but he has allowed them to spread out a bit further, which has caused a lot of attention to be taken away from the central area where most Dragons nest, where the gateway would be built.
The world as a whole was currently quite a mess as too many revelations were being made, and the four great powers were having trouble managing all of it. It shouldn't be long before the secret of the underwater world is revealed, and I wonder what that would bring. It’s kinda terrifying how good my creatures are getting at manipulating public perception, and how much control public perception seems to have on a large scale.
The troubling thing is that the turbulence of the outside world seemed to be reflected inside my dungeon, especially with the adventurers. For the first time in a long while, the main cause of death for adventurers is no longer my dungeon with its traps and monsters but instead their fellow adventurers.
Currently, most of the problems are happening on the lower floors, but the collapse of the large guilds has been spreading upwards quite steadily. Mostly, it’s because all of the large guilds on the silver floors were actually just recruitment guilds for the gold floor guilds. The instability of it all is quite troublesome, but fortunately, I don’t seem to need to step in, as the recommended path and the runner's path have been kept clear of any trouble.
That's not to say that some small yet powerful guilds with platinum ranks haven’t tried to take some of those waystations. It’s just that their attempts have been crushed utterly and incredibly ruthlessly.
Not only did they have to contend with the three powerhouse guilds, the Explorers, the Runners, and the United Guilds. Ace was properly handling things with his nation’s military being used as a guard force to keep the peace on the recommended path.
Yet that wasn’t the only problem I had in my dungeon. Many of my playrooms are now properly filled out, and while that has slowed down progress for the creatures and plants inside, they are still changing and forging ahead at an enormous pace.
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I have so many new patterns, but what’s saddest is that some patterns have gotten so powerful and so specialized that they don't actually fit well into the playrooms they originated from.
A perfect example is the elementals. My first elementals were of wind and sand, yet now I had so many different kinds. The problem was in the more specialized playrooms, like where there’s only air and the playroom is surrounded by heavy winds. Well, it’s a breeding ground for new elementals, and the ones who are slowly getting stronger are having more and more influence on the whole playroom.
If things continue as they are, eventually I wouldn’t be surprised if they could overpower my dungeon rule and take full control over the entire wind system and generate their own. That wouldn’t be a problem for the elementals—in fact, it would be even better for them—but there are many species who have started to properly adapt to the environment there, and I don’t think they would survive the onslaught that the elementals would bring on them.
I don’t have anywhere to put them yet, but it’s certain that I need a place like the ranked playrooms for stronger creatures, so I can stash the elementals that get too powerful and stop them from messing up my playroom ecosystems.
Another thing that’s happening, which fortunately isn’t a big problem, is the number of tribal societies that have been forming. Fortunately, I have a place for them, as I have a dedicated playroom to bring those tribal societies that have formed in other playrooms. The problem is that their absence is quite noticeable in the playrooms they used to be in.
Even before I call them tribal, those groups of creatures have already started to manipulate their environments and change it to their liking. This leaves a large vacuum in the environment when I take them to the tribal playroom, which usually means a fight amongst the creatures of that playroom for the newly opened-up territory.
This has caused me to lose quite a few patterns who were unfortunate enough not to win those fights or just got caught in an unfortunate position. Currently, my list of patterns that I think have a lot of potential but have unfortunately died out is getting quite long.
Most of these problems I could fix easily enough; it’s just that I need more playrooms. Yet, right now, even though I will soon be advancing to the 50th floor, I will be stuck there purposely waiting for the right moment to advance, which will take some time.
It’s just unfortunate timing. But I can’t do anything to fix things right now. Another troublesome fact seems to be that the orcs are seemingly starting to develop a sort of religion that honors death in combat and believes that the one who dies honorably will get a chance to fight forever in the service of me.
Unfortunately, in some cases, that’s true, as I have taken some of their most powerful fighters who have died and made them into monsters, mainly to bolster my core floors' labyrinth defenses. And even if I don’t use all the patterns, every creature who has been powerful enough—I have a copy of their memories and patterns near the moment of their death, so when needed, I could make an army of elite monsters to protect myself.
It took me a little while longer, but I finished the dungeon rooms up to floor 49, even if currently the adventurers only have access to the dungeon rooms up to floor 47. It was time for another breakthrough, and with my farm floors gathering enough mana, a breakthrough was as simple as no longer making mana-dense materials for just a few hours.
Entering a breakthrough always felt amazing, but I could also feel the wall that greeted me just past this breakthrough, that represented the next floor. It was going to be more difficult to break that, but with the amount of mana I had access to, it shouldn’t be a problem.
For the floor guardian, I picked one of the wyvern patterns and changed it to an even more powerful version that should be powerful enough when too many adventurers tried to enter the floor guardian room at once.
In the skill selection, I increased my Ever-expanding quantity skill to Rank B. It was the second passive skill that I had, and what it allowed me to do was use a portion of my mana regeneration to continuously increase the number of creatures and monsters I could have.
With that, my breakthrough ended, and I was once again stronger as I reestablished control over my dungeon. It’s damn unfortunate that I wouldn’t be able to hide my next breakthrough; it would be too strong. That would have made everything so much easier.