Pov Dungeon Core

It seems like all the clans that I sent the contract offer to are going to accept. The time limit for contract signing was something my advisors recommended. We knew that there would be some who would jump on this opportunity immediately, but decisions like this needed to be thought out properly. So that’s why we came up with the time limit before they could come and accept the contract.

The contract itself was quite simple. It was still a magical contract that would bind the parties who signed it, but it wasn’t a compelling contract like the ones dungeon cores were given. I find it kind of funny that these kinds of contracts are incredibly illegal in the entire world, except when it comes to binding dungeon cores.

One by one, I watched as the representatives of the 12 clans walked through their gateways in their hideouts and appeared in the newly finished city that the Academy built inside the room I constructed, where people could continuously fight platinum-ranked monsters for as long as they wished. It was quite a big city and a busy city, currently with nearly 25,000 occupants from all over my dungeon.

It was funny to see their reactions to creatures they hadn’t seen before, communicating with each other in ways they didn’t understand yet. The clans weren’t the only ones to come through the gateways; I also offered this opportunity to many smaller groups and individuals. It was quite the colorful bunch of people that waited at the edge of the city.

I wondered how they felt about the strange creatures and the city they saw. This room was also quite unique in many other ways. It was 10 kilometres across, with walls having doors at regular intervals. Above those doors were red and green lights—red meaning that the room behind the door was in use and someone was currently fighting platinum-ranked monsters there, green meaning it was empty.

Because of how many of these rooms I needed and how large they needed to be—as most people would be fighting in groups and not solo—there was a need to make this room long. So while it was only 10 kilometers across, mainly to make room for a living space and different facilities. The room itself was incredibly long, so long that for the people who just got there, they would not be able to see the end of it.

As more and more come to challenge this place, even if they eventually fail to reach diamond, I will most likely need to expand this room even further. In each direction, it currently stretches 700 kilometers, bringing the total length to 1400 kilometers.

Each of the challenge rooms that the doors led to was 1 km squared, meaning that currently I had 2400 challenge rooms available to be used. There were many gateways that you could take to the different sections of the room, so you wouldn't have to walk for too long if you got a time slot in a room at the very edge. There were already small outposts forming at almost every gateway.

When everyone had arrived, they were surprised when Bug Guy walked out and started to address them. "I am pleased that you have all come. Please follow me inside, and we will get everything signed, and of course, I will answer your questions."

They were taken aback that Bug Guy was here, as he was one of the leaders of one of the currently biggest guilds in the dungeon. They didn’t expect someone like that to be here.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"I can already see the burning question in your eyes. I have been working for the dungeon for a long while now. As for the ability of my guild to keep the dungeon’s secrets, well, you could see all kinds of beings here. Every member of my guild is not an adventurer but a creature of the dungeon. Yes, this place you call home is so much bigger than you ever imagined. You will learn it all, don’t worry."

I expected distrust in the eyes of the people who had come here. Instead, I saw curiosity and excitement. There was a good chance that all of them were a bit mad, as a normal reaction should not be like that. Well, whatever the case, I didn’t have much time to concentrate on the proceedings. I’m sure they will do fine enough, and I will keep a more active mind here just in case.

My main focus was currently on the fact that I finished expanding the 51st floor. In length it was massive and just shy of 350,000 kilometers, with a width of a bit over 295,000 kilometers. The height I kept at 15 kilometers.

Currently, it was almost entirely empty except for the bedrock that covered the bottom part of the floor. Normally, this means that I would start building out the terrain of this playroom and the basic structure of the dungeon rooms. But things changed even more than I expected them to change.

The plan originally was to barely focus on the dungeon rooms, as they weren’t the priority right now. I wasn’t even going to start building out the terrain, as I didn’t know exactly what I would need. I didn’t have a pattern ready for a farming floor that would take that pattern to diamond rank in any reasonable amount of time, and without the worry that the pattern would gain proper consciousness before it reached diamond rank. That was the hardest part I was having trouble with.

There were many times I observed when adventurers got lucky; in some cases, I have also been lucky, but not truly in the sense that adventurers mean it. But for the first time in my life, I felt properly lucky, and it was a wonderful feeling. This luck came in the form of the ooze that started to develop consciousness. Now, on its own, that would not be anything useful—just a curiosity. That all changed just a few days ago.

The ooze continued to grow larger and slowly advance in rank as it continued to absorb the nutrients it was getting from the sunlight. What I couldn’t have ever imagined was that when it got big enough, it split into two distinct consciousnesses that, by every measure I could test, were different creatures from that point forward.

I expected the ooze to simply continue becoming bigger and bigger and just remain as a singular consciousness, even if this consciousness could be partly called that. It was all basic instinct, but it should still be impossible for the ooze to achieve, and I still had no idea how it even happened in the first place. That didn’t matter much, as I immediately focused a huge portion of myself on this particular development.

Immediately, I started to test this pattern even more. I made it in various ranks, and it did become more intelligent as its rank increased. At platinum and near diamond, I would call its intelligents close to a stupid hunting dog. It seems that it was just shy of being as intelligent as a good hunting dog.

That was still incredibly impressive for this kind of creature that shouldn’t have intelligence at all. I’m still trying to figure that one out, but I think I will need to put that behind me, as I really don’t need to focus on that right now.

The funny thing was that the higher its rank, the larger it could get before splitting into two distinct consciousnesses. So, while a silver-ranked ooze was about the size of a small tavern's main room, a platinum rank seemed to be able to become the size of a village.

I still didn’t know much about their behavior, as I currently only had about a dozen creatures with full autonomy. Everything else was still monsters, and from them, I couldn’t observe proper behavior patterns.

It seems that they did fight each other somewhat, trying to consume each other, but all of them were at the same rank, so they could only pull off small portions from others. The interesting thing was that when they split, some portion of the ooze became inert and reverted back to the original ooze. They did occasionally consume it, but it seems like they didn’t much like the taste of that ooze. That was another interesting behavioral pattern I didn’t fully understand.

If I were to put them in the 51st playroom, crank up the heat of the playroom, and ramp up the intensity of the sun, they would breed incredibly fast, and from what I can tell, they should be able to achieve diamond rank. So that’s why I was lucky. I managed to get a viable pattern for my diamond-ranked farm just by accident. I still can’t believe that this has happened.

What’s even better is that I wouldn’t have to do anything huge and time-consuming to the 51st playroom to make it a perfect place for this pattern. I think I will still add some spawners high up that would occasionally drop chunks of fat, as the ooze could consume anything to get more sustenance to continue to grow. I might be jumping a bit ahead; perhaps I should do some more testing. Yes, no matter how eager I am, I should take a bit of time to properly test out the viability of this pattern.