Pov Dungeon Core

During the next breakthrough, I decided to increase my Ever-expanding Quantity skill, getting it to rank A. I had a lot of creatures and monsters, and while I was not starting to suffer from excess mana upkeep, it also wasn’t too far away.

I needed to be able to increase the number of creatures and monsters I could upkeep, and this was one of the best ways to do it. With an increase in rank, I could channel more mana into it every moment, which would hopefully allow me to keep ahead of the ever-expanding numbers I had to deal with.

Another way to fix this would be to increase my capacity by improving my Creature Quantity skill beyond S rank into S-plus or even SS rank, but to make such a leap, I would need multiple breakthroughs. This kind of rank was meant more for when I got closer to diamond or even reached diamond rank.

There was another rank above that, SSS, and even a plus version of that, but only a few dungeons have ever reached that—at least to my knowledge—and only because they were truly talented at that specific area and fully focused on it.

This time, when I reconnected with my dungeon, I was met with a surprise. There was a new plan that had been thought up and properly explored. It was quite a simple plan to fix everything, although the application of it was questionable at best. Our plan was to eventually raise me up so half of me would be above the surface, but now came the question: why not lift me up completely, perhaps even put me into orbit?

Orbit was a new term. Many new terms have come out from the satellite outpost as they continue to observe the space around them. They also needed to start naming certain things so they could be taught easier.

Orbit was a term to describe the movement of celestial objects, as every object seemed to be moving around others, mostly in some sort of circular pattern. It was fascinating to learn about all of this.

Also, the world we were currently in was not unique, except it had life while others didn’t. Worlds like this were, for now, being called planets, while smaller celestial objects circling them that were big enough were being called moons.

So the plan was to lift me up high enough that I would become like the satellite outpost, which would safeguard me from a lot of attackers and most definitely other dungeons. While I was not against the idea—basically no one was—it was unfortunately not easy to accomplish. Not easy at all.

Currently, how I was moving upwards was that I had taken a lot of the surrounding rock and dirt, made it my own, and then used it to slowly push me upward. It was an incredibly mana-consuming task that took a lot of concentration.

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Another problem was that it wasn’t that safe. Moving my weight caused the surrounding rock to often crumble. If I were to lift myself even higher up without supporting the bottom, it was more than likely that I would fall.

That problem was largely fixed thanks to my newest skill. If I felt that I was going to start falling, I could just activate it, stabilize everything once again, and start moving upwards.

Even if I wanted to, lifting myself up past my equator was going to be tough—not to speak of getting me into orbit. There wasn’t really anything powerful enough to actually lift me, at least not yet, so another few projects were added to the Academy that now required filling new positions so such methods could be invented.

There was talk about using my newest skill. Technically, if we waited for the correct time and if I could control this skill of mine to a fine degree, we could use it to basically anchor myself to space that wasn’t bound by this planet, which would make me move away from this planet.

If I did it at the wrong moment, instead of being lifted upwards, I would be dragged through the planet, killing me instantly. If I wasn’t able to control the skill precisely enough, we would accelerate way too fast, basically liquefying everything inside, including my core.

If that wasn’t dangerous enough, there was also the problem of this world and how mana circulated. I needed that circulation; otherwise, I would suffocate. The mana got thinner and thinner the further out you went from this world. If I were to go outside the influence of the world core, I think I would actually suffocate. Also, I believe if I were too high up, my mana regeneration would fall drastically.

So, while in the end it might be a good idea, there was simply too much that could go wrong and too much we didn’t know. We just needed more time to find things out. There was also another thing I had noticed about mana—I was generating more of it, and it wasn’t accounted for by the increase of creatures and adventurers inside of me. So, it was time to dig a bit further into that to find out what was actually happening.

I also started to expand the 60th floor. My instincts were now quite angry at me, and I also felt quite unsatisfied that I couldn’t make proper floors. The emptiness inside of me was disgusting, but I needed to endure it so I would have a chance to survive. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the mana generation issue. The ambient mana of the whole world had increased by just a little bit, and it turned out that could help quite a lot.

After I revealed that discovery, a few more started to examine this and what could be the cause. Eventually, we all figured out that it was because so many dungeons were getting stronger. It turns out that the four powers weren’t just focusing on a few dungeons. They were literally changing the way they ran dungeons—from the newborn dungeons all the way up to diamond-ranked.

The thing was that this wasn’t good. While it would start to get them more and more strong people with more resources than ever, I might actually not have to release the small pattern for this world to be destroyed. If the ambient mana kept rising like this, more and more animals were going to start changing and getting stronger, and the current strongest wildlife was going to get even stronger.

It was a dangerous game they were playing, trying to raise an army strong enough to quickly wipe me out. They would not fight me as an easy target, no matter what they did, and I didn’t even need to give any signals.

Even if I were to end with a snap at this current moment, the creatures I sent out were completely autonomous, and when they understood that I was gone, they would release the small pattern. Unfortunately, I didn’t really know how to make them truly fear this small pattern, because if I were to release a bit of it, it might already be too late.

In the end, all I could hope was that this threat would be taken seriously. I focused back on expanding to the 60th floor and strengthening and enchanting a lot of materials so the building of the outer defenses could continue.

The more time passed, the more the frantic situation inside calmed down, and people got more or less back to their lives. I really wanted more time to just observe everything that was happening, but there was only a finite amount of me, and unfortunately, survival trumped entertainment.