POV Ace

I had just finished another dungeon run. The amount of mana I could accumulate was minuscule. But there was nothing I could do about it. The dungeons I was allowed to delve into were of a wooden rank, but there were no other adventurers around here that I would want to form a party with so I could enter the copper-rank dungeon in the nearby forest. At least I was close to another breakthrough which should allow me to go to a larger town and find myself a proper party.

My thoughts were interrupted when I saw the Guild receptionist waving me down. This wouldn't be good. I just wanted to go and get some beer and food and then go to sleep. I approached the receptionist, hoping this wasn’t anything bad. "Ace, I have a letter for you. Just wait a moment."

When I heard those words, I could barely keep my reaction neutral. There were only a few reasons I would get a letter: either my father wanted coin so he could keep gambling, he needed coin so he could pay off his debts, or he was dead.

Honestly, I hoped for the last one. Then again there was a good chance that he was killed by someone he owed coin to, which meant that whoever they were would want that coin from me.

Lately, his luck just hasn’t been good. When I was younger, I still remember the days when we lived like nobles, but eventually, his luck turned and nothing he tried could bring it back. I took the letter, thanked the receptionist, but didn’t open it. I enjoyed a few beers and a proper meal before I went to my room where I finally opened the letter.

I hadn’t received a letter from him for almost a year now. Usually, every few months he needed more coin. The first few sentences confirmed it - he was dead. "Shit," I muttered, touching my cheek where I found a tear. He was still my father, and he gave me a good childhood, no matter how badly he messed up the rest of it.

When I kept reading, I was quite surprised. It turned out that he was killed, but not because he owed coin, because he won too much. He had been dead for over six months now, but it turns out everyone wanted a piece of the fortune he had accumulated over the few months he had truly good luck.

The numbers shown here were absolutely staggering. Did he win a bank or something? I could have bought my way to the gold rank with that much coin or lived until I died in luxury. But most of it was gone; apparently, a lot of people showed up claiming that he owed them and they were able to prove enough of it in court that many were actually given compensation.

But the remaining amount was still ridiculous, so there was still quite a lot left for me to claim. But when I finally reached the end of the letter, I spent a few minutes cursing. Taking out the second piece of parchment from the envelope, I confirmed the last part to be true. My father had somehow won a huge piece of land, enough to make him a noble. Perhaps this was the real reason he was killed, but it didn't matter. I now owned that land and by Kingdom law, needed to develop it.

What the hell did I know about developing frontier land? This also meant that my adventuring life was now over unless there’s a dungeon near my land, but I don’t even know where this piece of land is.

It took me a month to reach a big enough town where I could claim my inheritance and then quickly put it into a bank so no one would steal it. This town also had a proper map shop so I could finally locate where my land is.

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I almost cried when I found out. It was on the other side of the Kingdom, near a mountain range and the very edge of this Kingdom. There was also no direct way there. If everything went perfectly, it would take me over a year to make it, but nothing ever went well in this world.

I estimated it would be two years. Perhaps the best idea would be to buy a horse for myself, at least for the roads that were relatively safe. There wasn’t even a guarantee that I would make it there alive, but if I didn’t try, I would be declared a traitor and killed in some horrible way. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

POV Dungeon Core

Time went by quickly. Currently, the age of exploration and expansion had ended, but I didn’t know what to call the next age. The ants had created huge colonies that were united by common ideas and values. A name that would fit would be an age of cultures, but I didn’t like it.

That name just didn't feel as good as the Age of Exploration and Expansion. That was an epic name. The age of unifying cultures also didn’t fit because not all cultures unified; some previously huge colonies split in two because of different opinions. Finally, I decided to call it the Age of Emerging Culture.

Was this in any way necessary? Absolutely not, but it was enjoyable, and that's the most important thing. A lot of civil wars happened, and slowly the huge colonies started to split apart. Wars raged endlessly, but it was now rare for a colony to be completely destroyed. They also seemed to be getting smarter. It seems that intelligence is important for survival.

A while later, I noticed a new trend happening. Assassinations of the queen started to happen without an all-out war. Mostly it was done by the same colonies as different queens wanted to become the head Queen, but some were also done to weaken a colony before war began. After observing this for a while, I realized I was quite vulnerable to such a tactic. It seems like a redesign of my core room is required.

While my decoy would still work, everyone would figure out quite quickly that it wasn’t the core. Currently, anyone could come here and just pick it up. That just wasn’t good. After thinking for a while, I decided to make my core room a perfect cube and expand it to be 16 by 16 meters.

This left just enough room that I didn’t squash the third-floor colonies, and perhaps I would once again be able to see upside-down battles. The few skirmishes that happened between floor connections were a little bit too small for my liking.

As I started with my room expansion, I was disrupted by an invader. Something that I hadn’t seen before came in, and it was large. It killed the horned rabbit in one bite. It was disappointed and angry when it only dropped a single piece of meat. It continued to advance, and nothing my rabbits did slowed it down. When it reached the floor guardian, it couldn't just kill it with one bite and had to do a swipe attack which gave it an opportunity to bite down on the neck of the floor guardian, ending its life soon after.

It had a bit of trouble getting down the staircase, and I made a note to make them bigger. Finally, it stayed long enough so I would know what it was. It was a creature called a bear. It was truly massive with long fur covering everything. It was impressively strong, and the foxes didn’t pose any problems to it. The floor guardian, however, was able to wound it a bit. It seems that this made the bear hesitant to go down, and after a while, it turned around and left.

Each pattern was complex and big, so I was only able to learn a small portion of it from the time it was on my territory. Hopefully, it will come back. Having such a powerful creature to defend me made my instincts feel giddy. This was a new feeling for me, and I completely agreed with my instincts on this. Perhaps we had different goals in mind as I would just like to see this creature fight and observe its behavior.

I made the stairs bigger, taking into account creatures with different modes of moving. There were also some memories of creatures that lived inside water, and that sounded quite interesting. Now that the construction was over, it was time to get back to my core room.

I extended the pillar, so I would end up exactly in the center of the room making it larger so I would have room to grow. It seems that with three floors, my body actually grew a bit, and I didn’t want myself to be accidentally crushed because I grew too much with a breakthrough.

At this moment, I took inspiration from the ants. I extended the pillar to form a cone with the fake core on top of it. Then I spent a long time making sure it was as smooth as possible, so anyone trying to climb it would have a terrible time.

Around the fake core, I made a protective surrounding. While I left the core visible, the slits were too small to get the core out without destroying the stone, and I made sure that any projectiles shot from the ground wouldn't be able to hit the fake core. My instincts felt great after that, and I was also quite proud. Now, stealing the fake core would be troublesome.

Putting my full attention back on my ants, I continued to observe while time went by. The bear visited me a few times, and sometimes there were different predators, but none of them ever made it to my core.

The ants had helped me to gain a lot more mana than I was supposed to. I wondered how my speed compared to other dungeons, but soon I was interrupted from my thoughts by my instincts constantly nagging at me to start the process of a breakthrough.