Hey you,

I hope you enjoy the chapter and leave me a rating. Unfortunately I don't know how much I can release until late October. At least once per week might be too much already since I am really busy with exams. I have no plans to drop this story.

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When Quin thought back at the last six months the progress of the town and his dungeon was really astounding. The new disciples they gathered from the nearby sect and that they had forced a contract of absolute loyalty on had been forced to work very hard. Most of the menial tasks like mining and wood cutting were done by them until the masses of mortals arrived. Then they were made the overseers of the work they had done before and given a quota to fulfill to avoid punishment.

The mortals were housed in giant buildings and their living conditions were anything but good from what he had gathered. As soon as any news began to spread they were naturally discussed while dungeon diving and Quin was always there to listen. Most of the people concerned with the mortals were those that had very close mortal relatives like parents or siblings, the others had slowly developed an apathy to the injustices happening to those they almost considered lower lifeforms.

This was just one of the many issues that naturally developed in most cultivators. Fleeting things like mortals, basic needs like food or copulation and the value of any life just faded more and more from their mind as the centuries progressed. Death was something that every cultivator had to face countless times in all its forms that they either slowly got numb to it or began to go insane.

With the new workforce the city quickly began to expand and to be reworked from the ground. Every wooden shack was torn down and replaced by houses made of stone. Huge administrative buildings were constructed and elders could buy mansions on huge plots of land near to the to show off their wealth and importance to the world.

Since this was not possible in the city around the sect headquarters many elders and teachers took this opportunity to secure themselves and their clans a secure foothold in the city that was sure to be the second center of the sect in the future.

Since this city was planned from the start in contained many artificial lakes, parks, statues, operas and theaters for the residents to enjoy and for any visitors to marvel at. But the picturesque city vanished as soon as the inner wall was crossed. here, the wooden shacks were not only prevalent, they even began to be stacked on top of each other. It wasn't an unusual sight to see a house collapsing that couldn't bear the weight added on top anymore.

Cultivators were very robust though and no serious injuries had been reported yet. The collapsed houses were then just cleaned up and a new foundation made of stone was built before the houses were stacked again. The first Cellar Casinos had also opened and the construction of a second Undercity was just a matter of time. A merchant elder had already secured the rights from the sect to open the black markets, fighting pits, brothels and more himself and direct the majority of the income to the sect itself.

The sect was very aware that no one could prevent the formation of those from happening and so the elder devised a plan to at least control it. This Undercity was planned by the sect's best architects and would later go at least four stories deep down and to make sure that it wouldn't collapse and take the city above with it there were many supporting pillars and walls that would span through all four floors.

The first floor would be the one with the businesses that could not be allowed to exist in broad daylight for anyone to find. This would also be the floor that had most of the Undercity's visitors would see. The lower floors should be as much out of sight as possible as they would house what the city wanted to hide from everyone who did not specifically search for them. It also had to be easily accessible and traversing three floors just to get to a brothel would most likely never have worked anyway.

On the second floor were the slums of the city. Here was the place where the mortal workers would live, hidden from the view of the general masses of cultivators. It was a place of safety, but also a place to hide the lowly lifeforms that nobody wanted to see cramping the streets when the cultivators went on a stroll through the city.

In the the mortals mostly lived in the Undercity anyway, and now this was just taken a step further. Seeing as the mortal population was so huge already and it was estimated to grow even further this floor was planned with more than double the size of the first floor with ample room for further expansion.

The third floor was planned to be even more massive than the second one. Here would be the and farms that would supply the whole city with meat and basic crafting ingredients for the disciples to buy. Maria had already informed him that the protector would once again come to discuss the acquisition of beasts and animals from the dungeon. The sect had made a massive purchase of from the neighboring kingdom that was ironically easier to reach then the rest of their own due to the mountain range. The crystals were a better version of the and at least Grade 3. With a sufficient supply of Mana they could illuminate the whole floor and once the Mana supply stopped they would slowly dim, so that a day and night circle could be simulated.

On the last floor would be the sewer system for all floors above as well as the rest of the city. Mortal workers who were very unlucky or criminal cultivators would soon shovel shit there and hunt the inevitable that would crop up there, but it would also be the place for beggars or fugitives to live and the way smugglers got their wares into the city. A teacher of the sect with the Water had already confirmed that there was a massive underground river nearby that came from the mountains so the supply of fresh water was already secured. Supposedly this river was already used by a number of cities further inside the province so sooner or later a dock would have to be built for easier trade routes and fortifications against potential invaders.

And even with its big scope the city at the moment only occupied one-quarter to one-third of the side of one nameless mountain at the foot of , so room for expansion in the future was a given. The planned fortress atop the flat mountain would have to wait for the moment as it wasn't immediately needed. The watch towers had been expanded though and now they were much broader and sturdier than before.

A proper stairway was also carved into the cliff so that the disciples had no problem climbing up and down the mountainside.

Although the progress of the city was astounding the change inside the dungeon was just as noticeable. It now was at an impressive 80 floors. When he reached the end of the phase the dungeon would have an astounding over 10 times increase in expanse compared to the previous stage. The beasts had also grown further and further, shaping the dungeon's interior to their needs and preferences.

Now a group of disciples would need to travel approximately 14 days without exploration and without rest just to reach the end. And that was also if they did not meet any enemies.

As the dungeon acquired a fair number of new beast species through the sect the space got more and more cramped leading to most species developing at least one variant that would specialize in excavation as long as they were not privy to information about tools used for that task or they could simply not use them.

Now the dungeon hosted a great number of feline, wolf and other insect species that weren't present before and the fighting on the first ten floors got more intense and broader in scope every day. The miners who looked for valuable ores also had to either venture deeper and deeper, into more and more hostile territory or dig through tons of normal stone to reach new veins. If they didn't have anyone with an affinity related to metal the first option was the only viable one as they had no methods to locate the veins otherwise.

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On the tenth floor the title shifted constantly as the beasts who were strong enough to get it would sooner or later leave to the lower floors anyway or they were killed in the massive fights that broke out daily. Quin also decided to have a secondary entrance to the 11th floor that was deep under water to give the evolved fishes a chance to go deeper too. The ones who did manage to cross the line that separated them from were a terror for the other beasts to deal with as they were mostly much bigger than the beasts on land and they only had to leave the water when they wanted to hunt land beasts.

But the beasts in the water had it by no means easy. As the water tunnels were not as expansive as the tunnels above and digging was harder the place they had to share was much smaller. That lead to a very harsh environment in which only the very strongest or most versatile could survive or even thrive. Amphibians were the ones who could use the advantages of the water ways the most as they nested in caves that were only be able to be reached by diving and they could hunt the small creatures as well as the big ones.

The ones amphibians who used this best were the , and alligator species. The and who evolved from toads and frogs respectively used tools and superior numbers to hunt whereas the alligators used their strength, size and explosive speed to drag their prey into the water and drown it there.

The species who were the undisputed kings of the water world though were neither of those species. That position firmly belonged to the . They hunted in small groups and had an estimated length of 10 meters. Those two features alone made it nigh impossible to hunt them. But to make matters worse they were also very fast and had an incredible jaw strength that made them very good hunters.

Meanwhile on the higher floors knowledge had become a very important resource and ruins were very coveted places. Especially the on the 20th floor was very valuable as it taught the beast language to anyone who gazed at the altar placed inside. This language had nothing to do with the actual sounds made by the beasts and used Mana instead that was emitted through the mouth in a kind of morse code that could be received by anyone who heard the cries of the beasts using it.

After the 20th floor there was actual trade of goods or knowledge between different tribes who managed to secure certain key information that everyone could put to good use. But the tool to effectively communicate ones desires also led to internal strife, so some groups split themselves from their species and began to found their own villages. This led to the following ten floors to be the most chaotic as new groups constantly formed and only the strongest ones managed to travel further down the dungeon.

Because Quin had already foreseen that problems would arise the floors from the 21st to the 30th were mostly filled with open grass lands, only a few trees, the occasional hill and many small rivers. The rooms were also fairly big so that there was sufficient space for all the small communities that had formed. 

The ruins this time were old tombs that had their entrances in the hills and then led further underground. The information this time was about how to construct basic straw huts using the tall grass that grew everywhere. This was of course no normal grass and in fact every grass stalk was a Grade 1 treasure. They were very sturdy, but also flexible and when weaved together they could even serve as makeshift walls for the villages.

To make the wood from the few trees not just a valuable commodity, but also a challenge to get, every single one of them was sentient. As soon as they evolved from Grade 1 through mana absorption they began to be classified as Rank 2 , the . In this case every  that evolved became a . With their evolution they were also able to move around and thus even harder to find.

Only the that evolved from had no such problems as the Treants instinctively trusted them and even planted themselves in their villages. With this move they replaced the of earth or stone as those had separated themselves once they had the means and numbers to defend themselves.

The floors from the 31st to the 40th then contained a swamp that favored the amphibians as well as the most coherent groups, because of the obvious huge water masses and because the environment was very hazardous. Only very strong individualists or groups that helped each other out against ambushes from the hidden depths and the vegetation would have a chance to survive these floors.

With the weak beasts and unstable groups filtered out the next ten floors were a savannah again, so that the populations that managed to pass through the swamp had a place to expand their numbers once again. When he had established these floors the were surprisingly the first to arrive and they also had minimal losses, but in retrospect it really was only logical.

The toxins in the swamp had no effect on them, most plant life wouldn't attack them and they were very dependent on each other since they were weak individually.

From the 51st to the 70th floor there was a big change, but not in form of hazardous terrain, but because that was the time when he had merged the into his core and began to attune certain places more heavily to the elements. The terrain this time was again a caves, but this time it was so cold in these caves that the walls were made of ice and the ground was frosted over and very slippery. Since their advancement to the second Stage almost every beast had a stronger body that could handle this type of temperature though.

The water attuned Mana was very strong inside these floors and the deeper the ruins went the colder it also got and the stronger was the Concentration of water Mana. The deepest places would also later birth the first , beings of very basic intelligence at the beginning that purely consisted of Mana attuned to their element.

They were formless and very weak in the beginning, but once grown up and evolved they would become some of the most powerful known entities.

And finally on the 71st to the 80th and later up to the 90th floor he made the floor full of deep water and placed many small islands and narrow land bridges connecting them. On the islands themselves were huge trees planted that would serve as homes for the newly advancing avian species like the and .

Quin had often contemplated whether the conditions in the later floors got too hard to handle and would cripple his dungeon's growth as the beasts saw themselves unable to advance further anymore. This worry was unfounded though and although the swamp and ice terrains were meat grinders that swallowed thousands of corpses, the influx of new beasts from the lower floors never stopped.

As the new communities grew further and further some of the big factions stopped their constant infighting and began trading their newfound knowledge with each other. This led to an explosion in the population and the lack of space pushed the strong individuals of the species to form small groups to try to reach the lower floors where space was in abundance. In the end only the strongest survived and their superior genes would be passed down to those born in the lower floors who were destined to travel even further down then their parents.