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Sighing Torian wandered around in his temporary office. After a while he went to the room high window that granted him a good view of the city below that was full of bustling life. With the constant expansion of the city the huts that were built-in the beginning had long been demolished to make place for the more lavish buildings that were made available with the increasing stream of resources. The Sect naturally decided that the private residences of their Elders could never outshine the official Sect's headquarters and so a grand citadel was being constructed atop the flat mountain that originally only held the four watchtowers.
The construction was carried out by the many mortal workers and a few of the inner and outer Disciples of the Sect while the elders oversaw and directed the construction. This resulted in the incredibly short predicted construction time of five months. There was a total stagnation of further dungeon exploration previously, because the city construction needed so many helping hands. There was of course the occasional scouting mission that went further than the tenth floor, but those missions only searched for safe routes to go down further instead of trying to discover every natural treasure or species the dungeon had to offer. To this day they had only reached the 33rd floor with still no end in sight and no clear picture of anything lurking on these floors except a safe path that could be gone by the time they reached that floor the next time.
Now that the citadel construction was well on the way the Sect head had already sent him instructions on his next tasks. Firstly he had to finish the excavation of the Undercity and subsequently and subsequently get rid of the slums that began to form outside the city walls. The plan was to celebrate the new year and new city together and the slums full of mortals would tarnish their reputation in the eyes of many Elders and probably visitors from other parts of the country. His second instruction was to remove the Goblins from the nearby mountain range in the next six months or to at least corner them enough to provoke a final battle to exterminate those pests.
But he also had plans of his own. Now that so many Disciples had been freed up he had finally organized a group of 50 inner disciples that would test just how deep the dungeon grew and collect the floor maps that were engraved in a stone tablet and placed at the beginning of each 10 floors. Had the protector now negotiated to get these maps they would really be in the dark just how massive the dungeon was already. He had of course stored the old maps for their archives and most floors now had double the size compared to the first time they got a map of them, but many were even bigger as the beasts had clearly carved out their living spaces and expanded them for their needs and growing populations.
He had once tried asking Maria about information on the dungeon, but her response was very surprising. She had used most of her time interacting and socializing with the Sect Elders to make sure no one thought she was controlled by the dungeon or just cultivating and training. Occasionally she had also chatted with the dungeon who had specific questions about the outside world or wanted a monthly update on the situation of the city. So all in all she knew even less about the dungeon interior then he did and had surprisingly few interactions with the dungeon itself. When asked about this he had apparently told her that his current focus was on growth and that things would change as soon as he solidified his Mana Core.
Another positive piece of news was that Cog finally reached the Liquid Mana stage and a test of his Mana showed that he had a very good affinity for time, which was a very rare and strong affinity. With this his status in the Sect instantly skyrocketed and Torian decided to take him as a personal Disciple since no other strong Cultivator with that affinity existed in the sect. He would start his lessons in a few days once he had everything either organized himself or delegated to capable people. He would have loved to nurture Seth into his paperwork slave so that he could go back to cultivating and attempting a breakthrough, but there was no stopping him when he heard that there would be an expedition into the dungeon. In the end he was even voted as team leader due to his extensive experience in dungeon exploration and knowledge about dungeons in general.
With another sigh he turned back to his overly large desk that was filled with paperwork. There were many plans to be made and many tedious tasks to be fulfilled, but there was just not enough time of the day to accomplish everything, even when one only had to sleep once a week.
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Seth was so excited that he had almost began dancing in front of the Head of the Hunter Division at the good news. He was just barely able to save himself from that embarrassment and keep his composure until he arrived at home and promptly invited Cog, Grom and a few other friends for a party at his new residence in the Elder's district. His gamble on being the local dungeon expert and conviction that a dungeon had to form in the Sect's province in the next 200 years had paid of in a spectacular manner and had secured him a bright future.
When his confused friends arrived and enquired for what reason there was a party, his answer that there was finally a big dungeon exploration left them speechless for a while. But since having a party was never a bad thing they stayed anyways and celebrated until his departure the next morning.
When he stood in front of the entrance again a very bad feeling rose in his stomach. It was some ind of premonition that something would go terribly wrong and that he had overlooked a crucial detail. After a few seconds of deep thought he couldn't come up with anything and mentally pushed the feeling to the side to concentrate on his mission.
"Alright. Before we go just a few reminders so everyone is on the same page. Our mission today is to advance down the dungeon. We think that the dungeon has at least 40 floors, our only confirmation through the dungeon map is 39 floors. Given the dungeons history of developing faster than ordinary dungeons we have reason to believe there exist 50 to 60 floors or even more. We are not expected to reach the end, but if we do there will be a sizable reward from the sect. We are also not expected to fight our way through, but find a route that is relatively safe and can be used by a bigger group. Furthermore we should strive to find safe spots that can be use as bridgeheads to either explore the floors further or to go deeper from there the next time. Our exploration is estimated to last a month before we are back on the surface. I have a few space pouches filled with rations since we can't be sure that we will be able to hunt or find fresh water or edibles at all times. If you have any questions you can ask me any time. Now then, we want to reach the 11th floor today so you better hurry up."
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And with those encouraging words the group of 50 set out and made haste to the 11th floor, which they reached after only 16 hours of constant running. After this exercise everyone was drenched in sweat and exhausted, but also happy to finally rest and go exploring in the next days. The final guardian or Boss as it was called at the end of the 10th floor had smartly avoided them since it could already gauge that they were much stronger than him from their passive Mana Pressure alone. If it hadn't developed that skill it would never have stayed alive for as long as it had. But what was convenience for the stronger beasts and cultivators since they avoided a difficult fight made it an absolute terror for the weaker entities that encroached upon its territory. It never took a losing fight and smartly focused on any weak links that a group had, whittling their numbers down before it went in for the kill.
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While the dungeon was further scouted the next morning Cog made his way to the residence of the Division Head Torian, his new master, to receive his first lesson in using his Mana beyond simple body amplification and to learn how to make use of his affinity.
Nervously he stood at the gate of huge walled mansion. The wall was more to avoid anyone peaking in then for any real protection, but it was intimidating to him nonetheless. He used the big door knocker that was decorated with intricate carvings to announce his presence and was soon led through the gate into a huge forest of different plants, many of them even Grade 1 or even Grade 2 materials that any outer Disciple would drool over.
But plants weren't the only things living inside this little forest. Through his nature Affinity the Division Head had naturally also a strong connection to animals and Frost Leopard that he had tamed and reared since he found it as a young cub in the Trult Mountain Range. It was famous throughout the sect as the only tamed Core Solidification beast and with his strong body and formidable control over ice it could probably enter the top ten of the most powerful elders in the sect. Had he not left it in the Sect at first the goblin raid would have probably been beaten down much quicker and with much fewer casualties, but of course no one dared to raise that point with the now most powerful and influential Elder.
Cog woke up from his musings when the servant reminded him to enter the study that they had already reached. He had no recollection of how they arrived here or how long they had stood in front of this door. Mentally composing himself he opened the door and entered. What greeted him was the sight of a small library with shelves and a desk made of Deep Sea Mahagony, a Grade 2 Plant that grew deep in jungle lakes. The ceiling was decorated with paneled wood that was arranged in intricate patterns and the whole floor was covered with a crimson carpet. Behind the desk sat Elder Torian, an imposing presence like always, with a stack of documents on the side while a half-finished book laid open on the desk. He was apparently reading it when Cog arrived.
"Please take a seat Cog."
He said and motioned to one of the two armchairs that were placed in front of the desk. He hurried to the armchair with nervous steps as he was still not used to being in the presence of his idol since entering the sect and his anticipation of finally learning how to really cultivate didn't help either. The advanced methods of any Sect on how to groom their disciples were tightly kept secret so that they could maintain their status as elites and new upstart organizations or unaffiliated cultivators didn't endanger the status quo. Even outer Disciples had no knowledge of any such techniques and only once one became an inner Disciple would they get access to them either through the Sect library or a personal mentor.
"Today we will begin with a purely theoretic lesson on cultivation and on what your options are moving forward. Your first focus should be on combat. Every cultivator has to fight others at some point in his life. How you do that entirely depends on your own preferences and your creativity. Almost every affinity can be used in countless different ways and it is up to you to find the one that suits you.
Your second focus is cultivation and you should learn what cultivation really means. Up until now you only drew in Mana from the outside world and compressed it all in the end until it took a liquid form. Now you have to do that for every single drop of Mana before you can assimilate it into your own Mana Pool. That is also the reason that cultivation gets harder and slower the further you cultivate. But now there is also a second component to cultivation and that is your understanding of your affinity. You should strive to understand what you can do with your affinity and how to combine certain aspects of it to achieve a better effect. The further you progress in your cultivation the more you have to shift your focus from Mana cultivation to cultivation of your understanding.
There are many people who get stuck in the early stages of cultivation because their aptitude with the Mana cultivation aspect is too poor they just barely scrape by and advance fast enough to further increase their lifespan. That matters less and less though, the further they advance. On the other hand there are people with exceptional Mana cultivating capabilities that have a poor comprehension capability and get stuck at a certain point and advance slowly or even never again.
The third focus should be on your affinity itself. There are many affinities and a few basic rules have been observed about them through the ages. The first one is that the broader your affinity is that the weaker it is in the beginning. The second rule is that the broader the affinity is, the more options you have to grow in the specific direction that suits you. The third rule is that the more closely related an affinity is to yours, the easier it is for your to also get an understanding into that affinity. This is important to either narrow down your early path and get access to early power or to expand your path for the future to not get stuck one day and to broaden your options of advancement.
I think we should end todays lesson here. It may not have been very long, but the ramifications of what you do with those information are very important for your future development. You should think very long and hard about what I told you today and when you have made your choices for the future you can come back to consult me for any questions you might have. This is your future you have to plan and no one has any right to tell you what to do with that."
The rest of the day was like a blur for Cog as he agonized over what the right path for his future was.