Seeing the absurd rise in my Mana generation from just leveling up boosted my Mana Generation from 30.2 to 42.9!
I am almost at the stage where I can create a Widow Ant every day!
But with the mana I had at my disposal, I could create a Da'gba every day and still have more mana to spare...
The question is, should I even create more Da'gba?
The Da'gba were small, smaller than the Widow Ant, which was the size of a medium-sized dog.
If anything, I made the Da'gba the same size as the molerat from the Fallout series by Bethesda, and it was originally my intention to recreate that specific molerat, but my loss in focus is what created the Abomination before me that was digging through a dirt wall along with a few Giant Ants even larger then the Da'gba.
After some thought...I decided to create two more Da'gba when I had enough mana to assist in the expansion of the floor.
Sure, the Da'gba was slower when it came to mining, but even then, they would help hasten the expansion of the Dungeon, at least until I got to the point where I could create a Widow Ant every day.
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Two days passed, and two Da'gba were created to assist in the expansion of the floor.
Due to the efforts of the Monsters, my Mana Regeneration has jumped to 46.9, and I was already approaching my goal of 50!
I was most likely going to reach my goal in a day or two, and then I could start producing a Widow Ant every day.
I've also used some of my mana to create new plants for my dungeon and hasten the Oak Tree's growth, which has finally reached its Adult Stage and begun producing seeds, with more than a dozen seeds already produced and spread around the floor.
As for the plants I created, I was mostly experimenting and created several new plants that now populate my Dungeon.
But these were not just simple plants. I wanted to create something magical, which is why I experimented when creating these plants with the first plant I called The Falling Sun Flower.
This flower was designed to give off warmth, and it absorbed the Ambiant Mana around it to do so. However, what I did not take into account was putting in natural resistance to the heat, meaning that after a while, the plant would die from damaging itself.
The flower also acted as a source of light for the floor, which plants could thrive off of.
The flower had a short life but was a great source of heat, and its Alchemy Ingredients would be stronger than the next plant I created, which I called The Rising Sun Flower that was designed to last longer but provide less heat, and its Alchemical Effects was weaker than that of The Falling Sun Flower's.
But the Rising Sun Flower's strength would increase with time hence the 'Rising' part of its name, while The Falling Sun Flower's power would decay with time, hence the 'Falling' part of its name.
As for the two flower's alchemical effects, they both had nearly the same effects, with the first three being the same and the fourth being different for both flowers.
The first three effects were 'Fortify Warmth,' 'Heat Resistance,' and 'Weakness to Frost.'
As for the Falling Sun Flower, its fourth effect was called 'Solar Strength.'
And the Rising Sun Flower has the effect called 'Fortify Flame.'
Other than those two plants, I created something I called Posidon's Flower, Starlight Berries, and Lunar Moss.
Each of these plants had its uses and alchemical effects, but something all of my new plant creations had in common was that they could absorb mana to survive and had some kind of magical ability.
The two Sun Flowers could give off light and heat like a real sun, the Posidon Flower could use mana to create a pond of water around its base, the Starlight Berries gave off a flickering rainbow light color, and Lunar Moss gave off a gentle white glow.
I would have kept the Magic Plant creation train going but ended up using all of my stored mana, which I did not mind now that the plant life of my first floor is more diverse.
With nothing else to do but watch the town and keep track of the expansion progress of the first floor, I relaxed and waited. I have 1,000 years ahead of me, after all. I will need to relax.
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A week later and my Regeneration was now sitting at a comfortable 60.3, for days I have been producing a Widow Ant every day, and now my Widow Ant number has risen to 8, and that number has only been increasing by the day as the Widow Ants worked tirelessly to expand the first floor.
The Da'gba still sit at three in number and are on the opposite side of the Dungeon expanding.
As for my Branded Monsters, I now had four separate Horned Rabbits watching over the city.
I had the three newest Horned Rabbits go around the city's external walls so that I could get an accurate estimation of the size of the city.
From what I could tell, the walls were a few miles long, and I would guess the city had at most a population of a couple thousand.
All of their walls looked to have been made from scrap metal or scavenged vehicles all meshed together to create a solid wall, and I've noticed a constant guard watching and observing from the walls and guards constantly switching through shifts.
There were two gates into the town, one on the northern side of the town and one on the southern. I was closest to the southern gate but was southeast from the gate by two miles. If I continued to expand with the box shape I am currently doing, I would eventually be underneath the city itself, which isn't all that comforting.
This is why I decided to expand around the city instead of directly underneath it, where I had the chance of being discovered.
I would only expand underneath the city once I was ready and prepared to handle Delvers.
I also had another idea on how to allow my monsters to level up in the dungeon without having to hunt on the surface. Still, I wanted first to diversify and increase my Monster population first.
Which is why the next day, I created two more Da'gba to follow the Progenitor and help in expanding the floor, and the day after that, I created two more, raising the Da'gba number to 7 and my Mana Regeneration to 65.2.
I have also spent some time and mana to change the terrain of the first floor by adding hills, caves, and small fox holes for future small monsters to hide and live in.
The first floor was beginning to look like a proper forest, well, as proper as possible with it being underground and all.
I've also finally realized something I should have noticed a long time ago...light.
It seems Dungeon Cores can see even when there is no light...
Yeah...
This entire time my first floor has been shrouded in darkness, with the only light being the new plant additions I have added to the floor...
No wonder I have seen some of my Ants run into things like they didn't see them until only recently when I introduced the new plants.
Now that I think about it, the Ants seem to always have some of the Sun flowers nearby so they could see while they worked on digging through the wall.
At first, I thought it was just because they wanted to be warm, so I never expected it was because they couldn't see.
Reminding myself that I would need to find a fix for the light on the floor for later, I finally opened the loot table menu for my monsters which showed a list of my monsters and that none of my Monsters had a set loot table, which apparently meant that upon death they would just leave behind corpses.
Examining and looking through the Loot Table menu, I eventually found that so long as a monster had a loot table, it would be able to automatically revive somewhere on the floor at the cost of some of its exp and a Dungeon's Mana.
Basically, if a monster had a loot table assigned by the dungeon, whenever the Monster died, the monster would dissipate into mana and be stored as data in the Dungeon Core, allowing the Dungeon to recreate the Monster at a much cheaper cost than having to recreate it.
I also noticed that the Dungeon Core had the option of letting the monster keep its memories or wipe them away, lowering the cost to revive the monster even further.
This gave Delvers even more incentives to delve into a Dungeon since Dungeons could set valuable loot to drop from its Monsters at a rate it chooses.
The more I learned and read, the more I began to see why a Dungeon needs to add so many incentives that Delvers would want to come back to the Dungeon where they could be killed at any time.
If there was a description for the relationship between a Dungeon and a Delver, it would be a Symbiotic Relationship.
The Dungeon produces valuable items, materials, and more while also giving a Delver the chance to take it but at the risk of their life.
That's why I can guess cities or towns form around Dungeon Cores since they can be profitable and low risk over time once they have learned of all the Dangers.
Not to mention that Dungeons are ever-growing, meaning the loot will become even more valuable with each floor depending on the Dungeon giving even more reason for a town to form around a Dungeon so they can profit off it.
After all, as an Ex-Human, I can confidently say that Humans are greedy, and when there's a source of almost constant profit? I doubt they could control themselves, especially if the Dungeon had unique or rare loot drops.
Focusing on the Loot Table, I opened the Widow Ant's loot table and set a few items for drop.
Widow Ant Drop Table
Ant Meat
Drop Quantity: 1x, 2x, or 3x
(60% Chance)
Chitin Slab
Drop Quantity: 1x or 2x
(40% Chance)
Widow Ant Acid
Drop Quantity: 1x or 2x
(10% Chance)
Widow Ant Pheremones
Drop Quantity: 1x or 2x
(5% Chance)
This Monster has a maximum of three drops at a time.
1x: 100%, 2x: 50%, 3x: 25%
Just as I was about to work on the Da'gba's loot table, I was rudely interrupted by a notification sent by one of my Horned Rabbits.
Connecting to the Brand, I looked through the Rabbit's eyes and couldn't help but curse.
"What the fuck is wrong with this world?"
Marching before me was a small army of a couple of hundred robots marching towards the city.
And focusing on one of the robots, my Observation skill activated.
Metal Golem Level 30, Dungeon Construct