I was very pleased with myself at the moment.

I had brought all my units to the depths of the 33rd floor. Past several floors filled with nothing but water and all manner of treacherous marine creatures dead set on making a meal out of us.

It had been a challenge, in more ways than one.

I first had content with the reduced mobility of all my new units in the water.

I then had contend with the fact that the seed bullets, which had been a staple of all my strategies thus far, were nowhere near as effective underwater.

I also had to account for the two additional dimensions to combat, as monsters could easily swarm us from above and below with little to no warning beforehand.

Add in the fact that all those floors were pitch black, and that most of the creatures found therein had ways to confuse or even nullify echolocation and it was a wonder anyone would have been able to descend so far in the first place.

I was sure that I was special.

I was sure that the degree to which I was special was not small.

I was fairly certain getting past the lava zones would have been next to impossible at my level or even level 2, if I didn't have an army with me.

I was completely certain it would have been impossible, if my army wasn't as versatile as it was.

I was happy that I had overcome so many obstacles.

I was pleased that I had done so in so little time.

I was having trouble keeping track of time, but I could hazard a guess that it had been a couple of days.

I made this observation due to having discovered a way to see through the eyes and ears of the trees on the surface. Growing the eyes and ears hadn't been a problem. The real trial had been finding a way to develop nervous systems that could use those eyes and hear through those ears and keeping the trees free of mutations that might impair my sight and hearing as my magic rampaged through them.

I found it to be a struggle, so far from the surface.

Yet, my connection to the Dungeon floors that I had conquered and to my units, remained strong. Perhaps because of how much my brains had grown. Perhaps of how much practice I was getting.

I found it hard to pinpoint a cause.

I managed it, in the end.

I was very surprised to see and hear that no adults had come in all this time.

I overheard some of the older children speaking about the reason.

I heard that a rival corporation, one run by people the old man hated, had tried to sabotage the truck shipments.

I knew that was impossible, as the trucks were teleported by the gloomy man. One would have to be either another teleporter, or a human strong enough to overpower that magic in order to affect shipments.

I could guess that those rivals could perhaps obtain the assistance of a teleporter.

I did not find it likely, given the information the child had learned, but it was a possibility.

However, I did not think it was possible for the enemies of the old man to find a human that could go against the lustful man. The latter would grind the former into paste, no matter what kind of resistance he faced.

I remained convinced of this, because I did not think I could prevail against the lustful man. Not even with all the armies I had amassed put together. Not even with the advantage of preparation, strategy, and over thirty floors between us.

I knew it was impossible.

I knew it would remain impossible for a long time yet.

So, I considered alternatives.

I guessed that it might have been possible for a competitor to track one or more of the trucks.

I would have waited at one of the stores, and then followed the vehicle back to where it had come from, if I were in their place.

If that had happened, I might have been able to glimpse the moment where a truck disappeared into thin air.

If that was caught on camera, then the old man's faction would have to be very careful about controlling the damage and making sure their magic was not revealed.

I figured it would make sense for the old man and the lustful man and even the gloomy man to focus their efforts elsewhere if that was the case.

They would figure the child had been practicing in the upper floors of the Dungeon. At least, that would have been their likely conclusion if the child wasn't present when they brought all the other children to train. They would have been safe in the idea that the child would be in good hands, as the older children would take charge of the situation. If they bothered to note his absence at all.

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As things stood, the older children were panicking on the surface.

They had not been able to contact the old man in days and they had still not been able to break through the new defenses I'd placed on the 7th.

I didn't blame them for this. In fact, I was even impressed they made it that far in the first place.

I had been updating the upper floors whenever I chanced upon a new and interesting monster.

I had come across a lot of interesting monsters as of late.

I had seen, or rather, heard, eels with heads at both ends that could phase through walls and whose eyes could emit a curse energy that paralyzed foes.

I had heard sea-roaches, only as big as a human fingernail, that would swarm in the thousands to completely cover prey. They could vibrate their bodies at frequencies so fast that they could make incisions with extreme precision. Burrowing under their prey's scales or skin in order to eat them from the inside out.

I had heard jellyfish. Smaller specimens than the boss the child had fled from so many days ago. Ones that somehow maintained a field of electricity around themselves at all times. Not allowing the deadly current to dissipate in order to keep it as a permanent shield. Not that it needed it, with how much venom and poison it carried within its invisible tentacles and body.

I found all these monsters troublesome.

Not only to kill, but to eat and re-use as well.

I could not make any sense of how the eels phased through matter. Just as I could not figure out how the blue spiders on the 12th had been able to teleport in and out of the child's lines to kidnap and prey upon his vulnerable units.

I could not make any sense of how the roaches vibrated with so much force underwater. Nor how they could coordinate so freely when I copied other monsters in jamming echolocation.

I also could not figure out how the jellyfish maintained their electrifying fields around themselves.

Magic, was the answer I came to, but that didn't tell me anything.

I knew better than to eat any monster cores, as I could feel the wrongness they would lead to in regards to my own core.

I could force some of those cores on my own units, but their magic was a mirror to my own. Most of them died within minutes, if not seconds.

I had plenty of units as I had spent plenty of time inching my way across the many floors, but I could not delude myself into thinking these lives were cheap.

I was all too aware that even the weakest monsters down here could kill me in seconds, due to the raw difference in stats.

The children would have to be level 4, and well-trained level 4s at that, in order to thrive here.

In the end, I managed to replicate the magical curses, but only by [Assimilating] the eyes directly into a unit. Nothing happened when I ate them.

Nothing but cramps and a terrible aching in the few parts of my current body that were not pure brain tissue.

And I couldn't make units spawn with the eyes already implanted on them, so that was another disappointment.

I did manage to replicate the roaches' burrowing behavior, but not to the point where they could do it underwater. Moreover, the ones I spawned had a very short lifespan. A few minutes at most, though that hardly ever happened.

I also failed to replicate the toxins of the jellyfish in their entirety.

When I ate a sample, the corruption was so overwhelming that I had to stop all my movements and focus all my attention and magic on healing myself.

Only after did I realize how close I had come to death, as I had been at full capacity when I first ingested the tissue and I was down to 5% of my magical reserves when it was over.

On top of all that, I did not manage to fully digest it.

I survived because of my quick thinking, as I grew claws to disembowel myself and remove my stomach and all my intestines in their entirety, as well as all the body parts that had been afflicted.

It been painful, but it had been a learning experience.

The magic of these monsters was several times that of my own.

I could not afford to look down on them, even after they were dead.

I did make some improvements though.

I upgraded the ammunition of all my units so that they worked underwater. I did this by replacing the seed-producing organs of the bio-weapons with organs that produced sea-roaches.

This way, it did not matter if they had short lifespans. All they needed to do was live long enough to burrow inside a target and rupture important organs. Add in their natural ability to swim at speeds even these monsters couldn't dodge and the fact that I had filled their bellies with a mixture of corrosive slime and the bits of jellyfish toxin I was able to process and the resulting arms were a step above what any of my units had possessed before.

Something the children above had found out after their latest attempt to break through.

I had a feeling the one called Ramji would try to murder the child upon their next meeting.

I thought that was a problem for later though, and I figured there was a good chance it wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

I noticed a sudden sharp increase in numbers when I arrived at this latest floor.

I knew that was the sign of an impending level-up.

I also knew it was critical to make as many gains as possible during this last chance to train ourselves and that each new point I gained would be doubled when the jump finally happened.

It was with this knowledge that I descended further into the abyss.

Until I and all my units passed a film of water that somehow remained glued to the ceiling.

I fell.

I found myself on another downward path, now leading to the 34th floor.

I was glad, as this meant the children would not be catching up to me anytime soon, even if they made it past all the re-enforced floors I had left behind for them.

I tried to connect myself with the latest floor I had conquered. Attempting to subvert it to my will, just as I had done with all the others.

Just like the last 10 floors, it was hard.

I drained my magical reserves. Almost to their entirety.

Then, I sat and began to rest while my magic returned.

Focusing my mind on the task of unraveling other body parts I had absorbed and trying to find creative solutions to the limitations they imposed on my units.

I waited for six hours and my magic reserves were full once more.

I sent most of it back to the floor behind me.

I then felt frustration, when I realized that much of the progress I had accomplished had reset itself in those six hours.

I drained a good portion of my magic once more and went back to resting.

I repeated this process two more times, until I finally gave up.

I realized this timeframe was too critical to be wasted on attempting to conquer a floor that was beyond my means.

I needed to train, now more than ever.

I needed to eat and hunt and grow and kill and triumph.

I could not do that while saving up magic to [Terraform] a floor.

I descended and just as I was halfway through the 34th floor I felt a rumble. Not through the unit tasked with carrying me, but through my own magical senses.

The Dungeon was growing. Wider, and taller.

My current floor being pushed down, as some invincible power rose up to fully consume the first seven floors that I had created.

The magic, the power...

I breathed it in and I recalled the magic of the old man through the child's eyes.

That, had been the bite of a single insect, compared to the deluge engulfing me now.

My unit knew it was happening too.

Its insides ruptured when the force passed through it and I was thrown to the floor.

Bathed in a presence so mighty it might as well have been divine.

And then, I knew.

I knew what had happened.

The Dungeon had grown.

For the first time, but not for the last time.

And the 34th floor, had become the 47th.