Chapter 123 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground” (Patreon)

Pov Dungeon Core

That madman actually pulled it off. Not only was he able to get me the skill crystal, but he also managed to escape without leaving any evidence. Well, now that I look back on it, there is no evidence that I was involved. I'm pretty sure that monster of a Guild Master picked up the scent of the theft.

Fortunately, that wasn’t my problem as I had what I wanted. I admired my copy of the skill crystal. It was magnificent. Unfortunately, it seems that the thief has finally stopped running, so I need to give him his reward.

His escape was quite convoluted. As soon as he used the gateway to escape inside the dungeon, he just turned around and used the gateway again and again and again to go from one place to another.

Eventually, he ran from one location to the other and then used more gateways. Eventually, he ended up in his safe house, or more accurately, his safe room.

He finally opened up his reward list and whistled at the list of skills available to him. I kept my end of the promise. He was now looking at the list of absolutely every skill I now had, everything from the skill crystal and all of the other skills I had collected up to this point.

Many of the skills would be incompatible with him, but it would not be my problem if he chooses one and can't use it. Of course, he could also sell them as I will be giving him skill stones, but that was for him to decide.

"There’s way too many, wait, I couldn’t even use this skill; it requires wings?" he just continued to talk like that to himself. Looks like I have more time than I expected.

I admired the skill crystal once again. Making a copy of the original was anything but easy. It basically took all of my concentration and literally two mountains full of red mana crystals. It wouldn’t have been such a problem if the crystal wasn't so heavily protected with enchantments.

I couldn’t break the enchantments, otherwise the original skill crystal would have broken. So what I needed to do was copy everything with one exception, making me the master of the skill crystal, not the Guild Master.

Finally, the thief started to pick some skills, and it was easy enough to make the skill stones appear near him. Seeing the need in his eyes was a strange sight. It still amazes me how easy it is to manipulate adventurers.

At first, I started to do this with the quest system to test out certain areas of the dungeon, to see how everything reacted to different kinds of approaches.

It didn't take me long to understand how useful this approach could be. Now, I didn’t need to wait until a certain adventurer did something I wanted to test out; I could just make a quest and find out pretty fast.

I have been careful about who I give these quests to, as I don’t want certain types of people figuring out what's actually going on.

Now, back to this individual. He's not the only one of his kind. Most of the adventurers take the quests and just move on, but others, however, like this one, seem to almost get addicted to the thrill of it.

There have been some addictive substances in my dungeon brought from the outside, and to some people, these quests seem to affect them similarly.

Pushing adventurers like this is something I usually wouldn’t want to do. I am happy enough to give them quests they like, but the way I push this adventurer, I would only do in extreme cases.

If I made this too common, I think it would bring trouble down the line. Eventually, however, this shouldn't be a problem because now I had my own creatures that looked exactly like adventurers.

The humans were slowly getting their bearings. It was interesting to watch how they did things. However, the way they interacted with the world was too artificial for my liking.

I think the problem is that these monsters in human form are a bit too rigid right now and, because they have so much knowledge already available to them, they do not properly fit into the surrounding nature.

It kind of reminds me of the ants. Not when they first started to expand; that was the exact opposite of what was happening to the humans. No, I’m talking about the expansion to the later floors and the current expansion to their latest floor. It's like they no longer need to work with nature; instead, they subjugate it. Still, the ants are a lot less abrasive about it.

I do, however, have hopes for the humans. It seems that even monsters can slowly become more ‘real,’ not in terms of who they are but how they act.

I have noticed the same thing in some of my dungeon rooms that have not been cleared in quite a while. It seems they can slowly learn how to act more like themselves.

That was good news and something I had hoped for; otherwise, the next generation of humans might have been quite messed up. Who knows how humans would develop if they were raised by monsters?

I had a choice to make: either start with the dwarves or focus on reaching the next floor. After some thinking, I realized there's actually no need to hurry.

While getting deeper and finally fully understanding my trait would be nice, the next big floor, the one that is as significant as the 20th floor, is the 50th floor. That’s how deep I need to go, and how deep adventurers would need to go to achieve platinum rank.

Of course, the adventurer seemed to have multiple stages for their gold rank. To me, however, that didn't matter. It will be a long way down, a way that I could make quite short if I just pushed through breakthrough after breakthrough without fully building out my floors.

That would be a terrible idea. I would need time to think up the new skills I need but also learn how to use those skills most effectively, the same way as adventurers need to do.

It was now time to start making some dwarves. That reminded me of that dwarf who made this heist possible. The teleportation cube is her invention. She joined my dungeon not too long ago and started selling her teleportation cubes.

For adventurers, these are life-saving objects. They are one-time use, and I did need to use two of them, but for any adventurer who finds himself in a situation where death is certain, it's a good way to escape it.

When I first detected them, I contemplated making a dungeon rule that would make using these objects impossible. I was supposed to be a training ground, not a safe place to train at.

Most adventurers, however, are not using these devices lightly, mostly because of their cost but also because they understand if they rely on it too much, they will eventually become too weak.

No matter how well-trained or prepared, something can still go wrong. Most of the time, it would not be your fault, so having this kind of life-saving object is actually a smart move and something almost everyone should consider.

Now, perhaps if things get to the point that absolutely everyone has one or multiple, then perhaps it's time for change, but right now, I think it's good enough.

The dwarves that I was going to create would be quite similar to the humans I made in terms of pattern-making. Everyone would be unique. The large difference was in their knowledge and where they would live.

While some humans did well in mountainous regions, most didn't; dwarves, however, loved such places. I actually needed to change some animal patterns so these dwarves would have more creatures like they did in their homeland.

It was a wonderful time adding another species that can build civilizations. Looking at the patterns for the other adventuring species, things looked worse. The next highest pattern was only halfway done, and that was for the elves; the rest were even lower. I wonder if there is a way to speed that up. Most likely not.

When I was done with the dwarves, I had 10 million new residents. During this time, the humans had slowly started to give birth. Surviving was quite the hard thing to do, so even if there are new humans coming into this world, over 2 million have lost their lives.

In some cases, simply the lack of food was the biggest problem, while in others, wildlife and other humans were the main causes.

It really depended on the location, which I made notes of. If the data is to be believed, even with the more hardy bodies, the dwarves should lose a lot more. I guess time will tell.

I was also basically finished with the 22nd-floor dungeon rooms and only had some minor adjustments to make. I think I will, however, delay my breakthrough a little bit so I could observe all that’s happening in the 22nd playroom.