Apinsig
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Chapter 326 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”
🕑 Added 2025-04-17 15:10:46 +0000 UTCPov Dungeon Core
While I needed two solar systems of celestial cores for me to not lose mana, the mana generation they offered was well above what my diamond ranks were currently giving me. This meant that I had plenty of mana to throw around for all the projects I wanted to complete.
So by the time I captured my fourth solar system, I was done making all the required real materials and having my monsters finish placing them, that I could now make permanent mana channels through these runes and enchantments, whose purpose was to make me completely hidden from the outside world.
No one should be able to find me now, and with how fast I was approaching my next breakthrough, I should be able to go through all the ranks in front of me in at least 2000 years—unless there is another jump like with going from gold to diamond. But I would not know that before I made it that far.
It has now been 30 years since I left my home system, and I’ve now survived longer than I was expected to without the connection to my home world. I wondered how they were doing, and so did many adventurers, but I couldn’t have contact with it. It was simply too dangerous, as I was certain if there was any civilization out there, they would have already made contact somehow—and they will definitely have people in ranks higher than my current one.
When I felt ready, I could at least easily contact them no matter where I was, because I could still feel the faint echo, the faintest connection to the dungeon gateways I built there, even the buried one where the dragons used to be.
I would just need to reach out and make a connection, and yes, even without upgrading the skill any further, I was pretty sure I could form a connection from this far out. Our belief is that it's because of my new rank, and if it is so, then every further rank above this one would extend that range even further.
What I could also do was forge new dungeon gateways. I just needed to extend the sliver of my territory using this skill, stretching it out incredibly long distances on to world that would have life, then they could visit my dungeon whenever they wanted to. Once again, it was a bit too soon for this, but when I re-announced myself to this universe, it was certainly going to be an interesting time.
Currently, I was in a huge solar system. This wasn’t my tenth solar system—I had already hit my ten solar systems nearly a decade ago. After that, I continued to visit more solar systems, not to take their stars, because I didn’t currently have room for them. Well, technically I could use the 101st floor, but I was thinking I would do something more traditional with that. No, I was here to steal more celestial cores.
Did I have more than enough? Yes, but every solar system I had could be filled out more, because every planetary orbiter could actually have three planets with me having to do very little to keep them stable. So now, all these ten solar systems had planetary orbits that all contained 3 planets. The numbers of them made me feel happy.
I had nearly 200 rocky planets, almost as many gas planets, and so close—like literally only 5 away—from 1000 moons. Unfortunately, I was not going to hit it, because this solar system had fewer moons than we expected.
But in the end, it didn’t matter. Perhaps I would be able to make those moons myself. That was an interesting problem. Of course, I could make a moon without the celestial core—that was completely possible. The problem was, it would simply take too long.
While my newest trait made it so I could expand every floor to be truly gigantic, that didn’t mean that I could make enough materials to fill them up. So I have actually been pushing back my breakthrough, because for the last nearly two decades, I’ve been working on the concept of a skill that I hoped would help.
Now, I felt that it was as good as it was going to get, and hopefully, I would get a skill that would actually help me with this problem.
With the last moon collected from this solar system, I started to accelerate out of it, and we would be setting up shop in between solar systems, quite far away from here. It would take me nearly five years to make it there, but I should have the time, and this should allow me to simply observe everything that was going on inside my dungeon and, of course, start working on my first diamond-ranked dungeon rooms.
What I also did was lift everyone's rank restriction. Now everyone who wanted was allowed to rank up from diamond rank. In the first months of our travel, hundreds of diamond ranks pushed themselves to the next rank. Everyone also seemed to agree that we should continue with the precious gems naming convention, so the rank above diamond is now called emerald. It was nice to finally have a proper name for the rank I was.
It was nice to see everyone continuing with their lives. Carl, his party, and his clan were doing excellently, continuing to be examples for others. The bug guy now had a wife and children, and they were starting their own little clan.
Ace was continuing to rule reluctantly, as his nation continued to grow. It was funny that he thought he was bad at ruling, because from what I could see, even if he doesn’t think so, he’s the best ruler I’ve ever seen.
The beast clan had been making a name for themselves, and of course, the former master of the Assassins' Guild was now a well-known name in the game of spying.
So many of my favorite adventurers continued to succeed like I thought they would. And many of my favorite civilizations were continuing to push forward, never resting on their current achievements—always pushing forward.
It was amazing to see the diamond ranks finally being put to the test when I opened the first diamond-ranked dungeon rooms. The first floor for diamond ranks was all the way back on the 76th floor, which means that I had a lot of work to do, but my designers absolutely loved every second.
With my growing strength, we also had more options in how we wanted to do things, and I certainly loved the dumb faces of the diamond ranks when they found a challenge that they actually needed to think about how to overcome instead of just using brute force.
Almost immediately when we made it to our location—where we were going to stay for quite a while—I anchored myself to the galaxy itself so I would always be in this location no matter where this galaxy moved.
First, it was time for the breakthrough. It started exactly as it had before, with me making an emerald-ranked floor guardian. Then the skill selection came, and I poured all the knowledge I had gathered, all my ideas of the skill I wanted, and hoped that it would work.
When I reconnected with my dungeon, almost five months had passed. Making new skills truly took quite a while. I reconnected with my dungeon to find everything was fine, and as quickly as possible, I looked inside to see if I had received the skill I wanted to.
World Crafting: Rank E
This sounded promising. I started to test it out—and yes. It was still in Rank E, but it had already boosted my ability to make stuff so much.
I had hoped that perhaps it would also allow me to make celestial cores, but no, it would not allow me to do that. It was, however, the basis, and I would only need one or two more skills to make it happen. The problem was, I also felt this rank was not enough. I think I would need to be even stronger than I currently was to be able to actually make celestial cores.
That wasn't too big of a problem—at least not right now. It could become a problem if I don’t have a way to upgrade the current celestial cores I have. One way I know celestial cores upgrade is if they have life on them—magical life. So every single celestial core and its surrounding planet or moons—perhaps I could even get some life onto the surfaces of the suns—would help rank up all the celestial cores I have.
Now, it would be fun to let life evolve naturally on them by me changing their environment to be more suitable for life, but that would simply take too long.
Also, while life eventually could live in a lot of places, with the experimentations I have done, life could only start in a very specific way, and for most of the environments inside the solar system, they would not have the proper starting location for life.
So right now, using the dungeon rules, I started to make atmospheres that should not be naturally possible. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to mess with the worlds themselves that much. Even the planets closest to the sun that were molten to a certain degree would be perfect places for quite a few patterns I had.
The second way to upgrade a planetary core was dungeons. So, onto every celestial core planet and moon went as many sub-dungeons I could make. They right now do not have proper cores, but I believe I am only one new skill away from making that happen. That would mean I could upgrade every celestial core quite fast.
So while constantly making new dungeon rooms, expanding my next floor, continuing to make atmospheres, and seeding life on all the new planets and moons I had—along with a few other long-term projects—it was also time to start expanding myself.
I was currently quite large, but it was time to make myself a lot bigger. My main entrance would still remain in its original location, but from it I started to make from real material a framework of the new me that was also going to be a spherical design.
I was going to expand myself enough that I could easily have 2000 floors and even have extra room for other things that could go outside my floors. It was funny that inside my floors I had all the space I wanted, but outside real space was still at a premium. In the end, I was going to be bigger than an average moon.
All of this was going to take quite a while, but the first thing I was going to finish was making the framework and inserting into it the hiding runes and enchantments. After that, I could continue to make whatever I wanted without the worry of anyone finding me. So many projects, so much fun.
Then there was my 101st floor. It was the size of basically half of a solar system. And I could make anything here. With my new skill, I wondered if I could pull off a flat world that would take up the entirety of this space. But I felt it would be better to do this a few breakthroughs later, when I would have a chance to upgrade my new skill.
No, I think I will do something special here. Life always needed water to start, and while it would take quite a few expensive dungeon rules and my gravity control skill—what if I filled up this entire space with water, making it the largest ocean ever?
The best part—I could still focus almost fully on my other projects and would only need to channel the tremendous amount of mana I could now control through water runes. I would need to make quite a lot of them, and quite big ones, but that wouldn’t be a problem.
The weight of the water itself was going to be a problem, but I was going to use very little gravity, and of course, I would need to make it so that an artificial sun would penetrate deeper into the water—but that was all possible.
This made me think about the future—would I at some point be able to start to rewrite the rules of reality inside my floors? All of this sounded amazing, and I did have many floors before my next rank.
While everything now was bigger, I was doing larger projects, my floors were a lot bigger—at the heart of it, I was still doing the same thing as I always was: making new dungeon rooms for my adventurers, and new worlds for creatures to inhabit, explore, and perhaps build civilizations on. It was going to be a pleasant time.
With those thoughts in my mind, I looked at all the skills I had and the journey I had to make to get here. It had been a difficult one, and at quite a few points I came close to death. But I think I made it.
I had achieved what I wanted—to be left alone so I could observe what happened inside my dungeon and continue to build out new worlds to see what would happen on them. I wondered if every dungeon dreamed of this, making it to this stage, but currently, I was the only one who has actually achieved it.
I have really made my dreams come true.
Skills:
Pattern Strengthening: Rank S
Creature Making: Rank S
Creature Quantity: Rank S
Dungeon Modification: Rank S
Space Expansion: Rank SS+
Dungeon Rules: Rank S
Sub Dungeons’: Rank S
Outer Vision: Rank S
Creature Advancement: Rank S
Ever-expanding Mind Matrix: Rank S
Planned Evolution: Rank S
Dungeon Gateway: Rank C
Extreme Environment: Rank S
Aura Crystal: Rank S
My World: Rank S
Ever-expanding Quantity: Rank S
Enhancement: Rank S
Hold Location: Rank S
Extended Sight: Rank S
Territorial Change: Rank D
Talent Study: Rank A+
Space Push: Rank SS
Dampening: Rank A
Gravity Control: Rank S
Inside is Outside: Rank B
Shield of Life: Rank B
World Crafting: Rank E
Traits:
Intelligence Leaning Evolution and Enhanced Pattern Combining
Real Materials
Multi-Fractal Connections
Expansive Space
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So, this is the last chapter before a time skip and epilogue that I will write tomorrow. I wrote a bit about why in the chapter, but I wanted to explain it to you all and to myself a bit better. I do not know how many web novels and even books I have read that just start to write the same story over and over, with just a bit changed with everyone being stronger.
At that point, I have always asked why did the writer not end it before. Now everything seems to suck. People post on reddit and in the comments on how the story has gone downhill and they only say it like that if they are nice people.
Now, here we are and I feel the same would happen if the story continues. As an author who makes money from this story, everyone says I should just continue writing it until I don't, but that feels wrong to me.
If there is anything you think is not answered, please comment it and I will see if I can add it to the epilogue. There will be an explanation of what happens with the celestial government, the home planet and to the universe as a whole.
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Comments
RedFaux
Honestly, I like stories that feel like they go on forever. So I could say I almost fundamentally disagree with you. It would make you money because some people would still enjoy reading it, and that really all that matters with sharing a story in my eyes. But you do you, its your story and you decide how it ends. Been a nice ride
Merlin's Fan
I'm curious to know if this happens in the same universe as the junkyard ship story
Dalton
I'm pretty happy with etg overall and it's honestly one of my favorite dungeon stories. I look forward to the epilogue. I don't really have anything specific that hasn't already been mentioned that I want to know. Maybe what the Internal system of etg is like so far in the future from a person just starting from the first floor.
Michael Grover
Agreed 100%
Zac Jel
Awesome chapter, still would like more slice of life chapters going forward, maybe just on patreon once a month or so
snidramon
I do agree it's a smart decision to end here. The main plot was always "Can ETG outsmart/survive the world that wants to control him?" After that, the next question was "can ETG truly free himself?" And now we ask "What will ETG do now that he's free?" Once we know that, what else is there to really ask of the story? I do want to say I have really enjoyed the ride. You introduced me to the dungeon core sub genre, and I absolutely devoured everything you had written up to that point in just a few days.
ReadingObsessed
I came here for ETG but I'm even more excited for Junk Ship. You're an excellent writer. I respect your decision to end *your own* series on your own terms.
Apinsig
The epilogue will be of ETG, but I do think that I will write short stories of other events and characters that I will occasionally post. Perhaps after a while, I will combine the short stories into a book, who knows.
Zarik0
An entire solar system size ocean, and in zero gravity :P Amazing idea The zero gravity will just change so many things vs the ocean that we know as it will change lot of things in fact Well will I would loved to have way more chapter on plenty of things and that the story continue a bit, im also fine that you chose to stop here So Gratz !!! Well I hope to have quite good expanded epilogue chapters to patch all that well :P on the many aspect and characters :) not just a few Maybe even one or two new character pov (like new children/adult or etc who were born into the dungeon and reflect about the world they live and how it is in a future time) Would also like to see character pov of both the inhabitant of the dungeon and the outside world when MC start his big move and start connecting things together and so intercation happen Maybe also a chapter pov of far in the future when MC connect a Gateway and etc to a world who has no contact with the universe and so big bam revelation and change it bring to them and etc Well honestly will you can end the main story, the epilogue can be very lonnng with how many things and chapters you can add to expand and explore the situation and its different aspect and subject and situation that they will be soon in the future Plenty of opportunity and material to writte and I don't feel at all that it will be a lost and a bad thing to the story to have a big expanded 'Epilogue' numbers of chapters on plenty of things Hope you given plenty of epilogue chapters on things you fancy or get inspiration The worldbuilding and story you had done is so vast if you think a bit about it, poenty of things to say and writte about it who are not filler in my view and will be really enjoyable now that the 'main story' and event of MC come close to its end Well anyway GRATZ man and thank you so much for sharing your story :)
brennon Petersen
Tftc! I would love to know how many ranks there are or if they just continue going up in perpetually.
RedLeaf
Thanks for the chapter! Sorry to see this series end, but I agree that going out on a "high note" is far better than the alternative(s). "Junkyard Ship" is shaping up to be a worthy "replacement" though!
