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Chapter 3 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”
🕑 Added 2023-06-13 19:38:35 +0000 UTCIt took me about a month to finish the first floor, and once again, I knew that was fast. Normally, I believe that this should have taken close to a year. Looking over at my dungeon, I was satisfied and content to wait until I had gathered enough mana to start making a second floor.
With the five combat rooms in a loose configuration and every one of them having a monster inside of them. The first three only had one horned rabbit, but the next two had two inside of them. Here too, I only did the minimum required to silence my instincts.
I finally felt that I had recovered from the loss of my ants, but I was still missing them. So when I refocused on the ants that I left alive, I discovered something incredibly joyous. Some of them were acting like my original ants. They were constantly looking for food, but they didn’t need it as I was giving them enough sustenance. But I also noticed that the ones who were looking needed a bit more than the ones that I had summoned.
Incredibly curious, I started to observe and try to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t keep my happiness and delight in check as I figured out what was happening. They had their own desires and wants like the regular ants, and that was because they were born and not made by me. What an incredible discovery. That meant that I could make queens that would make real ants. Although they would still be proper dungeon monsters, they would have their own mind.
When I rushed to start creating more queens to produce more real ants, I halted as I realized that they were even more open and vulnerable to anything that wanted to eat them. This wasn't going to be allowed. Could I make a room dedicated to them? I could, but that didn’t guarantee safety. There wasn't any hurry for me to start creating more ants. I had all the time in the world. Let's think this through and try to find the best solution.
The pillar that I was in, I started to hollow out under my core but not enough that I would fall through, but enough that I would have a good connection to the territory that I was clearing the rock out of. Soon, I had a large room. The floor I covered in dirt, and I planted some moss and grass. Then, I moved all of my current ants down there and made a few more queens so they could start expanding. Immediately, I had to separate the ants as the workers started attacking each other if they were too close.
That done, it will only take time until more real ants grow, but I had time, so I just went back to watching my territory as I accumulated mana. About a week into this routine, I noticed a new bug entering my territory from the entrance I had made. I directed my rabbit to kill it so I could learn its pattern faster. Now, I had another bug for my collection, but I would still need both male and females before I could start breeding real ones.
It seems that nature didn’t like emptiness and slowly it started to encroach its inevitable expansion towards my first room. More and more bugs and even some smaller animals came to explore. The rabbit was in defense mode, so it attacked anything that could threaten it. Eventually, I noticed something new entering that made me excited. It was a new sort of ant. While it was also black, it wasn't the same species that I currently have.
I almost made the mistake of ordering the horned rabbit to kill it. I could create more of this type of ant if I killed it now, but ant species usually had more than one type of ant. I couldn’t make it into a queen. What to do, what to do? Bait, I needed bait. There was meat that I could leave out, but that wasn’t their favorite food. Something with sugar in it, that they should like the most, good energy. But right now, I didn’t have anything like that.
Perhaps I already had a better option that was receive from my parent. There were many patterns I found. Most of them were incomplete or just hazy, but I found it. It was called an apple. I spawned it in the second room and made the horned rabbit take it to the first and then smash it so the smell would start to entice the ants to enter.
It took a while before the ant found the food, but I could already see the pheromone trails that it left when it started to return home. In a few hours, more and more ants started to show up, and I made my horned rabbit take more apples to the first room and smash them.
Slowly, a steady stream of ants were coming into the first room with many other bugs and smaller animals. I continued to make more apples when I started to run out, and eventually, I even came to acquire more ant species, which made me incredibly delighted. I was going to collect them all.
My entire first floor is now full of bait. My collection of different patterns keeps expanding, but I’m most proud of two new ant queens I have been able to acquire. One of them I call the hairy black ants and another one is the red dot ants. The red dot ones are the most aggressive and they have bigger mandibles than the others. They are formidable fighters, but with my new ants, I have had to expand my ant room. I like the name I came up with, and it's a perfect description of what my first floor has come to be.
The room that the ants now occupy is huge. Basically, I hollowed out my entire territory which ended up in a large oval hollow. The walls are still made from thick dungeon stones, and I made them even thicker than usual. There are multiple pillars that help support everything, even though my dungeon stone is strong enough that they wouldn't need them, it still made me feel better. The proper dungeon rooms are now suspended inside the oval emptiness, also supported by many pillars.
One thing I wished was that I could make it even bigger, that way I could have more colonies. But it's hard to push against my limits, and I have only been able to expand a little bit. That expansion just took a bit too much mana, so it was more practical to save up so I could expand downwards into the second floor, which would give me a lot more space to turn into an ant habitat. Currently, there are exactly 27 colonies, and their numbers are quickly rising. Unfortunately, none of the queens are actually ants. It will still take a while before real ant queens appear.
It takes a lot of mana upkeep to keep so many monsters alive, but currently, they are producing more than they are requiring, so it's a net positive for me. This has allowed me to accelerate my mana accumulation, and I was quite close to my breakthrough. When it finally arrived, I followed my instincts and did what I needed to do. The moment I initiated the breakthrough, my accumulated mana was used to make me better. About half was spent on improving myself, while the other half was also split in two.
Half would be allocated to expanding the potential of my next floor, and the other half would go into this floor's guardian. Immediately, I knew that I couldn’t let that happen. The amount of mana inside of me was larger than normal, and the monster would be too strong. From my inherited memories, I knew that a floor should have a gradual increase of difficulty, while the final guardian would have a small jump. But currently, it would be like an ant versus an anteater.
I wouldn’t be able to decrease the amount of energy used, but I could force more to be allocated to the next floor's potential. In the end only about 7% was left for the floor guardian when I finally felt that it was correct. I stopped meddling with my breakthrough, allowing it to finally finish. The floor guardian I chose was the horned rabbit, but now the horn was bigger and pointier, and the rabbit itself was bigger and overall stronger in every regard.
When I tested expanding downwards, I felt that I had an incredible amount of space that I could expand into. Just in case, I waited a few days so I could accumulate some mana before I started expanding, but never using more than what was being generated. My instincts already wanted me to move my core room downwards into the next floor, but first, I wanted to expand as much as I can to see how much territory I will gain.
