***

  This time, ETG didn’t hide his breakthrough. There was no point—the dungeons that were connected would immediately feel what he had done. One thing he did do was change how strong the vibrations were to mimic that he was still at an earlier floor than he actually was.

  As soon as he triggered it, he could no longer push the territories of the 21 dungeons back. It took those dungeons a bit of time to realize what was happening, as they no longer had to fight to keep their territories in place. Then they pushed and found the resistance to be minimal, but more than a normal dungeon would have when going through a breakthrough.

  This information spread like wildfire, and the leadership of the four great powers understood immediately why the small pattern was released when it was. The dungeon would have a safe breakthrough, but no one actually figured out why it wanted one. It would not help in the coming fight, but many were wary of what this could mean.

  The 21 dungeons didn’t let this opportunity go. They pushed their territories forward, and with the change of territory, the monsters inside the diamond-ranked elementals grew weaker. As they were no longer on home turf. The flood of platinum-ranked monsters that had been fighting those elementals found themselves at last in a position to push back.

  For months, these monsters had been constantly changed, and now they were good enough to effectively fight against the elementals. They were still missing one crucial element—diamond ranks on their side.

  The dungeons had learned what worked and what didn’t from the platinum-ranked monsters they constantly sent to die. During all of this time, they were also modifying diamond-ranked monsters to be as effective against this type of enemy.

  Now, they had finally made those monsters. And not only that, but every great power also sent teams of diamond ranks that would be perfect to counter elementals to join the push. None of them, however, expected this to happen so fast, so not everything was ready just yet.

  They still could not push too fast otherwise they would suffer too many casualties. But were finally able to push back those terrifying elementals. The one fact they didn’t know was that those diamond-ranked elementals were saving their strength—by not pushing forward but instead by giving ground slowly. That’s not to say that the new forces they were up against wouldn’t be able to push them back; it was just that this would buy more time in the long run.

  This was to be expected, as the forces of ETG had prepared many counters for what their enemy could do when they found out that ETG had triggered a breakthrough. This was also a learning experience, as the same would happen during the next breakthrough.

  They knew that those dungeons would have an even harder time pushing into ETG's proper territory and that they could never take over ETG's floors, but they would need to hold against dungeons that would constantly be pushing back their home turf advantage.

  They also had some backup plans that they hoped they didn’t have to use. And, of course, the best hope was that ETG could fix this shortcoming during this breakthrough.

  Only a week after the breakthrough was triggered, the surface armies started marching once again. It was still missing a good chunk of diamond ranks, but with the help of the rest of the world, they took care of the small pattern outbreaks surprisingly fast. With every passing day, there were less and less outbreaks.

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  Turns out that the threat of undeath was a great motivator for everyone to work together. In the world’s eyes, while they were not favorable towards ETG on average, most didn’t care about this dungeon. Now, however, the sentiment was completely against ETG, as many cities, villages, and entire areas had to be burned completely to ash to get rid of this small pattern.

  This dungeon was now a true threat in everyone’s mind, but ETG didn’t truly care about that. He only needed to reach diamond rank, and all the advantages he had accumulated over his life would allow him to win, no matter what the outside world tried to do to him.

  Two weeks after ETG triggered the breakthrough, the surface armies reached ETG territory. It was almost a month and a half later than they expected to be here, and they found themselves unwilling to push into the lands that they saw. It was a landscape that looked like it enjoyed bringing suffering to others.

  There seemed to be constant storms, but they weren’t wet or full of normal lightning. The storms were hot, filled with what seemed like volcanic ash that constantly generated naturally occurring lightning. The ground was hot and, in places, glowing from the heat it emitted. Periodically, there seemed to be fortresses that looked like they had been buried, but in the ant world, they were known as bunkers.

  Instead of rushing in, they properly started to plan and test the defenses, slowly peeling away the protective layers. When they finally understood what they were up against, they relentlessly started to assault. Rafe was doing his best to keep up and to continue teleporting more monsters into the fight, but they were dying faster than he could keep up.

  Underground, the dungeons had pushed quite far towards ETG. In just two weeks, they had undone two months of progress. Yet it was at this point that ETG woke back up. He retook control over his dungeon, and immediately, masses of monsters were teleported to the surface into the correct positions to halt the advance of the surface armies. He was also able to halt the advance the 21 dungeons were making, but that was only for a moment.

  ETG needed his monsters to be in enemy territory to push them back, but he no longer had that advantage on that battlefield. The teleportation of a lot more platinum-ranked elementals helped, but over the course of a few days, it became clear that the 21 dungeons would be able to push back ETG, even if it was going to be slow going. What also helped was ETG’s new skill—Territorial Change which was at rank D.

  For the first time, ETG didn’t get the exact skill he wanted. He would have preferred an overall improvement to his territorial strength and the ability to change it at will.

  The thing about dungeon territory was that it was really hard to undo what had already been claimed, often resulting—if the dungeon pushed too far—in the destruction of its core. While ETG didn’t get exactly what he wanted, he would now be able to change his territory freely, although it still took time for the change to happen, as it was so counter to dungeon physiology.

  Already, new plans were being drawn up to use this new skill while the fighting intensified. On the surface, each inch of ground took a while to claim, but once again, slow progress was being made. And as time continued to pass, more and more diamond ranks started to return from clearing out the outbreaks of the small pattern. It was also now harder to send out new creatures to continue spreading the small pattern continuously, but some effort was still made to do so.

  One disadvantage of fighting with monsters was that, slowly, the enemy would get stronger as they continued to kill them. So ETG had to be careful with how many he sent to die, using the defenses they built optimally but not trying to hold onto ground that was too easy for the enemy to take. It was a constant battle on two fronts, and both of those fronts were being pushed back ever closer to the dungeon proper.

  During all of this, ETG was pushing himself to the absolute limit—not only fighting on two fronts that constantly needed his attention, learning about his new skill, its limitations, and what he could do to use it effectively in this war, but also continuing to expand the 75th floor.

  He was so tempted to trigger the breakthrough before he reached the limit of this floor, but, unknown to him, he could never actually make that choice, as it would be so against his very being. Just the fact that he could think of it showed his incredible control over himself and his instincts.

  Like this, the war continued, with the count of monsters already killed well into the hundreds of millions, and now proper people were starting to die as well. It was a scale of war this age had never witnessed, but in terms of numbers, it paled in comparison to the wars of previous ages.

  In terms of strength, however, this age was a step above everything else. Diamond ranks were just in a league of their own, and the destruction they could cause was as immense as it was beautiful.

  ETG was savoring the time he would finally be able to properly go through all of his memories and witness all that had happened during this war. The spells used and the combinations that happened when they collided with other spells—it was beyond anything ETG had imagined.

  But slowly, as the armies pushed closer, the countless deaths of monsters that didn’t actually mean anything would turn into the deaths of creatures and adventurers. And no matter how beautiful and exciting those fights were going to be, ETG still wished there was another way, he just wanted to be left alone.