Pov Dungeon Core

  I watched as Vivian left and quickly changed the gateways so they would no longer work or be in any way connected to the rest of my network. It should be impossible for them to use them, but you couldn’t be too careful.

  Basically, while it wasn’t official yet, we were under siege now. What I also did was start to gather the last of the mana I needed to break through so I could start making the next floor but, more importantly, to improve the skill My World once again.

  The only reason I’m doing this is because we found out through one of the listening devices that it will take them four to five days to reach here. I should be out of the breakthrough by then, especially if I go fast.

  I already had my floor guardian planned out. At first, I wanted to make something with slime, but balancing it seemed to be a nightmare. It was either too weak or way too powerful. Still, I wanted to do something different, so I decided on a swarm-type floor guardian.

  Gathering enough mana was stupidly easy, like always. What wasn’t so nice was pushing myself to the absolute breaking limit, but when I once again triggered the breakthrough, it felt so good. I only enjoyed the moment for a short while before I got to work.

  The pattern I was using was one of the ancient creatures that a few of my Academy scientists specializing in that field managed to bring back to life. They classified them as dinosaurs, with only a few species of them still surviving to the modern day.

  The ones I was planning to use were small, didn’t even reach the waist of a person, but they were vicious, especially one of their claws that had some sort of pivot mechanism to make it move incredibly fast up and down, tearing apart anything in its way. They seemed to have pack tactics, which I toned down a bit, as I wanted them to be swarmers and not intelligent hunters.

  I also needed to make sure that some of them were quite a lot stronger because the problem with swarms was that if you were strong enough, no matter how long, you could endlessly defend yourself. So, it was still quite tricky to balance this particular floor guardian, but it will also take a tremendous amount of time before anyone gets to test it, so I will have chances to make adjustments.

  The reason being is because this floor basically has no dungeon rooms. My instincts didn’t like it at all, but I did make one big one that seemed to satisfy it at least a little bit. I simply didn’t have time to make proper dungeon rooms. First, I needed to deal with whatever trouble the powers of this world were going to bring, and because of this, I was focusing on the playrooms.

  I needed more farm floors capable of producing diamond ranks, but after that, I was most likely going to rush to diamond rank. While doing the minimum possible to make sure I didn’t mess up the floor size advantage I have built over my entire life.

  The skill selection for the breakthrough was easy. I just put everything into My World, bringing it to rank C. Damn, this skill was hard to rank up, but it needed to be done. I finished the breakthrough four days and 12 hours after I entered it.

  Immediately, I went through all the reports, finding that nothing bad had happened and that the diamond ranks hadn’t yet arrived. Then I reconnected with my dungeon and went through everything to make sure that nothing had happened in my dungeon without me knowing about it.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Nothing really special happened, but a few more of my creatures had reached diamond rank. More interestingly, some of the adventurers—the first to accept my deal—were starting to get close. Some of them were real monsters, especially Carl.

  His talent was seemingly quite simple, but it was so incredibly effective. I kind of wished there was some way for me to collect the talents of my adventurers. Perhaps I should see if it’s possible to create a skill that would allow me to do so, but right now I simply didn’t have time to put so much effort into something that wasn’t important for survival.

  Then again, when I was able to make diamond-rank monster, being able to use the best of the best talents as I made their patterns would be an incredible advantage. Well, right now I need to focus on getting My World to at least S rank.

  That way, no one can mess with me. Pixies should already find it impossible to teleport to my core floor, but who knows? They might have some diamond ranks with really specific talents to make it possible.

  Immediately, I started to expand the new floor. It was, of course, going to be another farm floor and the only diamond-ranked farm floor for land-based creatures. The other farms had been working for quite a while now, and it seemed like the water-based one was pulling ahead in the department of producing mana and platinum-ranked creatures.

  So, for the first five floors after the platinum rank, the first one would be for the slimes, the second for land-based creatures, and the last three would all go to the water-type farm floors.

  That should be enough. Then the rest of the floors could basically just be empty, but I would still need to make some dungeon rooms. That would be relatively easy as those rooms would also basically just be empty.

  I didn’t like this at all. At least in that part, I agreed with my instincts. But from what I’ve learned, many adventurers also go against their instincts and do the opposite of what their body tells them to do. Some of them die because of this, but those who don’t—well, they can become truly great.

  I had nearly finished going through all my floors, updating some dungeon rules, especially in the labyrinth, when I finally noticed the approaching presence of something incredibly powerful. When I looked toward it, there was a medium-sized airship that was just radiating with power. There weren’t just diamond ranks aboard, because to my surprise, they also had a dungeon core.

  It took me a little while to realize why they had that. I also felt quite stupid when I realized how they were using it. I am capable of making dungeon cores, so my people could also use such technology.

  What they had done was use a dungeon core to expand the size of the ship’s inner hull so they could fit more people without making the airship bigger. Now, how exactly they used the dungeon core to get that effect, I didn’t know, but sometimes all you needed was to see that something was possible to be able to figure out how to do it.

  I added this discovery to the backlog the Academy was currently under, as new research into topics that didn’t have to do with our survival had been left to the side. When they entered the eternal city-state's territory, I could finally feel the individuals on the airship.

  They had six peak diamond ranks and about thirty others. That was a way bigger force than we ever expected to see so soon. They also had a lot of platinum ranks, but they wouldn’t matter in this type of fight. I think they are more for logistical purposes than anything else.

  Vivian had gotten the other diamond rank conscious, but he was still a bit broken. The grandfather and granddaughter hugged each other warmly, and they didn’t seem to care what everyone else thought. There were some Beast representatives, but the majority of the diamond ranks that came were from the Masters. I also figured out why they brought six peak ranks.

  One of them was Vivian's grandfather. He probably demanded to be here and wouldn’t take no for an answer. The other five I had expected to be the people who got the short end of the stick and had to come here without actually knowing each other too well, but that turned out to not be true. It seems like these five were a proper adventurer team that have been together not for centuries, but millenniums.

  In all honesty, they were intimidating. Just their presence alone radiated absolute confidence, and I had no problem believing that they not only complemented each other but that they could enhance each other's powers exponentially. It was a scary thought, and I’m pretty sure they could fight against my platinum ranks easily enough, probably even fight Ismael to at least a standstill, with Vivian's grandfather making the difference.

  Perhaps I was underestimating Ismael's power, especially when he would be in his dragon form, but there was a reason why his species was basically extinct. So now I understood why they waited so long to come here.

  If they wanted to, a few of them could have been here a day or two after they discovered what I truly am. They waited to bring enough strength that they could at least match mine and my allies, so they wouldn’t have a weaker bargaining position—if they were even going to bargain. Currently, I have no idea what their game plan is, and I just have to wait and see.