Pov Dungeon Core

  The 76th floor was 145,000 kilometers in length and 109,000 kilometers in width. It had been a while since I had such a small floor, but the huge difference was the height, which was now 1,000 kilometers. The last floor was only 48 kilometers high, but I felt like I needed a change and, of course, to scale back the length and width of the floors as they were getting way too big.

  The dungeon rooms were also opened up to floor 60. My design teams were happy to see everything they had created in the past 10-plus years finally become reality.

  It will take quite a lot of adventurers quite a while to make it to the end, and even the diamond ranks will need some time simply because of the sheer size of it all. I mean, floor 60 has a bit more than 600,000 rooms, some quite sizable. There are many secrets to be found, but now it was time for another breakthrough.

  During all this time, I’ve concentrated on refining a skill, and I truly hoped it would work the way I wanted it to. I already had plenty of mana to trigger a breakthrough, but I also chose to do this secretly so that I could practice more on how to minimize the effects of a breakthrough. That way, I could pass that knowledge on to the dungeons of this world, as there’s really no reason not to. But I’m going to share that information later.

  Entering the breakthrough felt the same as every other time, and I quickly finished making the floor guardian, as everything was already prepared. This one was a simple wolf that was, of course, diamond-ranked and would cause trouble even for groups of diamond ranks. Then came the skill portion of the breakthrough, and here I started to think about the exact skill I wanted and what it should do.

  I felt time going by, but if this required me to stay in a breakthrough longer, I would. When my consciousness reconnected with my dungeon, I realized that a month had passed. It really takes a lot longer during a breakthrough if I need to make a new skill that’s really complicated.

  It was time to see if I really succeeded. I entered my mind space and looked for the skills, and there it was—the new one. Talent Study: Rank C.

  So, I might have failed here. Do not panic. I started to try to understand the skill and then tried to use it. My relief was palpable—I did succeed, in a way.

  I won’t be able to just copy talents from anyone who comes here and leaves immediately. The study part was quite literal, as I needed to study every talent, observe it for quite some time, and see it in action before I could add it to my library of talents. So while it will take me longer to collect the talents of every adventurer who delves into my dungeon, I have succeeded in my goal.

  This made me quite happy, but it was time to start on my next floor, along with the next five dungeon room floors and making a world for my diamond ranks. Of course, there were the usual projects as well. All of this started to stretch me a bit too much, but I would only be making a new proper world this one time until I reached the end, as this world was truly needed.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I already had an underground area, but it still needed work. About 500 kilometers of the floor's height was underground. There were, of course, oceans and landmasses—everything looked quite standard, but there were quite a few floating islands as well because I had plenty of diamond ranks who were aerial creatures, and they needed their own space.

  I really missed just making worlds, and there were so many floors missing that. It was sad to look at them. Unfortunately, I still had a job to do—that was to survive, so that everyone who called me home could survive as well.

  The current worlds that I had were quite amazing, each one with its own stories, but currently, the diamond ranks were a bit left out, as I didn’t have a proper home for them. I had just stuck them into other worlds that weren’t meant for their strength.

  Of course, there were some exceptions. Ace’s world was big, and technically, adventurer diamond ranks didn’t need anything special. It was more that my creatures needed a proper environment to feel fulfilled in their lives. But even the adventurer diamond ranks right now didn’t have any true challenge, but I hoped that this new world would be that.

  It was not going to be a full battleground, but some of the environments I was going to make were going to be truly dangerous. My experimentation worlds were still going full swing, and they had plenty of time to come up with truly dangerous stuff.

  Currently, what was holding me back the most was actually my Aura Crystal skill, as it was still low rank. So perhaps, at my next breakthrough, I should fix that so I would be able to prepare for the future a bit better.

  For the next week, I asked questions of the adventurers I knew best, but it seemed like my new skill that let me try to learn their talents didn’t register to them at all, which was good news. It would have been quite difficult to get new talents if the adventurers I was studying felt uncomfortable or actually didn’t want me to get their talent. Now, no one was the wiser. That was good news.

  My upper entrance was also starting to see more traffic. Some of my adventurers left in hopes of finding their family, and some new adventurers came—some in anger, some looking to get stronger.

  The world was not that happy with my existence, as quite a lot of places had experienced the small pattern and what it could do, and I didn’t blame them for their feelings.

  The last of the small pattern was destroyed just a few days ago, which now meant that the entire world was free of it. Now, it was only in one place, and that was the undead world—although it wasn’t fully undead any longer. The other small pattern had been doing quite well for itself, now having proper living creatures on its side, fighting for it.

  That was truly curious, and I wondered how it worked because every single living thing there was a monster when I unleashed the undead pattern. But now, when this small pattern cleansed those monsters that had turned undead, they returned as creatures, not monsters.

  When they returned, they didn’t have any memories, and even their souls were different, so it wasn’t a way to bring back my creatures who had died, but it was still incredibly interesting to witness.

  To them all, I offered a way out, and some even agreed, while others wanted to keep fighting, even after I explained everything to them. This small pattern truly existed symbiotically with the people who were no longer undead.

  Okay, this was starting to get complicated.

  So, the undead pattern killed living creatures, then brought them back. They would be undead because they still lived but were also dead—hence the classification of undead. But now this other small pattern brings them properly back to life, yet it’s not the same person and not exactly the same life as before. So, are they reborn life, then? And what if the undead pattern once again turns someone who has been reborn?

  Was this what a headache felt like? If so, I do not like it.

  I kinda wanted to give them an entire new world, but once again, I didn’t have the time to make one. What I did have was space in one of the larger labyrinth rooms. It was quite similar to the one the beast clan occupied.

  The labyrinth had many such rooms tucked in where I could fit them—some larger, some smaller—where there was actually proper plant life and even sunlight. I made those for the long-term plan of the overall labyrinth project, but right now, I needed the space.