Pov Leader of the Beasts

  It was weird to be out in the open and having so many people look at me who weren't from our clans. Yet I didn’t want to miss seeing a dungeon leaving this world with my own eyes.

  It threw us quite a few curveballs by the end of it, but even now I’m a bit sceptical about all of this. How was it going to make something as big as the dungeon go into space?

  The knowledge he shared—that I believe. Others will take a bit longer to convince, but one of the masters already built that long viewing thing called the telescope and already confirmed there were other worlds out there that were stronger than ours—at least their cores.

  Who’s to say there aren’t people like us there as well? That’s the reason I have been pushing the new rules that have been implemented, lifting restrictions on adventurers, letting everyone go further than before, and uplifting new dungeons to help train even more.

  Building up this kind of force would not be possible just by the threat of some nebulous other world, but I have been pushing the narrative that we need as much strength as possible when this world's core is upgraded. The new challenges then will be beyond diamond rank. So, we would need people who could face it.

  By that time, our world would also be shining into space, and I am way more worried about whatever was out there than what could be on this world.

  We were also weaker now because all the clans decided to send some sires of their bloodlines into the dungeon, so if we were to fail here, some part of us would live on. And I was certain, if something were to live on, it would be that dungeon.

  It was strange to be here because I could no longer feel the dungeon. The last time I was here, we were fighting to get into the dungeon.

  There were scars of our battle, the abandoned bunker that the dungeon made, but already nature was reclaiming what we had disturbed. I wondered how long it would take for every trace of our civilization to be wiped away—and whatever came next would never know what was.

  Then I felt it. The shift of mana. The dungeon was doing something, and it was expanding a lot of mana, so much that I could feel it. It was like some sort of massive spells were activated one by one. Something started to surround the dungeon. It didn't seem to do much, but I did feel that it was somehow isolating the dungeon, but things moved normally through it, so I was a bit confused.

  The smell of magic permeated the entire area, and I could feel a sort of stretching of space around us. Currently, we could see only the top of the dungeon, but slowly it continued to move upwards, bursting through the ground.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  When it was halfway out of it, I was surprised by how big it was, and that those fortifications we fought in seemed to extend throughout its surface. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a part of any army that wanted to take over that dungeon.

  As it continued to move upwards, it did so faster and faster, pushing air aside, creating massive turbulence, moving the air around in a large area. It took a while to reach the edge of space—perhaps 30 minutes.

  When it properly left the atmosphere, I could still see it. It was quite tiny now. I wondered why it stopped moving — did it change its mind? Yet after about an hour, while most had already dispersed, I still continued to watch and saw it finally start to move again.

  “So I guess you are going. Good luck on your journey.”

  Pov Dungeon Core

  The first zero-atmosphere tests went well. There was no leakage from the Shield of Life skill, and it was even protecting against solar radiation. It was time to move further away from this world—my home world—that would now just be that: a place where I came from and not a place where I resided in.

  We didn’t want to steal any planets from this solar system—it just didn’t feel right—but we were going to take a smaller moon from the fifth planet. It was a dead planet, but it had four small moons.

  All of them had celestial cores, and we were going to try to steal one of them. What I would do is accelerate halfway toward it and then decelerate the other half. This way, we can continue to test my capabilities.

  It was weird to use active skills like this to actually do something so adventurer-like. They moved around their bodies constantly, even during their sleep, but for me, this was quite a novel thing to do. It was also quite distracting, but eventually, I got the handle of it and managed to start expanding to the 97th floor at a more reasonable speed.

  I didn’t push myself too hard as we weren’t yet planning to go from one solar system to another. So it took us three months to make it. When we were in close orbit, I used the hold location skill, to make us perfectly in sync with the moon we were going to steal. It was only 600 kilometres in radius and it was quite lopsided, but it would be good enough.

  I expanded my territory, which took about a week to encompass the entire moon, during which my monsters and creatures were busy moving the teleportation devices into correct locations so I could pull this moon into me.

  The interesting thing was that as I enveloped it entirely, the celestial core was helping support me, but barely, it was so weak. Still, that was incredibly encouraging because I expected that I would need to be connected to it, but perhaps being inside my territory counts as that.

  For a moment there, I thought that perhaps I wouldn’t have needed the skill inside is outside, but then—my floors were a different thing from my territory. Now I’m not entirely sure, but I think I still need the skill to make it work like I need it to work, otherwise it would just become a part of my floor. Well, all of this was a bit experimental. I didn’t think anyone had done this before.

  It took them another week to set everything up. So I channelled my mana through the teleportation devices, charging them up, and when all of them were ready, I pulled on their collective influence, and the moon disappeared and reappeared on the 91st floor.

  The moon was tiny compared to how big the floor was, but it was inside. Immediately I could feel myself starting to corrupt the celestial core, and I now knew what would happen. But quickly, I activated the Inside is Outside skill, targeting the entire moon. That stopped the corrupting. And the moon functioned like it did before I teleported it inside.

  Success. It actually worked. It also seems like if I take celestial cores like this, my very being will start to corrupt it and make it a part of my own core, making it bigger. That was something I didn’t know I could do, and apparently, I could go around stealing celestial cores to make myself stronger.

  Well, I will definitely test this out at least once, but let’s put that on the back burner. I would need to collect enough celestial cores to be able to survive before I think about starting to consume them.

  I could also now feel the limitations of my Inside Is Outside skill, and I definitely needed to rank it up. If I was going to bring in planets—and multiple ones—the skill would simply not be able to handle those numbers. Not yet, at least.

  We still had two large tests to do. I was not confident enough to go near the sun, but going near a gas giant to test if I could handle that type of gravity would be important. And then, of course, leaving the solar system, even if it is by just a bit, to test out if the Shield of Life can protect against what’s out there. After that, only a few breakthroughs left before the next rank.