Pov Dungeon Core

  I was so small compared to this gas giant. It was also so much bigger than my biggest floor. I would need to be three times bigger to be able to fit it.

  There was one skill that I haven’t upgraded for a really long while, that was space expansion. The problem was, if I did that, it would take me a lot longer to expand the following floors, and from the calculations I’ve done, I am not entirely sure if it would be safe for me to do it right now. Who knows how fast the other dungeons have become?

  It was still strange to do things so actively, but I was glad that the gas giant’s gravity was something I could counter. It meant it could not drag me into it even if I got too close. The sun would still be a problem, but I could get a lot closer without having to worry about bad things happening.

  Yet I still wanted one of these things in my floor, because I could see life surviving on a gas giant. The patterns I could get from it would be magnificent. There was a sudden jolt of panic through me. If I used the skill inside is outside on this planet, would the creatures on them belong to me and would I get their patterns?

  Two days of panicking later and I was finally able to relax. Nope, everything worked the way it’s supposed to work, because they’re still inside my territory even if I don’t own the celestial core or the planet. That could have been incredibly annoying, but fortunately, things seem to have worked out.

  When we were safely away from the gas giant, I anchored myself relative to the sun, basically becoming a small asteroid orbiting the sun in between two gas giants.

  The hold location skill was something that turned out to be a lot stronger than I expected it to be. I could anchor myself relative to any celestial object I was in range of, allowing me to completely sidestep what my scientists were calling annoying orbital mechanics.

  They were incredibly jealous, but I was glad that I had this type of skill. It had just made everything so much easier, especially in the future when we were going to start stealing planets.

  Now, however, it was time for another test. This one was not something I expected to go wrong, but my creatures still wanted me to be careful, so they were all prepared at the entrances to block them off if the Shield of Life were to drop.

  Of course, I knew it wouldn’t. Even though it was somewhat of an active skill, it was more of a passive one—like basically all of my skills. Dungeons were quite different from adventurers in the concept of their skills, more because of our nature, not because of theirs.

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  My predecessors were the ones who gave all the living beings a way to quantify skills like we do, and now they think they were the experts on how skills worked. Well, they were—but not for dungeon skills.

  Even talents worked differently from traits. That’s why dungeons called them traits, they were a bit different from adventurer ones. Same with skills, although depending on the skill, some were still quite similar, so using the same name kind of made sense.

  Perhaps I could argue that talents and traits should have the same name, but the dungeons before me made that distinction—and who was I to go against it just because I could?

  So, with everything prepared, everyone ready, I entered a breakthrough—first time in space. The feeling was a bit muted, but in the end, I was the one breaking through, not the world helping me to do it.

  In the skill selection, I chose to upgrade Inside is Outside, getting it to Rank C. When I came out, almost two months had passed. Everyone was still alive, even the gravity remained constant. The ones who were not aware of what was happening didn’t even know that they were in space, and that I had just gone through a breakthrough.

  Now I started to expand the 98th floor, which was going to be the second last breakthrough before the final one that would take me a rank above diamond rank.

  We still didn’t have a name for it, so we were just calling it green rank, as Rafe didn’t have the white glow of the diamond ranks instead, he had a green glow. People thought that we should call it emerald rank because of the green glow, but many argued against it because emerald was less valuable and weaker compared to diamonds. I was just fine calling it green rank.

  Now I really started to accelerate, as we had a long journey just to get out of the solar system. The thing was, I could go a lot faster, but it would take time to accelerate safely to such a degree. But I did start testing it out more, seeing how much acceleration I could sustain without my inhabitants feeling anything.

  It took a bit, but we were now beyond the solar system. My connection to the world was stretched. My mana generation dropped quite a bit, but even now I was still supported—only minimally, but still supported—by the celestial core. Without it, I would certainly start to leak mana. Rafe explained it like sand flowing through your fingers, no matter how much you try to stop it from doing so.

  He had found ways to mitigate this loss, and I have been practicing those methods, but it would still not be easy, and I was a bit worried about space. It should not be a problem getting space expansion to SS rank, which would give me a lot more room to work with.

  Even fitting a gas giant should not be a problem—even multiple ones to a single floor—and I will be able to expand my current floors, because I would not be able to advance again before I collected enough celestial cores.

  The shield of life was also strong enough at its current rank to easily defend against the cosmic radiation, so we were actually ready. So I signalled the last of my creatures who had stayed behind to board their spaceship and come and join me before I reached the end.

  I was actually getting more and more nervous about what’s to come. This had to work. I didn’t want to become a world’s will. I just didn’t.

  The way I could change the world I made while watching is incredibly interesting, which is just so truly wonderful. The way I could make new ones based on the ones I have made, but just twist it a little bit. All of this would go away. And then of course there's the adventure I just found so fun watching them and giving them challenges as they struggle to get stronger and stronger.

  If there was even a small chance of me succeeding, I think I would never choose the safe option. In my experimentation playrooms that are all sectioned off, there are so many small patterns that I have been able to examine and develop. All of them could rival the interesting world of the undead. I just couldn’t wait until I could be with all of them in their own worlds to see what they would come out with—or see how they failed—as both outcomes were interesting.

  Then there was the universe. While I would be needing to hide quite a bit to be safe from what's out there, and my creatures were working on that, I wanted to see everything it had to offer and not just stay in one place. Moving around just felt so good, and I never knew that it was so wonderful to do so. It truly has been a wonderful journey, and I hope I would get to have a long one ahead of me.