The next week was incredibly fun. The absolute panic at the start—where everyone was scrambling to understand what this new task was all about and then trying to find solutions—was entertaining to watch.

  Many were struggling to understand how to defend against something greater than themselves, with most coming to the conclusion that they needed some sort of artifact or device capable of defeating an enemy they couldn’t.

  They were also technically not incorrect. This would satisfy the task parameters, and they would get their points. Just not as many as they might have.

  The problem was that absolutely no one thought the time limit was going to be just one week. Most weren’t even done with the planning phase when their week was about to be up. Basically, everyone was about to fail this one—except for two civilizations.

  The ants were partially going to succeed. Some of them had the right idea and quickly attempted to form defenses against flooding, but this was just a side project. While almost everyone else thought about a monster coming that they couldn’t defeat and how they would deal with it, they forgot that nature could also be an enemy. There were ways to defend against or mitigate natural disasters, but hardly anyone considered that aspect.

  I could kind of understand why the smaller organizations wouldn’t think of this, as there wasn’t really bad weather in any of the hub stations. But that wasn’t always the case, as there had been some bad rains happening semi-randomly.

  Every hub station had weather patterns modeled after a larger area that didn’t actually exist. So, things would seem more natural and sometimes that meant the weather wasn’t the best.

  The absolute winners were the Five Spires tribes. They wouldn’t be getting full points, but close enough. The reason why was because they had actually started the project they finished before this competition even began.

  On their islands, their worst worries were storms and big waves. They also knew that protecting their people was the most important thing, so they had started designing and building large rafts that would rise with the water and be big enough that storms wouldn’t be a huge problem.

  Of course, they also thought about monsters they couldn’t defeat, but they had no practical way of even trying to make artifacts or devices to defend against something that strong. So instead of trying to figure that out, they simply poured everything into finishing their rafts—which they completed in time. Not all of them, but enough to get a decent chunk of points.

  This helped them take the second spot and be so close to getting the first. The ants got to the third and the orcs fell into the fourth spot.

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  With this phase coming to an end the rest of the leaderboard stayed the same, as basically everyone else failed. People complained about the week given, but usually, when such a disaster comes, you would be lucky to have hours of warning. This was a good lesson for them all, and I liked how so many truly stopped to think about it.

  The next phase was going to be a longer one because it needed to be, due to its nature. The phase was called Legacy Building, and it was all about the next generation and the ones after that. Even if you got strong enough to live for thousands of years, that didn’t mean you shouldn’t think about what comes after you.

  I was quite certain that absolutely everyone would do well during this phase, as my teachings had already sunk in quite deep. Basically, everyone was already doing this, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done better.

  I have seen some civilizations stop thinking and advancing, even with little steps, just because they thought it was good enough. It might be good enough, but perhaps there was something beyond it.

  If a civilization—or anyone—stopped pushing forward, it would mean they had reached their end, and what would follow would be the slow or rapid downfall of their civilization.

  This time, I think I will also take advice of my own teachings. I could also never stop pushing. My creatures have gathered a lot of data, as they have now gone to the moons of this world and even beyond, trying to understand the environment I would be in once I left this world and this solar system behind.

  One of the things they have learned is about gravity and how important it is on a large scale, as it moves everything and affects so much.

  Now, with dungeon rules, I can perfectly well control gravity. Even right now, dungeon rules make it so that the outer sphere of mine—the north half—has normal gravity that corresponds to the world I’m on, but the south half does the exact opposite.

  The reason for that was that it was the best way to defend ourselves. But dungeon rules have always been a utility method. They always take a lot more from me than a skill of comparable effect, and, of course, skill effects could be a lot stronger and even more modifiable.

  This meant that I could certainly control the gravity of my own dungeon, but getting rid of the effect of other celestial bodies—now that would be a lot harder to do with my dungeon rules.

  From some of the calculations I could run, I would empty my mana quite fast trying to keep my gravity stable inside my dungeon with a strong effect coming from the outside. Even being in the vicinity of a large gas planet would be quite devastating.

  So during the next breakthrough, I was going to try to get a skill that would allow me to control gravity, which should help me with those problems.

  It didn’t take me long, as time moved fast, to reach the next breakthrough, and I hoped I was ready. When I reconnected with my dungeon, I found everything to be quite normal, but I quickly looked inside myself to see what skill I got.

  Gravity Control: Rank E.

  Well, that was exactly what I was looking for, and I immediately started to test it out. As I suspected, I could now reduce the effect of gravity this world was having on me, but I would still need to upgrade it quite a few ranks before I would be confident enough to at least survive this type of hazard.

  Time to start the next floor. I couldn’t believe that I was already 87 floors deep. This rushing really wasn’t funny, but one of the other diamond-rank dungeons managed to get to floor 92 during my breakthrough.

  They were getting better and better, and the outside world hadn’t stopped trying to beat me. They were all concentrating quite a lot on three specific dungeons, bringing in people and animals to help boost mana generation and ensuring that those dungeons didn’t claim the people born there. This way, more people would be willing to come, knowing that their offspring wouldn’t be stolen and controlled by a dungeon.

  I still didn’t understand the reasons why other dungeons did so. Yes, I could understand that my instincts kind of wanted me to do that, but were they really so influenced by it? Were they all really more like animals than adventurers? What made me so different from them?

  Perhaps it was just freak luck, like many of the adventurers who are called prodigies or geniuses—they just happened to win a lottery in how their pattern was combined during their creation. I wonder if I would have survived if I was just like the others.