Hello everyone here is chapter 4 hope you all enjoy it! I'm also working on editing the older chapters and will update them once they are done. Will post in new releases on what chapters have been updated and if there are any changes to the plot.

Also I want to say this now but I don't want to get too detailed in stats. I know some stories of similar setting kinda go into lot of tiny detail of the stats of every characters and monsters. I honestly don't want to fill up chapters with tons of tables so I won't go into too much detail of like cost of every thing and every single character's stats. I might make a list in the future of the summoning cost of things for reference. I personally feel the story is more fluid without spending half a chapter doing math and reading tables, at least that's my personal decision on this matter.

“Ok so that didn’t work again.” Sage muttered to himself. “Why am I failing? I’ve taught the best of the best, any type of genius you can think of yet I can’t get these… things to do the most simple cultivation technique!”

Sage had been at it for more than 8 hours and produce no result at all. Finally the 7 goblins and 1 kobold were tired from standing there and listening to sage all day and they needed to rest but didn’t dare to. Sage continued to try and teach them cultivation techniques for a few more hours before Alice finally cut him off.

“Sage, I’m not sure what you’re trying to teach these monsters but they really aren’t going to learn anything asleep. Hehe.” Alice couldn’t help but giggle at what Sage has been doing. “Also neither goblins or kobolds have good affinity for magic so trying to get them to do anything with them unless they evolve is basically impossible.”

“Wait… what did you just say?” Sage suddenly asked.

“Uhmmm that goblins and kobolds don’t have good magic affinities?” Alice hesitantly replied.

“What exactly does that mean?” Sage questioned.

“Well it is what is sound like, they don’t have good magic affinities meaning they can’t really gather mana inside their body and use them.” Alice quickly said.

“You mean that not every living creature can gather mana and use them?” Sage continued

“Yes and no, every living creatures has mana inside of them and gather them subconsciously. However not every creature can sense that mana and use them freely.” Alice hesitated a bit and then said “Only more intelligent creatures are capable of manipulating mana inside their body, the lowest of goblins and kobolds have never shown that capability. Only once they evolved to their higher form can some of them use mana.”

Sage pondered a bit then burst out, “But aren’t dungeon creatures different? They all have a mana core which allow them to absorb mana inside the dungeon and sustain themselves without food. Doesn’t that mean that no matter what kind of creature they would have much higher concentration of mana inside their body?”

Alice was startled, this was something she has never considered before. Common sense always said that the lower tier creatures lacked the ability to control mana and that’s just how things had always been. She felt very confused and blurted out, “I mean it’s just common sense you know. Anyways Sage you should worry less about whatever it is that you’re trying to do and focus more on completing the first floor of this dungeon. Once it is done we can connect to the outside and you will officially be an dungeon! Time to see what you’ve done while I’ve been asleep!” With that Alice quickly darted out of the room and into the dungeon.

Sage let out a sigh and decided that Alice won’t be able to help him overcome this problem and it was something he’d have to do himself. And so for the next 5 days this continued. Sage ended up summoning more monsters and in the end there is a total of 20 goblins and 5 kobolds. Sage had split them up into group and taught them in rotation. That way once one group grew tired out another was moved in.

Sadly after 5 days zero progress was made and Sage himself was becoming increasingly unstable. All the monsters are filled with fear as they knew their master was very angry with them but they just couldn’t figure out why. Alice took note of this and tried to calm Sage down but to little success.

Finally on the 6th day Alice could stand it any longer and interrupted Sage’s “lecture”, which which at this point is just him yelling at the goblins. She shouted “SAGE! What has gotten into you? You’re doing fine! The dungeon’s first floor is near completion and you already have build up a nice force of monsters for the dungeon. You should be....”

Before she could continue Sage lashed out, “BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH! THESE MONSTERS ARE WEAK! THEY MUST BE STRONGER OR ELSE THERE IS NO WAY I’LL BE SAFE! THEY MUST BE STRONGER!”

Alice as startled, this has been the first time Sage has lashed out at her. She was scared for a moment but that was just for a moment. Alice has always been one to speak her mind, people that knew her would say she spoke too much of her mind, but she is not one to be scared quiet.

She responded in full force, “I’M TRYING TO HELP!” With that shout she used a bit of magic that shocked Sage’s soul. Since Sage was a dungeon Core she really couldn’t slap him as his physical form was, well, a crystal. All she could do was to use her mana to slap his soul so to speak.

Sage was startled by the force that struck him and during that moment Alice continued “Sage you need to calm down, you are doing fine. In fact you’re doing amazing. Not only did you reached level 10 from awakening in record time you’ve almost finished an entire floor and populated it with monsters all with in the span of a single week. It takes most dungeons at least a year from their wakening to be ready to be connected to the outside world. Sage I want you to trust me when I tell you that you are safe. People aren’t targeting you and besides you even have this secret room to hide in. That’s not something a newly born dungeon could possibly have. So please Sage calm down and rest for a bit.”

Sage was completely stunned by those words and finally calmed down a little and replied “I’m sorry, this has really gotten out of hand. You guys can go rest for now.” The monsters all let out a breath as they quickly scrammed.

“I need to rest a little, thank you again Alice.” Sage slowly said.

“That’s what I’m here to do.” replied Alice as she went out to check around the dungeon.

“What has gotten over me, how could I have lost myself so easily….” Sage went into deep thought. Given his cultivation and experience there is no way he should have lost control of himself from such simple failures. Looking back at it now his anger was laughable. It has only been 5 days and he was angry with no results? Cultivation has always been a very long and very slow road, it would really take the top geniuses or those old monsters to be able to achieve some result in just 5 days. He remember back when he started, due to his own mediocre talent it took him a month to reach Elementary Rank 2 from rank 1. And here he was expecting these monsters that have 100x worse talent than even his own mediocre talent to achieve visible result in 5 days.

The more he pondered the more he calmed down and for the first time since he became a dungeon entered an enlightened state. This made him carefully look at himself for the first time since he came here and he was shocked. His soul was in shambles, his once powerful soul was now only a tiny fraction of what it original was. This shocked Sage greatly causing him to mutter to himself.

“What happened to me, my soul is less than 1000th of the size it used to be. How did I not notice this at all until now?” Then something clicked and Sage realized what has happened, “Whatever brought me here must have done this damage to my soul and with my soul in such a state I felt a constant sense of danger even if I didn’t realize it. I didn’t notice the state I was in due to all the events that happened one after another resulting in me clinging to the idea of protecting myself with powerful monsters. My damaged soul lead to me not thinking clearly at all and I was almost consumed by my own inner demon.”

Thinking of this Sage shuddered at how close of a call he just had “I need to find a way to recover my soul as quickly as possible. Maybe when it recovers I will regain some of my abilities as well to protect myself. For now let’s see what I can do to help myself recover. If there some soul recovery pill this would go a lot faster. I remember Alice said I can summon items, maybe I can do something about the pill.” With that Sage decide to bring up the item menu.

Minor Herb (10 Mana) - Healing herbs that can heal minor injuries or be used to create healing potion.

Minor Healing Potion (25 Mana) - Concentrate made from minor herb, much more effect than using the herb directly.

Qi Gathering Pi… &%$&#$E#$%R354R#$%$#R#$^&O%#[email protected]!$#@

The flash of violent red light appeared again and once it disappeared the item list appeared before Sage and just like before with the monster list it was altered from the first time he saw it.

Minor Herb (10 Mana) - Healing herbs that can heal minor injuries or be used to create healing potion.

Minor Healing Potion (25 Mana) - Concentrate made from minor herb, much more effect than using the herb directly.

Minor Mana Potion (50 Mana) - Recovers 30 points of mana.

Weapon (??? Mana) - Mana cost varies depending on the size, material, and enchantment of the weapon. Current available material: Copper, Iron.

Armor (??? Mana) - Mana cost varies depending on the size, material, and enchantment of the Armor. Current available material: Copper, Iron, Leather, Cloth.

Skill Book (???) - Mana cost varies depending on the type of skill book. Skill book will teach whoever uses it the technique inside given that they meet the requirement. Skill books disappear once it has been used. Custom skill books can also be made. Current available skill: Elementary elemental magics.

The last choice shocked Sage “Custom skill books? And from the description skill book automatically make them understand the content without the need for them to learn! I can’t believe such a convenient thing exist in this world!”

With that Sage quickly tossed all other plan to the side and decided that he was going to succeed this time for sure! He quickly searched through his memories and remember the Tyrannic Black Dragon cultivation technique which was the cultivation the Black Dragon Saint used to become one of the most powerful beings in his world.

His mind quickly focused on the skill book and technique to make a skill book for it. He felt mana quickly draining from him and the mana wove together to form the book. But soon 900 mana point were drained and the book is still almost completely transparent. Sage quickly activated his cultivation to absorb more mana but he realized that at this rate it would take him over 100 years to completely form this book. Reluctantly he ended the summoning process and all that mana scattered and was lost.

Sage let out a sigh and thought “I was a bit too over eager that I forgot the fact the mana cost matches the quality of the skill book. Trying to summon a saint level skill book while I’m this weak was a bit too rash. I almost lost myself there again, it seems like I really need to look into this problem with my soul first or else my judgement on everything else will be too clouded.”

Sage calm his soul and begin to cultivate a technique that would help his soul recover. Damage to the soul were almost the hardest injuries to recovery. With his vast cultivation knowledge he knows of technique that could allow his body to completely reborn if he still had a living body. But even with his vast knowledge there isn’t much he can do to recover injuries to his soul beside using a lot of time. As he cultivated he noticed that when his mana was filled his soul recovered just a tiny bit faster. This lead him to believe that being in a mana rich environment would lead to his soul recovering faster. Now Sage’s thirst for leveling up increased even more!

After he set his soul into a recovery state he turned his attention back to making a skill book.

“So from what I felt earlier the saint rank cultivation method was going to cost at least 1,000,000,000 mana”

From his knowledge of cultivation he predicted that right now with 1000 mana he could only summon a very low grade Core level cultivation skill book. So he searched his memories and decide on the Soaring Dragon Cultivation method. Although it sounds amazing but it is a skill book that can be barely considered a core level cultivation method.

After gathering enough mana he once again activated item summon and mana quickly drain from him. Sage has seen this process a few time and getting a much better understand of how the mana moved as it form the item. In the end Sage used 1100 mana to form the skill book which means he had to gather mana as it formed. Luckily Alice was not here or she would be shocked. She never heard of a dungeon that could absorb mana while summoning something.

From this summon and the last failed summon Sage came a conclusion of the cost of different rank skill books he could make. Skill books that are at the Elementary rank cast 1-100 Mana, Foundation rank cost 100-1,000 Mana, Core rank 1,000-10,000 Mana, Earth rank 10,000-100,000, Sky rank 100,000-1,000,000 Mana, Emperor rank 1,000,000-10,000,000 Mana, OverLord rank 10,000,000 - 100,000,000 Mana), Saint rank 100,0000,000+ Mana. Of course these weren’t set in stone as there are good and bad cultivation methods between them. There are some Core cultivation more powerful than Earth rank ones.

Sage was very excited as he quickly called a kobold over. Alice who was in the dungeon saw the kobold rush toward Sage’s chamber she quickly followed as she was still worried about his condition.

When she arrived inside the room at the same time as the kobold and saw a book before Sage’s body.

“A skill book!” Alice quickly shouted.

She was very curious as most dungeons don’t get access to skill books until they are much higher level. It have to be said that skill book are very rare and in high demands. Not all dungeons are known to have skill books even some really powerful ones while some lower level ones do. All dungeons that can summon skill books are well protected as it is too important of a resource to lose. She was very happy and became lost in thought as the kobold picked up the skill book.

The kobold picked up the skill book and stared at it. Seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

Sage urge the kobold to use the book again and the kobold seem to be trying very hard but nothing happened still.

Finally after a whole minute of silence Sage shouted “Use the book!” The kobold was startled and dropped the book.

Alice finally regained her sense and said to Sage, “Sage, skill books have requirements. If the user doesn’t meet the requirement than the skill book is completely useless to them. From the cover of that skill book I’d say it’s a rank C skill book and you want a common kobold to learn it? Really? Still you sure are full of surprises. I never thought that you’d have the ability to summon skill books. Those things normally only appear in high level dungeons and even then it is very rare. It is not a skill all dungeons get and no one really knows what the requirements are for dungeons to unlock it. Dungeon that can spawn skill books are highly valued. With this our safety is basically assured!”

Sage was startled at this information and after a while he couldn’t help but let out a sigh and muttered, “I should have known better. Cultivation is not easy!”

Edited by: mossclaw64

Edited by: The super secret and mysterious masked editor... from space!