Chapter 16 - Expansion III

Day 16

Before he started his expansion, he had one last look at the still unconscious Mike. He noticed that he was missing his bow and spear. He'd probably lost them when he was hunted by to goblins. Neo thought about it for a moment, then he decided to get Mike's weapons back. After all, thanks to the boy he got three level ups and better creatures.

So he started to create five black goblins and he ordered them to follow Mike's trail and pick up anything the boy dropped. The goblins obeyed immediately, being dungeon monsters they no longer had a real free will neither had they any sense of individuality. Maybe this would change for a named monster. He had to do some tests later, when he had enough mana capacity to create a goblin shaman.

Neo decided to begin his expansion with the third floor. The level should be similar to his second one, but he created five rooms this time. In two of them he put wolves, each group had five rank F4 ones. Two of the other rooms where populated by deer and badgers. He set them up only to leave the room after at least 30 animals where in the room. For the last room he installed a black bear as a floor boss. He would have to experiment a little bit later on to make it stronger. Next he put in dirt on the granite ground and installed some plants. All in all he spend 5000 m² on the third floor.

For the fourth floor he wanted one very big room, where he would put in a lot of plants and some big cats that could hide and ambush visitors. In addition to the cats he would create some deer and badgers again. This monotony of his animals annoyed him a little bit, he really needed some other animals like boars or some real stags.

He was able to get everything done, except for the felines. He was still missing a blueprint for them. Until he got one, the other animals would just breed and multiply. He did not want a boss for this level, because the fifth level would be a boss level. This time he spend 6500 m². The improved floor sizes were better than before, but in his opinion he needed at least a floor size of one square kilometer to have any sort of real ecosystem. The faster growth and reproduction levels of dungeon animals was helping. It had to wait for later.

After finishing the floor for now, he looked at his status window and decided to compress his core before expanding further. Maybe there would be some detrimental effects if his crystal growths too much before condensing. He didn't want to take a risk.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: E-0

Level: 8

Structural Integrity: 4/4

Mana: 2505/2505 (595)

Floor area: 14600/25200 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 393 m

Mana Regeneration: 3600 /h *2*50000% = 1000 /s

Life Energy: 638.7

Life Energy generation: 19.23/d

He smiled when he saw the rank upgrade from the goblins and then saw his affinity. From what Luna had told him, it was very good for a dungeon core to gather affinities, in contrast to a human, for whom an affinity only meant a weakness. He probably got it when he created the skill book. Just to be safe, he decided to inform Luna before he started.

"Luna, I want to condense my core again, is there anything I need to now?"

"Hmm, no. Only that the second core compression is the easiest, because you don't have much mana and are already in the same shape you want to reach. This time it should not take more than a few hours."

"Good to hear. If Mike wakes up, please give him the skill book and one hundred silver coins. Oh and the goblins should soon come back with the gear he dropped. You should probably send them deeper into the dungeon so he doesn't see them."

"Ok, good luck with your core."

"Thank you."

Then he started. After a moment he noticed Luna was right. It was much easier this time, almost too easy. It was probably best to not get cocky and to keep up his full focus. After all one stupid fault would follow him for the rest of his life.

Luna's POV:

After she talked to Neo, Luna got back to train her rabbit. She was very proud of the progress Mr Floppy made. He was the best rabbit in the world. But she wasn't able to focus on the training for long. The goblins arrived and with them they brought back the spear, the bow and a pretty large panther. Shouldn't they only get the things Mike dropped? She decided it didn't matter. The panther would be pretty perfect for the fourth floor, so she just told them to drop the weapons near Mike and bring the panther down with them to the fourth floor. Then she kept on training Mr Floppy after all, she had grand plans for him.

"Who's a good boy? Yes, you're a good boy."

Neo's POV:

This time the compression took only five hours. When he came back to his senses he felt the returned goblins and to his surprise the panther. He immediately absorbed it and looked at its status.

Large panther

A big cat that lives in forests. This type of panther prefers to live alone and use his stealth for surprise attacks on its prey.

Rank: F9

Traits: stalker (rank 1); stealth (rank 1); loner (rank 2)

Costs: 1000 mana ; 85kg animal material

The rank F9 was good, but it was not much stronger than the bear on the third floor. If it hunted alone, it would have to face a whole group of adventurers and in his opinion it was too weak for that right now. He decided to tinker with its blueprint a little to see if he could get a stronger version. He tried to increase its size and to make it stronger. Improving the stealth would probably to brutal on this floor. Two hours later he had a design that was satisfying for its task. He then put ten of them on the fourth floor. With the 75 badgers and deer they should have more than enough to hunt for now.

Very large panther

A big cat that lives in forests. This type of panther prefers to live alone and use his stealth for surprise attacks on its prey. This type of panther is altered by mana from a dungeon.

Rank: F11

Traits: stalker (rank 1); stealth (rank 1); loner (rank 2); strong (rank1); mana altered (rank 1)

Costs: 1200 mana ; 135 animal material

Neo then went on with his fifth floor. His plan was a large mining area in the middle surrounded by multiple boss rooms. This way multiple gourps adventurers could challenge this level at the same time. For now he created one 200 m² room for the boss and an additional 6000 m² mining area. When he found ore veins later, he would place some of the ore here and expend the area.

After preparing the fifth floor, he started to move his core down to level eight. This time he planned for a larger distance between the floors and spend 500 m² on the sloped way down. When he arrived, he started to think about the theme for level six. His first five levels where populated with wild animals and should be enough to challenge a rooky adventure group in the high F ranks. The next five levels should gradually increase in difficulty to finally challenge high rank E groups on level ten. Thinking about it, his choices for creatures where very limited. His only option would be the goblins. So he decided that level six to ten would be a large goblin hideout with increasingly stronger types of foes.

He created 20 rooms between 100 and 200 m² each. Then he connected the rooms in a way that would created multiple paths to reach level seven. After this he had still 2000 m² left, so he build a large arena right in the middle of the floor. He would let his goblins fight each other in their off time. This way some of them would probably improve in rank. For the population he went for 50 greens, 20 green warriors, 50 blues and 20 blue warriors. He ran out of animal material half way through and had to convert some plant material. After finishing the creatures, he created low quality iron gear for the green goblins and medium quality gear for the blue ones.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: E-0

Level: 8

Structural Integrity: 16/16

Mana: 17163 /17163 (8037)

Floor area: 25200/25200 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 393 m

Mana Regeneration: 3600 /h *2*2*50000% = 2000 /s

Life Energy: 648.7

Life Energy generation: 67.23/d

When he looked at his status, he saw that there was more than half of his mana still unblocked, so he decided to create some goblin strike teams to gather outside material in the next days. But first off all he needed plant material, it would be easier to gather some wood than to magically increase the growths of his plants. But just when he wanted to send out his five black goblins, Mike woke up.