Chapter 20 - Coming up with a plan

Day 23

It took Neo four more days to finish his design for the mana absorbing formation. He created it in a way, which made it possible to adjust its absorption rate all the way up to a maximal amount of 95%. He laid the formation beneath the ground of his core chamber. After he was finished, only a small amount of the materials he collected from his old formation were left. Then he placed his seven lapatronic crystals around it, so the gathered amounts of mana could be stored. Each of them was able to contain one trillion mana, together they should be able to keep the formation going for years, even if he continued leveling up. After finishing the task, he recreated the stone floor above it. The high level of mana concentration near his core would prevent visitors from sensing the mana in the crystals below the floor.

Neo decided to only turn the formation on, when he was doing task with an extreme mana expenditure. If the formation was on all the time and he was not expending much, the mana concentration in his dungeon would get far too low. Over time, while his dungeon expanded, he would decrease the absorption rate. This way he could disguise his abnormal regeneration as a natural development.

With this task out of the way, he had a look at the creatures, his strike force brought him over the last days. The highlights were an E1 ranked mountain lion, a F2 ranked boar and a highly toxic F10 ranked snake. It was a eight meters long constrictor, but at the same time it had a strong paralyzing poison. The rest of the animals were small, like squirrels and hedgehogs. He could use them later on to improve the ambiance of his rooms. The boars and the snakes would be used on the fourth floor, while the lion would make its debut in on level seven. Of course, he would need to improve it first. For a moment, he was frustrated that there were no real monsters to hunt in the surrounding forest, but this was just a downside for being next to civilization. It would've been far worse to create the dungeon somewhere monsters could be found, only to wait for years to be discovered by people. When he looked at his status window, he saw that he had enough life energy to level up again and so he did buy it immediately.

Upgrade dungeon level -> 9 Costs: 1280 life energy Upgrade dungeon level -> 10 Costs: 2560 life energy

After this his status changed again.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: E-5

Level: 9

Structural Integrity: 16/16

Mana: 13708 /13708 (11492)

Floor area: 25200/50200 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 619 m

Mana Regeneration: 4500 /h *2*2*50000% = 2500 /s

Life energy: 48.1

Life Energy generation: 90.56/d

His mana regeneration did not increase by much. In the future most of the improvement in that area would probably come from compressing his core. His maximum floor size and the maximum dungeon extension both doubled. Before Neo started to grow his dungeon again, he thought about his plans for the next days. Mike would get back to his dungeon in 19 days. Together with the trip to Geldern and the time the adventurer guild would need to send an exploration team, he would not have more than 30 days, before larger groups of humans arrived in front of his entrance and he would no longer be able send out his goblins. He needed to use this remaining time to its fullest extent. With this in mind he started to expand the large cavern on the fourth floor. He still was only able to use a fraction of his mana regeneration. The best he could do at the moment, was to expand for a little more than one m² per second, bringing his mana consumption to 130 mana per second.

Five hours later, he was finished. He'd increased his fourth floor by 25000 m². After this, he had a look at his material reserves and saw that his gathering goblins had been busy.

Animal material: 1507 kg

Plant material: 54257 kg

He decided this would be enough for his plan and started designing a defensive device for his little fairy. If the little fairy wanted to leave the safe environment of his dungeon and go hunting, he decided she needed some shielding, some cloaking and a fast way to escape.

Neo was in his element when was creating this blueprint. He'd already been a master artificer when he still was a human, but being a dungeon improved his capabilities even further. He no longer needed, the often times long and tedious, crafting process it took to create more elaborate items. As a dungeon, he could just create everything in his mind and then call it into existence and so he did with his newest creation. The design he went for, was an invisibility field, a force shield and a low range teleporter. It was powered by a crystal he made from the last remains of his old formation. After that, he decided to call his little fairy.

"Luna, can you come to my core room please, I have a present for you!"

"A present, really? I'm on my way!"

He didn't have to wait long. The fairy used her full speed when she flew in his direction. In her excitement, she'd even forgotten to bring along Mr. Floppy. When Luna arrived, she was speechless for a short time after she saw the item Neo created: A small golden crown with a crystal in its middle

"Ohhhh, I like it. With this Luna is a real princess."

She immediately grabbed the crown and put it on her head.

"I'm glad to hear that. Let me explain its functions now."

So he did. After he finished, Luna instantly used the crown to turn invisible and to blink around inside the dungeon. He even had to reload the battery after a few hours.

When Luna left with the crown, Neo began to put his plan in motion and he started to create steel and animal material. He didn't stop until he had 2000kg of steel and 11500kg of animal material. It took him 18 hours and millions of mana when he was finished.

After this, he explained his plan to Luna and started to create the creatures he needed for it.

One hour later a little fairy riding on a rabbit left his dungeon. She was flanked by two wooden golems. Following behind her were 250 black goblins, 20 shamans and Biff, marching in orderly ranks, their polished steel armors sparkling in the sunlight.

The moment after the fairy left his dungeon, he tried to use his connection to see through her eyes. It was working. This calmed him down a lot, he didn't tell Luna, but he'd implemented a remote trigger for the teleportation function of the device. With these headaches out of the way, he pondered over what to do next.

Tired of using his mana to create steel, he decided to build a blast furnace inside one of the larger rooms of his sixth floor right above his mana core. He made it big enough to produce 10 tons of steel in one operation. His plan was to use the excess mana of his formation to power its heating coils. That's why he started with the creation of a silver mana conduit, going from his core room to the blast furnace. To save silver, he decided to put the conduit inside a newly created vertical tunnel from his core on the ninth floor to the furnace on the sixth. He had to decrease his fourth floor a little bit to free up the needed floor size. His 40 kg of silver only lasted him a tenth of the way. So he decided to create more. In his calculation he would need around 20 hours to gather enough to complete it.