Chapter 23 - Taking inventory

Day 24

Before Neo decided which floor to expand, he went through his existing levels. His first floor just consisted of an entrance, a small room with rabbits, his big bad wolf room and the guard room. Without the guard room it was only 100 m² big. Neo decided to keep it this way, this floor was only there to sort out lousy adventurers who froze in their first battle. He didn't want to kill huge amounts of F ranks, who weren't made to be a real adventurer just to get some meager amount of life energy.

The second floor was 2400 m² big. It had two smaller rooms with, all in all eleven wolves and a larger 1700 m² cave for his deer and badgers. After thinking about it for a moment, Neo decided to double the floor in size. In addition he doubled the amount of deer and badgers, but he kept the wolf groups the same.

Then he went to his third floor. It consisted of two rooms for wolves, two for deer and one for the floor boss, the black bear. Altogether this floor had a size of 5000 m² Neo decided it was good enough for now.

His fourth floor was the biggest in whole the dungeon. It was just one 31500 m² sized cave. When he expanded it the last time, he didn't have enough plant- and animal material, so he left the new part empty. Neo decided to fix this issue now. When he was finished, the floor contained 15 jaguars, 10 of his new boa constrictors, 50 boars, 150 deer and 150 badgers. Again, he had to use his mana to create animal from plant material. After he was finished, he moved the entrance of the floor to the edge of the room, the way to the fifths level went into the middle. Later, after he expanded his third floor, he would create multiple points of entry to this level. This way, there could be a large amounts of adventurers going through it at the same time.

At the fifths floor, there was only the 5000m² mining area and an empty boss room with a size of 200 m². He converted some more plant material and put his rank E3 brown bear into it. Then he tinkered a little bit with the entrance to the room. He build it in a way, that it only opened, if there were no more adventurers in it and a new bear was present. Later, when there were more dungeon divers, he would just create more boss rooms. With this, his first five floors were more or less complete. The only thing that was to do later on, would be expanding and instancing. But this could wait until there were multiple groups of adventurers entering the dungeon at the same time.

The sixth dungeon level alread had 20 rooms and the arena. All in all its size was 5000 m². Adventurers entering here, had to fight large groups of weak goblins. For now, Neo was satisfied with its design, he would expand it later, after this floor got another entrance from a second bear room on level five. After his research team finished, he would place some traps, starting from this level.

Right now, the seventh level of his dungeon was only a hallway, that went further down. Neo thought about the theme he wanted to implement on this floor for a moment. Then he came up with an idea, this floor would be a big pig farm. He started by creating a 20000 m² large area for the his boars. Next to it, he build ten rooms as living quarters for 80 blue goblins, that would be his farmers. He build the entrance to the floor into the farm area. If adventurers arrived, they needed to use stealth, otherwise they would be swarmed by the F3 ranked goblins. Even a group of high E ranks would have difficulties with fighting all 80 of them at once. At the other side of the farming area, he created a another, larger living space for his farm boss. He choose one of his new E3 ranked black goblin warriors for the task. In addition he put in five mountain lions, who acted as his pets. Going back through his floor design and thinking about it, Neo came to the conclusion that it would be too easy. If the attackers had area of effect magic or used the narrow hallway of the entrance to fight their enemies a few at a time, there wouldn't be any challenge on until the boss. So he added another 20 black goblins to the blue ones.

Finding a design for the eighth floor was more difficult. He didn't have access to a lot goblins that could challenge a high E ranked adventurer group and he didn't want to use quantity over quality three floors in a row. After thinking about his options for a little, he decided to go for a maze. The difficulty on this floor would mainly be coming from its traps. That meant, if his researchers were able to come up with the designs. Inside of the maze he created ten guard rooms, manned by one elite black goblin and four black goblin warriors each. As a whole, he spent 20000 m² on the maze.

When he finished his eighth floor, he noticed that there were 300 goblin corpses laying in his entrance. It seemed like the expansion had taken him longer than he thought. He absorbed the goblins and had a look at his status. When he saw his life energy, he immediately leveled up and bought the regeneration facility.

Life energy: 9778.1 Upgrade dungeon level -> 11 Costs: 5000 life energy Upgrade dungeon level -> 12 Costs: 9000 life energy

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: E-7

Level: 11

Structural Integrity: 16/16

Mana: 41383 /41383 (56717)

Floor area: 98100/190200 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 1571 m

Mana Regeneration: 6600 /h *2*2*50000% = 3666.67 /s

Life energy: 3778.1

Life Energy generation: 228.6/d

Neo was a little bit surprised. His floor size didn't double any more. He only got 80% more than on level ten, no longer 100%. Anyway, this new floor size meant a lot more expansion and the new floor size got a little cheaper. When he saw that he wasn't missing much mana for his next core compression, he immediately went back to construction. He moved his core room and the connected facilities to the newly created eleventh floor. Then he build a hidden room next to his core where he could hide his old body, his golems, the map device that after being repaired would allow him to connect to the hidden sensor array and Luna. With this, he went looking for his little friend.

"Hello Luna, do you like your new training facilities?"

"They are ok, but I need more minions. At the moment only Mr Floppy is here and he gets lonely if he has no companions. Maybe you could name some more rabbits. We could have a whole rabbit army, they would be so much better, especially cuter than the goblins."

"Sorry, but I think one Mr Floppy is enough, don't you think? Otherwise he would no longer be special."

"Yes you're right. Mr Floppy is the best. There can only be one Mr Floppy!"

"I'll look into creating other named creatures. By the way, what's the difference between a named dungeon monster and a boss monster?"

"Boss monsters don't lose ranks when they die. While it's often better for named monsters to stay out of the adventurers sight and only fight them if there is a danger to the dungeon itself, it's best for boss monsters to fight as much as possible."

"Good, I keep that in mind. Now for the reason I'm visiting you. I upgraded my level and now I have enough mana to compress my core again. Anything I should know?"

"Not really, but because of the increased mana pool, it will be a little harder than the last time."

"Thanks for the warning, then I will get to work. Oh, before I forget, if you need something from the outside, we should get it in the next few days. We need to give nature time to recover, it could be bad if the exploration team from the guild finds a lot of tracks going in and out of the dungeon."

"Oh, ok. Then I need flowers, bees, honey and a bone saw."

"What, why do you need a bone saw?"

"I want to teach Biff some pain resistance. For a caster, being able to stay focused while under attack, is very important."

"Uhm ok, but maybe there is another way to teach that, perhaps even one where he isn't losing his limps?"

"Of course there is, I could just let him fight and getting wounded a lot. But in my professional opinion, it would be faster to cut off his arms and legs and let them re-grow a few times."

"Then please just let him fight, please. Biff is no longer a mindless dungeon monster, he developed a conscience and he is on our side. It would not be right to torture our own. For the flowers and the rest, just order the goblins to get it for you. I will be off now, good luck."

Before Neo started, he ordered some his goblins to leave the dungeon and pull out all trees and bushes 150m around the dungeon. For this task, he created some iron chains to help them. He told the goblins to bring all those trees into his dungeon. Then he started.

A few hours later Neo was finished and his regeneration doubled again. He didn't really feel any difference compared to the last time, but then wasn't fifty percent more difficult than 'a child's play' still very easy?