Chapter 48 - The new floors

Day 60

Neo's POV:

Neo went back to a topic which he had pushed back for a long time. The system to shortcut his floors after clearing them once. Without a body, he didn't have the fine control over some kinds of magic, he had as a human. But, with his new body this changed. It took him only two hours to create an apparatus which would be able to check the coins he created earlier. Portals were out of the question for now, that's why he went for rotating doors out of massive steel to limit the entry to his shortcuts. Sure, the adventurers would be able to break them, but then he would just seal the tunnels.

For now, he created only two of this systems, one for the fifth and one for the tenth floor. He decided it would be too dangerous to create a shortcut to one of his last five floors. The chance to be rushed was just too great, so his 15th floor would stay as it was.

Before he was able to create the tunnels to his fifth and tenth floor, Sonja and the rest of the exploration team came back into his dungeon. He had to smile, this meant a lot new life energy for him.

While his visitors rushed through the first floors, he created coins with a five in front of a bear head on them. When they killed the bear, his fifth floor boss, he dropped one for each visitor, while putting the individual's face on the other side of the coin.

"This is new, maybe it's for a new system in the dungeon?" he heard the dwarf say.

"Don't know, but we'll probably find out soon enough. This dungeon is changing pretty fast." the mage, Khadgar answered and they kept moving.

Neo went back to his work. The Maze on the eight floor would slow them down for at least a few hours, so he had some time until he needed to create his coins for the tenth floor. Instead, he started to create a tunnel from the still existing guard room near the entrance to the fifth floor. At the exit, he put a one way door to prevent his guests to leave his dungeon this way. After he was finished, he used his new apparatus and two tons of steel to build the entrance with the rotating door.

On the apparatus, he'd put a picture of the level five coin and a slot. Then, if you step inside of the area of the turn door and the coin was ok, it rotated for ninety degree and you would get your coin back on the other side.

When he was finished, his visitors already reached the ninth floor, so Neo decided to create some level ten coins. This time they ignored his arena and furnace room. Instead, they went directly for the floor boss. When they arrived at the tenth level, he'd just finished the coins. His low D rank weregoblin posed no threat to them, and the barbarian killed it with one blow.

Neo didn't really care, none of the creatures in his dungeon would be able to stop this group, so he just dropped the level ten coins.

While they waltzed their way through his 11th floor, Neo had a look at his status window.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Rank: D-12

Level: 16

Structural Integrity: 256/265

Mana: 2589k /2589k (1225k)

Floor area: 3814k /3814k m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 14898 m

Mana Regeneration: 13600 /h *16*50000% = 30222.2 /s

Life energy: 59248.5

Life Energy generation: 79654.2/d

When he saw his life energy, he decided to spend ten thousand to rank up one of his lesser earth giants to a normal one. After spending the life energy, Neo started to push earth mana into the giant. Unlike before, it started to get more and more difficult. He tried to keep going, but at some point he wasn't able to put in more mana without letting it go out of control. He stopped and had a look at his new creature.

Earth giant

A normal earth giant. Earth giants are extremely strong and resilient.

Rank: C7

Type: Earth monster

Traits: strong(rank 12); resilient(rank 12) merciless(rank 4)

Costs: 800k mana ; 850 animal material

C7, it was better than nothing, but he was not content with it. Neo thought about his problem for a moment, then he concluded that it was probably because of his almost non existing earth affinity.

'I'll ask Luna about this problem when she wakes up' he thought.

Then Neo created another earth giant. This time, he stopped infusing mana at rank C3. Then he put it as the final boss on the 15th floor. With the new increased costs, he was glad he had his high mana regeneration.

When he looked back at the explorers, he saw that they were still on the 12th floor, so he decided to keep going with his experiments. His fire skill level was much higher and he wanted to see the difference between his maximum earth creature level and his maximum fire creature level. He took one of his lesser fire panthers, put in a normal beast core for another ten thousand life energy, and started to push fire mana into it.

This time it went much easier. He was able to push the creature all the way up to the C12 rank and it still felt as if there was some room for improvement left. With the amount of mana he had to spend, he was glad for his abnormal regeneration, otherwise he would need to wait a long time to gather enough mana for one creature.

Fire 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. After becoming a beast, it uses fire to improve the damage of its surprise attacks. The fire panther can use a fire aura for defense and attack.

Rank: C12

Type: Fire beast

Traits: stalker (rank 3); stealth (rank 3); loner (rank 4)

Costs: 1300k mana ; 145kg animal material

When he finished the panther, his visitors reached the 13th floor, the valley of doom. They immediately started to curse about the hidden rabbits and their aura.

Sonja's POV:

"These frigging rabbits, I can't even see them, but their aura is getting on my nerves. Let's just run through t his ravine and be done with them." Hallvor cursed.

"Shut up you pussy. We have enough of you and your rabbit hate. Don't let your guard down! We are fighting D rank beast - Khadgar, jump to the side!" Khorgan yelled.

Without knowing why, Khadgar jumped to the side. A moment later, a large werewolf landed where he'd just been standing. He summoned his magic and shot two ice spikes at the enemy. They impaled it and the werewolf went down. Just when he wanted to keep moving on, he saw it standing back up out of the corner of his eyes. It came back at him and he noticed that the wounds from his attacks were already closed. This time he summoned ten ice spikes and it went down again. They watched it for a moment and saw that the wounds were still healing.

"They seem to be mighty life magic beasts. Pretty rare, I think we need to burn or behead them." Sonja suggested.

With that said, Khorgan swung is axe and separated the creature's skull from its body.

"So, these doom bunnies aren't the only enemies here. The werewolf came from one of this small caves above us. I think, the bunnies should make the visitors rush through the ravine, so they let their guard down and the werewolves can surprise them." Khorgan speculated.

"I think you are right. We are powerful enough to shrug the death aura off, but weaker teams will have to make a lot of pauses to heal back up. I think, if you are a D rank group without a healer, this floor is pretty much impossible without wasting a lot of potions." Sonja summarized.

They kept going, while forcing Hallvor to ignore the rabbits. After being on guard against the werewolves, they had no difficulties in dispatching them.

Before they arrived at the end of the ravine, they found a downward cave entry on the side of their path.

"Looks like the next floor has multiple entries, do we want to take this one or should we keep going?" Sardian asked.

"Let's keep going, I want to explore the whole floor." Sonja answered.

They went on, past another cave entry, and after a mile they arrived at the end of the ravine and a third cave entry. The party went into it, and started to fight their way through the bears and earth giants.

Neo's POV:

After finishing his panther, Neo though for a moment about upgrading Mr. Floppy with a beast core, but then he decided it would probably be better to ask Luna, before making changes on her favorite rabbit.

He then went to his sensoring array and started to search for a good place where he could create the second dungeon entrance, which he got from his last research. His maximum reach was now fifteen kilometers, enough to get him half way to Geldern or the Kobold tribe he had an eye on earlier.

While he was busy with this, his visitors finished the 14th floor and arrived at the 15th.

"Yes, another mining floor." Khorgan shouted, immediately taking out his pickaxe.

"Not so fast, let's finish our exploration work first." Sonja interjected.

While the dwarf was grumbling, they went to the floor boss, the earth giant. Neo's first C rank creature didn't stand a chance against the group, but they were no longer able to kill it with one blow. When his visitors picked up their loot, they spotted the red X that marked the way down to the next floor.

"Looks like this is where the dungeon wants us to stop. If we face an army again like before, only with C ranks this time, we could be in danger, Sonja." Sardian determined.

"You'll stay here. I'll go down to check if it's the last floor and I can see the dungeon core. This dungeon is growing insanely fast and I want to be sure that the 16th is the last floor. Otherwise, we might need to report to the guild and destroy it." Sonja decided.

She went down to his last level and found Neo's army again. He didn't change it much and his C rank creatures were still in an extra room besides his core. Neo noticed Sonja to ease up a bit when she spotted his core and saw that his creatures were only at the D rank. She turned back and met up with her party again.

"Ok, no C ranks on the floor below and I was able to see the core. We can relax for now. This level's mana density is pretty good and we have one more day until the guild opens the portal, how about we stay here and cultivate?" Sonja suggested.

"Sounds good for me, after building the road, I could use some downtime." Khadgar answered.

"Haha" Khorgan smiled and immediately started to mine ore.

"Crazy dwarfs." Hallvor snorted.

"He's not crazy. Khorgan is using his earth and fire mana to mine the ore. For him this is skill training and cultivating at the same time." Sardian explained.

When Neo heard their decision and had a look at his life energy regeneration, he had to smile internally.

Life Energy generation: 79654.2/d