Chapter 49 - Motivation

Day 61

Neo's POV:

After he checked his status, Neo went back to one of his projects and continued working on developing a functioning teleportation formation with the materials that were available to him.

It didn't take long and he was interrupted again.

"Puh, that was exhausting. Neo! We need to keep on cultivating! Your avatar needs to be the strongest creature in our dungeon, otherwise it would be disgraceful!"

"Good morning Luna. Are you sure you want to cultivate again? The last time, you passed out from exhaustion."

"Don't worry, this is training for me, too."

"Ok, then let's do it. But, please tell me when we should stop. It could be pretty dangerous if you pass out and my cultivation goes amok."

"Yes, yes. Come on, let's start."

So they went on cultivating. After thirty minutes, Neo already advanced to the E9 rank and they kept going. A little later, Luna began a conversation with him. By that time, Neo was already used to cultivate under this insane amount of pain and he was able to split his focus to answer her questions.

"Neo, why did you want to create a dungeon?"

"Do you want the short or the long answer?"

"I don't know, maybe both?"

"The short answer is, to create options for the future."

"I don't understand, what do you mean by that?"

"Ok, I'll explain it to you. There are two main reasons why I wanted to increase my personal power and influence by controlling a dungeon. The first is the gargantuan demonic dungeon on the continent to the west. I went there with my friends and sadly, we underestimated it by a large margin. All of them died and I was the only survivor. Later, I got to know that the Ancient One tried to conquer the dungeon a few thousand years ago, too. He had a party of godlike ranked people, but even they failed and half of them died. This is the main reason why he created the guild. He wanted to prevent a dungeon like that from growing on our continent and he saw this as a way increase the power of the people."

"So, you want revenge for your friends and crafted a plan that would take you hundreds of years to implement?"

"No, not revenge. I'm not angry at the dungeon. It is the dungeon's nature to try to kill all intruders. When we were fighting its creatures, we noticed that some of them had relatively fresh wounds. That meant it was fighting other people, from a for us unknown land, too. A dungeon fighting visitors, means a growing dungeon. There were only two possibilities, first was the dungeon would overcome the people that it fought against. In this case, it would sooner or later start to expand into our continent. With the strength our people have now, I don't have much hope to face this foe."

"And the other possibility?"

"The dungeon could lose. In that case, we would meet a people that are much more powerful than we are. They could conquer us and we would be depended on their mercy. I for myself want to control my own fate and not depend on the mercy of others."

"Being independent is good and necessary for a dungeon. But, aren't there others that would help you in this fight? Sure, you don't want to face all of that by yourself?"

"Yes, there are others. A lot of the top ranked people know about this dangers. That's why, the higher ranked immortals and godlikes usually don't fight each other and try to increase their strength. But I have another reason to improve my own power and influence - Civilization."

"Civilization?"

"Yes, after you reach the S rank, you start to remember parts of your past life."

"Wow, that's cool. So, were you a powerful mage in your past life, too?"

"Hehe, no. In my past life, I was a normal human."

"What?"

"On the world where I lived my last life, there was no such thing as cultivation or magic."

"Sounds boring."

"Maybe, but that made people a lot more equal. After a lot of wars and ruling by terror and force, eventually my ancestors came up with something called the rule of law."

"What's that?"

"Basically it means all people are equal in front of the law. If the ruler of a country would commit a crime, he would get the same punishment as a poor farmer. At least in theory, there were still a lot of injustice, but it got better over time and the situation was not like on this world."

"I don't know much about human behavior, how is it here?"

"Here, if you are powerful enough, you could more or less do whatever you want. If a S rank person kills off a whole village just for fun, or because somebody looked at him the wrong way, he could probably get away with it. It depends a little on the ruler, but most of the time they wouldn't bother to confront a powerful person for some villagers."

"Isn't that how it's supposed to be? In nature the strongest always rule. I think it's natural"

"Maybe, but being natural doesn't mean being good or reasonable. If you have a conscious mind, you should strive to be better than an animal and stand above being controlled by your instincts. That's what I mean by civilization, to rise above our instincts and build a society with rules."

"I don't get it, but if that is what you want, I'll try my best to support you!"

"Thanks, I appreciate that. I'll give you another example. It's natural for people to hoard their knowledge to gain an advantage over others. If you look at the distribution of good cultivating techniques, it would not be a problem to give every person, even the poorest beggar access to good cultivation techniques, spells and fighting manuals. It would improve our overall power a lot, but most people only think about themselves and their advantages. Powerful cultivators mostly only give their children access to their gathered knowledge. Sometimes, if they are afraid to be replaced, they wouldn't even be bothered to do that. Most nobles rule because they have better techniques, spells an abilities than their subjects, not because they are better."

"Is this why you dropped so many skill books?"

"Yes, that's one of the reasons."

"But you were powerful and had a lot of knowledge, why didn't you just distribute it to the general population?"

"If I did that, it would be a declaration of war against all ruling elites on the continent. Elves and dwarves don't behave much different in that perspective. Most of the powerful people would judge me as an agitator and try to kill me. While I was strong, I wasn't strong enough to take on all the people that profit from the status quo, yet."

"Wow, your peoples politics sounds really complicated. Dungeon fairies are much easier, if two dungeons fight, the stronger one survives and the weaker one gets killed."

"Yes, that's probably because most dungeons were beast before and they still follow their instincts even after becoming more intelligent. In the end, the reason doesn't matter, I have my own will and my own goals, and will behave like I see fit!"

"So cool"

"Ok, let's go back to our topic. Even the most powerful man, the Ancient One has the same problem. All he could do in order to build a more powerful society, was to create his organizations and if you reach the immortal rank, there is a secret event called the judgement day."

"Sounds dangerous."

"You could say so. Basically, it's a meeting of the higher ups, where they discuss your character and past behavior. If you commit atrocities or are generally judged as a bad and dangerous person, they create a kill order and one of the guild's problem solvers will take the new immortal out. It's the greatest secret of the guild."

"So, how do you know about it? And why is the guild killing off powerful people if they fear this dungeon?"

"I was one of the guild's problem solvers for more than fifty years. For the why, while these people would be a powerful addition to our overall strength, they would create strive and abuse their powers and weaken us in the long term."

"Wow, but weren't you a relatively fresh immortal? Why would they send you?"

"Yes, I was only at the immortal rank 3. But, while there are a lot higher ranked higher ranked ones, most of them are fighters or they concentrate on a basic element. Being a spatial mage gave me quite the advantage over most opponents and I didn't need help and could just appear where I wanted, finish the job, and get back without anybody noticing."

"Ok, I understand. But what is the connection between this issues and a dungeon?"

"A dungeon is the fastest way to create an army. If the dungeon is powerful enough, you wouldn't need to fear large amounts of opponents. In fact, with a dungeon, each fight makes it stronger. So, if I could control a godlike dungeon, I would be able impose my will on the continent, use force to implement a basic rule of law and give people access to education about magic and other topics."

"Don't understand me wrong, but talking about forcing your will on a whole continent makes you sound like a megalomaniac."

"Hehe, yes it does. But look at it from this side, if you are immortal and will be living for thousands of years, why not think big? In addition, progress is the most interesting thing there is. Even after living for hundreds of years, finding new knowledge, developing new spells and doing research never got boring for me. If everybody becomes a cultivator, there will be a lot more progress and it will be a lot more interesting. On the world where I came from, there were literally millions of people researching new knowledge or finding new solutions for problems. I was one of these people and it was amazing. This is in my opinion the main benefit for a civilized society. On my world, when it was ruled by nobles in the past, the speed of progress was a lot slower. Most people were just busy trying to survive another day, like they do on this world. But, when the living conditions improved over time and we became more civilized, more people were working on improving knowledge. In the century I came from, there was a saying that the speed of progress doubled every ten years. This is what I want for this world, too."

"So, did you met other people who remember coming from your world and helping you?"

"I found some, but talking about the past life is the most personal thing you can do. They people I met, were mostly S ranks. They didn't remember much. With your rank increasing, you remember more. Then, when you become immortal, your memory is complete. As far as I know, I was the only immortal that lived on a world without magic before. Most people I talked to, came from worlds that weren't much different than this one."

They kept talking about lighter topics for a bit and while Neo pushed his rank all the way up to E12 and they decided to stop for today.