《The Cardboard Explorer》Chapter 21
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The first change that was happening to all the dungeons was the level limit. If the dungeon had level 10 monsters, only explorers at level 10 and below can enter the dungeon.
No matter what all the explorers did, they cannot enter the dungeon if their level exceeded the level of the monsters. Only those at the level limit were allowed to enter.
However, if an explorer leveled up inside the dungeon and passed the level limit, he or she will be fine. They will not get kicked out of the dungeon. They can continue their explorations until they stepped out of the dungeon.
Once they stepped out of the dungeon, they will be unable to get back inside.
The second change was happening to the monsters. Before the changes happened, all the monsters that were killed will die forever and the monster inside the dungeon would be depleted and when all of them died, the dungeon will disappear.
However, the new changes were truly shocking. The monsters can respawn. If the monster dies, they will respawn someplace inside the dungeon.
At the beginning of the changes, no one realized this but they soon found out that the number of monsters shown by the system did not decrease. They stayed the same even after they killed some of them.
No matter how hard the explorers tried to eliminate all of the monsters, there will still be the same amount of them inside the dungeon.
The third changes were on the dungeon floor. Usually, the first floor will be the biggest floor out of all the floor the dungeon possessed.
The new change however made it that all the floor was the same size as the first floor. All of them were huge.
If an explorer took five days to explore the entirety of the first floor without fighting the monsters, he will take almost the same amount of time on another floor too.
The fourth change was related to the dungeon floor too. Before the changes happened, explorers can only find the dungeon boss on the top floor but after the changes happened to the dungeon, all floors had a boss.
The explorers called them the floor boss. The floor boss can only be found at the end of the dungeon in an enclosed room. Unlike the boss before the changes, the floor boss will not roam around the dungeon. It will only stay in that room.
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To enter the next floor, explorers needed to defeat the floor boss once. Everyone who participated in defeating the floor boss can go to the next floor.
The floor boss also was said to always drop an item either the magic crystals, equipment or skill book. The chance of getting an equipment and skill book was higher by defeating the floor boss.
However, they can only defeat the floor boss once and after that, no matter what they tried, they will be unable to fight the floor boss again.
The fifth change was the weirdest change ever. If the floor boss at the top floor was defeated, a new floor will be added and the level limit of the dungeon will increase.
For example, if someone defeated the big tongue toad boss on the tenth floor, the eleventh floor will appear and the level limit of the dungeon will increase from 10 to 11.
When Cade was reading this, he gasped. He was shocked by that. That meant that the dungeon had now become permanent. It will keep increasing its floor and level limit whenever someone defeats the top floor boss for the first time instead of disappearing like before.
The last change was the most groundbreaking and heaven-defying changes ever. No one can die inside the dungeon.
Whenever an explorer died inside the dungeon, they will revive outside the dungeon and the system notified him or her that they will be forbidden from entering any dungeon for a while. Other than that, they will also lose a level, some stat points and all the equipment they were using.
Cade did not know how to react to the last changes. It was too much of a change. Explorers had been losing their lives most of the time when they entered the dungeon.
The dungeon had now become like the dungeon in games. Respawning monsters, floor boss, reviving… all of them were something common in games. It was not as threatening as before.
“This is weird… this is too similar to games. Are dungeons created by humans?” Cade wondered. If it was something that appeared naturally, the changes won’t be this drastic. It will happen slowly like how animals evolved taking thousands to millions of years.
The changes were too similar to games that humans had been making all these years and it looked like the permanent dungeon was helping humans by not killing them permanently.
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“This is suspicious. It is much more suspicious that this change happens after we lose a lot of humans… no, explorers on Planet Snowball. The creator of the dungeon seems to want to reduce the casualty among the explorers,” thought Cade.
He was not the only one suspicious of this. Everyone who smarts enough was thinking the same. At the time Cade was reading the information about the changes happening to the dungeon, all the powerful families had started their research regarding the creator of the dungeon.
Some theories said that the system and the dungeon were created by the same person or there were two of them collaborating to make the system and the dungeon.
However, it did not make any sense that the creator of the dungeon created the destructive time limit dungeon and at the same time making changes to the dungeons that were already available in the universe by not killing anyone.
The time limit dungeon killing rates were higher compared to the permanent dungeon. Even the system warned everyone about the time limit dungeon and never once warned about the other dungeon even after the appearance of the time limit dungeon.
That meant that the creator of the system and the creator of the dungeon were still on good terms but then, was the creator of the time limit dungeon was a different person?
Did the time limit dungeon creator love destruction and created the time limit dungeon to destroy planets in the universe? Or was he or she enemies of the system creator and dungeon creator?
If what they thought was right, they needed to find that person and stopped him or her from creating more of the time limit dungeon.
However, this theory was unlikely. The power of the system and the dungeon were not something a human from 10 000 years ago can achieve. Even after 10 000 years had passed, no one was able to recreate the system and dungeon.
Another theory was that the system and the dungeon were created by a higher being to help humans become stronger.
Maybe the time limit dungeon was created by a demon king or something and that higher being had predicted it will happen in the future and prepared humans by creating the system and the dungeon.
This was possible because there were so many things unknown to humans even after they got the system, the dungeon appearance, and the monsters.
Cade was reading every information about the changes happening to the dungeon and he sighed. He took out his emergency teleport badge and frowned.
Now that he won’t die even if he was killed inside the dungeon, there was no need for the badge. It might be helpful to those that use normal kind of equipment but to Cade, his equipment was linked to him and there was no way he will lose it.
Losing a level was nothing much to him. He did not mind losing a level if he could stay alive. He can gain that level back.
Once Cade made sure of the changes that had happened to the dungeon, it was time for him to start his second explorations.
Cade did not want to waste any more time as he was afraid that Cynthia would find him. Now that there was a level limit to the dungeon, it was possible that she could not enter.
She had been an explorer for quite a while and her level must be higher than 10. For Cade to not meet her, the best place to hide was inside the dungeon.
Cade took out his cardboard mouth mask and wore it. He lifted his hoodie and covered his head. With the mask and hoodie, no one will be able to recognize him.
Cade took out his cardboard round shield and cardboard short sword. He tightened the round shield on his right arm and held his short sword on his left arm.
It had been a while since he wore his cardboard equipment. He blushed as he felt embarrassed at his appearance. No matter how much he had gotten used to the cardboard equipment, it still felt embarrassing.
Added to that, this time with a lot of people nearby.
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