Valens watched in amusement as yet another party of adventurers wandered through the dungeon. They had finally started delving two days ago and the core was starting to appreciate the humans not only for their massive amounts of experience but also for the entertainment value. The unfortunate leader of the group tripped and landed right in the center of a goblin camp, Valens chuckled in amusement as the party leader was whacked over the head repeatedly. The goblins were swiftly killed, the party was all tier two and they were only on floor six, but it was still funny to watch the leader stagger around with his head obviously ringing.

The core was highly impressed with the sheer number of adventurers that were coming into his dungeon daily. They were spaced out a little bit, but there were still at least ten parties somewhere in his dungeon constantly. This was all good for him though, he had made several kills and was now busy expanding the seventeenth floor. Something interesting that he noticed was that the aura shift on the sixteenth floor hadn’t carried over to the seventeenth. He had needed to get Magnus to saturate the floor with enough ice mana for the change to happen again. Instead of making more arrays as the core had expected Magnus had just blasted the entire floor with ice mana until the change stuck. It was rather impressive, to be honest, the drake had used a huge amount of mana before the aura shift had happened.

Valens watched as a group of wolves slowly stalked the adventurers he had been watching, the team was busy looting the goblins, not that there was much to loot in the first place, not paying attention to their surroundings in the slightest. The core sighed, he knew they were over-leveled for this floor but they could still pay more attention to what was going on, it was a bit insulting. On the other hand, though he had actually killed a few tier two adventurers on his upper floors when they weren’t paying attention, the tier difference wasn't too great to overcome with them, yet at least.

The ambush was not to be though, and a black-clad figure appeared out of seemingly nowhere and executed the lead wolf with a lightning-quick stab to the back of the neck. This was another reason that this particular party was interesting, this was the first chakra user he had seen so far. It was interesting to see the difference in fighting style compared to the chi users he usually saw, more focused on evasion and ambush than straight-up fighting. Magnus had commented that the chakra user was probably a fighter for one of the noble houses as he wore a crest on his clothes, a gold sword on a purple field. The flashy symbol wasn’t doing the man any favors with trying to be stealthy, but it didn’t seem to be hindering him too much. Valens wasn’t sure why a noble vassal would be here, he hadn’t seen any before.

The remainder of my wolves ran, lived to fight and ambush another day I suppose. My creatures aren’t completely stupid, well besides the goblins and they will sometimes retreat when they realize they can’t win. “You’re an idiot George. Can’t you pay better attention to your surroundings? We’re never going to clear the dungeon at this rate.” The chakra user rants at the leader of the adventurer party. Team drama, how fun.

“Shut it, Felix, you hired us to get you to the end of the dungeon and that’s what we’re going to do if you would just quit your whining for one second.”

Yeah, that wasn’t happening. From what he could tell this particular group of adventurers was low tier two, and they might get a little stronger as they delve into the dungeon but they were never going to kill Sora. They were just too, incompetent, Sora had put on a few more levels and was solidly in the upper fifties now. He couldn’t wait until she evolved again, it was so exciting. The core was glad Magnus had stubbornly refused to tell him any specifics about Sora’s evolutionary tree, it was like getting a present every time she evolved.

Valens watched with interest as the adventurers moved on, the technique the chakra guy was using was very interesting. Technique was the word Magnus had taught the core to mean any chakra type skills, mages had spells, warriors had martial arts, and chakra users more commonly called assassins had techniques. The core watched as goblins toppled to the ground one after the other with daggers firmly planted in their backs.

What this ‘Felix’ guy was doing was approaching the monsters through their blind spots, and stabbing them in the back when they weren’t paying attention. Sounds pretty straightforward, but it was a little more involved than that. Felix was using his chakra to speed up his movements, getting into position blindingly quick, and then delivering one devastating enhanced blow. That wasn’t even the most interesting part though, his chakra was moving slightly outside his body and was obscuring his movements slightly making it harder to notice him as he went in for the attack.

Valens still wasn’t quite sure how chakra worked, he was familiar with mana you make spells, and throw spells, easy. Chi was pretty straightforward, reinforcing someone’s body over time making them better at whatever physical task they tried to do. However, the explanation for chakra that he had gotten from Magnus had been less than satisfactory.

The drake had described the energy as being a weird mixture somewhere between chi and mana. Chakra was mostly an internal energy amplifying the user’s body briefly, the core got that part, it made this Felix guy both faster and stronger for a short time. What he didn’t understand was the external uses of chakra, which was what the adventurer was using to partial conceal his movements. Magnus had said that chakra users couldn’t cast true spells but that they could use their techniques to sometimes do similar things. How was that not just a spell? The drake had also mentioned external uses of chakra were more common at higher tiers, which made sense if it was a more advanced use of chakra.

Anyway, Valens turned away from the adventurer party, he would check back in with them when they made it to Aspen. The sixteenth and seventeenth floors were progressing quite well, it was a little jarring to have a ‘winter’ theme for the floors but have no snow, but he could figure that out later. The grass made a decent substitute for snow as it had turned pure white and was absolutely everywhere on the floor. He had thought that the climate would have killed off most of his plants but apparently not. The pine trees scattered around were loving the environment as well, but a few of his other plants like the herbs and flowers that he had weren’t doing as well. There were a few flowers that seemed to like the freezing temperature of the floor, blooming in a beautiful icy blue color, but there weren’t that many of those.

Incidentally, he had gotten a few more plants from the adventurers wandering around that he was rather pleased with. Fruit trees for instance were something the goblins adored, granted he only had apple trees for right now, but hopefully, he would get some different trees with time. The core had also gotten a few more varieties of herbs, but nothing else really to get excited over. Adventurers made a mess though, if he wasn’t constantly absorbing all of their trash, the dungeon would be a dump by now.

Back to observing the sixteenth floor, Valen marveled at his plants again. He had figured it out a few days ago but the plants that had adapted to live in this freezing environment produced ice mana as well. This was rather exciting for the core as it might mean that he wouldn’t need arrays to force his aura to shift, he would just need enough plants to cause the same effect. He was sure Magnus would be happy about that when the core got around to telling him at least. The drake was passed out in the core room, again, whatever back to work.

He wasn’t that busy, to be honest, most of what he needed to do was expand, which he did, slowly. It didn’t take his entire focus anymore though so the rest of his consciousness was free to wander around the dungeon and observe what was happening. He could start actively using his mana to speed up his aura growth, but he wasn’t in that big of a rush. Valens was making steady progress and wasn’t like he was intentionally being slow with how he was growing his floors. To be honest he felt like he was growing at a blistering pace and his dungeon was massive now with all the floors he had added.

The size of his dungeon was a frequent source of comment and a common complaint amongst the adventurers. Apparently, other dungeons were smaller? He wasn’t especially sure why that would be the case, but maybe making the floors into giant rooms just made things feel bigger. The humans seemed quite happy with the monsters they had to fight, they seemed especially eager to take out any helpless bunny they could find. Valens sighed, it made sense, mostly at least, every creature on the upper floors was tier one. It was just acting more intelligently to target the tier one creatures that couldn’t fight back, but it was still annoying.

The entire ecosystem on the first three floors was holding steady for now but it wouldn’t stay that way forever if the humans didn’t stop killing everything that moved. Maybe he would have to send Sora up to give them a lesson on ecology if he got too annoyed with the situation. It took him a lot of work to get his floors established and watching the humans go over the first floor like locusts wasn’t enjoyable. Humans were still funny though, most of the time.

Turning back to the lower floors, Valens watched as Sora stalked one of the pure white wolves that had become common on the ice mana floors. It hadn’t been that long since last he had checked but the boss’ levels continued to steadily tick upward, she was now level fifty-four. The core glanced over at his other boss and sighed, Aspen seemed more content to let the humans come to her to fight. That would work for a while, but eventually, he was going to have to order her to start hunting dungeon monsters again. For now, though, it was fine.

Speaking of his monsters, Valens was excited about the changes that were happening to them on his ice mana floors. He had gotten more variant patterns for all of the mammals this time. From the rabbits to the wolves all of the warm-blooded creatures had adapted quite well to the icy floor. Unfortunately, his reptiles were not doing so great, with the notable exception of Sora, all of the cold-blooded creatures of his dungeon refused to adapt to the freezing conditions of the sixteenth and seventeenth. That was unfortunate but he planned on trying for a different mana-type floor once he hit tier three so it would be fine.

He was more interested in the mammal variants that he had managed to adapt to the overwhelming ice mana. For example, the ice wolves, as he had come to call them, had little bits of altered mana the core had come to associate with ice mana. There wasn’t a big change in ability, having a normal wolf fight an ice variant wolf produced a draw nine times out of ten. However almost all of the creatures on the ice floors had bits of ice mana in their templates, Valens had decided to call these altered monsters ice variants for the time being. The system still wasn’t classifying the templates as anything besides, wolf or fox, so he made up his own names for them.

He hadn’t figured out an actual application of the variants he had discovered. Although they were practically the same as the normal creatures Magnus had suggested that they would probably have resistance to ice element in general. That made sense to the core, being adapted to live in a freezing environment would probably make it easier to shrug off a freezing spell. Valens had hoped that some of his creatures would start throwing spells around, but unfortunately no luck on that.

Magnus had practically laughed his tail off, explaining once again that creatures needed to have a class to have mana, and that the only way to get a class was to be at least tier five. This had annoyed the core just a little bit and he had heatedly pointed out that Aspen could use mana already. The drake though had just shrugged and said that Fae-type creatures were the exception, not the rule when it came to mana. Valens growled in annoyance as he watched the humans slowly delve deeper into the dungeon; they hadn’t made it back to Aspen again, but they’d get there eventually. The core settled in content to slowly grow larger and stronger, and let the foolish humans dig their own graves as they ventured deeper into his dungeon.