After overcoming his existential crisis, Gorm turned back to his dungeons matters. Since he achieved initial success in his father’s technique just below 50 years had passed. But the changes in the dungeon were enormous.

  Before he would examine all the new things, Gorm wanted to find out if there were any benefits to having an entrance and a bigger core room. Because he couldn’t find any changes that he could trace back to one of the two things, he decided to consult his status window.

  Gorm was amazed by his new status, especially the doubled mana regeneration and almost tripled mana capacity intrigued him. He had finally been able to increase his mana regen, but more importantly, he had gained the increase in mana capacity he should with floors as huge as his.

  Another noteworthy fact was, that he couldn’t find any indication that his mana regen was burdened by the upkeep of the two floors outside of the mountain spanning formation. Gorm had a feeling that this circumstance had something to do with his father’s cultivation technique, which he assumed was also where his new specialty was from.

  To confirm this notion, he willed the description to show in front of him.

  This time Gorm was stunned, he had prepared himself for a high evaluation of his father’s technique, but he never thought it would be divine grade. Gorm could still remember how his father taught him.

  Back when he was still a child his father had taken him into their garden and had shown him a little seed. Whilst explaining the technique, his father accelerated the growth of the seed and used it as an example. Thanks to that he was able to grasp it the first time he heard it. That made his father very happy, but he still had him help with farm work.

  Now that he thought about it, it was quite unusual for farmer family to have a divine grade cultivation technique, from what Gorm knew, Kingdoms had fallen in fights for cultivation techniques of lower tiers.

  Brushing off the thoughts about his past, Gorm concentrated back on his status. The next things he wanted to investigate were the changes in his list of ecosystems. Especially the True Endless Wilderness interested him.

  The True endless wilderness ecosystem was a surprise, it basically doubled all effects of the old endless wilderness system. What was most surprising, was that the part he had explored of the endless wilderness was apparently only the outermost rim. When he had cleared his questions from his status, he would investigate his new core room in detail, he really wanted to find out what the true endless wilderness was like.

  While the mystic forest was nothing special, its effect was awesome, Gorm had already seen the huge numbers of magical and monster plants. Magical plants were uncommon, at least from Gorm’s experiences, but he now had almost one and a half million of them in his dungeon. They would greatly elevate the strength of all his animals. Monster plants were the next evolution phase of plants, even Gorm had only seen a handful of them on his travels.

  To evolve into a monster plant a magical plant needed huge amounts of mana and some other special circumstances. Most magical plants could grow for tens of thousands of years before they accumulated enough mana to evolve. Monster plants were multiple times more effective than magical plants and would be treasured anywhere in the outside world.

  Gorm knew that plants could evolve further, with one stage being sentient and another being sapient, but because he had never met anything beyond a plant monster, he wasn’t sure what the stages were exactly and in which order they were.

  So while the huge increase in animal evolutions made him excited, the number of plant evolution, especially the almost two thousand from which he didn’t know the evolution name, made him ecstatic.

  Something that bothered Gorm was, that he didn’t know his new boss Anty, but due to her name, he assumed that she had met Melia. And if Melia gave her a name she couldn’t be all that bad. He would talk to her as soon as possible, especially because of her race. Gorm assumed that she was responsible for the ants that guarded the entrance into his true dungeon. He wanted to talk about some plans he had for the inhabitants of the first nine floors. He was playing with the idea to give them the possibility to enter the lower floors for training and resource gathering.

  He only had that idea now, that he knew that his suspicion came true. Only in the part of the dungeon that was within the formation, did the animals show the crazy increase in intellect. The two new floors still had a higher chance for monsters to appear, but the probability for a sapient animal was as minimal as in the outside world.

  Another piece of good news was that Sek finally was able to finish his change, Gorm didn’t think that evolution or mutation would be a good way to describe what the spirit went through.

  Gorm hadn’t ignored the thirteen invaders, in truth, as soon as he saw that there were invaders in his dungeon he had scanned it in its entirety, and the intruders turned out to be small animals that had stumbled into the entrance of his dungeon. After discovering the high mana density, they decided to settle in the part that was intended for the future adventurers.

  Now the only thing left was the nameless unknown divine creature. Gorm pulled its description up.

  Even though Gorm didn’t know what a divine animal was, he knew that the little monkey would be insanely strong, so he decided to make him the guardian of his core oak. As soon as the evolution process finished he would talk to the monkey and make him his protector.

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  With all the new information sorted through Gorm only had to investigate a few more things and talk with Sek, Melia and the new boss Anty. But he would try to do so with more patience. Now that he was open to the outside and didn’t have to worry about how to get enough mana to afford the upkeep of his future floors, Gorm could allow himself to do things a bit slower.

  In his last life, he never was in a state of constant stress like in his dungeon core oak form. If he was still a human, he would have never had the energy to work this crazy for so long.

  Now the only things Gorm wanted to do was expand his dungeon slowly, enjoy his time with Melia, Sek, and his creatures, and find out why he even was in this situation.

  Gorm didn’t know that the very definition of being a dungeon core was to never have peace for long. Unbeknownst to anybody, a group of hunters of the nearby village was on its way to the dungeon.