Pov Dungeon Core

  The first month of the competition was already so much fun, and this was just the first month, where basically nothing special happened—only the first step of the evaluation.

  I released the leaderboards and watched the shocked faces, once again capturing their likenesses. The future was going to be good when new versions of the coins were released, and someone found their own face there.

  What they were so surprised about was the leaderboard. No one was shocked about the first places; they were as expected. The civilization leaderboards’ first place went to the Ant Nations, as everyone predicted, even with all the heavy penalties for basically everything they were doing because of how big they were. Although their lead wasn’t as great as the other leaderboards’ first place.

  The runners, just like the Ant Nations, got heavy penalties because of their size and already established nature, but they still had a commanding lead.

  It was like they had somehow been taking it easy, which I literally don’t understand because among them were the very best. This was despite a lot of their best members being part of other groups participating and not being counted as their members because of it. Truly magnificent.

  The second place’s—well, even I didn’t expect them. First of all, in the civilization leaderboard, the Kobolds were in second place. Their civilization was at best fractured, mainly consisting of fighting tribes. They weren’t the only ones to unite, but they did it wholly.

  It seems like for all their life, all they were missing was a direction. All the different achievements and goals gave them direction—something to strive for—and they delivered. They weren’t that far off from the Ant Nations, which meant we were going to have some true competition.

  After that was a new nation also born from this competition, as many were, but this one was completely new—there was no hint of it before.

  It came from the World of the Tribes. Many tribes had joined the competition from this world, filled with different types of my creatures who were too intelligent to continue living in their previous world. Some were warlike, but there were instances of trade between the different tribes through the endless sea that surrounded every island.

  There were five tribes that started to trade more and more. They expanded like any other tribe, but they never fought each other, even if they only traded among themselves.

  So it came as a complete surprise when, all of a sudden, those five tribes decided to unite wholly and become a new nation they called Five Spires. Not the most original name, but I could see why they would call it that. In any case, they were in third place, although they were still a bit off from getting close to second.

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  After that came the orcs and then a few more expected civilizations. To the surprise of many, only the dwarven civilization from the adventure world made it into the top ten, and Ace’s nation was barely in the top twenty-five.

  I could kind of understand why. They didn’t push themselves too much. First of all, they were too scattered, and second, they already had their whole world—they didn’t feel the pressure that others did.

  Another surprise was the sixth-place holder. It was the Village of Slimes. Before they did nothing but grow food and just enjoy life. There were a lot of them now, and the small area I had for them was growing a bit overcrowded.

  What I planned to do was move them to a bigger place, but they wanted to do it themselves. It was admirable to see them taking up new challenges, like metalworking, to gain those points and reach the position they were in.

  As for the organization leaderboard, it was mostly dominated by guilds and clans—the ones you would expect. Carl’s group took the fifth spot. The real surprises were the second and third places.

  The second was a knight order from the kingdoms of the bee world. That world was in chaos, as most kingdoms didn’t unite and instead tried to separately claim a world for themselves. The biggest surprise was this knight order separating from the kingdoms, as they felt their kingdoms had betrayed their service.

  This was going to be one of the more interesting entries in this civilization’s book series, and I couldn’t see this Knight Order failing to claim a room of their own. I wonder what kind of civilization they will build because their plans were grand, and I wondered if they were going to achieve it or not. They definitely had the will to try, and that’s a large part of the battle.

  The third placeholder—well, someone I actually didn’t expect to make it this far up the ladder, at least not so soon was my guardian, Rafe, who claimed that spot.

  A few of his offspring had already been born with a lot of inherited memories. He laid eggs, of all things, and right now, he was working on crafts, making himself a huge blob of slime that worked on 100 different projects at the same time.

  He also never slept, having made his body in a way that wouldn’t require it. Eventually, everyone would need to sleep—even he couldn’t escape it—but I wouldn’t be surprised if he could keep going at this pace for an entire year.

  Never thought he had this in mind when he wanted to compete, but he’s really going for it. His offspring will also take part in the competition, which will lower some of his advantages, but he has crafted his offspring to be excellent in ways that matter.

  I did enjoy that he didn’t just make them for one purpose but ensured that every single one of them could still have a full life even after the competition. Hopefully this will go well without any regrets.

  That was a good thing because I was a bit worried he would get too sucked into the competition and do things he would regret in the future. However, it was nice to see him striving for something again.

  Reaching the end of his advancement was a big blow to him, but now he had something else to strive for, which was a good thing. I had seen that in others as well. It’s like when the truly powerful have nothing to do they become less connected to the world.

  I can see how some might go down the wrong path like that. Some will turn inwards become less connected, less active. Then there’s the flipside the ones that search meaning in the outside world often to do with something like world domination.

  The entire dungeon was in an uproar, discussing and trying to understand what was happening with the leaderboards. Already, there were many people trying to complain about the fairness of it all and stuff like that, but I wasn’t the one actually deciding anything—it was the algorithm my designers and I built. From the tests we ran, it was still working as intended.

  Now for a bit of a surprise. I released the updated achievement and goals list for the second phase. While everyone could still complete the first stage’s achievements and goals, they would bring in reduced points—only about 30% less. Let’s see who will fold and completely abandon their current plans just because they would take a 30% penalty.

  In the long run, it would not be a good idea. This competition wasn’t just a competition—I mean, I have to stay true to my role. I have to train and teach. Let’s see who learns and who doesn’t. This phase would take two months—another misdirect if they expected it to end in one.