Rui put his thoughts aside as they were attacked multiple times after the first attack. Sometimes it was hippogriffs, other times it was larger wild cats, and sometimes it was aerial beasts.
Yet each time they were attacked, the Martial Apprentices and the canons fired, warding off beasts before they could even come closer to the convoy. Most creatures that attacked them either died or got hurt enough to simply run away. Ultimately. Most creatures in the animal kingdom had a strong sense of survival that prevented them from fighting highly dangerous battles that would likely result in them getting butchered.
After many hours of agonizingly slow travel, they finally reached the core of the Serevian Plateau.
The land had suddenly and sharply elevated highly at a particular point, just as Rui had remembered it.
The only question was how the carriages of the dungeon team were going to travel up all the way to the surface of the elevated land.
That had also been planned by the Ministry. The convoy veered to the side as they traveled parallelly to the Serevian Dungeon before they happened upon a particularly large cave that was much larger than any of the ones that they had run into prior. The cave had been located prior to the commencement of the mission when searching for a cave that would allow the dungeon team convoy to reach the surface of the Serevian Dungeon.
The convoy temporarily broke formation as the carriages proceeded one by one through the large cave, following a particular path that brought them to the surface. The Martial Apprentices had secured the entrance and exit of the cave and had also scouted the path ahead of time to make sure that there weren't any hostile Apprentice-level animals that would pose a threat to the particularly more vulnerable carriages of the convoy.
"That's the last of it." Rui nodded as the final armored carriage finally pushed itself up to the surface of the Serevian Dungeon.
He turned back, facing the Serevian Dungeon for the first time since his last mission. "This place hasn't changed much." He nodded.
Soon the carriages huddled together in their formation. However, this time, some of the inner carriages buzzed and hummed as the top of these large carriages began to change as certain devices began growing out of it. Several devices resembling satellites had formed atop these carriages. They were positioned such that they faced the entirety of the Serevian Dungeon in all three hundred and sixty degrees of vision.
Rui knew what they were for. Not only because the mission bill had spoken about them, but also because they resembled the technology of Earth a bit too much.
According to established protocols, the dungeon team was supposed to gather environmental data before that data would be set back to the higher-ups back home.
The Ministry and the government back home would process the data and choose the location of their core territory.
The location of the core territory of a sovereign nation in the Serevian Dungeon was extremely important. According to the Serevian Pact that the twelve countries that laid claim to the territory of the Serevian Dungeon, the territory that each sovereign nation declared as its core territory would be, as sworn by all nations, uninfringeable and unseizable by any other nation.
Thus, the location of such territory was an extremely important and strategic decision that needed to be made. The choice was important enough that it would permanently impact the outcome of the nation's participation in the Serevian Dungeon war.
Thus, it would likely take some time before the relevant militaristic and strategic experts in the headquarters of the operation back home in the Kandrian Empire, figure out the most optimal spot for declaring as territory.
Important decisions took into account logistical and inventory constraints, the risk of getting attacked by other nations, risk of getting attacked by Apprentice-level beasts. It also needed to take into account the distance from the edge and the cost and difficulty of restocking.
It also needed to take into account the evaluation of mining viability and resource availability.
For now, the dungeon team convoy set up a temporary base and other temporary defensive measures. A simple fortification fencing was erected for basic protection as the defensive squad and the armed and armored carriages also formed a perimeter around the dungeon team.
It was only after several defensive and surveillance measures were taken before the inhabitants of the Serevian Dungeon finally exited the carriages. It was quite clear that the many individuals who emerged from the inner carriages were mix of intellectuals and manual laborers, particularly miners. They contained people of the intellectual professions such as environmentalist scholars as well as ecologist scholars for very obvious reasons.
Both of these professions were quite needed in the Servian Dungeon, of course, but they weren't the only needed professions. The Ministry of Mining had deployed miners and specific mining technological solutions that would aid in the process of the extraction of some of the vast reserves of featherblood mercury and Nereneal Flintstone.
They immediately began looking busy as they began acquiring samples of literally everything that could even be sampled. In comparison, the offensive squad was mostly jobless. It wasn't their fault of course, their turn would only come after the Kandrian Empire chose their core territory and only after they stabilized their base in their core territory.
Thankfully, the decision came within a few hours.
To everyone's delight, the decision of the core territory of the Kandrian Empire within the Serevian Dungeon had overlapped with their existing position. Meaning they didn't need to move places in order to begin colonizing their core base in their core territory at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon.
Rui had partially expected that the core territory would be placed at the edge of the Serevian Dungeon. After all, it was a smart move from his point of view. There were several clear advantages to doing so.