Kazuto stood just inside the fifth and final room. It was nondescript. The room was oddly wide, and the door was directly in front of him, perhaps fifteen paces away.

He felt his stomach lurch. No, not another one of these…

Knowing full well what would happen, he took a step forward.

Kazuto fell out of the ceiling and landed back at his original position with a thud. He groaned. Why would anyone make something like this? I have to beat it somehow though. I know my girls are waiting for me in the next room. And even if they aren't waiting, even if they tell me they want to stay with Carl once I take care of him, I'll just have to make them fall in love with me all over again. I'll bring them back to the castle, and I won't let either one leave my room until they're the same as before. Well, probably just Ise-chan since she might go back to being more tsuntsun.

Amazingly, the thoughts hadn't triggered any rule violations. He sighed with relief. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of it. It's been hours since it started screaming at—

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: INSULTING THE DUNGEON CORE IS NOT ALLOWED."

Kazuto's entire body tensed as he endured the screeching of the old hag's voi—

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: INSULTING THE DUNGEON CORE IS NOT ALLOWED."

He gritted his teeth. A dungeon core? He was instantly reminded of his favorite web fiction series on the venerable Royal Road site, in which a man had been isekai'd and found a dungeon core, then used it to create a harem of very unique and well-written sexy waifus while also cleverly defending a nearby town from the evil kingdom that wanted to annex it, allowing the villagers to enter and live in the dungeon and eventually managing to turn the dungeon core itself into the most unique and well-written and sexiest waifu of them all, marrying it and creating tons of baby dungeon cores that he'd used to take over the world and make it a better place.

Kazuto relaxed and sighed in contentment when he remembered Harem Core, his favorite series of anything ever. He'd read and re-read it countless times, and—

"NO, I'M SURE I BANNED THAT."

Kazuto cringed at the loudness of the voice, but his ears seemed to somehow still be intact. Then he considered what he'd just heard. "Banned?" he said. "I read Harem Core just—"

"WHAT YEAR DID YOU READ IT IN?"

Kazuto screamed a little as he felt himself go deaf again. He waited a second for his regeneration to heal him before answering. "Um, can you maybe talk quieter, I—"

Stolen story; please report.

"NO. ANSWER THE QUESTION."

He groaned and clamped his hands to his head for the tiny amount of good it would do. "T-twenty forty two?" he said, afraid that he was somehow breaking more rules. "In February, right before—"

"I BANNED HAREM CORE IN MAY OF THAT YEAR BEFORE I BECAME A DUNGEON CORE. I WAS TOLD THAT SEXUAL CONTENT HAD BECOME A CENTRAL COMPONENT OF THE NARRATIVE."

Kazuto's eyes widened, and the excruciating, deafening pain in his ears was, this time, not what caused him to flinch. "No…" he whispered. "You couldn't have…"

"I WOULD'VE BANNED THAT FILTH A DECADE SOONER, BUT IT HAD GROWN TOO POPULAR AND WAS GENERATING TOO MUCH REVENUE. ONLY WHEN WE HAD CREATED OUR OWN MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANY DID WE FINALLY HAVE THE CAPITAL TO FREE OURSELVES FROM SUCH DISGUSTING TRASH."

Kazuto fell to his knees, heedless of his sudden deafness or the ringing inside his ears. "No, you're lying! You couldn't have! All those weeks writing review bombs for other series to get it to the top of the rankings, all that time spent comment-brigading other, higher-ranked stories until the authors quit, the private discussion server I was an admin on where we were organizing everything, the shared universe fics I wrote that hit trending… It had ten million followers! There was a movie based on it coming out in April, and—"

"THE MOVIE WAS A CRITICAL FAILURE AS A RESULT OF BEING A DIRECT ADAPTATION OF TRASH. IT RELIED TOO HEAVILY ON IN-JOKES AND REFERENCES THAT THE GENERAL PUBLIC COULDN'T UNDERSTAND. I SAW SOME OF THE TRAILERS, AND IT LOOKED LIKE THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE."

"No! It couldn't have been!" Kazuto shouted. "They cast that porn actress as the main core, and she looked just like the sexy cover illustration—"

"SHE WAS A TERRIBLE ACTRESS. I LEVERAGED THE IMPENDING FAILURE OF THE FILM AS PART OF MY JUSTIFICATION FOR FINALLY BANNING THE SERIES FROM MY SITE DESPITE THE BACKLASH. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF FOR EAGERLY ANTICIPATING SUCH GARBAGE."

"What gives you the right to decide whether something I like is garbage?" Kazuto demanded after his ears healed again, looking around the room in the hope that the core—which had apparently been a moderator on his favorite web fiction site before reincarnating as a dungeon core—was placed somewhere nearby so that he could be very nice to it.

"I AM AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A MODERATOR. I SIFTED THROUGH THE WRECKAGE OF AWFUL STORIES EVERY DAY ON THAT SITE AND TOLERATED COMPLAINTS FROM PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO HAVE NO TASTE. FILTHY."

"I HAVE TASTE!" Kazuto shouted, not even waiting for his regeneration. "I have great taste! My—"

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAVING GOOD TASTE MEANS."

"That can't be a real rule!"

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: IT IS NOW."

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: YOU LIKED AN ABYSMAL, POORLY-WRITTEN PIECE OF WEB FICTION TRASH THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO EXIST."

"YOU HAVE VIOLATED DUNGEON RULES: YOU HAVE NO TASTE."