Volcatia gnawed on some kind of meat, not taking it seriously.

She didn't take many things seriously these days.

At that exact moment, however, she was extremely serious about something.

"I'm sure he'll make it," said Subodiosa. "Look how athletic he appears!"

"Nah, there's no way," Volcatia said with her mouth full, chewing furiously. "No fucking way."

"I concur," said Ignis.

"Another ten marks for me," announced Subodiosa. A ten-mark moved from the dungeon core's pile of coins and appeared next to the other fifty marks of its existing wager.

"Your loss," said Volcatia. She met the raise with a ten-mark of her own, though it wasn't a serious amount of money. She'd suggested the betting as a way to pass time while the dungeon intruders prepared themselves, but the annoying core had taken it as a serious opportunity to try and grow its treasure. "Here we go!"

The man at the edge of the deep ravine filled with lava started to swing his arms back and forth, bending his legs a little. He took several steps back, then charged forward and jumped with all his might.

Volcatia lost interest the instant he started to move.

"Fly, human!" bellowed Subodiosa.

Volcatia started sliding the small piles of marks over into her betting pool.

She hadn't cheated.

She just recognized that the Char man wasn't going to be jumping nearly far enough once he'd begun moving.

As she'd expected, the man screamed as he failed to traverse the twenty or so paces of lava between him and the next platform and fell to his death.

She wondered why he'd tried.

"I really thought he'd make it," Subodiosa said in a sad tone.

"Alright, I'm bored." Volcatia started tapping her foot. "Was a little funny for a while, but… Fuck."

She was still upset that the couldn't use more shit to build with.

"Can you please stop with all the profanity?" Subodiosa whined again.

It was really living up to its namesake.

Volcatia tried to think like a smart person.

What would someone Smart do?

This couldn't be the end of her fun here, could it?

Her brow furrowed, and she crossed her arms.

There had to be something…

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"No!" shrieked Subodiosa. "No, no, no! I won't allow it!"

"I'm gonna leave this fucking gladius here, and you're not gonna move it again. Understand?" Volcatia glared.

She wished she had a definite object to glare at, but the annoying core was staying back in the workshop.

"Absolutely not!" shouted the core that was so fucking annoying she could barely restrain herself. "You can't give away our treasure!"

"It's not our fucking treasure," Volcatia snapped. "I just bought this shit! It's mine! If I wanna give it away—"

"It's in my dungeon, so that makes it mine," the core yelled.

"The dungeon is ours! Not yours!" said the core with the funny accent on her shoulder.

Volcatia was growing fond of the fire core.

It didn't argue about every tiny thing.

She moved closer to the dungeon entrance, still finding it hard to believe that it reached all the way to Charus City even after she'd gone outside to confirm it earlier.

The number of people entering the dungeon had been nearly zero when she'd arrived.

The cores, it seemed, were just killing people immediately with their combined powers.

Boring.

Unbelievably boring.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Who the fuck would want to go into a dungeon that kills them instantly?

She'd made them stop that right away after making a few traps.

The dungeon was so fucking big people would probably starve to death before they found any treasure anyway.

She'd found it, obviously, but that wasn't very difficult for someone like her.

The reason the dungeon was boring was because there weren't enough people in it for her to spectate.

This wasn't the arena, but the idea was the same.

Nobody went to the arena to watch an empty fighting platform.

She needed to entice people to stop being so afraid of the dungeon.

Or, at the least, she needed to convince them that entering might be worth the risk.

So she brought her own treasure to give out.

It was just a collection of weapons and armor she'd taken from around Onyxfell in the early morning with varying amounts of marks left in their places, but it was something.

There was no guarantee people would be tempted, but Volcatia was hopeful.

Now she just had to get the cores to stop arguing about whose dungeon it was long enough to make some fucking places to put all this shit so people would see it.

Volcatia sighed.

This was turning out to be way more work than she'd expected.

If it didn't get fun again soon…

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"No…" Volcatia stared.

It was working.

It was really working!

It was working a little too well.

She'd chucked a huge number of ordinary armaments all over the entrance to the dungeon, and, after running outside to shout that there was treasure in the dungeon, the Char idiots had flooded the place.

She could barely believe it.

How fucking stupid were these people?

Didn't they remember watching people fucking melt a few hours earlier?

Seems they didn't, which was great for her.

A fight had broken out over the first item the idiots had seen, which happened to be a pugio.

An actual fight.

Over a pugio.

Volcatia had started laughing immediately.

When a man was punched so hard teeth flew out—which she could see in great detail due to the dungeon core's ability to create improved versions of the screens at the race tracks—she'd had to stop watching for a few minutes to catch her breath.

A pugio!

She almost wished she could show the results to whichever weaponsmith she'd taken it from.

Almost.

She'd left a handful of marks that seemed like it was probably overpaying, and that'd have to be enough.

Next the idiots had come to a crossroads.

Would they choose the left path or the right?

Most seemed to like the left, which was a simple set of steps with sharp spikes of stone pointing down from a lowered ceiling.

All the idiots would need to do was slowly crawl up the stairs, but no!

Not these idiots.

They'd caught sight of the mediocre parma she'd left at the top of the steps and begun clawing at each other.

The passage had soon become completely blocked by the corpses that had been impaled by the spikes.

It was just a fucking parma!

And not even a very good one!

Volcatia had rubbed her forehead once she'd stopped laughing.

At this rate they'd all die before they got to the fun parts!

She had to do something.

She'd gotten all the shiny weapons and shit already from Onyxfell, which meant she'd need more in order to make people want to come entertain her.

She bought up all the weapons in Charus City.

She was already there, so it wasn't far.

Also, bought was maybe not the right word, but she'd left varying forms of payment.

After throwing those around randomly and setting up a few more stupid, but less lethal, traps, she decided to get more.

Just to be safe.

She went back to Ocexius Tower, the so-called Tower of Pride, and bought up all their magic-user shit.

Alright, bought was probably the wrong word for that too since nobody was really awake, but she left money.

It was just money.

Stealing was an option, but it felt a little…

Stealing was boring.

Her Inventory skill wasn't boring at all though.

Fuck, how did she even live for so long without it?

Now, though, the dungeon was going fucking great.

She got the cores to make a bunch of stupid traps and scattered random shit all over, and then she sat back to watch.

It was amazing.

For a little while, sitting back wasn't even enough. Volcatia sat with her legs dangling off a high, floating platform as a group of intrepid treasure hunters struggled beneath her.

The choice was simple for them.

Would they attempt to cross the rivers of lava using the floating platforms she'd added in precise locations at the limits of the average man's jumping ability?

Would they endure the heat of the lava and try to run through the tunnel of stone she'd made to go through it?

The walls were laden with more sharp spikes made of stone to discourage people from trying to be smart.

The spikes weren't there to be fucking grabbed onto!

The man got his hand stabbed through as he swung himself to the next spike, but then the blood caused him to slip and fall. He looked up and spotted Volcatia in the process, shouting something, but…

Her mastery of the Char language was limited to buying, fighting, fucking, and, obviously, cursing. That wasn't the same order she'd learned the language in.

The man fell, his face a weird combination of anger, fear, and regret, and Volcatia laughed.

Why wouldn't she?

She might not be smart, but not even she was dumb enough to try using giant, pointy fucking pieces of stone as handholds to cross a gap like that just for a magic wand.

Or at least, that's what she thought it was, but she didn't know much about magic.

It was then that she realized that none of these people were smart.

She'd been a little cautious since it was Carl's dungeon, after all, but that was a boring waste of time.

The dumb traps she'd made were too smart, so she made them even dumber.

Then she laughed more.