Pov Vivian

I laid a piece of meat onto the pan and immediately knew I had messed up. There was way too much smoke. I quickly lifted the pan from the heat source and used a skill of mine to cool it down a bit. Unfortunately, it was no help. The meat was already stuck, so I cooled the pan down completely and made sure all the smoke went outside. Next, I sat down on one of the chairs and just sighed in defeat.

Why should this be so hard? I literally couldn’t remember the last time I had to cook for myself. I either ate rations or someone cooked for me. I couldn’t even complain about the equipment, as it was decent. It didn’t take us long to find some buried iron ore, and we had plenty of crafters who quickly turned that iron into more mundane stuff we needed.

Most of our houses were built of logs, and so was mine—I even helped build it. Most of the clan seemed quite content and happy to build their homes here, but I was, in all honesty, dissatisfied. It was too normal for my liking.

Worst of all, I was inside a dungeon that was beyond my understanding, and yet all I could do was just sit back and live a normal life. Of course, I knew that someday we would be able to live here and explore this dungeon if it survived, but how many generations down the line would that happen?

We had access to the dungeon’s labyrinth. There were two labyrinth exits from this area, wherever this area actually was. Why had the dungeon even done something like this, I had no idea. It even had wildlife that weren’t monsters like in its hub stations. But this certainly wasn’t a hub station. It wasn’t connected to the dungeon’s main route; I could feel that. So, why did it do this? Was it helping itself somehow?

I knew that dungeons could get mana from creatures or dungeon-born, as we called them. The trees and plants here were also real, but not all of them—the percentage was quite low. So this place must’ve been quite old, like half a century at least. Was it getting mana from them as well?

I was now regretting publishing that paper and sharing my knowledge with others, because I was certain they were testing things out. And from the breakthroughs I have felt of dungeons reaching diamond rank, I think my ideas have been proven right.

“Dungeon, ETG, I don’t know if you can hear me, but the dungeon breaking through the diamond rank—I think it’s my fault. Please don’t look at this as a failure of our clan, and don’t punish them. I shared my ideas with others about the usefulness of dungeon-born—or creatures, as dungeons call them.” There was no answer. I didn’t even feel more focus from the dungeon on me.

“Most likely, they are using these methods to improve dungeons as fast as they have now been able to, and I think they’re pushing diamond ranks even more than platinums. You must try to continue pushing forward. I know that defense is a priority, but you must try advancing as much as possible.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“They’re most likely using this method with our deepest dungeons. I don’t know if you know this, but there are a couple dozen dungeons in the 90s and some in the mid-90s. They have been stuck there for centuries as they are barely keeping a positive mana flow.”

“But with your threat, I am certain that not only would they allow those dungeons to make creatures—perhaps even millions of them—they will also bring in millions of other people, like you have done with the adventurers. I do not know how much time you have, but you must really hurry if you want to surpass them and get past floor 100.”

There was silence again, and I waited for quite a while, but nothing changed. I looked down at the pan that was still in my hand with the piece of meat stuck to it. “I guess it’s time to fix this. At least I can do that.”

A noise outside the cabin shocked me, as it sounded and felt like a large piece of stone falling from a decent height. As I opened the door, I saw not too far away quite a big boulder blocking my pathway to the main village. The meaning was quite obvious as I saw a letter that was stuck to the rock. I was actually quite amazed that it could spawn something so close to my aura. This dungeon truly was quite powerful for its depth.

I picked up the letter and went back inside before opening it. Time went by, and I just sat and looked at the letter. I was a bit afraid of what it would say, but in the end, I needed to read it. The wax seal broke apart enough, and then I started to read.

Hello Vivian,

I appreciate the information, and although it is not pleasant to hear that you passed on such information at the time when you did, we were enemies. So I do not hold it against you.

It is a bit unfortunate to hear that they are using such methods to improve their dungeons instead of wasting more precious resources, as I was expecting.

On your worries about dungeons having millions of adventurers and millions of creatures to advance themselves as fast as I had—well, you are missing a lot of information there.

I am also aware of all those dungeons that are so deep, quite a few of them are now quite close to me. If it comes down to it, a battle of the dungeons will be seen.

Those last words were chilling. There hadn’t been a proper dungeon-versus-dungeon battle in this or the previous age. Fortunately, I think this time the battle won't happen on the surface, but it would be devastating nonetheless. The biggest worry I had was: what was I missing that would change so much that this dungeon was so confident in winning? Whatever it was, it must be crucial.

When I got the pan cleaned, I cooked myself a proper piece of meat, although I wished there was some salt. We could get some from a couple of plants, but since the dungeon is actually listening, perhaps my grandfather and I could propose to the dungeon that it adds some resources to make living here long-term more viable.

With that thought in mind, I started to head towards Grandfather’s lodge when my route was blocked by the boulder the dungeon used to deliver its letter. I delivered a simple punch to destroy it, as smaller rocks could be a bit useful, but a sharp pain went through my knuckles. Damn it. I looked at the rock that didn’t have any damage on it.

Then I remembered that the dungeon could have just made a letter without making such a big rock. So it was definitely a bit annoyed at me.

After sensing, I realized that this was dungeon stone. I wasn’t going to be able to break this without considerable effort and perhaps a few months of time. That was a bit annoying, but I decided just to lift it out of the way. When I tried, however, I could not budge it even a bit.

It wasn’t that big that it should have been that heavy. In fact, no metal or rock should be that heavy at this size that I couldn’t move it. So, it used some dungeon fuckery to make it incredibly heavy.

"Really?" I said out loud and then heard another loud noise further down the path. This time, I did feel a bit of mirth on the dungeon’s part, and I felt my eye twitch. I looked around the boulder to see about 20 meters ahead of me a boulder twice the size of this one. My shoulders drooped. I simply walked around this rock and then the other one.

My beautiful straight pathway was now ruined. Note to self: don’t do stuff that would make the dungeon annoyed.