“Things are going to get worse for the city soon,” Aura told the family that night as Nina and Niall were preparing to head out. They had been assigned to work the overnight shift for their positions.

Both parents paused what they were doing to look at her. “What do you mean?” Niall asked after a moment.

Aura had already had this entire conversation with Nate, so he was paying the bare minimum attention to them while he worked on his meditation art.

“It’s not something that we particularly enjoy doing, as it plays havoc with our natural cultivation paths. Even the more unthinking beasts instinctually understand that.” She opened with a decent disclaimer. “However, we can use the cores of other beasts to enhance our own cultivation. If you have ever looked at the remains of a beast corpse after a beast has eaten their fill of the qi-enhanced flesh, you would have noticed that the core, if there was one, was never touched.”

Her mental tone dripped with disdain at the mere thought of the action. “Each one used takes you further from your original path, making it harder to cultivate naturally in the future. If you have an easy supply of cores to devour, then they are an easy alternative to power. It is a problem that my kind only faces in times of war. No beast would sacrifice their future otherwise.”

Nina finished slipping on the armored top Nate had left out for her and Niall and sat down with a grunt. “I am almost certain that the city is unaware of that.”

“And we haven’t exactly had the chance to go out and pick up the beast cores…” Niall tucked the bottom of his new armored pants into the tops of his boots. “I’ll be sent out beyond the wall again; I can raise the warning then. I’ll tell them I saw a few of the beast’s eating cores and growing stronger.”

Nina pulled out her bow from her storage bracelet, pulled it off her wrist, and then handed it to her husband. “Here, I’ve shared the permissions on it, so you can use it as well. Pick up as many of the beast cores as you can while out there tonight.”

***

Inside the first dungeon, Nate and Aura were going through all the various changes that the newly upgraded Dungeon Core had performed throughout the day.

It hadn’t touched any of the traps Nate had disabled from before. However, all of the rooms and traps that had still been active had undergone tweaks of some sort. The traps had simply undergone the most extensive of the changes. Not necessarily the largest, but simply the most overall.

The Dungeon Core had improved details that Nate hadn’t even thought of before. The cam/wheels on the crossbow traps, along with the other traps that he had incorporated the design into, now worked better than before. The Core had smoothed out and improved the design in ways he hadn’t even thought of.

Which was what it seemed to do on a lot of things. With better bearings, springs, and choice of metal, it had changed little details all across the board in a bid for better performance. The dungeon traps had always been a strange mix of magic and logic to Nate. Where they didn’t quite make sense to him, the Dungeon Core apparently had the recipe.

The traps still weren’t enough to hold back the cultivators by themselves. They could hurt and damage them, but only the crossbow trap right above the doorways had the power to kill any of them. As a result, the Dungeon Core had added a needed twist to the exploding rooms.

The cultivators were no longer trying to actively destroy the dungeon rooms and the traps. That was the thing that had annoyed Nate the most about their intrusion. This didn’t mean the dungeon was going to quit doing dungeon things though, hence the new twist.

Namely, the Dungeon Core itself had taken control of the gas-filled sections and would detonate them on command. The resulting explosions were far more deadly than any that had come before, save perhaps the first couple. The Dungeon Core was able to make the stone far tougher now, which meant it was able to also pack in far more gas before the stone containers began to reach their stressing points.

The explosions were big, and the hard stone acted as glorious natural fragmentation grenades. Piercing all the flesh of those caught in its wrath.

“I don’t think we need to worry about the cultivators for the moment,” Aura declared. “I can’t wait to get the Dungeon Core leveled up a few times in the second dungeon as well.”

Nate laughed. “Hah, that’ll be nice, but it’ll take forever at the rate we’re going.”

Together, they approached the portal and headed down to the second floor of the dungeon. They weren’t going to mess with the cultivators for the moment. Both of them wanted to warm up first and see how things were progressing down below.

Contrary to expectations, the Dungeon Core hadn’t ruined the second floor. It would have been easy for the Core to completely change the floor and wipe out their hunting and practice areas. That wasn’t what it had done.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Instead, it did the exact same thing it had done on the first floor, only in more moderation. It improved the existing traps, thinning the number of beasts that made it through to the end. It also helped to ensure that they would be injured when they fought in the little side tunnel area Nate had made.

The Dungeon Core had understood that they didn’t want the second floor trapped to the point of complete inaccessibility. All they wanted was to make sure that they never made it to the first floor again. It had done that, while also making sure that they were weakened in the areas Nate and Aura used for practice.

Aura wasn’t exactly a fan of that last item, but Nate didn’t care either way at the moment.

Practice at his current level of ability was still practice, whether the beasts were injured a little more than before or not mattered little.

This time around, he wanted to try out his new crossbow and quiver. After that, maybe they would head back up to the first floor and go to work on the cultivators.

***

“How many cultivators do you think they have lost at this point?” Nate asked Aura, as they watched some of the injured foreign cultivators get dragged out of the dungeon. The other groups were consistently making sure that none of the traps came back in the first couple of rooms.

“I’m not sure, but they haven’t made any progress despite those losses.” She was viewing them through her own connection to the dungeon. “No matter how you view it, their operation has been very subpar and ineffective.”

That was a sentiment he could agree with. They had destroyed who knew how many safe havens around the area, encouraging an attack on the city, and they had made no progress. Their leaders had to be sweating and furious by this point.

Oddly enough, Nate found he was perfectly alright with them being in that state.

***

His parents trudged back into the house as he was preparing breakfast for everyone. Nate’s mother looked exhausted, while his father was covered in various surface-level injuries. His new armor had held up well, saving him from the worst of the hits.

“Fun night?” Nate quipped as he carefully flipped the large omelet he had been making. It was full of diced onions, sliced red bell peppers, cheese, and more.

“Oh yeah, classical date night. The only thing missing was a car with a bench backseat.” Niall muttered tiredly.

Nate gagged. “That’s disgusting. You’re my parents. You two don’t have sex. As far as I’m concerned, I appeared through immaculate conception and the supreme efforts of a very dedicated stork.” He smiled and pushed them both toward the table. Cleaning up their gear could wait for a few minutes. “Seriously though, how was it last night?”

“The wall took less overall damage than it did the first night,” Nina told him as she put her head on the table. “However, the areas that were hit took far more attacks as a result. We came close to losing a few sections of the wall during the night. They’ll be reinforcing it constantly today.”

Nate frowned, leaning against the counter. “That sounds a lot closer than I think all of us were hoping it would be.”

“That’s because it is,” Niall admitted. “This isn’t a normal beast wave. The walls and our defenses weren’t built to withstand these sorts of numbers or constant abuse.”

“Do their numbers show any signs of shrinking at least?”

“Maybe a little? It’s hard to say.” His mom told him. Her eyes dragging shut against the cool surface of the table. Next to her, Niall wasn’t much better. Defending the city was taking everything everyone had during each shift they worked. It had only been a couple of days, and already they were all feeling its exhaustive effects.

The city wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer if something didn’t change soon.

The omelet was divided into thirds and plated up while they continued talking. Nate had already prepared a separate piece of meat for Aura to eat. Which she was doing right next to them.

Niall handed Nate the keys to the car and told him to be careful before both parents tiredly dragged themselves up to bed. A minute later, their armor and other clothes came crashing down the stairs for Nate to throw in the washer.

He settled himself in front of the TV to watch the news and get some work done while he waited for the call. Regular cultivators all left their shifts knowing when they would return next. As a high school student who had only just formed his core, he was being treated as the person you called to fill in a vacancy. He was a part-timer in their eyes and nothing more.

That was fine for the most part, though it did make trying to set a schedule hard.

He sent off a message to Angelica and Lindsay, checking in with them both.

***

The damage to the wall was definitely worse than the day before. There were more sections in need of reinforcing, and at least one that had come close to falling entirely.

Looking out over the beast wave, it was possible to finally see an end to it.

The beasts at the very back would occasionally break off and turn back toward the dimensional zone. It was a gradual process, but it was also obvious that many of the beasts had expended their anger by that point. That would have been good news, and it was, many simply considered it too little too late.

More and more of the beasts near the wall were eating beast cores that had been left lying on the ground. So, while the overall number of beasts dwindled, the strength of those that remained continued to skyrocket.

Nate picked his shots with care, aiming for any beast that looked as though it was going for a beast core. If they grew too strong, then his crossbow wouldn’t be able to hurt them. There had already been a few beasts where his energy skill attack had done little more than leave a nasty burn on them. Unless he hit them right in the eye, there was nothing he could do against those sorts of enemies. They were too strong.

Instead, he had dedicated himself to ensuring that as few as possible were able to eat another beast core. He wasn’t strong enough to destroy the cores, but the explosions he caused would send them flying, frustrating the beast’s efforts to eat them.

It was perhaps a little petty how satisfying he was finding their roars and other noises of frustration. The archers closest to him had quickly clued into what he was doing and would use the beast’s moment of distraction to poke it full of holes.

A few of the weaker archers with similar explosive energy skills had taken to doing similar attacks on the cores. Frustrated beasts began to fall one after another.

The stronger beasts were still a worry, but Nate didn’t have the strength to worry about them, so he didn’t. You worried about things that you could affect and help with, and that was it. Worrying about any more than that was only asking for an ulcer or anxiety problems.