At the house, his parents headed for their small, combined office while he went up to his room. He had managed to keep a distracted eye on the cultivator’s efforts to traverse the dungeon while in the car. The first of their group had finally gotten injured by a trap they had missed. It was something he had made sure to make a note of.

It was the kind of simple trap they hadn’t been expecting and because of that; it had caught them unawares.

It would probably not work again in the future, but it was in his notes now so he could experiment.

No matter what happened as a result of all this, he was seeing the weaknesses of his current layout. Then again, he had already known that the traps he was using weren’t the best designed for humans. They were oriented toward the normal inhabitants of the dungeon. The beasts that came out of the portal, and for them at least, they worked fairly well.

Still, these people were sort of like beta testers in a way. The information they were giving him with what they were doing was valuable. It was different from how the monsters worked and was useful in letting him know the weaknesses that existed.

Regardless of all that, he was still a little disappointed that the dungeon wasn’t doing better against them. However, that in itself was worth noting, as it told him how strong cultivators could be. He would need to ask if anyone knew what their realms were later.

It was all about getting that baseline that he had been missing out on until now.

Nate pulled up the second screen and looked around until he found the current beast inside the dungeon. He grinned when he saw it was only one room away from them. It was resting in a corridor for the moment.

The monster was one of the leopards with three whip-like tails, only it had been injured by one of the previous rooms. One of the tails had been completely ripped off, and it had a long graze along the side as well. It was the first time he had seen one of the monsters simply take damage from a trap room and survive instead of dying outright.

There was a part of him that found the sudden change suspicious, but he wasn’t sure what would have changed.

The only thing that had changed was the introduction of the humans inside the dungeon… But was that something it could even do? It wasn’t something he had seen it do before, however, this was also the only time he’d had humans get this deep inside.

He shook his head; it was more likely the beast had just gotten lucky. It had to happen at some point.

Sure, Nate knew there were stronger monsters on the other side of the portal. This wasn’t some video game where they were all limited to a certain level until something happened in the game’s plot. It was a little difficult to remind himself of that fact though, at times almost all that came through were the weaklings.

The leopard’s muzzle twitched, and its ears flicked about as it began picking up on the approaching group. The beast leaped up and pressed itself against the corner above the door. It was the perfect ambush spot for it. Behind it, the blood it had left on the ground sank into the dungeon, sending the iron resource up a percent of a point.

There was nothing left in the corridor to mark that it had been there, and it was the one place they wouldn’t expect to be attacked. When he had designed the traps and layout of the dungeon, he had left the corridors purposely blank. They were the rest areas, and he liked to think somewhat psychologically damaging to everything that came through them.

It was an effect that he was undoubtedly overthinking and giving the spaces way too much credit for. But he liked to imagine that they were useful for something. He couldn’t just have traps everywhere that would be too much and create other problems. There had to be a balance, a safe space of sorts for the beasts or people to relax enough that their anxiety for the next room could ramp up more.

It was a balancing act, one that was probably wasted on monsters. He was seeing the fruits of it now, however, as the cultivators took the chance to let down their guard.

It was the exact moment the leopard had been waiting for.

The beast jumped down and raked its claws down the woman’s unprotected back. Its two tails speared out and knocked the others aside, leaving her open to its ravaging attacks. Unfortunately, it was just too weak.

The claws tore into her back, and scraped across her bones, but went no deeper. Her cultivation was stronger than the monster and while she was taking damage, leaving her blood splashed across the floor and walls. It was far from the lethal blows the monster assumed them to be.

She would need time to heal, but she would be able to heal from these wounds.

As soon as the leopard jumped away to take on one of the other cultivators, she crumpled weakly to the ground.

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Through the screen, Nate could see her reaching for a healing pill while the rest of her team finally began to react to the unexpected attack.

The various weapons they held sliced through the air. Swords, daggers, and blunt clubs, among others, all raced for different parts of the leopard. A staff held by the biggest woman Nate had ever seen cracked against the base of the beast’s spine. Its whip-like tails instantly fell to the ground, lifeless and dull.

From there, the fight lasted mere moments as they tore it apart in an efficient, if somewhat bloody, manner.

On the ground, their injured companion rolled over as the wounds on her back began to rapidly heal.

The entire fight had taken less than a minute, but Nate still found himself breathless. Finally, he had some idea of their base strength. This was a monster he kind of knew the strength of and could extrapolate theirs from it. It still wasn’t perfect, since it was stronger than normal, but it would work for the moment.

What he learned was intimidating.

He stood no chance against these people, not that he had ever believed he did. However, he didn’t think anything inside the dungeon did either. If he had a mask or some other way to obscure his face, then he could use the avatar to talk to them. Unfortunately, that was also not an option.

For the moment, all he could do was watch and learn, and hope they didn’t destroy the place.

A minute later, the injured woman finished healing and stood up, pieces of her outfit falling to the ground as she did so. By that point, she was barely decent and quickly exchanged her top for another one.

Nate decided to be a gentleman this once and looked away, searching the other screens for potential monsters that may have entered the dungeon.

What he saw shocked him, as it confirmed his suspicions that something had changed inside the dungeon. It was the appearance of the humans, most likely, but the dungeon itself appeared to be trying to protect itself.

It had shortened the time between each beast summoning down to only a few minutes, instead of the normal half hour. Along with that, he also noticed that most of the traps weren’t attacking them, so much as guiding them toward the invaders.

It was something he hadn’t noticed before, but it appeared that the dungeon had a form of rudimentary intelligence. He sat back and let that percolate. Suddenly, upgrading the core had just become a lot more important. If it was capable of doing this much, then at higher levels, he might not even need to be the one who managed the dungeon at all.

Maybe he had finally figured out his role in this entire messed-up affair. He was never meant to micro-manage the dungeons for long. Instead, he was only there to get them on their respective feet and act as a sort of manager and overseer. It was a thought, at least, an expensive one, considering how much just the first core upgrade was going to cost him.

One monster after another was sent toward the cultivators, slowing them down, and wearing them out. It gave Nate plenty of time to study their abilities and habits, jotting them down in his notes while he watched. He somewhat distractedly did his homework during this time as well, though it took him three times as long to finish the work than normal.

He kept a close eye on the different knife-wielders in the group. Since it would be some time until his parents would be able to afford a proper trainer for him, he needed to learn where he could. These people were supposed to be considered some of the elites of their city. If that truly was the case, then there would be no better chance to watch them all in such a manner again.

Nate could control the cameras giving him closeup views of all the real-world moves they used. It would help him know how to practice his movements when he was in his avatar later. Of course, without the corresponding skills already learned, he wouldn’t be able to use any specialized abilities. This was fine for practice and learning, or at least he hoped so.

He’d find out later. Until then, he’d just keep taking more notes and hope they were useful in some form.

They’d been inside the dungeon for hours by this point, and he had already eaten dinner. Despite that, their speed had slowed significantly. They had been cautious with the trapped rooms, to begin with, and now with the near-constant stream of stronger-than-normal beasts, their pace was glacial.

After all this time, they were finally nearing the first of the treasure chests Nate had placed earlier in the day. He just hoped they even took the time to look down the side corridor and find it.

It wasn’t a possibility he was originally concerned about knowing how loot-hungry humans normally were. Then again, at the time, he also hadn’t known that the dungeon would be an active participant in fighting against them. The chests might be another item he would need to scrap later from this particular iteration.

Nate cracked his neck and yawned. It was time to enter the dungeon through his avatar. Though, frankly, he was a little leery of doing so. He didn’t know what, if any, his appearance in that form might have on the dungeon. He didn’t really want to throw a sudden new variable into the mix, but he also didn’t want to just go to sleep and miss the rest of the show.

Decisions.

It was such a seemingly simple one that he just didn’t have the answer to at the moment. Scenarios where they learned who he was danced through his mind. There were other possibilities as well, such as his avatar shutting down whatever intelligence the dungeon was showing.

Finally, after thinking it over for a few minutes, Nate closed the screen, showing the cultivator group, and closed his eyes. In the end, the chance his appearance could cause more harm than good was just too great a chance. Sleep overcame him almost instantly, though it was anything but restful.

What he saw the next morning made him wish he could just stay asleep. At some point in the night after he had fallen asleep, it looked like they had found one of the treasure chests. From there, they had proceeded to tear the dungeon apart.

Pieces of the traps in the walls, floors, and ceilings had been destroyed by powerful attacks as they searched for more. All the traps that he had put so much effort into before were almost completely gone.

Their little rampage had led to them picking up their pace, and during the time he had been asleep, they had cleared the entire dungeon. Judging by the wreckage of the room the core was hidden in, placing a chest, there had been a smart move. If they had gotten there and found nothing, then he really would have lost the core.

Nate jumped out of bed and raced for the bathroom, suddenly feeling like he was going to throw up. It had been very close this time. He needed to fix the dungeon and get a second one up and running as soon as possible.

Then he needed to find a way to punish them when they came back, and there was no doubt in his mind that they would be back for more.