“Two questions: what exactly do you mean by loot? And are you okay? Your voice doesn’t sound so great.” Was there random treasure to find in a dungeon? Considering the entire rewriting of what I thought were the standard rules of reality that I had already experienced since my arrival in this new universe, I wasn’t entirely sure why I was stuck on this concept alone. Still, for some reason, the idea of loot was just pushing my brain past the easy acceptance point.

“He’ll be okay; he’s just gotta get his body more used to channeling mana through his throat like that,” Cecile explained. That explained the chanting he had done before the weather effects. That had apparently been my first exposure to someone casting real spells here. I added another note to my continuously growing list to read up on how exactly spells worked alongside mana channeling.

“Okay, and the loot, what are we looking for? Wait, actually, I found this shard earlier; what is it?” I asked as I fished around in my pocket and produced the small crystalline object. Now that I had time to look at it without the anxiety of looming monsters, I noticed that it glowed a faint pink, similar to the worms that had nearly engulfed me.

“Good find, Dave! That’s a mana shard; every monster should have at least one of them. We’re also gonna want to find wherever the dungeon core rolled off to after I killed the snail. Can’t leave it for something else to get ahold of, or the dungeon will start to grow again. As for other loot, it’s too new for that, but the bigger older dungeons, well, those tend to have attracted other mana beasts, so there can be extra chambers full of strange things, like magical plants or items that have just been exposed to the dungeon long enough to develop unique properties.” Cecile explained. I felt like he was leaving out another potential source of loot in the more dangerous dungeons—the possessions of those who didn’t survive their expedition.

“I saw where that rolled to; I’ll grab it; you two can dig through the mess that used to be the slugs.” The smell alone of the dead slugs was already getting to me, and I really didn’t want to start vomiting during my search; this was already bad enough.

“We should check the back end of the cavern, just to be sure there’s nothing else, but likely, yes, we only need the core and the shards,” Elicec said, his voice still scratchy.

I spotted the dungeon core, now a dull black, in a pile of rubble near one of the walls and bent to carefully pick it up. As I touched it, I realized my newest mistake in what felt like a series of nonstop blunders. I felt a small surge of energy tingle its way through my palm and up my arm. The core still wanted my soul.

“Dave, have you changed your mind and considered letting me take your body? That would be an incredible gift.” The voice’s smooth, almost melodic words blanketed my brain yet again. This time, though, I was more prepared for how it would feel.

“I told you last time, stay out of my head.” I gritted my teeth, whispering these words, hoping the brothers didn’t overhear. I forced my hand to drop the core into my pocket, and the moment the contact was released, the voice vanished again. So, the intelligence in the core persisted past the death of the host, did that mean the rock snail had no control of its own body at all? That explained why Mel was worried about me going in here. What would happen if the dungeon core used my body to leave? Did it even want to?

“That’s all five shards over here. Did you find the core?” Cecile’s question, his voice full of excitement, brought my mind back to the situation at hand. I didn’t have time to plot the nature of dungeon cores yet. That was better left for when we returned to the archives.

“Yeah, safely tucked away in my pocket. Are these things sapient?” I asked, unsure what the ramifications of the answer would be.

“What’s sapient?” Cecile asked as a look of confusion had covered his face.

“It essentially means intelligent, do you ever read, brother? Yes, they can be. I assume it tried to speak to you?” Elicec asked while giving his brother an annoyed expression.

“Yeah, twice, it really wants my body. What would it do if it got it?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. This really could have waited, but having a talking, body-stealing, otherworldly orb in my pocket made it hard to ignore the risks for the moment.

“I know it’s happened before, but I don’t really know the outcome, probably nothing good for you, though. I know some people have based their classes and skillsets around dungeon cores, so it is possible to make the thing’s intelligence useful. You can keep that one if you want to explore its uses. Since it doesn’t have a body there isn’t a lot it can do to you, just don’t eat it or anything stupid like that,” Elicec explained.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yeah, I doubt it’s worth much considering how weak it is anyway; I can already feel the dungeon starting to lose its energy,” Cecile said. A few seconds following his claim I also felt the weird feeling that had been with me since we entered lessen.

“Come on, do a quick perimeter check of the cavern before all the energy fades. Grab anything that seems useful. We can check it later,” Elicec ordered. I picked the opposite side the brothers went to and started walking along the wall towards the far end. With the dungeon’s influence fading, I felt a little of the earlier fear go with it. In its place, some of the anxiety turned into an excitement of sorts. We had fought monsters and survived. That was something to be proud of. The usual aches and pains of my body didn’t seem to bother me as much as I searched the cavern for anything of potential use.

In my haste, I almost missed it. Growing from the crack between two rocks was a small black flower. I reached down, pushing the pebbles away to reveal more of the stem. I grabbed it firmly as far down as I could and carefully plucked it. I had no idea if this was just a natural cave plant or something special, but that was something I could find out later. I stood back up, keeping the flower safely in my hand, and continued my path, finding nothing else until I bumped into the brothers.

“Hey guys, found a black flower, what did you guys find?” I lifted the flower into their field of vision, giving them a glimpse of my potential loot.

“Nothing, but that looks like it might be magical. We should plant it when we get back. I can test some of my magic on it,” Cecile said. I liked the idea. I didn’t have any idea what to do with it, and they had given me the core to keep. It was only fair they got something. I handed the flower to Cecile, who smiled brightly as he grabbed it from me.

“All yours, buddy. Are we good to get back now?” I asked. I was exhausted. I wanted a nice long shower, some food, and then to get back to a safe world of research. The memory of being stabbed flashed unbidden in my head. Okay, so it wasn’t always safe, but that was exactly why I needed to get back to it. I had to work on my core so that I could avoid future incidents while trying to accomplish other tasks.

“Yep, honestly, that went quicker than I thought it would. I know we’ve got experience to spend, so I bet you can’t wait to either, Dave. Let’s meet up tomorrow at adventurer hall around lunch. We can give our full report and see what we wanna do with the shards,” Cecile said, clapping me on the back gently. The man’s enthusiasm was almost contagious, but I couldn’t fault him for it. I was glad he had invited me to this, not just because of what could have happened without me or even the potential level increases. This was an experience I had needed. It gave me a better picture of what was coming and reinforced how far I had to go.

After much small talk and assurances of seeing each other the following day, I was finally back in my room and no longer covered in the grime of the day. I sat down at my desk and pulled up the System’s interface. I had points to apply. I quickly dismissed the list of notifications and started by looking at quests. It seemed the dungeon’s completion had counted as a series of new quests, and more interestingly, it had been given a name.

Dungeon Exploration

Slimy Slithering Depths!

Dungeon Boss Defeated

Slimy Slithering Depths!

Dungeon Looted

Slimy Slithering Depths!

I had gained another seventy points of experience from the quests, and three new skills as well, not that I could use them yet: Cartology, Malacology, and Treasure Sense. The first and last, I was already aware. They were basic skills that most people ended up with access to. The second one, though, I wasn’t sure about, and outside of diving into books, I had no way of learning until I reached level twenty-five and considering how much experience I had gained already, that wouldn’t be far off, assuming I could get my core formed to get past the level twenty barrier.

Speaking of levels, I checked my status. I was sitting at level fourteen, which when you take into account I started the dungeon at level five, was quite the jump. How many attributes did I have to spend? I quickly moved to my attribute section and found one hundred and ten points waiting to be assigned, which didn’t add up to what I had expected. I should have had less. I checked back on the level-up notification logs I had earlier dismissed, and apparently, once I hit level ten, the attribute points I was gaining had increased to fifteen. I remembered skimming something about point values increasing with levels, but it hadn’t been my focus at the time. I’d look more into it tomorrow.

The first thing I did was push all of my reactions to twenty-five and my mental use as well. I hit the caps in all three, so that looked like it might turn out to be true across the board for me. I had seventy-six left. I moved each of my soul stats up to twenty and put the remaining into my physical score. I figured I was probably going to need the soul attributes if I wanted the core experiments to go right, learning from the last time I did each of my increases separately, letting my body settle after each.

The biggest change I felt was a growing presence inside of me, but not an alien one at all. It felt like it was my own self, almost coming awake within me. Was this tied to the growth of my soul? I thought I understood now why a stronger soul made it easier to fight off something like a dungeon core, as it was the master of its own system, my body. This had the added effect of increasing my confidence in the core experiment. I believed my soul was ready, but there was no reason to rush it just yet. I could still gain another six levels worth of attributes, which would help fortify my body as much as possible before I did this, and I would gladly take all the help I could get. Then there was the question of the dungeon core: what exactly did I want to do with that little monster?