“This route has been shut down lately. The last few groups to travel through had to turn around once they got there.” The dwarf stated. “This journey might not be so safe. I wouldn’t be going if I wasn’t asked by the Esmore assembly.”
“Not safe?” Pait frowned. “Why would you think that?”
“Dungeons thrive on mana,” I spoke up without thinking. “I’m just guessing, but I think whatever trick they use to alter space means the dungeon can’t absorb very much mana from the ground. That means it needs to feed off people. If there are no people…”
“The dungeon gets hungry.” The old dwarf finished, giving me a second look and seemingly nodding with approval. “A dungeon diver?”
“Ah… I dabble.” I laughed as I scratched my cheek, not wanting to get into it.
“You don’t need to worry. This is a class D dungeon. It’s nothing we can’t take,” the adventurer said.
“Uh… classes?” I blinked.
“That’s right, you guys in Ost Republic don’t classify dungeons,” the man said. “Just like adventurers, the adventuring guild down here classifies dungeons based difficulty. A newly formed dungeon is an F, while the dungeons you call Great Labyrinths are an S class.”
“The Ost Republic has a similar system. Although we rate by floor, and the rating is simply which level adventurer we think would be able to function safely on that level.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I nodded as he explained such a simple thing. It made perfect sense. I knew dungeons had levels of strength. In Aberis, we usually determined that level based on the dungeon’s size. A new dungeon was ten floors, and then they gained about a floor a year. The older a dungeon, the stronger it was, usually. However, the more I was exposed to dungeons the more I realized that this rule didn’t need to be followed. That might be the truth with natural uninterrupted growth, but dungeons could be altered in a variety of ways. Take Matty’s Dungeon, which should have had forty or so floors, but only had twenty.
Thus, evaluating dungeons and determining their difficulty made some sense. I understood why Aberis didn’t do this though. When dungeons were found, they were either kept and nurtured or destroyed. A difficulty level couldn’t truly tell you how dangerous a dungeon was, and was only necessary if one decided they were going to destroy the dungeon.
The Great Labyrinths might be S class, but countless low-level people entered the dungeons and fought on the top floors to gain levels and fighting experience. Dungeons were unpredictable. You had dungeon floods and traps. Sometimes, a dungeon just wanted to kill you. I could portal out of a dungeon, which made the danger to me minimal, but for anyone else, even a level F dungeon could kill a skilled person if they let their guard down.
Thus, I didn’t feel that bad that I didn’t know of such a ranking system. It would only confuse most people in Aberis, who didn’t see dungeons in such a one-dimensional way. A rather easy dungeon could be building up mana toward a super powerful boss, and a rather difficult dungeon could have a rather simple lore to complete. By nature, people wanted to classify nature, but no matter how many criteria existed, nature always came up with an exception. The dungeons weren’t much different.
After exiting the elevator, we began the two-day journey through the darkness of Gram’s Passage. I couldn’t shake the feeling like I was walking into the maw of a great beast.