Alistair wore a satisfied expression while Riseth looked at him and the blade curiously, and King radiated some annoyance.
"Sorry, I won't steal your kills again," Alistair reassured King, who let out a rumbling huff.
"You better not," King replied, and Alistair couldn't quite tell if the wyvern was joking or serious.
Riseth started tapping her foot impatiently. "Well? How the hell did you manage to break what looked like simple enchantments?" She inquired over their Akashic Link.
Alistair knew the dungeon could likely observe everything within the dungeons, and depending on how intelligent it was, they shouldn't be talking aloud too much.
He chuckled before responding. "I was curious whether I could convert the beam of light from my Light Manipulation skill into water using the enchantment, and the answer is a resounding yes."
Riseth's eyes lit up with a competitive gleam as she covered her mouth with her hand and began pacing. "That's brilliant! Do you think Denodia could create some turrets with similar properties?" she asked, excitement bubbling in her tone.
Alistair loved the idea but doubted Denodia could create the enchantments on a large scale. He suspected they required powerful materials to make the turrets as effective as his new blade. He shook his head.
"That's a good idea," Alistair said, "but I suspect the lack of power behind the attack, plus the material costs, would make mass production for turrets impractical. We might manage to create a few if we provide the right materials or advance our understanding of enchantments. Still, they'd likely be useless underwater, so their only practical use would be for defending Lacustrine."
"True, but these unicorns have a light concept, which might help with that. Plus, we're on an archipelago planet. There’s bound to be some water treasures or beasts we could use. Denodia had to have gotten the materials for that blade from somewhere," Riseth pointed out.
"It’s worth exploring. The problem with the unicorns is that their concepts are too layered. Refining them for turrets would be difficult, and we'd lose out on their luck concept—which is just too valuable to waste on this. Fueling and finding suitable treasures to power and build the turrets isn't an issue, but the real concern is the turrets’ stopping power in the long run. We’d need to find a way to enhance and empower the beam to make sure it’s effective," Alistair added, thoughtfully scratching his chin.
King, who grew bored, spotted another group of griffins and chose to engage them, leaving them to their musings.
"This dungeon loves shiny stuff. There might be another beast using light concepts," Riseth said, hopefully stretching her arms out, indicating their surroundings.
"Yeah, let's keep looking, but we should stick together. Taking this dungeon for granted could cost us dearly," Alistair responded and sent King and Viv a similar message to stay close.
Riseth nodded in agreement, and they headed toward the forest beyond the meadow. Alistair's conceptual awareness didn't highlight any of the flowers, no matter how pretty or elaborate they were. However, the entire area was infused with elevated atmospheric mana, as everything within the dungeon had been artificially created by the core's magic. This technically made everything a treasure of sorts, though most of them were hardly worth their time.
As they reached the forest, it didn't take them long to spot the next beast: a silvery, T-shaped insect with incredibly thin, spindly legs. Its wings were hidden beneath the top of the T shape, while its body was encased in the perpendicular section of sturdy, silvery chitin that protected its main form. Using their Identify skill on the dog-sized beast, they learned that the insect was a [Silverspine Stenac - lvl 70].
Before they could inspect the beast more closely or discuss it among themselves, the beast extracted its mosquito-like stinger from the trunk of the tree, silvery liquid dripping off its stinger as it tried to flee from them at incredible speeds. Alistair barely managed to restrain the beast with his Telekinesis skill as it struggled in vain to escape his grasp. Alistair had to restrain himself, not to crush the fragile creature accidentally. He brought it closer for them to inspect.
"Quite weak compared to the other beasts," Riseth remarked. "Also, what's that silvery stuff? I doubt the dungeon would create something that would weaken or damage its own environment."
Alistair flipped the beast over, examining its body, a large portion of which seemed to be one large, elongated sack containing more of the silvery liquid and protected by the silvery chitin.
"That's because this is likely the opposite," Alistair responded through their Akashic link.
Riseth looked at him curiously, waiting for him to expand on his comment.
"More intelligent dungeon cores can create beings not meant for combat but to cultivate the environment or produce treasures, some of which grow old and intelligent enough to become sapient species. On my planet, we have bees, incredibly helpful insects we've domesticated to produce honey, and this could be something like this."
"You mentioned something like that and that you failed to find any suitable bees on Earth to bring along," Riseth said, nodding along.
"Yeah, I presume Sol has claimed most of them and uses them to create some kind of treasure, maybe his ambrosia, but that's just a guess," Alistair explained.
Riseth looked at the creature, still struggling within Alistair's telekinetic grasp.
"We should release it and follow it; perhaps it has a hive of sorts where they store that liquid of theirs; we can then harvest some of it and have our craftspeople figure out what it is." Riseth sugguested.
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Alistair considered the suggestion and nodded, releasing the Silverspine, which raced away. Both he and Riseth turned invisible and pursued the insect as it rushed deeper into the forest. Before they could see what the creature was trying to reach, King reached out through his Summoner's skill.
"Watch out. There are multiple hives of these insects right ahead of you, and they seem agitated by my presence even from this distance," King warned.
Alistair relayed the information, and they stopped chasing the insect, which dashed toward a thirty-meter-tall obelisk-shaped structure riddled with entry points, each slightly dripping with the silvery liquid. Countless Silverspines circled around the obelisk in a dazzling display, forming perfect silver rings. It appeared they were either guarding their hive or performing some sort of refinement technique, as Alistair sensed a magical interaction between the coordinated display and the obelisk.
Scanning the obelisks and their guardians, Alistair didn't find any Silverspine Stenac higher than level 75. They presumably relied on their numbers to fight, and Alistair had noted that their T-shaped wing guard had been rather sharp, which was presumably their primary way of attacking. Alistair felt very confident they could handle them; neither he nor Riseth had anything to worry about at their level of power as they could shrug off most, if not everything, these beasts could throw at them with their powerful defensive skills.
"Let's not piss the dungeon off too badly. We'll just take a bit of that silvery liquid and have our crafters figure out if it's worth harvesting," Alistair said aloud, confident the Core was watching them.
Riseth tilted her head before replying, "Alright, but you go fetch that stuff then."
Alistair groaned but nodded. He sent a message to Viv to stick close to Riseth and not follow him and to King not to attack until he did. Maintaining his invisibility, he flew toward the nearest obelisk hive and began telekinetically extracting the liquid, storing it. However, his invisibility proved insufficient as the hive quickly noticed his presence and actions. The Silverspines swarmed around him, their sharp wings slicing through the air at high speed. Despite their efforts, all they managed to do was fuel his kinetic storage, as they lacked the power to penetrate his Kinetic Skinguard skill.
Undeterred, the swarm continued their assault. Once Alistair had gained enough distance and accumulated kinetic energy, he unleashed most of it in a kinetically charged shockwave, pushing the swarm away and killing most of the insects close to him. Although this hardly dissuaded the dungeon beasts from attacking, it cleared his vision, allowing him to see again. King, who took this as a sign that he was clear to attack, unleashed his sonic beam, carving through what was left of the swarm in short order.
Satisfied with their gains so far, they continued scanning the various meadows, forests, and hills for more treasures and beasts. Initially, they only encountered reddish bronze-colored birds with long tail feathers and crests atop their heads. These birds weren't combative and scattered whenever they approached. Alistair wasn't sure of their purpose within the dungeon but half suspected they were there just to 'look good.' However, he gave the core the benefit of the doubt and considered the possibility that they served as scouts outside the dungeon.
The inner workings of a dungeon and its advancement weren't well understood because of the System-enforced secrecy, preventing even friendly cores from sharing their insights. However, a prevalent theory suggested that the baseline of the beasts available to a core over time was at least semi-random, with the core having free rein to modify them before placing spawn points in their dungeon. Picky dungeons often refused to use most of the offered baseline creatures, instead investing their energy into fewer creatures and heavily modifying the baselines of the ones they preferred. This approach typically led to less diversity but resulted in stronger or more interesting monsters, usually indicating an intelligent core or one with very set preferences. In contrast, less intelligent and less picky dungeons spawned whatever creatures they received without much modification, leading to a more diverse and numerous but generally weaker population of beasts.
Picky cores generally loved to work with specific themes, aesthetics, and beast types, spending considerable energy transforming whatever creatures they had to match their vision. Examples include dungeons that focus on creating only one type of beast, like serpents, constructs, or draconic creatures. Others prefer certain concepts and fashion their environments and beasts accordingly. Alistair was quite certain this dungeon was very picky and had a specific aesthetic it aimed for, a suspicion reinforced by the lack of diverse beast types they encountered.
Dungeons like this were usually easier to manipulate if you worked within their framework and made suggestions that aligned with the core's sensibilities while also being advantageous to you. Alistair could think of many ways to influence this core's growth and decided it was time for them to try and find its core and determine its exact personality and intelligence.
"I think we've seen all this dungeon has to offer on its outskirts," Alistair mused over the Akashic link.
"I agree. Let's go storm the castle," Riseth replied with a toothy smile.
As expected, it didn't take much to convince Riseth, who frequently glanced at the massive tree in the distance, to stop their exploration. They had encountered the same beasts repeatedly for the last few hours, and Alistair was almost certain that some of them weren't even new packs but respawns of the same ones. They flew on King's back, effortlessly cutting apart any suncrest griffins bold enough to try and stop them. It quickly became apparent that the white marble-like structure they had seen was a massive palace at the foot of the colossal golden oak tree. Alistair's stored knowledge of dungeons suggested that this tree wasn't a world tree yet; it would take much more effort and time from the core to make it one. Nevertheless, the progress was already impressive and very apparent. The core must have spent a significant portion of its energy income on cultivating the tree.
"Look, I think the core is panicking," Riseth said over their connection and pointed at the packs of unicorns and suncrest griffins that headed towards the palace, presumably to defend the core.
"That's just gonna make hunting them easier," Alistair commented aloud.
As they grew closer, they found that the unicorns had grouped up in a formation led by a much larger unicorn, whereas the suncrest griffins had joined a white wyvern at the top of the palace structures dome.
"Those must be its guardians," Riseth commented, drawing her blades. Alistair did the same, focusing on the white wyvern. According to his Identify skill, it was a [Gividian Wyvern - lvl 150], making it by far the strongest beast present. The wyvern looked somewhat unusual; it lacked feathers or scales, with its entire body appearing leathery and muscle-bound. A long tail ended in a decorative leathery flap. Its head and maw were smaller than those of most wyverns and more draconic in appearance when compared to King. Instead of horns, it had a golden growth that protected its head and neck. The wing and foot claws were golden as well, more ornate than sharp and wicked-looking. The same golden plating that protected its head and neck was interspersed across its leathery body, protecting its vitals.
Alistair could sense King's eagerness to fight the other wyvern. Despite being at a lower level, he could clearly tell King was confident he could take on the guardian.
"How about I clean up those griffins while you handle the Guardian Wyvern?" Alistair suggested to King, whose excitement noticeably grew.
Alistair chuckled and looked at Viv, concerned about her safety in such a chaotic battle with so many potentially higher-level forces. But Viv, for her part, jumped into his shadow in a stubborn display.
"Alright, fine, you can fight, but only if you stay in my shadow," he relented.
Riseth patted his shoulder, an eager smile on her face. "I think it's time to let Fluffy out too. She's been too broody for a while now; it's time for her to come out and play."