When an [Adventurer] arrived at a Dungeon, what was the expectation to see? The Core had asked itself that very question too many times in the remaining hours of the night and then continued the train of thought well into the morning. The plane around it had shifted to accommodate for the very stars yet its thoughts were still in the same place as before. When masses of unthinkable sizes could shift around so drastically without the Core moving an inch, it knew that something was wrong.

But the question still stood. What was expected of it? When an average [Enlightened], carrying some inane weapon and wearing cheap leather armour, came walking into the Dungeon, what did it hope or expect to see? A dank cave filled with various plants? A wall of miners that were harvesting the ores as quickly as possible? Perhaps some form of creature dribbling oozes out of its mouth with increasing frequency?

The Core had no clue, never able to set itself in the shoes of such weird creatures. They liked to shout, liked to sway their bodies, and liked to do unhealthy activities for the sake of short moments of pleasure yet they were actively repulsed by anything that had long-term benefits for their physical health. They were such weird creatures that trying to imitate their patterns of mind would only bring on biases that could never manifest in the real world. It could guess towards situations where it had already seen something similar but trying to grasp the idea of something new? That was impossible when trying to eliminate all but one reaction.

But still… Those people were greedy, driven by their basic needs above all. They wanted to eat, wanted to make sure random people had children, and wanted, as the most important thing of all, to be as rich as possible. Gold might not have been worth much as a source of nutrition but it was such a desired material that people would kill for it. So… why not kill monsters for it?

The Core had heard the whispers of the [Druid] mumbling in his sleep. It had heard how there were expectations of coins littering the ground with each wave of monsters, how the so-called bravest of the brave would lounge for those flat round disks, losing all self-respect in the meanwhile. The Entity already knew how those were supposed to look, what they were made of, and how little reason there should have been for the humanoids to want them.

Yet wanting such a coin had become the mainstay of the larger dungeons. There wasn’t the mere expectation of there being ore to mine in the walls. Not all areas were made of caves, some having actual walls. That did make the Core wonder how many thought the Dungeon-Cores animalistic to begin with but it knew nothing of the outside world. Maybe ‘primal’ meant something else to the feeble-minded.

it mattered little in the grand scheme of things, the Core still having the same belief as it did in the start. Humanoids were too weak, too unable to think themselves logical, that they could ever accomplish anything that made sense. Their continued existence was pure luck mixed in with a set of desires that evolution had set forth through sheer force of will, nothing else helping them live for more than five years at a time. If it had been in the non-physical-and-only-mental hand of the Core, it would have crushed them all within the minute.

Yet what mattered was their greed, that one trait that seemed to persist over their entire work of living. The Core did not need to know anything but the quality of the creatures. They could work, run, have fun, and kill as much as they wanted, but Greed itself was one of the factors that, above all else, made the move. If they knew they could gain monetary currencies from the movement, they would move like the wind. It didn’t matter how much fear needed to be felt, it all outweighed it with enough money behind the reward table.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And that was what the Core was gambling on. With little other understanding than the [Enlightened] being immoral bastard, it had devised the idea of attracting them with the apparent standard coins. It wanted the monsters within the Dungeon to shatter into pieces and reveal the shiny materials within. That… was a hard requirement to have. The Core knew that the other Dungeons before it had done such a thing, that they had shown great success to the point where it could even hear about it at random points. Dungeons gave more rewards than mere experience and ore. It gave rewards when killing creatures, rewards when solving puzzles, whatever that was meant to be, and gave a very large reward whenever somebody killed a boss.

It was all about the rewards. Were those brains off the [Enlightened] just geared towards that concept alone? Did they not see what costs there could come from such endeavours, how many lives could be lost? A thousand could die just so one could gain enough food for a year? The Core knew that they would care little, all expecting themselves to be the one instead of the thousand. It was disgusting but realistic assumptions were made.

Still, there was the issue of the very coins coming out of dead creatures. How exactly did such a thing work? Did the Core spawn in the coins each time one was killed? Because that seemed very unworkable after a certain level of killing. The Core couldn’t have above fifteen monsters at one place at a time yet it was expected to monitor each with a sharp eye and put a few bronze coins on the ground without anybody seeing in time or walking over and disrupting the creation process? It was a joke in the making.

Perhaps a bag around the creatures? A [Giant-Ant] wasn’t always naked. After all, dirt was very common to fall on its back. What was there to stop it from getting a piece of rope and a bag with a few coins around its neck?

…

The Core saw the potential problems of the humanoids spotting intelligence with that one. Having man-made objects prominent in the Dungeon could be saved for later. Yet.. what else was there to do? While good enough, in theory, spawning in coins at each death was hellish when scaled up. And not doing it during the initial creation was just as painful. What was there to do?

The first idea was out of the running yet the latter still had potential. While, yes, it would be quite hard to manage, it was still much easier than watching out for every creature in the Dungeon. Yet… how exactly was it meant to work? The Core couldn’t just shove the creatures full of coins and just have them walk around with them in their body, right? The internal acids would destroy them.

Or would they?

The Core questioned its morals as it slowly but surely started to fill up a newly-made ant with silver coins. It was a very expensive project mana-wise yet the results themselves were quite fascinating. There was no actual expectation of filling a creature up to the brim with the coins yet the effects of having them in every open space inside the creature were not as simple as one would think. Weight was an obvious issue from the start, the ant having severe issues walking around due to both balancing issues and the weight being too much for only four or five legs t over. It was even sitting down most of the time, its bottom-side resting against the floor no matter how much it pushed to rise.

There was a large amount of open space in internal organs, as the Core came to also realize. Were the severe damage done to those organs when the higher concentrations of silver were introduced? Yes but not as much as it had expected. Long-term would surely mean the death of the creature yet it could very reasonably walk around and attack without too much hindrance performance-wise. It could live for at least three hours and that was enough for a fight to both start and end.

But were there any other failures? Well, the most obvious was the lacking chance that the intruders would dig through each ant to look for a few coins. Because… that was all they would be getting for the kill itself. There wasn’t enough of a fight to make it either viable or profitable to do higher amounts, after all.

And the other problem? That came in the form of another entity.

‘Little rock, should I even ask why you have decided on torturing my children this fine day?’