‘Why do you think I am doing such a thing,’ the Core questioned.

‘The screams of pained souls are more obvious when you don’t annoy me,’ the Queen answered with little hesitation. ‘And when you aren’t questioning me about everything and nothing, you are usually cutting up my children in some new way. Am I wrong that you are doing it at this very moment?’

Looking back at the Core’s current works, the Entity had to try and think of anything that would reject her ideas. Yet… she was pretty much spot-on with her accusations, save for the lack of audible screaming. The Giant-Ant hadn’t said a thing the entire time. Even when its blood vessels had been pushed to the side to make more space for silver, there had nary been movements.

‘I didn’t hear any screaming,’ the Core said dismissively.

‘That’s because you clogged up its throat to the point where it likely couldn’t breathe, little rock. However, it has very much been in pain these last few minutes. If you would do me a favour, slice its organs and let it die so I don’t have to hear my child’s soul scream so violently. We aren’t trying to make [Soul-Stones] so there is no point in just letting them suffer!’ the Queen said, not happy at all about the current circumstances. Yet… the Core felt like the Queen might have been unhappy about the wrong thing. The pain was meant for other times.

‘So you are not against pain itself,’ the Entity surmised. ‘But doing it at times where it is not needed is something you are against?’

‘As you say yourself, it’s a waste of resources,’ the Queen retorted. ‘And it is also a waste of my patience. I have no desire to become distracted during crucial moments in my research and your utter lack of refinement with this is ruining any chance I have at making this work… What is it even you’re trying to do?’

The Queen had made her way outside of the inner room, pushing out the fake wall without too much trouble. With Mana-Tendrils to aid her, cutting it out without fracturing it had been frighteningly easy. And since the Entity could just replace it afterwards, there was no real issue with it. Though that was only as long as the intruders at the initial start of the Dungeon would stay in their place. The boss is out and roaming could spell danger for the current faked system, after all.

‘I am trying to add [Loot] for the intruders to find. Our enslaved personnel mentioned that it was meant to be a standard feature for Dungeons to have such a thing and I wanted that for this one as well,’ the Core explained with the most amount of bluntness it could muster.

‘... your utter lack of knowledge sometimes flies over my head,’ the Queen said after a few seconds of silence. ‘Little rock, you are not supposed to get results like those other Dungeons have by just jamming the creatures full of coins and whatnot. Some of the other Dungeons I have personally ventured into have even had items, armour, and weapons show up as [Loot]. Do you believe that a small insect could have carried around a [Mythical] dagger?’

The Core didn’t see that working out. And thinking about it more, how exactly was it meant to hide the items inside the otters? They had the slight detail of being completely transparent at every part of their body. A few coins floating around would be very hard to hide.

‘I thought not,’ the Queen continued, taking the Core’s inwardly-focused mind as an affirmation of her words. ‘Dungeons don’t like to show what [Loot] every kill can give and that makes sense. It’s meant to be random with each creature, though the more powerful monsters give better stuff to any man brave enough to die trying. But since you can’t hide them within the body, you need to put up a sequence so they spawn in after the creature dies.’

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‘A sequence?’ the Core questioned.

‘Exactly!’ the Queen answered, sounding happy about it. ‘It’s a series of commands that only gets fulfilled after certain criteria have been met. The most common use of them in the world is proximity-triggered bombs but we do not need those right now. Instead, we need a sequence that drops a piece of loot after a creature dies. Normally, this would take more than a few months of magical theory to understand but I know for a fact that the Cores don’t have that. Instead, they heavily rely on the [System] doing it for them.’

The [System] was included in the process as well then. The Core was getting closer and closer to just trying to request that it be levelled up for figuring out the secrets of that thing. It adapted to every creature. It must have! There was little chance that it would normally show off such details to an [Englithened], meaning that it was adapting according to the Entity’s needs. It meant that the system was capable of evolving, right?

‘Doesn’t that mean the [System] is alive?’ the Core asked.

‘What?’

‘Since the cores have something the other races don’t, it must mean that it’s alive at some level.’

‘Little rock, everybody can get that screen made. It’s just that it is next to impossible for nearly every race to use and there isn’t any function in it for anything other than cores, to begin with,’ the Queen explained. ‘The feature itself is not something that you can find naturally. It’s something you have to carefully create yourself using a blank screen as a starting point. You did know you could do that before this point, right?’

‘Oh…’ was the only thing the Core had to say, setting back its conspiracy theories for another day. It wasn’t a feature adapted to only Core but another, more varied feature that nearly every race used in different ways. It was a minor mistake but most certainly one it wasn’t proud of.

‘At some point, we need to have a nice, long conversation about everything a child needs to know,’ the Queen said with a withdrawn tone. ‘But since we don’t have five years of free time this morning, I think we will be sticking to the basics of how Dungeons are meant to work. Little rock, I assume you know how to will any screen forth?’

‘Yes,’ the Core confirmed. ‘It is no trouble at all.’

‘Good. I want you to will forth a blank screen.’

That was slightly harder than what the Core normally gathered itself to do. When wanting the system to bring forth anything into its sight, the ENtity would normally focus on what it was meant to be showing. If it wanted its Status Screen, it would think about the various stats that were on it. If it wanted the Evolution screen, it would think about all the monsters. But how exactly did that work when it came to a blank screen? Was the Core just meant to think ‘I want a screen with nothing on it?’

… Huh. The Core had been expecting more resistance from the [System], yet it seemed that even the slightest push allowed for such things to manifest. What exactly were the limits of such things? Could it just ask for anything to be written down on it?

Warning!

Users are not allowed to grant themselves [Levels]. Any further attempts can cause restrictions to [System-Manipulation]

That was expected. Giving itself one hundred levels was not allowed. The Core wasn’t annoyed about that fact, being merely saddened by the fact that it was so close to gaining it. If only it had access to such things. What was [System-Manipulation] anyhow?

‘Done,’ the Core sent out, going back to the original screen it had manifested. It wasn’t as interesting as the one after it but the Entity supposed that listening to the Queen’s words were of higher priority.

‘Good. Now I want the basic set-up made. For the [Loot] system, you will need a list for [Creatures], a list for their [Drops] and a list for each of those drops’ [Drop-Rate]. We can connect that to a series of items which you already know of but this is the most important step.’

Well, that was a bit more complicated. Setting to work, the Core did its best, not caring how long it took. It wanted loot and it would bring it into reality one way or another.