Ulbert stared up at the short cry for help carved above the door to the second floor: “No wind nor rain has ever escaped the sky, yet still I yearn for their freedom.” It had been incorporated into the puzzle below, which made it the only similar plea that hadn’t been erased yet.

The dungeon researcher turned his gaze down toward the small wooden sign that had yet to update its text.

“I examined your records before coming here,” Ulbert explained. “I saw a great many signs of distress. Please don’t tell me I’m the first person to ask if you’re okay.”

Eventually the ink on the sign rearranged itself. “You’re the first.”

Ulbert heaved a sigh in dismay, but there was no one thing he could blame for this mess. Since recorded history, new dungeons had been born incapable of emotional reasoning. They were like machines that acted predictably based on set patterns and external stimuli. There was no risk sending an inexperienced guild inspector to learn and grow alongside such a dungeon; there was no need to send one of the precious few dungeon researchers to meet with a dungeon that couldn’t even speak yet; it was fine to let the much larger explorer’s guild lay the groundwork instead.

Now that there was a precedent for a young and intelligent dungeon, there was guaranteed to be a wave of policy changes, but it would have been overly paranoid to implement them before disaster struck. Without the benefit of hindsight, everything that had gone wrong had done so for perfectly understandable reasons.

But it was such a pity.

Ulbert couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake up, alone in the world, fully capable of fear and longing. And then, for one of your first contacts to be a group of brigands? Who tried to take you hostage first and returned for petty, violent revenge when they failed? For the group that was supposed to be a dungeon’s first line of defense to walk up to you and begin the standard procedures as if you have no say in it? For that procedure to hurt you, just because you were unlucky enough to be born different?

Ulbert held his head and sighed again.

Now now, Ulbert. Too much sympathizing and you won’t be sound enough to help.

“My question stands,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot in the short time you’ve been in this world. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be okay. So if that question is too difficult… then how are you doing now? Is there anything I can do to help—even if you just need someone to listen?”

If Archimedes had a jaw, it would’ve dropped. He was, of course, actively mapping and fishing around in the demon’s mind, and his surface thoughts were echoing at the periphery of his perception at full volume.

Was this what Anther would be like in a few centuries? Still kind and empathetic, but with a social intelligence further honed by countless experiences?

Archimedes had seen dozens of outsiders in the past few days while waiting for Anther’s treatment to be approved, but their perspectives were different from the researcher in front of him now. Those people saw Archimedes as a structure, a phenomenon, a resource deposit, or just vaguely as a “dungeon”.

Ulbert thought of him as a child. Just a confused and lonely child—albeit a very powerful and clever one—who needed help all the same.

“Can you help me?” Archimedes asked on reflex.

“I hope so,” Ulbert smiled. “I’ll certainly do my best to.”

For about a minute, Archimedes was so full of things to say, and so unsure where he should even begin—if he should even begin—that he was silent. He found himself wanting to believe in this outsider’s sincerity.

That hope made the potential disappointment into a fearsome behemoth indeed.

“Maybe it would be easier to talk about if you weren’t limited to just signs,” the demon chuckled. “Why don’t you construct the design I’m thinking of? It’s called an earpiece, and you can make it vibrate with mana to produce sound. I lost my previous one when I went swimming not that long ago.”

The demon was laughing at himself over his clumsiness, but Archimedes thought his core might crack from shock.

The designs were perfectly laid out in the demon’s head for a simple device that, in theory, Archimedes could talk through. And there wasn’t just the earpiece, but a larger version called a speaker that he could, for instance, mount to a wall.

By delivering small bursts of mana to a thin mithril ring, he could cause it to rise up and bump against a thin, flexible skin, which could be made either out of various materials Archimedes hadn’t seen before or even simply paper. All he had to do was deliver mana at the correct frequency and intensity—genuinely possible with a dungeon’s processing ability and mana control—and he could replicate any sound he knew the wave structure of. Even a voice.

Except for the processing power he was devoting to copying Ulbert’s entire brain, Archimedes dropped everything else, including his own expansion. He created a speaker about the size of a teacup and mounted it on top of the wooden post that once housed a sign.

His experimentation began immediately.

At first, he only succeeded at producing horrible screeching noises that forced the demon to cover his sensitive ears, later static, but after just five minutes and about as many hundreds of mana, he had equated a range of known sound waves to specific mana frequencies.

“H—e—llo—hell—o? … Hello?”

Neutral, robotic sound waves slowly adjusted into something more… emotive. Most people imagined a voice in their heads when speaking, and Archimedes had one for himself as well, but it was tricky to bring the feel of that voice out to something truly audible. He got close, though.

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“Incredible…”

The voice was masculine.

“Outstanding.”

And it was clear-spoken.

“Superb!”

Frankly, it was the voice of an arrogant prick and a wanna-be intellectual. But now it was Archimedes’ voice.

“I thought you wouldn’t need long to figure it out,” Ulbert congratulated him.

“What do you want?” the dungeon asked.

“Pardon? Last I recall, I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help you.”

“No, I mean what do you want as recompense for this?”

“What?” The dungeon researcher waved his hand in front of himself. “No, it’s free, of course. You would have found it in my memories sooner or later. It isn’t a particularly widespread technology since only dungeons can make use of them, but it’s public knowledge nonetheless.”

“Is there any regulation against a researcher accepting gifts from a dungeon?” Archimedes pressed.

“No?”

“Then tell me what you want. Anything.”

The voice coming through the speaker cracked slightly, and Ulbert felt his Snow White hair beginning to frizz as the humidity kicked up in the dungeon.

“Otherwise, I don’t know how to express my gratitude.”

Ulbert exhaled briefly through his nose and gave the speaker head a delicate pat like it was the head of a child. “In that case, I’d like you to thank me with that new voice of yours.”

“… Thank you.”

The speaker would have been flooded with sobbing sounds if it weren’t a waste of mana. Instead, the first cavern’s walls shed water in a heavier deluge, and the humidity in the cavern went up so high that drops of water condensed and fell from the ceiling. Down on the third floor, Archimedes had let Thesia and Helios into his protective barrier, taking solace in their touch.

“I’m glad you got a voice, papa,” the slime congratulated him.

“Please don’t cry, daddy,” the trick spider begged, unable to distinguish happy tears from sad ones at his mental age.

“I didn’t even know I wanted one so badly,” he admitted.

But it was like being one step closer to an animal. One tiny step closer to his dream.

At this point, doubt had already left Archimedes’ mind completely. He trusted Ulbert with his life, and he hoped without fear of failing that the researcher could help him.

“I am not okay,” Archimedes admitted through the speaker. “I am not in as bad a place as I used to be, but I am still not okay.”

“I’m listening,” Ulbert nodded, sitting in the grass to make himself comfortable.

“I am the way I am now because I’m friends with the Voice of the World, and she decided to give me another chance after I committed suicide in my last life.”

Archimedes proceeded to tell Ulbert everything about Rachon, about his life there, and about his many millennia of suffering. What use was there in hiding it, anyway? Could the demon travel to another world? No. Could Rachon’s Gods come here? No. The knowledge had no benefit to offer anyone, but honestly sharing his pain might help relieve his burden.

Archimedes was too desperate to consider that he might be seen as crazy, or that being a reincarnated ancient dungeon would relieve him of his previous gentle, child-like treatment. But fortunately, Ulbert wasn’t such a closed-minded person.

Rather, as far as other worlds went, he was certain they existed. Otherwise, where had Phegmehogal come from? According to Ulbert’s father, the sky had torn apart, revealing distant worlds and stars, and the horror known as the evil god had pulled itself through the crack. On and on, that disaster had insisted that he would lay claim to “this world,” implying others yet existed.

A reborn ancient dungeon from across the stars was a much better visitor to have.

After recounting so much—even skipping over most of the details, Archimedes was almost out of mana. He had spent even the reserves he intended to save for Anther’s surgery, in case he had to begin suddenly. He could, of course, recoup those losses very quickly if needed, but it showed just how much this mattered to him.

As his story came to an end, he decided to ask Ulbert directly.

“Do you understand what Vow meant when she sent me here like this? How a dungeon can live a meaningful life?”

Ulbert took a deep breath in and out. His expression calmed into something completely neutral and passive, and Archimedes was surprised to find… absolutely nothing on the surface of his thoughts. Before he could probe deeper to see what was going on, the demon spoke.

“For this, I’ll ask that you don’t read my mind. I have some speculations that will help nobody, and they are emphatically unproven.” He continued to the main topic of importance before Archimedes could question him. “About living a meaningful life, I imagine part of you has realized by now that no matter what someone else tells you, it won’t answer your question. Meaning is something people struggle to find as well: dungeons aren’t alone in that. But whatever meaning you find will have that much more weight to it if you find it yourself. Even if I somehow gave you exactly the answer you yourself would later come to, it most likely wouldn’t ring true.”

The demon smiled, and simple thoughts began to clutter the surface of his thoughts again, not that there was much of importance there besides what he was actively saying.

“But I can give you a little advice, at least. Most people who claim to have found meaning in their lives are happy, or at least content. Who’s to say whether that happiness comes before or after the meaning they found? If you pursue what makes you happy, maybe you’ll glimpse a little of what they found.”

It certainly was just a bunch of waxing philosophical, but it was Ulbert talking, so Archimedes took it seriously. And, thinking about it, Vow had offered him a meaningful life, but had he agreed because that was what he wanted? At the time, wasn’t he just looking forward to the chance to be an animal?

On the off chance that he had gotten meaning and happiness confused… Well, pursuing happiness couldn't possibly be a bad thing, right? It might be an easier goal to meet in the short term.

“I suppose I’ll try approaching it from that angle.”

Ulbert nodded. “And, here’s just another thought I had, but if your wish is to have a body that can go out into the world, maybe you don’t have to be a person or an animal. Maybe you can use technology to make a body for yourself, just like how speakers gave you a voice.”

The cavern walls rumbled as Archimedes was struck by yet another acute sense of hope and amazement. He hardly even knew where to begin with such an endeavor, but it was more than worthy enough for him to devote practically all the resources he had to it.

But perhaps he shouldn’t give up on growing himself. Having more resources and processing power might certainly make such an ambitious project more feasible.

“You are not leaving here without my thanks,” the dungeon declared. “It pains me that I lack the mana to lay all the world’s treasures at your feet. I will owe you forever as my benefactor, but I must give you something today, at least.”

“I already told you I don’t need anything,” the demon chuckled.

“You also said I had free rein to look at your memories for as long as necessary,” Archimedes countered, “So, sit there for another while while I gather some mana.”