The core was having a great time, experimenting with Goblins. His first bipedal monsters, he had many things to test on them. How did they react to mana? Was it possible to make them better looking? How to raise their intelligence? Were they good slaves or bad soldiers? Were among few of them.

As of now, he was seeing whether the Goblins were capable of cultivating or not? As for the Dungeon's condition? It was fairly okay. The population was manageable. They were growing. But the research was more important. He could usher a new era of advancement…although Ms. BB had rather negative opinions on it.

Ignoring her, back to experiments. In his previous few experiments, he had tried runes on them to create something similar to a runic warrior.

In his world, people with low aptitudes would opt to become Runic Warriors and later Totem Warriors. The theory was quite simple. Warriors would extract all of their body potentials and cultivate the physical body instead of spiritual one. Qi would slowly strengthen their bones, muscles, and tendons until they were impenetrable by mortal weapons. Their every punch would have the strength of a wild beast. Later they would trap souls of Spiritual Beasts in ther body, turning them into totems. The totems would grant them the power of that spiritual beast and also few of its abilities. This sounded weak, but a twelve totemic warrior could fight an immortal barehanded.

So he decided to use this method to strengthen them. Although he had to tweak the runes a bit, to support the Goblin body, the results were fairly satisfiable.

Now since half of his Goblins were sporting basic runes, he had started to wonder, whether he could do something about the cultivation situation. Although they had pretty bad physiques, he could work on them…even if barely. In short, they were barely good subjects.

The Goblins had taken these as honors. They believed this to be God’s blessing, of which Ms. BB couldn’t help but make fun of. The runic warriors were now being called. ‘ Garak Dervic.’ Which sounded something like ‘ Grunnntttt Grunt…” and meant Holy Warriors. And, Yes, he was learning Goblinish...if that's what it's called.

As of now, he had his own holy army. Even if they were weak as hell. And Ugly.

he really needed to work on their looks..

‘Now which technique would suit them?’ He wondered.

Suddenly the Blue Box popped in front of him. But this time it was flashing as if doing its best to attract his attention.

On it, large words were written,

DUNGEON IS BEING RAIDED.

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Bastard. The creator of this dungeon was a perverted bastard. Nope, a sadistic perverted bastard.

Alyssa, couldn’t help but fume thinking about the Dungeon. They had entered the Dungeon in the morning. Now it was almost evening and the end wasn’t in sight. And throughout the way, they had been harassed by all sorts of wicked creations. The creatures by themselves were not a problem, but keeping a lookout for their frequent ambushes was becoming a torture.

You would wonder, how was a B-Rank party being meesed up?

Blame thir over confidence. They had dived in, without any preperation, and they were sorely paying for it. The Dungeon was simply using quantity to overpower their quality!

Moreover, a party with a build such as them was already weak in melee combat. Their party was supposed to be a scouting party. Additionally, in case of fights, they preferred guerilla tactics and long range fighting, over headlong battles. And now they were paying for it. Heavily.

Archers weren’t of much use in a cave. And when the field itself was narrow, rangers were almost useless. Their movement was limited. Their best ally 'shadow' was useles, as the monsters were more suited to darkness than them. In short, the Dungeon was like their perfect nemesis.

When they had entered, the first problem was the frequently twisting tunnels, with their irregular and sloped floors. Keeping your balance on them, especially during fights was a tiring task. Adding the frequent stalactites and stalagmites constraining their weapons, fighting was turning out to be difficult. You couldn’t swing your weapon properly to gather the force required, as half of the time the carefully arranged rocks would interrupt it.

And did she mention it was dark? Like a pitch black dark? If not for their high ranks and two of their team members being rangers, they wouldn’t even be able to walk. And finally navigating that treacherous terrain with its pits and rocks, in dark, with little or no visibility, was something straight out of the stories of Hell, which the Light Church kept ranting about.

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And the wind blowing inside the cave would frequently pass through cracks and crevices on the wall, creating an eerie whistling noise. This all kept them taut and gave them no chance of relaxation.

Overall that, she couldn’t fathom why all the pointed rocks were specially sharpened and covered with metal tips until she was almost poked to death by them. Of course with their level, such thing couldn't hurt them, but it was uncomfortable. Swinging your hands, to be poked by something sharp, or trying to take a rest an getting poked on your butts, wasn’t exactly comfortable. Unless of course, you are a masochist, which would be the perfect sort of fetish for visitors, visiting this dungeon.

The moment they had left the entrance tunnel, what visited them was a large cavern. Similar to the tunnel the cavern was rugged and sharp as hell. But a much-visited change was the slightly phosphorous light and the twinkling lights on the roof.

They were incredibly beautiful. All of them couldn't help but look at the magnificent scenary dumbstruck. The green glowing lights were like beautiful stars in the sky. It was like a paradise on earth. Incredibly beautiful. Just to see this, the Dungeon was worth visiting. No one spoke for a while, as if speaking would break the beautiful harmony.

Finally, Joshua couldnt help but ask, " What is that?"

Hearing this Ronald quietly left to see its source. He came back with glowing mushrooms, ferns, grass and lichens. Turns out due to absorbing large amounts of mana, the fauna here was releasing the excessive mana as energy in light form, and thus creating the incredibly beautiful scene.

Joshua was quite interested in them and spent a few minutes carefully observing them. He would note down his findings in a small notebook, hidden in his sleeves. But he would frown every few seconds as if confused. Finally he took few samples, carefully storing them in a box.

While doing this, he warned others, " There are monsters here. These plants show signs of being eaten. Be careful."

Nodding, they strengthend their grips on the weapons.

Once Joshua was done, they again started walking.

But soon they would realise that the beautiful lights were their worst enemies. The phosphorous light was casting eerie ghastly shadows here and there. Many times they had mistaken the shadows as monsters, and other times they had almost missed the traps on the floor.

Despite the cavern being large, people could only walk on fixed defined paths. Large stone pillars made due to the joining of stalactites and stalagmites seemed to support the whole cavern. Beside them small similar rocks covered the whole ground, leaving only a maze-like fixed path to walk on.

To understand what these rocks were made of, Ronald attacked with full force, even using mana to empower it. It was to be understood, that although B-Rankers didn’t have the power to flatten mountains and tear earth, they could definitely destroy a small hill. But the result shocked everybody.

The rocks were unharmed except for few scratches.

“ What the hell?” exclaimed Xo.

Although a dungeon’s interiors were strong, they wouldn’t be strong to such an extent. Apart from walls, the inside of the dungeons was usually easier to destroy. Dungeons rarely would spend their mana on strengthing the interior. Only when the dungeon has existed for a long time, would the rocks become almost unbreakable, due to constant mana absorption.

“ How old is this Dungeon?” questioned Ronald. He was sure of the power of his strike. So the result shocked him the most.

“I believe it’s a new Dungeon!” commented Joshua. Joshua rarely spoke, but when he did everybody listened. Joshua was a scholar by nature. Not even he knew how many books had he learned by heart. He continued, “ Firstly, the entrance is new. The edges are still sharp and the surface is still fresh and hasn’t been worn down yet. Plus, did you notice? All the grass and fungus, are still new. Usually in old dungeons plants would evolve. Here they are the same as outside, apart from the high mana concentration…”

“ In fact, this bugs me. How can a new dungeon have such high mana levels? But all evidence shows that the Dungeon is a newly born dungeon! And all this, it's like someone playing a psychological warfare with you. Everything here is designed to keep you out of sorts!”

“ The darkness, the howling of the wind, the sharp rocks, this damn unwalkable floor…it’s not at all like a new dungeon!”

Suddenly he stopped after finally noticing the strange gazes of all his teammates. As if realizing something, his face blushed, and he muttered an apology, “ So-Sorry.”

“ What are you being sorry for?” asked Xo, to Joshua. “But boy, did you speak! If not for us being understanding, most people will think you are a mute…You really should start speaking more…”

“ That’s enough Xo. He understood what you want to say!” intervened Annie. Xo was a chatterbox, a wouldn't stop, once you gave him the chance to speak.

“ As for now, note this in the report. We will let the captain decide. We should focus on completing the floor.” Continued Annie, prioritizing what was important. They couldn’t do anything anyway. As for now, their only way was to move forward.

But no one noticed Joshua scowling after hearing this.

They moved forward when Alyssa suddenly yelped. And before anyone knew what happened Lyssa found herself in a large pit. The pit was filled with some black color weird pellets, which simply smelled disgusting.

“ What the heck is this!” she cried.

All of them stared at her.

“ How did you fall into a trap?” Annie asked angrily. Such silly mistakes! What would the people say if they hear that a B-ranker fell into a first-floor trap!

“ I-I-I don’t know…One moment it was fine, and another moment I was here…” she cried. Tears were already forming in her eyes. “ Pull her up!” commanded Anne.

Looking at this Ronald was confused. He was sure that there was no trap here.

’ What the hell happened?’ was all he could wonder.