Core of Knowledge

Being a dungeon core was a strange existence.

Several months after his rebirth, Xu Han could now say that with some certainty. Xu Han was a stone, a small black stone floating about a metre above the ground. The stone was the core of his existence, he did not have any physical presence in the world outside the stone. Instead of seeing and hearing things through his eyes and ears, he is only able to observe and manipulate the world through a magical viewpoint. He needs to send mana from his core to the surrounding area to see and hear things. It's a curious sensation, and one Xu Han had surprisingly gotten used to quickly.

When Xu Han first awoke, he was only able to view his surroundings. That is still true, but what constitute as his surrounding had changed dramatically over time. For Xu Han has grown, his dungeon has grown, and it now covers three floors. Xu Han was still confined to the dungeon and unable to see outside of it, but being able to observe all three floors of his dungeon was not as bad as it sounds. At least, it wasn’t boring.

About half an hour ago, a big group of adventurers had entered his dungeon. Numbering over fifty, they came together and their presence alarmed Xu Han initially. Xu Han knew his dungeon would not be able to defeat so many adventurers at once, so he immediately informed his dungeon fairy of their arrival.

As the adventurers walked down the long tunnel on the first floor, Xu Han feared the damage such a big group of adventurers could do and was thinking of ways to prevent them from accessing the fog. However, after he opened the connection to let Jemma view what was happening in the dungeon, she quickly put his fears to rest.

According to Jemma, the adventurers were all low-levelled and they were probably here to test his dungeon. The fog on the first floor was in a spatial space, and transporting the adventurers to it takes mana. Jemma said the Adventurer Guild probably sent these adventurers to see how many adventurers the spatial space could take before it stops working.

Basically, the Guild wanted to see the maximum capacity of the floor.

Xu Han was surprised by this. He had never set a limit on the first floor and had a ‘the more, the merrier’ view on the matter. He did not even know there could be a limit to the number of adventurers he could accommodate.

He soon found that there was.

The adventurers turned the corner at the tunnel, and as the fog enveloped them to bring them to the poisonous fog, Xu Han begin to feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t pain or fear, but a distinct discomfort in his core. It was a familiar but forgotten sensation and it took Xu Han awhile to remember what it was.

It was the feeling a person had when they were too full.

Xu Han shocked Jemma when he laughed. As a former cultivator, Xu Han could go for months without eating. He could not remember the last time he had overeaten. It was a nice sensation.

Of the adventurers that entered the tunnel, fifty of them got teleported to the fog. That was his limit, but Jemma assured him that this would increase as he grew more powerful and gained more floors. The few remaining adventurers left behind by the fog had to turn back, but Xu Han had no doubt they would return. For now, he was now more invested in the adventurers in his dungeon.

They weren’t doing well.

“Oh! Another one fell into a pit trap! That’s already the third adventurer to fall victim to them!”

Xu Han chuckled as Jemma shouted in delight, flying in a circle above the dungeon core. Placing the new pit traps in the fog had been a good idea as they had proven to be far more effective than Xu Han had hoped. The dungeon core looked at the adventurer bleeding out in the pit and was waiting for him to expire when the adventurer surprised him by pushing himself off the spikes at the bottom of the pit trap. Xu Han had to admire the adventurer’s toughness and wondered what Class and Skills the adventurer has that allowed him to do this. Once he was off the spikes, the adventurer took out a bottle filled with red colour liquid and drank it. Jemma had called them health potions and Xu Han had to admit he was fascinated by the alchemical drink as he watched it healed the adventurer’s wounds.

Healing items was not unknown to Xu Han. Alchemy was a very respected field in the Crimson Lands, and Xu Han had studied it extensively when he was a cultivator. However, the form of healing was totally different.

Healing items in the Crimson Lands came mostly in the form of pills, but Jemma had informed him that healing liquids were far more common in this world. Xu Han wondered why. Xu Han had absorbed a few bottles of these potions before, but he had never really studied them as he was more interested in improving his dungeon.

Maybe it’s time I get back to being a Sage.

As Xu Han watched the adventurer slowly climbed out of the trap, he felt a wave of annoyance.

“Jemma, do you think I should put poison on the spikes?”

“What? No, of course not. This is just the first floor, you want it to be tough, not impossible for new adventurers to pass through.” Jemma immediately objected.

“It’s not impossible. They just must not fall into the trap.” Xu Han said.

“A deadly trap that already has spikes in them, you don’t need to make them even more deadly than it already is.”

“Well, it’s not deadly enough. Look! This adventurer is going to escape me. With poison…” Xu Han trailed off as his dungeon fairy rolled her eyes.

“Core, you already killed two adventurers with these pit traps. Having one escaping the trap is hardly a disaster, and he is still in your dungeon. You still have a chance of killing him! Besides, having a reputation of being too tough is bad for you.”

“Why not?”

“New adventurers are inexperienced, and the Adventurer Guild usually steers them away from dungeons that are too difficult for them. However, inexperienced adventurers are also easier to kill. For a dungeon, you want new inexperienced adventurers coming to you. In the long run, this is better for you.”

She was right. Xu Han saw where Jemma was coming from, he knew he was being irrational, but as a dungeon core, he really disliked the adventurer escaping his trap. The dungeon core and cultivator sides of his soul warred with each other before the discipline of cultivation overruled his desire as a dungeon core.

Although the adventurers currently in his dungeon were all low levels, their presence were giving Xu Han a steady amount of divine power. It was nothing like the surge of power Xu Han gained from the exploration team the Guild sent earlier, but the sheer number of adventurers within the dungeon was nothing to scoff at either. It would be in Xu Han’s interest for low-level adventurers to continue entering his dungeon, there was something to be said about quantity over quality.

As the duo watched the adventurers fumbled around on the first floor, Jemma suddenly drew his attention to one of the adventurers. Xu Han quickly saw what had caught Jemma’s interest. A lucky adventurer had found one of his new treasure chests.

The chest seemed to have caught the adventurer by surprise as he circled around the chest once before approaching it. If he still had a head, Xu Han could have shaken it in disbelief as the adventure immediately dived away after flipping open the chest. It was totally unnecessary as Xu Han hadn’t trapped any of the chests, but the adventurer must have been informed about the trapped chests at the end of his floors. The dungeon core wondered if he should begin trapping the new treasure chests. It wouldn’t do to disappoint his guests.

Seeing that there was no danger, the adventurer got up and approached the chest slowly. He peeped into the chest and Xu Han saw his eyes widened at the sight of the bolt of silk. The adventurer picked it up, inspected it for a moment, before putting it in his backpack. The adventurer then continued his run to the end of the floor.

Xu Han put the adventurer out of his mind and concentrated on the rest of the adventurers. Three more adventurers fell to his pit traps, but only two of them died. The last adventurer was a warrior of some sort who managed to harden his skin as he fell into the trap. He escaped the trap with only a few scratches.

A wave of annoyance came over Xu Han again. Maybe I should make the spikes sharper. No one can complain about that, right?