Heaven's Greatest Professor

Chapter 31: Dungeon Core

Warden sighed in relief. The complete silence in the surroundings was more than welcoming, considering he had been inside the dungeon for half a day.

He didn't know the amount of time he took to clear it was slow or efficient. He was certain a group of well-based team of adventures would do a great job of it, but he wasn't so sure about the lone warrior.

Well, considering his current attributes and upgraded weapon, he was pretty sure he could complete the dungeon within a couple of hours if he was desperate enough. His strength almost doubled in the last few hours, which was great, even though he couldn't say this was a healthy exercise.

He figured the only reason he grew so much was because he could hunt creatures stronger than him. But now with his Strength reaching iron grade, it would be a lot more difficult. He would have to hunt Silver-rank creatures to get similar benefits as far as he was concerned, which would be quite tough even with two legendary and rare equipment.

Ignoring the disparity of stats, Warden hadn't become a true Iron rank in spirit. Well, his Spirit was always on the periphery of Iron rank the moment he woke up near the stream, but attribute points weren't everything. It matters more how you use it.

And only opening more hidden apertures would let him do that. It was the only possible way to use the untapped power of his attributes. With one aperture opened, void energy's capacity would remain below 5%. Of course, it was still devastating to a fault, tearing even his own body.

So far what he fought was only a mindless beast that couldn't even put a defence against the void energy, but the equation would be different if he was up against a true elite warrior. Warden put those thoughts away and looked around. He had collected most of what precious things he could extract from the beast, which were mostly limited to beast cores and their heart.

"Now it's time to get out," he muttered, unsure how to go about that. If he wasn't wrong, he would have to find the gate through which he entered. But killing all the dire wolves inside only stabilised the monster spawn, it didn't seem to clear out the criteria for why the dungeon was formed.

In time, the monster would spawn again and again, would attack the nearby villages in their hunger. Adventures would always have to dungeon dive once in a while to keep the villages safe.

"Not unless I destroy the dungeon core," Warden thought aloud.

His distracted mind seemed to give one sneaky little ghost the bright idea that he would be vulnerable to its attack.

A semi-corporeal wolf sneaked on him from behind and was just about to pounce on him, unaware Warden was conscious of such an attack the very moment he killed the Dungeon boss.

Before the ghostly invisible spirit could even make contact with him, his clock flashed in dark purple, pinning it down on the ground.

"I knew something was fishy when I managed to kill you before so easily," he said, leaning to make eye contact.

It was, of course, the ghost wolf in its spirit form. It hadn't died when Warden had killed the cursed wolf it fused with, however, it did seem to have weakened by a fair margin. Against the power of [Void Shroud], it had no power to contend with.

In the end, it seemed to resign to its fate and acted docile, giving kind puppy eyes.

"Now who's a good boy?" Warden asked, as the ghost wolf woofed. "Who's a good boy?"

"Woof!"

"Well, definitely not you," Warden snorted. He masked his palm with the void aura and pushed through the head of the beast. It felt like pushing against a tangible element which was registering your touch. The beast understood exactly what Warden was aiming for, as its entire demeanour changed into scared shitless.

It howled one last time in struggle, but Warden found its unique core pretty easily and forked it out, tearing through the spirit form of the creature.

Its actual death wasn't as swift and deserving, as what it went through now, as its whole form disintegrated into nothing. Warden felt bad killing it slowly like that, but he had no other way. Well, other than crushing the unique core, which he figured should be studied.

[Iron grade energy harvested.]

[+1.2 Spirit.]

With that, Warden searched around to find the dungeon core. His loss of memory didn't provide any hints of where it could be, but once he calmed down from all the battle frenzy, he managed to track down the pulsation of void energy along with some other nearing the other part of the ragged terrain.

Warden found a cave, smaller than the one in the real world. Within it, he found the dungeon heart. It was similar to the gate, only that far more condensed and as big as a human head, thousands of strands of the weave of energy lines spilt from it, tangible and intangible to form the dungeon subspace.

Other than void energy, there was dimension force, gravity, and probably matter, and antimatter.

Warden wasn't sure if he should cut down the link first or simply destroy the core safely. Take note of the word safely, as a heavy hand experiment might lead to the dungeon imploding or exploding. Warden didn't know which it was, but he surely wouldn't survive an implosion.

He tried to cut the connection to the subspace first, but all his efforts turned useless as the core re-established the connection in mere seconds. There seemed to be a mechanism in it.

Perhaps I should leave it behind, he thought as an idea grew in his mind. Or perhaps. . .

Warden acted on his gut feeling and touched the football-sized dungeon core, wondering if he could manipulate it somehow. If he could somehow draw in the void energy and time the explosion right, then possibly. . .

[Void Prison Realm is trying to access Grade-8 dungeon subspace: Wolf's Next.]