Battle Masters on fourth-class flying monsters approached the boat and asked where we were headed. After listening to Raman’s response, they took imprints of our auras and flew away. The path was clear, so we continued our flight.

  Late at night, we saw the lights of the city of Zrakal on the horizon. Flying over any city of the Empire was prohibited, so we landed a few kilometers from the city walls and decided to spend the night on the boat rather than look for an inn for just one night.

  In the morning, we switched to a gah and headed for the Adventurers’ Guild.

  Zrakal was significantly larger than Matan, though still smaller than the kingdom’s capital. Here, too, many magical machines and devices were used in the city’s infrastructure, such as street lighting, traffic regulation, and even public transportation. Bright advertising and informational projections flickered everywhere on the streets, inviting citizens to work or spend their leisure time at local entertainment establishments.

  It all seemed strange to us, as we had seen nothing like this in Matan. Indeed, the Empire even differed in its pace of life, being far ahead of the kingdom. At the entrance to the Adventurers’ Guild, I checked the auras of those present and the building itself.

  There were many powerful warriors and mages, among them several high-degree Battle Ancestors. We stepped inside.

  The main difference from the Vangan Guild was the large number of beastkin adventurers, and not only among warriors—I also noticed several beastkin mages.

  Interesting. Until now, I had thought such did not exist.

  We quickly approached the information counter and asked to register as adventurers. The guild officer handed out forms. I refused mine, simply showing my golden plaque.

  After reviewing the collected forms, the officer asked the team members to confirm the number of their magic circles.

  The first was the Rector. He cupped his palms, and within them, seven interwoven magic circles ignited. The officer stamped a confirmation on the paper card and inserted it into a device, which, after a few seconds, produced a silver adventurer plaque.

  Strange. Given the Rector’s strength, I had thought it would be gold. Are the requirements higher in the Empire?

  The process continued in a similar manner—the team members took turns displaying their circles and receiving their certificates.

  Overall, it began to feel like a conveyor belt—I saw visitors at nearby counters also receiving new silver and bronze plaques.

  How many people register here per day? A hundred? More? For a multimillion-person city, this is a massive number. Where do all these adventurers go?

  For example, the entire guild of the Principality of Atun, which was wiped out, had only a little over forty members at full strength. Could there really be thousands or even tens of thousands here?

  Damn, with such numbers, the dungeons here should be empty.

  “Excuse me,” I asked the officer, “can you tell me if there are any rules for entering the dungeon? Or, for example, a limit on hunting monsters in it?”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. A provincial… all these newcomers…

  “No, nothing like that. Whatever you kill is yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  We stepped outside.

  “Something bothering you?” the Rector asked me.

  “Yes, a little. To me, there are too many adventurers here. The dungeons can’t generate enough monsters for everyone. Maybe they’re hunting something else in the dungeon, so please, be careful.”

  Everyone turned serious.

  “Captain, are you saying that conflicts between teams over loot are possible in the dungeon?” Gras asked me.

  Look at that, how perceptive.

  “I have reason to suspect so.”

  We boarded the gah and set off toward the dungeon, which was located not far from the city.

  On the way, we encountered both lone adventurers and entire groups, though their numbers were not as high as I had expected.

  At the entrance, the guards checked our plaques and let us in. Unlike the dungeons I had been to before, this one had a forested area right from the first level. Strange, since in Vangan, adventurers had told me that all dungeons on the continent had a similar structure.

  Another difference was that the distances between transitions were significantly shorter—not more than a kilometer.

  I spread my senses to determine the number and strength of the monsters around us. Only first-class, and in vast numbers. Along with the monsters’ auras on this level, I sensed the auras of several dozen people.

  “Let’s go. It’s just first-class here.”

  We kept descending—I wanted to find a level where there were roughly equal numbers of third- and fourth-class monsters.

  We stopped on the twelfth level, where I sensed over a million monster auras matching my criteria.

  “Alright, folks, let’s move a few kilometers to the side and begin. I assume you’ve all studied the weak points of monsters of this class, so there shouldn’t be any issues with eliminating them.

  Don’t just fire indiscriminately—try to aim so that each strike kills at least one monster.

  You’re all fifth, sixth, and even seventh-circle mages, meaning you’re at least two classes above these creatures.”

  I could see they were ready.

  Finally, I stopped and looked around.

  We stood on a rocky hill overlooking a vast, forested plain.

  A perfect spot.

  I checked the surrounding auras again.

  There were a few human ones, but they were dozens of kilometers away, so I wasn’t worried about affecting them.

  “Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll summon a wave of monsters on us.”

  “Aney,” the Rector smiled, “watch closely—now you’ll see what a seventh-circle mage is truly capable of!

  Dear students, please give me five minutes to prepare, after which you need only observe.”

  Wow, bold statement.

  “Rector, just not your asteroids, please! We won’t find a single core left!” I asked him.

  “Don’t worry, Aney, asteroids are sixth-circle spells. Now, with so many enemies, I’ll have to use seventh-circle spells!”

  So, when I sparred with him, he wasn’t fighting at full strength?

  “We’re ready!” Irgen gave the command.

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  I flew into the air above them and sent a few drops of my blood into the sky. When they disappeared into the swarm of insects, I removed the aura shell from them, causing a massive sphere of fire to bloom above our heads. Within a second, all the insects in the sky fell down, revealing our location to the monsters. They all immediately turned their heads in our direction. There were three types of monsters on this level.

  Ummus – a large, shaggy beast covered in gray fur, which also served as protection. Somewhat clumsy in everyday behavior, it was a strong opponent in battle due to its brute strength and sharp, hook-like claws on long limbs. This creature was of the fourth class and could even stand against a third-class warrior of medium rank.

  Tamar – a nimble, small fourth-class monster that preferred to live in trees and hunt prey from above. Physically not very strong, but incredibly fast.

  Musi – similar to Tamar but much smaller in size. Some believed that Tamar was an evolved form of Musi, but that was a false assumption; they were completely different species.

  And so, the entire horde simultaneously launched an attack on us from all corners of the level, even the most distant ones. My team created several rings of obstacles around our hill using spells of wood, earth, and metal elements. The first wave of monsters, numbering several tens of thousands, mostly perished upon them, but a second, even larger wave was approaching from behind.

  Meanwhile, the Rector also rose into the air, closing his eyes and spreading his arms. White sparks began flying in various trajectories around him, leaving a luminous trail in the air. It looked as if he was painting… a sketch?

  Meanwhile, the battle below raged on—dozens of wind, ice, fire, and steel blades sliced through the monster hordes like a hot knife through butter, killing hundreds of creatures every second as they relentlessly tried to reach the top of the hill and tear us apart.

  The slopes around us became shrouded in a bloody mist, drowning in the constant roar of dying creatures. A fragile moment of equilibrium arrived—while the mages couldn’t completely clear the hill of the constantly arriving monsters, the creatures themselves also couldn’t reach the peak where we stood. Just in case, I prepared to release my puppets if the team couldn’t withstand the pressure of the beasts.

  Suddenly, the space around the Rector began to change. The glowing trails of sparks around him grew denser, forming the outlines of a giant flower with seven petals, with Raman himself at its center. The denser the patterns on the petals became, the more the flower opened, lifting the Rector upwards with its central part.

  As the pattern neared completion, the sparks dimmed and returned to the Rector. When the dense, three-dimensional ornament was finally finished, the petals unfolded parallel to the ground, and above each of them appeared large, seven-layered magical seals of steel-gray color.

  It looked so fantastically beautiful that I completely stopped paying attention to the monsters. The flower slowly began to rotate in the air, and between the seven groups of magical seals hovering above its petals, lightning discharges appeared. Within seconds, these thin streams grew into full-fledged rivers of thick electric arcs.

  Raman opened his eyes, which shone with lightning, possibly even brighter than his magical seal, and scanned the battlefield. He turned his palm toward the advancing monsters, and from his magical seal, with incredible speed and the thunderous sound of space being torn apart, thousands of small, sharp steel cones shot out, each finding its target. The moment one of these cones pierced a monster’s body, an explosion followed, reducing the creature to dust.

  What power! Within a minute, tens of thousands of monsters had been turned into a bloody mist hanging in the air, but the Rector didn’t stop. Pointing his palms around him, he continued directing his attacks farther and farther away, expanding the area of destruction for kilometers!

  Damn! I was amazed—seventh-circle mages were far beyond what I had imagined. My fifth-circle Inferno was nothing but child’s play. Within ten minutes, I could no longer sense a single monster aura on the entire level.

  Weapons of mass destruction. Seventh-circle mages were damn weapons of mass destruction. No ordinary human army, which usually consisted of warriors and Battle Masters, could withstand such firepower.

  The flower beneath Raman began to slow its rotation and eventually stopped, then disintegrated into thousands of bright sparks that slowly faded as they fell to the ground. After the last one disappeared, the Rector descended to the earth. Firefly-like insects leisurely rose toward the black sky.

  “That was incredible, Rector!” I was the first to exclaim.

  “Huuuu,” he exhaled. “Now you’ve seen what the highest-circle mages are capable of, and why they are considered the decisive factor in wars.”

  “Yes, I understand much better now…”

  “Let’s not waste time,” Raman said with a wide grin. “Time to collect the cores!”

  This time, I released all my puppets to help, so within an hour, all the cores were piled up high in the center of our team.

  “Whoa! These are seventh-class puppets!”

  “Captain, where did you get such luxury? They’re not even sold in the kingdom!”

  “Aney, I don’t want a sixth-class puppet; I want a seventh-class one!”

  Ignore them, just ignore them…

  “One million one hundred sixty thousand and eight cores.”

  With my aura, I divided the pile into eleven equal parts, considering the class of the cores as well, and handed each person their share, keeping only two third-class cores and one fourth-class core for myself.

  “In the end, that’s one hundred five thousand four hundred fifty-five cores per person.”

  “No, you’re mistaken. There are twelve of us,” the Rector said.

  “No matter. Better give me a day’s time and wait for me here.”

  “You want to go down?”

  “Yes, I can’t shake the feeling that something is off about this dungeon. I hope I can find an answer below.”

  “Alright, but let’s get out of this bloody swamp first.”

  We moved a good ten kilometers away from the battlefield and set up camp. Once again, I released fifty puppets with orders to guard. No one but the God of War would dare to attack such a force.

  “One day!” I said again and rushed toward the passage leading down.

  I couldn’t clearly say what was bothering me. The absence of plains on the first floors? The abundance of monsters despite the number of adventurers in the dungeon? Maybe yes, maybe no.

  I covered the distances between transitions in just a few seconds. On some levels, I stopped briefly to assess the strength of the monsters there.

  Fifteenth level – the main mass of monsters were fifth class.

  Eighteenth level – sixth class.

  Twenty-first level – seventh class.

  Twenty-fourth level – eighth class.

  From the twenty-fifth level onward, I moved between transitions more cautiously, as there was a high probability of encountering a ninth-class monster, and I didn’t really want to fight one right now. I first sensed such a monster on the twenty-sixth level, but it was far away, so I easily moved to the level below.

  As I continued descending, I approached the transition exit cautiously, carefully scanning the area around me. I was lucky and reached the transition from the thirty-first level—where I couldn’t even roughly measure the monsters’ auras—to the thirty-second level without any incidents.

  I carefully approached the exit. On this level, the sky no longer shone with yellow-orange light but merely glowed dimly. And there was no aura of any monsters—the level was completely empty. I stepped outside. As far as the eye could see, there was a vast, smooth, black stone surface.

  I crouched down and ran my hand over it—stone, polished as if it had been sanded, without a single bump or crack. I hadn’t expected this. I looked toward where the transition to the lower level should have been, but it wasn’t there. I walked in that direction and soon noticed a low hill covered in a web of fine cracks. How strange—right here, in this very spot, the transition was supposed to be.

  I sharpened my senses and tried to peer into the depths of the stone. Darkness… darkness… and then suddenly, the stone shifted, and I saw something familiar several meters deep. I covered my fist with aura and struck the hill with all my strength. The black stone shattered like a husk, and beneath it, I saw a familiar gray surface covered in strange runes.

  There was no mistake—two identical gray cubes were already lying in my storage! I quickly broke the surrounding black rock, clearing the cube on all sides. Sitting on the edge of the pit I had made, I stared at my discovery for a long time. Damn, this thing looked like a sapling or… a seed?

  A seed from which a dungeon grows? I laughed aloud at the thought. But… it seemed very, very logical! And it could very well be the only correct answer. I approached the gray block and placed my hand on it. Solid gray stone—except for the bones in my right hand, which were covered in a web of green veins.

  So, here was the pair to the one lying in my storage. For a moment, I froze. If my guess was correct, and these stones were dungeon seeds, then someone had tried to destroy Matan by creating a dungeon full of monsters in its place? Meaning my previous conclusion—that the God of War had placed the stone on my teacher’s house out of personal revenge—was wrong? And he had actually intended to destroy the entire city where my teacher had lived for so many years?

  Well, bastard, I’ve memorized your aura well.

  I tried to store the stone in my storage, but it only trembled slightly and wouldn’t move. Hm. I pressed both hands against it and attempted to shift it. Slowly, it began to move, but something seemed to be holding it back, pulling it back into place—like… roots?

  I pressed with all my strength until the black rock beneath my feet began to crack and crumble. I reinforced it with my aura and increased the pressure. Suddenly, a loud, high-pitched sound echoed across the level, like a thin string snapping, and in the same instant, the gray cube flew to the side.

  And in the place where it had stood, a hole appeared—beneath it flowed a river of liquid mana, a perfect twin of the one beneath the Vangan dungeon.

  Oh ho ho! What a discovery!

  I quickly stored the stone and, forming mana circles with absorption runes around me, jumped into the river of mana. Oh, my dear, how I had longed to swim in you again!

  Enjoying the absorption of such pure mana, I closed my eyes… The best sensation of my life. I observed as my internal organs slowly changed, replacing their native cells with new ones, built entirely from pure mana!

  After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and realized that the hole above me—the one I had jumped into just moments ago—was shrinking.

  Damn!

  Like a scalded cat, I shot upward, barely managing to pull my legs out of the hole before it rapidly shrank and disappeared within seconds without a trace.

  That was close!

  I doubted I could have broken through several meters of solid rock while floating in liquid mana.

  I listened to my body.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t even a hint of reaching the God of War level, but I had definitely become stronger than I was thirty minutes ago. Much stronger.

  Well, that was still a result.

  I wandered around the thirty-second level for about an hour, watching the hole I had made gradually vanish, then headed for the transition back up.