In the m, I experimented with the snake meat for breakfast. I cut it into small cubes, seaso with paprika, garlid ano, and then fried it up before adding it to a. The first omelet was so good that I ended up cooking over two kilograms of meat with eggs. I k would disappear in no time. As I cooked, I seriously sidered asking Lis to searore of those scary snakes, regretting that I hadn’t ralized the poison from the “damaged goods” s didn’t matter that I personally had over 100 kilograms of this meat—it was just too good to pass up.

  Breakfast was a hit, and Rue, not oo miss out, demanded even more meat. So, I cooked him his own giant steak, which he devoured with gusto.

  After we finished eating, Lis leaned back, the air of a teacher settling around him as he prepared to impart some important knowledge. “Sihis is your first dungeon, there are a few things you o know,” he began, his tone serious but not overbearing.

  Mahya, ever the mischievous one, leaned forward with a grin, clearly enjoying the moment as Lis tinued. “The first and most important thing you should always remember is this: never, ever take the core of a reguted dungeon, no matter the circumstances. It’s a prisoen twenty pert of the worlds and a death senten the hty, regardless of their mana level.”

  That caught my attention. “And what about wild dungeons?” I asked, curious where this was going.

  Lis nodded, as if expeg the question. “Ah, well, that’s different. If you find a wild dungeon and mao clear it, take everything. And when I say everything, I meahing—rocks, trees, pnts, whatever you find. Take it all.”

  “Why?” I asked, not quite uanding the reasoning.

  “Dungeons,” Lis expined patiently, “are not what they seem. They’re maions of mana. Everything you see inside a dungeon is essentially a struana, and there are plenty of people who’d pay good moo take it off your hands. Earth Mages or Architects will buy the rocks; Wood Artisans, like Mahya here, will buy the wood; Enters i-Bcksmiths will buy aals you find; and Alchemists will snatch up the pnts. Usually, nobody bothers with the monsters because they dissipate, but since you harvest them into crystals, you literally take everything in your case.”

  “Iing,” I murmured, seeing the potential. “So ied dungeons, they tell you what you and ’t take?”

  “Exactly,” Lis firmed. “Dungeons typically serve two purposes. The first is bat, whether for training or leveling up, and the sed is resource harvesting. The purpose for which you book the dungeon run usually sets the price for entering. In some pces, if you only want levels, you find paid work clearing dungeons so the harvest teams go to work.”

  “What about selling a wild dungeon?” I asked, thinking about the possibilities.

  Lis smiled slightly, a glint of approval in his eyes. “You have a few options. First, you take everything, including the core, and colpse the dungeon. The core be used or sold for a lot of money, but be careful—many people would kill for a core, so you o be very cautious about how you go about selling it.”

  “Your sed option,” Mahya interjected pyfully, as if she couldn’t resist chiming in, “is to clear the dungeon of materials but leave the core intact. You thehe dungeon’s location, typically at an adventurer’s guild. The price depends on how quickly the dungeees. If you return with the buyer and it’s already full again, the price will be higher. If it’s still empty and just beginning tee, you’ll get less.”

  “Another option,” Lis tinued, nodding to Mahya, “is to sell the dungeon as it is, without going in. The value will depend on the quality of the harvested materials and the regeion speed. And if you’re thinking long-term, like establishing a settlement, you could purchase the nd around the dungeon before anyone else discovers it and start charging admission. Many Travelers have established kingdoms and dynasties this way.”

  “Seriously, kingdoms?” I asked, half in disbelief.

  Lis chuckled softly. “Yes, you’ll meet quite a few Traveler kings and queens. If they don’t have a specific reason to settle somewhere, they typically establish a kingdom or a school. Someday, when I tire of traveling, I pn to start a school somewhere.”

  I shook my head with a ugh. “I ’t see myself as a king or a headmaster.”

  “To each his own,” Lis replied, a faint smile pying on his lips as he tinued his lecture. “Now, about clearing a dungeon. When you go in, you kill everything, because everything that moves inside is a monster. Even if it looks like a cute, fluffy bunny, it probably has razor-sharp teeth and wants to kill you. Evei ants might be venomous or have some nasty paralytic. The rule is simple: if it moves—it dies.”

  He paused to let that sink in, then added, “After you clear a floor, make sure there isn’t a fluardian. If there is, it means the dungeon has more than one floor, and you’ll o kill it too. Ohe floor is clear, start harvesting everything before moving on. Not all dungeons, but many, will close the passage back to previous floors, so if you didn’t it out, you won’t be able to go back.”

  “’t I just leave aer?” I asked.

  “No,” Lis said, shaking his head. “The entrance portal won’t work until the dungeees.”

  “Oh, sorry for interrupting.”

  “It’s okay,” Lis reassured me with a patient smile. “If you don’t ask, you won’t know. As I was saying, clear a floor, it out, and then move on to the . The difficulty level increases with each floor, and the jump is substantial, so be ready. When you reach the final floor, whether it’s the first or the tenth, there will be a final guardian proteg the core. This guardian is much strohan anything you’ve entered so far, and it won’t leave the core. Before fronting it, gather all necessary resources because once you defeat the guardian, the dungeon starts colpsing if you take the core. If you don’t, you harvest after defeating the guardian.”

  “When are we going in?” I asked, feeling both prepared and nervous.

  Lis smiled, his enthusiasm clear. “Now is as good a time as any.”

  We headed to the dungeon, and I must admit, the portal still looked scary as hell. As I stepped through, I felt that familiar force field sensation, like passing through a Gate. Oher side, there was ay area bordered by trees, with a strange haze about three hundred meters out in every dire.

  “What’s that haze?” I asked, puzzled by the sight.

  “Mahya was right,” Lis said. “It’s a young dungeon, and that haze is the border of the pocket dimension. This dungeon is a baby. The core will probably be no bigger than five timeters in diameter, and probably even smaller.”

  “If it’s so young, why were there so many monsters outside?” I asked, trying to piece everything together.

  “Nobody has cleared it yet,” Lis expined.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, fused.

  “Dungeons absorb mana and process it. They use the mana to create the objects you see around you, while the trash is used to create monsters. If the dungeon isn’t cleared regurly, the trash spills out to make room for more trash,” Lis said.

  “A very colorful description,” I ented with a smirk.

  “But very true,” Mahya said.

  Lis surveyed the area and said, “I don’t feel like fighting irees. Rue, would you mind helping t the moo us?”

  Rue gave him a side-eyed look, and Lis reassured him, “You don’t have to fight them; just go to the trees, and wheart chasing you, run back here.”

  Rue trotted toward the trees and stood there, waiting. When nothing happened, he let out a loud howl. We saw some movement irees, and Rue started bag away slowly, then howled again. This time, a group of toothy cats jumped from the trees and charged toward him. Rue ran back to us and stopped beside me.

  As the cats came running, Lis said, “Rue, try to kill as many as you ; you he levels.”

  The fight kicked off with Rue charging into the fray, taking os as they poured out of the trees, soon joined by a few lizards. I stayed back, keeping a close eye on everyone, ready to jump in if things got out of hand. It wasn’t long before I heard Rue yelp—o had sunk its teeth into his leg. Without a sed thought, I dashed over, stomping down hard o’s head and quickly healing Rue’s wound.

  As I was finishing up, a few more cats tried their luck, lunging at me with surprising speed. I didn’t hesitate, swinging my staff and batting them away like they were nothing, sending them flying toward Rue, who made quick work of them. We had a rhythm going—Rue was the powerhouse, and I was the up crew, and together, we were an effit team. I hahe immediate threats, and he disposed of them with precision. It was a smooth operation, and I couldn’t help but feel that, at this moment, we were perfectly in sync.

  After about ten mihe onsught stopped. There were no more cats, lizards, or anything else.

  Lis looked at Rue, clearly impressed. “Your challenge was very effective. Want to give it ano?”

  Rue walked back toward the trees, and I turo Lis and Mahya. “Do either of you need healing?”

  Mahya looked mildly offended. “From level two and three monsters? Don’t joke like that!”

  “That’s their level?” I asked, surprised.

  Lis chuckled. “Fot to identify them again?”

  I nodded sheepishly, and he just ughed.

  Rue’s sed attempt to draw out more monsters didn’t yield as, so Lis said, “You start on the monsters,” and began piling them in one spot. As I worked to encapsute them into crystals, I noticed the process was harder than outside. The monsters dissipated much slower, f me to “help” them break down.

  “Why are they dissipating slower?” I asked, curious.

  “We’re in a dungeon,” Lis expined, as if that answered everything.

  “So?”

  “Monsters dissipate slower in a dungeon.”

  “Why?”

  “There are some theories, but no clusive answer,” Lis said, his tone suggesting he’d heard this question many times before.

  As I tinued w, Rue paced bad forth in front of the trees, howling occasionally but with no success. Once I finished, we moved on to the trees, which Mahya ied.

  “Too young,” she said, shaking her head.

  “So we’re not taking them?” I asked.

  “Of course, we’ll take them,” Mahya said with a grin. “Remember what Lis said, we take everything. I just meant they’re too young for my project, but they’ll be perfect for staves, wands, ented arrows, and the like.”

  It took us hours to cut down all the trees and gather the other pnts. As I worked, I could seheir abundanana, and I uood Lis’s earlier statement that the dungeon’s interior wasn’t real. The pnts, though they looked natural, were more like lumps of densed nature mana. Lis and Mahya assured me they were highly valuable to alchemists, especially sihey were pure.

  We took everything—trees, pnts, rocks, sticks, even fallen leaves—leaving nothing behiually, we spotted a small cave entrance. Lis insisted on doing o sweep to ensure we had missed nothing, and after he returned, we ehe cave.

  Inside, we found a rger cat prowling bad forth in front of a small gold ball h in the air at about knee height. The ball was even smaller than five timeters—maybe three. This time, I remembered to use Identify o.

  Mordere FelidaeLevel 5

  “Want to take care of it, Rue?” Lis asked, his voice calm.

  Rue sprang into a, and within seds, the cat was no more. I harvested its crystal, and then we all touched the core. A wooden ring materialized for each of us. I identified mine:

  Fountain of Health+2% stitution

  I turo Lis, feeling a bit underwhelmed. “This whole thing feels kind of… underwhelming. Was I expeg too much?”

  “No,” Lis said. “This dungeon is too young—only a month or two old. We should have brought Lyura a her clear it on her own. She’s the only one who could have really beed from such a young dungeon.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “judging by the mana level of this world, I was expeg a much bigger challenge.”

  “Well,” Lis said, his teacher’s tourning, “in six months, those cats would have been bigger than Rue.”

  “That big of a difference?”

  “Yes,” Lis firmed. “This core started the size of a grain of sand. It processes mana and grows; as it grows, it process more mana, and the monsters grow with it. In a world with this much mana, a core reach this size in just a couple of months. In a medium-mana world, it would take at least a year.”

  Lis carefully took the core and stored it, and I immediately felt a shift in the air. The surrounding mana became unstable. We stepped out of the cave aed via the dungeon portal.

  “If this was such a young dungeon, would I be able to feel a differen an older one?” I asked, still processing everything I’d learned.

  “If it’s open, you judge by the size,” Lis expined. “If it’s more cave-like, it’s harder to tell.”

  Well, at least now I could call myself a dungeoneer, and I’d ended up with a ridiculous amount of wood. The problem was that I had no clue what to do with it. I mean, what does one even do with this much wood? Build a fortress? Start a lumber business? The possibilities were endless, but holy, I was just bewildered. Ohing was certain, though—I definitely wouldn’t be running out of wood anytime soon.