Chapter 50: Chapter 46: Dungeon Core

Were they all blind? "Over there. Same place as the rear exit of every other boss chamber."

"There's no door there, Peter. That's just a wall."

I stared. Were they messing with me? Or there was another option; were they not being permitted to see? I grabbed Freya by the wrist and dragged her over.

"Umm? I think I'm being kidnapped here? Seriously, it's just a wall. This is the end of the dungeon."

I stuck my hand through the open door. "What does my arm look like to you?"

Now it was Freya's turn to stare. "Uh... guys? You'd better get over here. Peter is doing a thing again."

The party gathered. Robin whistled. "Well, that's an interesting sight."

"Are you saying you can see a door there?" Xander asked with a sigh. "What's behind it?"

"Yes, the door is exactly the same as any other boss chamber. There's a corridor beyond it. I can only see as far as a right-hand turn. I can't see any sign of a staircase down."

Freya was knocking on the wall just to the left of the door. "Feels like a wall to me."

"You're too far to the left."

"What are you talking about? I'm right next to where you stuck your arm in."

"Close your eyes." These perception blockers are weird... I grabbed her wrist again and pulled it through the open doorway. "Okay, open them again."

"Ahhh!" Freya jerked her arm backwards.

"See? Door."

"That... That did not feel pleasant at all. So how come you can see this door?"

"It's probably some sort of soul affinity perception filter, which I'd be immune to."

Xander was frowning. "Yes, you did say your unique trait had that effect. Why would a doorway be blocked off like that? In any case, it's too dangerous to step through. We don't know what's beyond it, and it's likely to close on us. We'll report it to the guild master."

"Hah, as if he didn't love us enough already."

I can't say I disagreed, but chances are they wouldn't be able to report it to the guild master. If this was like the perception blocks around the law or soul magic, they'd forget all about it as soon as they stopped looking. We all turned around and walked towards the teleporter, which promptly vanished.

"Umm, Peter? Please tell me that's an illusion too, and the transporter is still actually right in front of us?"

"Nope. I just saw it vanish too."

"Damn."

Xander did not at all look happy at this turn of events. "It seems something wants to force us through that door. I was hoping that the quest meant that unusual events around Peter would cease for the next couple of years, but apparently we have no such luck. I still can't see the door, and I'm not sending Peter on his own, so you'll have to lead us all through."

That was interesting. They didn't forget. At least not yet. We ended up forming something of a conga line, Xander at the front and me second, everyone but me with their eyes closed while I manoeuvred us through the door, which did indeed close once we were all through. Everyone opened their eyes and looked around.

"Just like any other dungeon corridor."

"But completely uncharted! We're the first ones here."

Xander glared at Freya. "That's not something to get excited about. Stay on your guard."

Noah was looking around intently. "I don't see any traps," he commented.

"Jared? Freya? Anything you can pick up?"

Jared was running a hand along the wall. "Density here is no different from the rest of the tenth floor, but around that corner my perception cuts off. Something is still hiding."

"Nothing for it but to proceed then. Take our usual defensive formation."

We edged around the corner, which led into another circular room. This one was decorated very differently to any other part of the dungeon. Statues of goblins lined the outer perimeter, highly detailed and similar to the ones outside. There were far more than four of them here though; there was one to represent every type of enemy present in the dungeon. The knight was riding on his wolf, and a statue of the goblin king himself stood flanked by his orc guards.

The walls and floor had a marble effect, rather than the grainy stone elsewhere, and [Appraisal] called it 'dungeon flesh'. That was kinda gross sounding, but the ground seemed solid enough. On the opposite wall to where we entered was a golden plaque, into which was inscribed around thirty names and dates, along with a number. In the very centre of the room stood a cylindrical plinth, on top of which was sitting a white glowing orb, given an odd lunar look by patches of varying brightness.

Subsidiary dungeon core (Rank 4)

Noah was the first to speak. "Still no traps that I can see."

Ever the professional... "Whatever that orb is, the mana flowing through it is insane," said Jared, the next to comment. "From the way it's hooked into the dungeon, it's likely that it's powering the whole thing."

Freya was fangirling, hard. As soon as Noah announced no traps, she rushed over to the dungeon core like, well, like it was a mysterious and powerful magical object that no-one had ever seen before. Which was pretty much the case. Luckily, Xander grabbed her before she could touch the thing.

"For those who don't have the skill, [Appraisal] says it's a rank four subsidiary dungeon core."

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Personally, I was looking at the golden plaque. My first thought was that it was a list of everyone who had conquered the dungeon, but none of my current party appeared. Then I spotted a name that looked far too close to some other names I knew to be coincidence: Cinus. Noah and Robin didn't follow the five letters beginning with C rule. Then again, Camus and Clana weren't blood relatives either, so maybe it was a custom among a whole tribe of catkin or something. I didn't want to think about the other possibility. The date matched up. It was possible that it hadn't been just any delving party Camus had been with, but that it had included family. I touched the name, thinking about how much he hated this dungeon. "Why would it write down their names in a room no-one can even enter?"

T* r*m**b*r.

I spun around, but had no idea where to look. The voice hadn't seemed to come from anywhere. I wasn't even convinced it was a voice. There seemed to be words in there, but they were without any sort of tone or inflection, and were drowning in a sea of static. Or perhaps rustling would be a better description, like a violent wind blowing through a forest. The others hadn't reacted. Jared, Freya and Xander were peering at the core. Noah was inspecting the statues, running a hand along bits of stone. Robin had joined me at the plaque, reading through the names herself. Being closest she spotted my unusual actions first.

"Something wrong?"

"I think something is trying to speak to me, but it's not very clear."

*o **u r*s**t *e? T**y *ade **ei* **oi*e, *** **ey h** **eir ch*n**. **at re*s** h*v* **ey fo* r*g***?

"I'm sorry, but I can't hear you." Everyone was looking at me with concern now, but what else could I do? Who or what was speaking, I had no clue, but it was obvious that I was the only one that could even partially hear it.

N* *at**r. **e **xt ti** y*u **e h**e, m* v*i*e **al* re**h **u.

The room flashed white, and by the time I could see again we were all back on the surface. Apparently we'd just been unceremoniously kicked out of the dungeon. And what the heck was that voice? Was that something different to who had spoken last time? Last time it had been a System message, but that was nothing at all to do with the System. It had been a voice in my head. It was closer to what I imagined telepathy to be like. Telepathy with a very bad signal. Would telepathy be soul magic too? It would have to be specially adjusted to work on me if so. Was something trying to learn to talk to me? But then why wouldn't they just use any other member of my party as an intermediary?

Xander checked over each member of his team. "Thankfully, we all made it out safe. Let's head back to the guild and make our report."

Robin was plodding along melancholically. "That plaque was a list of everyone who had died in the dungeon, along with the date of their death and the floor they died on. I recognised a few of the names."

I hadn't worked out what the last number was myself, but I should have guessed, given that none of them were over ten. I hadn't finished working my way through the names on the list either, but there can't have been many more than thirty of them. If this settlement has been delving the dungeon for over fifty years, and that was a list of everyone, that's considerably less than one incident per year. Probably less than one every two years, considering that a lot of the dates were the same, and were probably multiple people from a single party. With a hundred delvers running it, that's not all that bad, is it? Okay, I'll admit that if a normal job back on earth had a one percent per year fatality rate, there would definitely be problems, but it's still not as bad as everyone made it sound.

Freya was plodding along in silence too. That was strange, given how much she'd been fawning over the dungeon core moments earlier. I'd have expected her to be whining her head off about the forceful ejection.

"Freya, did you get anything else from the dungeon core?"

"Huh? What dungeon core? What's a dungeon core?"

Ah. That explains it. "Never mind. I'm talking nonsense."

I watched her eye me suspiciously, before her face relaxed and she turned away as if nothing had happened. So dungeon cores were off limits too then. But it hadn't done anything about their memories of the door, or the room itself. Seemed weirdly inconsistent.

No-one else had any other commentary to make, and thus we ended up in front of the guild master once more. This time he refrained from headbutting his desk and instead seemed downright cheerful. This was suspicious...

"Don't worry, I took precautions against just such an eventuality. Give me two seconds, then you can start talking."

The guild master reached for a drawer in his desk, pulled out a bottle full of amber liquid and started chugging it. I caught a whiff of alcohol; whatever was in there was strong. Wow, I'm really having a bad influence on people...

"Okay, I'm ready. Go ahead and do your worst."

"There was a hidden exit from the tenth floor boss room, masked with some sort of soul affinity based illusion. Peter's trait let him see straight through it, at which point the exit teleporter vanished, forcing us to exit through the hidden door. That led into a new room which contained statues of the dungeon monsters and a board listing everyone who has ever died in the dungeon along with their date and floor of death. Something in the room tried to speak telepathically to Peter but failed to make itself comprehensible, at which point we were forcibly teleported out of the dungeon."

The guild master looked wistfully at his bottle, then took another swig.

"Fine. Well, that's not so bad. You've discovered some place where the dungeon is apparently keeping score. And that apparently there's something down there that can control the dungeon. No biggy. At least nothing tried to kill anyone any harder than the dungeon normally does."

"About that. I wish to quit this teaching job."

"""What?"""

My voice overlapped with Freya and the guild master.

"I'm sorry, but I need to prioritise the safety of my party. Having a source of unpredictability in a dungeon can be lethal. It's too much of a risk to accompany someone responsible for making exit teleporters disappear or getting us pulled into uncharted regions of the dungeon. Peter has learnt well. If he wishes to continue to enter the dungeon, I see no harm in permitting him to do so alone, or as part of another party that has been briefed on and accepted the risks."

Looks like my 'week' is over in only three days. I can't deny they were productive, but he didn't have to break it off so abruptly... The guild master tapped his bottle on his desk. "You're really having a bad influence on people. I've never known Xander to quit in the middle of a job before, but whatever. What will you do next, Peter?"

Good question. Xander has raised a very valid point; what if I step back into the dungeon and it decides to turn off all exit teleporters? Would it? I still believed that whatever was mucking about with my life didn't want to kill me. There hadn't been any malicious intent at the end there; there were no traps or monsters. I didn't think I'd be at any more risk than anyone else in the dungeon.

"I was planning to return to the village for a bit once my time with Xander's party was over. I may as well do that now. Once I come back, I'll probably do some solo runs on the top few floors."

"Fine. Talk to a receptionist when you arrive next, and I'll make sure we find somewhere for you to sleep. You can sort out your own food, though. And don't forget you owe Silvanus a few large silver for that equipment, so don't stay away too long."

Wait, what? How much? I'd made a couple of small silver today, but that was because I got all the loot from a full dungeon clear. That wasn't the sort of profit I'd make running on my own. Although he wanted me to discover the space and time complex affinity rather than pay him back, and that would take even longer, so he was obviously prepared to wait.

We wandered down to the bar for food before giving our goodbyes, then I ended up back in the dorm for my final night. I lay in bed with [Mana Sense] switched off, trying to feel out my own mana pool. There was certainly something there, but it was almost impossible to grasp. Even so, back when I started I had to dump half of my pool all at once just to feel anything at all. It seemed that my experience with [Mana Sense] had resulted in some improvement to my natural abilities. Maybe if I kept this up, I could learn new magic without having to take the associated classes?

ding

Huh? did this experiment get me something?

For your efforts to uncover the secrets of dungeons, [Researcher] awards 2 soul points.

Sheesh, I didn't have any of them for months, and now I've had two in a few days. This time I want to save the points; rank two stuff is more important.