Chapter 23: Chapter 23: Today we grow not in size, but in quality

Dungeons, as far as we know, have little use for such an abstract thing as money. Yet, they are brim full of it.

Monsters carry coins. Chests are filled with heaps of precious stones and jewels. Mountains of Obols can be found laying around in seemingly random corners and places in some dungeons.

— But to what end?

Sometimes money is used as bait to lure in the greedy and the unprepared into traps and ambushes. Dungeons are well aware of the fact that those who intrude on them are there to make a gain of some sort. This is where we see the origins of the infamous ‘mimic’ monster; a creature that looks exactly like a treasure-chest, belonging to that particular dungeon.

Rare jewels, we can imagine more concrete purposes for, as they are often found embedded in magical mechanisms, or used to summon particularly potent monsters of various elements, corresponding to the type of jewel.

A striking example of this was found in the now destroyed dungeon, the Emerald-Heart. The Emerald-Heart held a natural abundance of rare emeralds in the underground cave-system it appears to have been birthed in. Feasting on the precious stones, the dungeon-core transformed the entire natural cave-system and mine-shaft into a bizarre underground forest full of trees that hung from the ceilings like stalactites, full of incredible natural monsters far beyond its level.

Given the wealth present here, it only made sense to destroy the core and harvest the mine. The Emerald-Heart reached a depth of nearly fifty floors, before it was permanently destroyed and its hollowed out tunnels used as a pre-made mining facility.

As for things such as Obols, our common currency, we simply don’t know.

There are many theories as to where dungeons get these tokens to begin with. Some hold that the dungeons create them through the same process of magical creation as their own walls and floors.

Others argue that the dungeons simply take the coins brought to them by those who fail to survive their incursions.

Others still whisper that dungeon-cores establish rare, secretive connections with merchants, in order to move items between the human economy and their own secretive lives. But this theory makes little sense, as a dungeon-core would simply have no need of money.

It remains a mystery.