“Just a damn fire! Dammit! Aaah!” One of Rowan’s henchmen hoisted his mace and shield and charged into the wall of flame.

“No! Stop!” Rowan’s voice didn’t reach the guy as he had lost it.

“Aargh! Ahh!” The brave… foolish man was burned to a crisp before he was able to pass a few steps inside.

Blocked by a wall of flame from both sides, Rowan was put between a rock and a hard place, but he hadn’t given up! “Elementalists! Do somethin’ to disperse the fire and poisonous air ‘round us!”

“Very well!”

“As you wish.”

Fortunately, the fires and explosions didn’t take the elementalists’ lives. And they hurriedly began chanting their respective Elemental Magic spells. Although, there were only two people among them that mastered either Anemo or Hydro Elemental Magic.

“Condense together, O ball of water, and blast forward — {Water Ball}!” A ball of water, formed over the blue gemstone on top of the magic staff, half as tall as Rowan, was blasted straight onto the advancing wall of flames, causing a hole in its formation.

“Spread about, O gusts of wind, disperse everything into oblivion — {Wind Gust}!” From the Anemo elementalist as an epicenter, the winds around him shook violently and dispersed the poisonous gas and stopped the fire from approaching.

“Now! Advance!” With Rowan in the lead, the group followed closely as though his tail.

Despite being low-ranking elementalists that only mastered Low-tier spells at the most, they were still able to put out the raging fire partly to make a path and save the group from being burned alive. Without them, who knew what kind of fate the rest of the people would have experienced by now.

Not far away, Rowan could see an entrance to a room, but there was a boulder barring the path in between. Going around the thing wouldn’t cut it since the fire had spread closer and closer; no one knew when there’d be another explosion.

“Open!” Rowan brandished his ax overhead and roared, “[Great Strength]!” Then smashed the boulder with it, blasting it asunder. With his strength, coupled with his Vocation, blasting an oversized stone wasn’t difficult.

At long last, they leaped in to slip into the room, escaping by the skin of their teeth. Simultaneously, a louder explosion, incomparable to before, exploded behind them, shaking the room they were in violently as hot air gushed inside the room and baking two more unfortunate guys at the back as the smell of smoked meat scattered about.

“Let me!” One of the elementalists stood up and began chanting a spell, “{Earthen Wall}!” He subsequently thrust his magic staff to the floor, and a wall of earth emerged from the ground and blocked the entrance of the room, stopping the hot air from leaking inside further.

“We’re safe…!” one of the men voiced as he tumbled weakly to the ground.

Even Rowan, who had an incredible amount of vitality and strength, gave way as he breathed chaotically, sweat pouring down his body. How many men had been lost in this operation? He didn’t have any spare strength and stamina to check.

Rowan felt that this dungeon was a huge anomaly. He had once explored a dungeon in the past as an adventurer, but he never encountered something this insane.

In fact, pushed by younger passion, he once dreamed of becoming a legend that liberated countless dungeons like the ones in stories. Yet reality had spoken differently.

“Keep your guard up. There might be traps in this room…” Erick warned nearby, taking out his dagger.

Rowan inspected the room. It was dark and murky, thanks to the few remaining lanterns on his hip and the others, however, he could somewhat see around him. The room was sizeable and about as tall as the cave area. He couldn’t see far since the lantern wasn’t bright enough.

“Men! Report to me your numbers by the orders we’d set.”

The remaining of his henchmen began reporting their numbers. To his surprise, Rowan discovered that only about half of them were remaining — exactly fifteen people including him. Two elementalists had died from the fire, but he spotted that the thin hooded man, despite being the weakest, was still alive.

This was a huge loss… Underestimating this dungeon had been a grave mistake. Still, so long as he conquered the dungeon, however many of his men he needed to sacrifice, it wouldn’t matter. Or else, if he were to go back empty-handed, his boss, Zero, would definitely kill him!

“Fuck this!” One of his henchmen stood up and began knocking his sword to the earthen wall. “Let me out! I wanna go home!”

“What the heck are ya doin’? You two, put him down!” Rowan frowned; maybe bringing all these newbies was a mistake as well.

Two of the nearby men complied and quickly grabbed the insane man down as he was screaming, “Let go! Let go of me!” over and over. Finally, he was tranquilized by one of the men with a special Vocation to make him sleep.

Out of the blue, one man reported, “Hey! Check this out! There is a treasure chest here!”

Rowan rushed to the location of the voice without any suspense, followed by all his henchmen. Right in the center of this room, in front of him, was an exquisite iron chest that seemed to contain a boon. As much as he wanted to rush over there and open the chest himself, he instructed the two remaining shield bearers to open it up for him.

As the chest was slowly opened, reflecting the light coming from his lantern were several shining, glimmering metal bars that gave off a golden hue: gold bars — treasures that all men seek. A wide smile subconsciously formed on Rowan’s face, and the same could be seen from all the men around him.

Rowan quickly approached the chest and took out one of the gold bars. Heavy, cold, golden metallic bar brought his heart to beat wildly… His palms were palpitating. The rest did the same and took the gold bars out. One person even bit on it to check its authenticity.

Blinded by greed, the people around almost appeared unhesitant to kill each other. After all, one less person to share the reward with, the more they got later on.

Realizing this, Rowan ordered, “Men, men! Order! Don’t let greed blind us,” putting the gold bar in his hand back to the treasure chest, albeit with hard reluctance.

The rest also understood what he meant and put the gold bars back in their original place. Now was not the time to count their earnings; they could go back to this place to grab the boon once the dungeon liberation finished.

Hence, Rowan instructed his henchmen to look around and found a narrow corridor that seemed to lead to the heart of this dungeon. Since pulling back now wasn’t an option, he decided to let his men have some respite before making a final push in conquering this dungeon.

Vincent’s Perspective

In the interim of them invading the dungeon, I was watching through the menu while munching on a bag of potato chips under the umbrella table inside the pavilion with Lorelei. It was a given that she was given the same snack for fear that she would eat me whole, in which case she enjoyed the chips despite her monotone expression.

Did all Dungeon Cores have a big appetite? Guess that’d be obvious… with them wanting to expand and all.

Still, watching them getting burned and killed had shot my appetite down the drain. Ugh. Those two burned corpses, especially, were still lingering at the room’s entrance. Why had I thought about eating these chips while seeing them being brutally killed? I definitely wasn't right in the head at the time.

“Hm? You seem quite pale. If you would please, have a taste of this delicious tea. It’s effective to raise your mood and relieve any stress.” She presented me with a cup of tea filled with brownish liquid the same way she did in the past.

“Hey! I am not going to fall into the same trick twice!” No matter how thirsty I was, I’d never again touch the tea she offered, even if it was my favorite drink! (I mean as it being lemon tea and all, not because of that “other” thing.)

“Hehehe.” She giggled. “Anywho, how come that the cave area exploded as soon as the torch dropped into the puddle? Shouldn’t it be extinguished instead?”

“Well… it’s simple. Having a conflagrated torch amid the sea of methane gas will result in a big, big explosion.” Of course, that was only if the concentration of the methane gas reached at least 30 percent or above. In the case of the cave area, it was less than 20 percent.

For one thing, too high of the concentration would precipitate the explosion prematurely, that was why I set it “low” (which was still high in the terrain chart) in order to lure them inside first, and the low concentration made the gas mostly piled up below. Therefore, maximizing the number of casualties on their end and cutting off their path of retreat.

Then again, regardless of how small the concentration was, in a closed space like inside the dungeon, the result would be fatal. And if not for the wall being tough and all because of Lorelei’s power, it would’ve caused a cave-in in the worst-case scenario.

Interestingly enough, changing the cave area to a methane swamp cost about two-fifths of its cubic volume, which was then converted to CP at a rate of one-to-one. Most terrains had an average price ratio of 0.5 with the most expensive at exactly one — the price seemed to be heavily influenced by its surrounding terrain, artificially through the Dungeon Menu or not.

Even so, the way that those mages used magics was cool…! I wonder when I’ll be able to do the same, I daydreamed, thinking of using magic.

I checked our earnings thus far; a huge amount of CP had surged in as people got killed with the deadly traps. Nice. I was exhilarated upon looking at our CP reserve that kept increasing, in spite of indirectly killing people… Now, our total CP amounted to a grand total of 2163 CP. Plus, they were still earning us 584 CP daily even after losing almost half of their force — meaning that the stronger ones were still alive and kicking.

Another thing, I noticed our daily CP gain had ticked upward from the original 20 CP to now being about 45 CP — more than double its original amount. This meant that now the dungeon generated almost 2 CP per hour. The increase had been progressive as the dungeon expanded; after all, larger dungeons meant more monsters, and in return, higher maintenance costs.

Concurrently, I kept watching the scene outside as they found a treasure chest containing “golden nuggets” that I had set up just today when I’d woken up as an impromptu. The chest itself was an [Exquisite Chest (50 CP)] mainly made of tough wood and wrapped with iron plates on the edges.

To my bewilderment, the CP provided by them spiked up as the gold bars fueled their desires and brought about their emotions to full motion. How come? Oh, yeah. Lorelei said that emotions are one of the things she partakes of, no?

“Pretty generous, huh? With those gold bars…” Lorelei remarked sarcastically. “Just where did you obtain that many CP to buy those?”

“Oh, those. Those aren’t really gold. Remember when I molded the iron ingots almost as easily as molding clay? I could change a property of an object within a certain limit. It was all thanks to my Vocation — [Programming].”

“Oh, my. How convenient. So why are you giving them those ‘gold’ bars? I don’t see a point in doing so.” Lorelei tilted her head.

“To lure out their human nature…” As a Dungeon Core, being oblivious was natural, so there was a need for explanation. To do that, I mentioned an idiom that I’d prepared beforehand, “To illustrate my point, here’s an analogy: ‘Corner an animal, and that is when it is most dangerous.’ Once those bandits are cornered, they would turn around and bite.” It’s when they get comfortable that they’re in the most danger.

Lorelei went silent for a moment, and a streak flashed momentarily in her amethysts-colored eyes as she seemed to realize something. “Point taken. So the whole reason you’re so roundabout in doing this is to raise their moral, huh. Pretty sinister, I dare say.”

“That’s not all. This would also invoke their greed and force them to go deeper instead of turning tail and running away. There are several more reasons for this that you’ll see later.” I picked up the bag of chips and grabbed one chip out. Mm. Salty.

“So, are there limits to your ability?”

“I’m not sure.” It was the truth, for one I didn’t know what would happen if those pseudo gold bars were to break, would they return to their original form? Wherein I didn’t dare to make counterfeit money if this world used metal currency, since there were too many unknown risks.

Anyway, what was left of the dungeon was the uphill hallway that led to the rearmost room where the Dungeon Core had been moved. There was no price to pay in moving the Core, but there seemed to be an internal cooldown of one day to do this. If the Dungeon Core was to be moved manually from the spot, chances were, it might bring unforeseen consequences like the dungeon losing its power and all.

“All these things wouldn’t have worked so perfectly, well, if it wasn’t for ‘that.’” Sure, I’d expected some margin of error, but they were so kind enough to “help” in perfecting my plan.

“As expected of Vincent — thinking things out of the box and adapting your plans accordingly. It appears that having you as my Dungeon Master is a good thing. Okay, I partially acknowledge you as my master.” Lorelei closed her eyes, seemingly pleased by what she said.

What acknowledging? But being praised feels good, man. Although, I’d been shamelessly taking most of these inspirations from Wikipedia.

“In case push comes to shove, I may need to step in as the dungeon’s final fighter.”

“What do you mean ‘stepping in’? You’re only a weak human.” She said so, yes, though Lorelei wasn’t being sarcastic and more being concerned.

“Welp, I suppose we just need to wait and see — fingers crossed.” To surmount this issue, I summoned more fighters to act as an emergency squad, consisting of ten mildly equipped goblins and kobolds respectively. Likewise, if the situation forced it, I still had one more ace hidden.

Seeing them unknowingly become our cash cow (by taking a rest), I let them be. Hehe. Keep your pointless struggle — since you have come inside, don’t dream about leaving.