Regardless, I went ahead and did what I’d come here for — extracting information.

“You there, hey, can you respond?”

I called out and waved my hand in front of their faces one by one, but it still took them a few seconds to finally regain some life in their eyes.

“Sir, I am at your command.” The thin hooded man was the first to respond and quickly bowed to his knees.

While I had some dealing with him when he was first brainwashed, I never interacted with him directly, so it came as a surprise that he recognized me. I guessed all minions under the dungeon had some sort of way to recognize their master — brainwashed humans included.

“S-Sir…” The elementalist in a robe soon followed with the same reaction.

Rowan weakly raised his head like a lifeless man, and his eyes enlarged upon seeing my face, then like he had just seen a ghost, he bowed down with his head on the floor. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for having killed you! Sir, please mercy!”

“They may be brainwashed, but they still possess some awareness, huh?”

“Well, after observing you, I guess having a thoughtful puppet would be more useful than a mindless one.” She shrugged her shoulders in honesty.

She got a point, but why use me as an analogy there…? I smiled wryly in response to Lorelei’s answer.

But funnily enough, he was one tenacious guy. To survive, he could betray his teammates, turn tail, and even fight back in desperate situations, and was now even begging for his life, even though he was essentially brainwashed. Still, not once had he resigned to his fate. Watching him struggle from behind the screen was very exhilarating.

“All right, no need to be so melodramatic. I’m still alive and am your master right now, and that’s what you should know.” Now their fates were worse than death… Still scared of death but living a life that was basically torture without being able to get out of it at all.

Rowan bashed his head on the floor, blood dripping out from his forehead as he implored, “Sir— No, yes… Master!”

I didn’t mean to have myself be called “Master,” but I figured that it was all fine considering my position as a Dungeon Master. Better be used to being called this sooner than later.

“Enough. I want to ask you several questions. First, where is this dungeon situated exactly?” Knowing would be of the essence. Although slim, if this dungeon was located within some kind of sheltered forest, I didn’t know what I should do…

“Are you really going to gather information so manually?”

“What do you mean by that, Lorelei?” Wasn’t what I did the kind of normal interrogation? Kind of similar to one good cop and another bad cop… Ohh, is she playing the bad cop here? Nah, I’m thinking too far.

“I could extract crucial info straight from touching their heads — the kind similar to how I gained general knowledge from you.”

“Oh.” That was pretty neat, I’d say. However, having no such ability, I continued, “Answer my question.”

“Yes, yes. Master, this place’s within the Great Elion Forest, a dangerous and all but uncharted forest with a lack of human activity nearby.”

“I see.” I went silent for a moment. “Then, what is the point of interest in the four cardinal directions from here?”

“To the west…” Rowan explained everything he knew about the surrounding area, and I was quite surprised to find out what surrounded us.

To the west, there was a mountain range spanning hundreds of kilometers known as “Obsivel Mountain Range.” He said that his organization — the Axiom Order — was situated there. To the north was uncharted land, and he explained that the place was usually described as the “Wilderness Land.” As for the east and south… the southeast seemed to be another mountain range of similar size. While the south, located between the large break of the two mountain ranges, hosted a large human settlement, a fortress city called “Xenonia.”

With the Dungeon Map function in a 2D map setting, I was only able to see as far as ten kilometers surrounding the dungeon, but I couldn’t see anything beyond that. In that case, the city must have been located more than ten kilometers southward.

“A town, eh? Tell me more regarding this place: its government and everything you know about it.”

“As you wish.”

Rowan continued with his storytelling, informing me about the type of government the place had, their political situation, their technology, and so on, without raising a single doubt about why I didn’t know such simple knowledge. I also asked him about the total population of this place, but he said that he wasn’t aware of the details. Even so, this was an eye-opener to an outsider like me.

“Lorelei, is what he said the truth?”

Looking as though her pride had been hurt for whatever reason, she remarked while crossing her arms, “I can vouch for that. You don’t need to worry about them lying.”

“Oh, okay.”

It came as quite a surprise that Lorelei had mastered this world’s language when the first brainwashed invader was put under her control. She must have used the time interrogating them to perfect her mastery over the language, which also included writing.

At any rate, the world was big and full of wonder. To the south alone was the “Vatenxia Kingdom,” a large feudal nation stretching hundreds if not thousands of kilometers in length and width. It was also a nation said to possess the most advanced “technology” among the surrounding nations; I could only wonder what sort of civilization they had. Though my hope was smashed when looking at the equipment of Rowan’s gang.

I clenched my new coat as I spoke. “I really want to go there.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m thinking of going to the city.” Staying would make me a frog in a well… There’s a bigger world out there, and to make this place safe from any dangers, I better get my ass out there.

“Are you intending to abandon me?” Expressionless, she took a step toward my direction while clenching her hands together.

“N-No, of course not! I won’t survive if something bad does happen to you. However…” I looked at Rowan and questioned him about what he knew about dungeons.

To put what he said in a nutshell, dungeons were almost everywhere. Whenever there was a mana vein converging in an area, it would gradually form a dungeon. Obviously, it came in varying sizes as well, from as tiny as like the one we started to something humongous that no one could even dream of fully exploring its depth in their lifetime.

Furthermore, he talked about the Adventurer’s Guild, which was an organization that controlled adventurers, managed dungeons and classified them under different threats and types. Some of these dungeons were volatile and oftentimes released monsters out to the surface. Consequently, a group of “liberators,” elite adventurers that liberated dungeons, were dispatched out to destroy them. This act of conquering dungeons was also known as “liberation” for whatever reason.

On the other end of the spectrum, dungeons that were more peaceful and brought benefits to the people were set as “protected dungeons.” However, he wasn’t aware of the prerequisites and how a dungeon was made so. After all, even Rowan, a middle-echelon member of a large underground organization, wouldn’t be all-knowing, even less so about the other two.

When the whole infodump seeped inside my mind, I was now wholly aware of the situation we were in. Maybe it would be in my best interest to make this dungeon a protected dungeon, but I would only do so when I was confident that this place had adequate forces and sufficient information. Otherwise, I’d only invite trouble for being ignorant and unprepared.

Afterward, I asked several more questions regarding things that I found curious, like why people with Vocations had to shout their Vocations when they used them. The answer was actually not because they thought it was cool to do that.

Incidentally, some Vocations could only activate when said, and in fact, my Vocations — [Developer Interface] — worked similarly. Though, I didn’t need to shout it out loud and only had to utter it inside my mind. Conversely, some activated passively, in which cases they could actually bring disaster to the holders themselves depending on their Vocations.

Satisfied with the newfound knowledge, I asked Lorelei out of curiosity, “Lorelei, while on the subject, I didn’t see the mud golem anywhere. Where have you placed it?”

“Oh, it’s actually right above you.” She pointed her finger to the ceiling.

“Above? Whoa—!” Like a spasm, I almost had my heart in my throat when seeing a clump of mud sticking to the ceiling. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was some kind of mud monster straight from a horror movie.

“Eek!” Rowan shrieked at the sight of the mud golem and distanced himself from it to the corner of the room while hiding his head between his knees like a frightened child. Having been swallowed whole by it must have caused a long-lasting trauma.

The mud golem started sliding down and formed the shape of a large mud man with endless wet mud that kept shifting downward to his feet slowly. Eh, I didn’t know that the mud golem could take a human form… Must’ve been because of the Dungeon Boss’s buff. Since the mud golem was practically the strongest monster I had in hand, I’d temporarily set it as a Dungeon Boss.

“So, Vincent… have you made up your mind about going out there?” Lorelei suddenly inquired, fidgeting her hands.

“Yeah. But I’m still not adequate in strength…” While wondering what could boost my survival capability, my gaze fell on the brainwashed elementalist, and I came up with one solution: magic.

This had been my whole intention from back when I decided not to kill him and had one of the golems knock him out instead. If I wasn’t wrong, he was a Geo elementalist, the one that cast his magic spell without a long incantation. And since Lorelei had “interrogated” them a few days ago…

“My, are you thinking of learning magic from me?” As if she had read my whole intention, she replied, “Even I haven’t grasped the principle behind magic fully… Certainly, if you insist, you know the price. Tee-hee.” She was trying to act cute with the last giggle, but her stale expression made it so that she looked like she wasn’t.

“Geez. Okay, okay. I’ll give you anything you want later. Let’s go back to the Artificial Realm first.”

Since our business here was done, we left for good. As for Rowan’s gang of three, I decided to leave them be — not because of mercy, but they simply could no longer act in rebellion. To add to that, brainwashed intelligent creatures were hard to come by; otherwise, dungeons would have been filled with brainwashed adventurers or something.

Anyway, the reason that I wanted to go back here was because of one thing: Where was the place most abundant in mana? The Artificial Realm, of course. It was located inside of Lorelei, a being that could create things out of anything — a place second to none for practicing magic.

“So where should we begin? Hrm?” I muttered. To practice magic, I’d need a target and not just any artificially created target, but a clay golem.

Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t repaired the broken golems yet since I was so engrossed in my training. Thus, only six of them were still functioning… Ugh, should have repaired them sooner.

“I’ll tell you everything that I have grasped about magic. Okay. First of all, I want you to sit down, take a deep breath, and close your eyes. Try to sense the magical power within your body,” she expounded while acting just like a knowledgeable mentor.

That was pretty ambiguous…

Nevertheless, I did what she told me by sitting down and closing my eyes. By the way, she believed that I should be grateful to her that I now possessed a body susceptible to mana after I was “born” anew or whatever.

I tried concentrating for a minute, and as a programmer student, I was confident in my ability to concentrate. But as time went on with nothing really perceivable by me, my brain ran astray and began thinking about unrelated stuff…

“Ah! This isn’t gonna do it!” I grabbed my hair in clumps and looked at the sky with a tense heart.

I summoned a meteor shower and directed it at the clay golem that I’d placed in the middle of an empty field earlier. Despite the outward intensity of the destruction it brought, the clay golem was just chilling as if nothing had hit it.

“It’s no use. Using magic in the Artificial Realm without actually being able to use it— would be like splashing mana onto the enemy…” She pinched my shoulder while holding her mouth with her other hand. “Also, if you use it too much… You know, this is inside my body, so it churns my stomach when you overdo it.”

“Oops, my bad.”