"Uh, not to offend, great dungeon, but—" one of the other adventurers started, and the first one cut them off. "So you can buy stuff!", they bellowed. "So you don't die!"

WHAT KIND OF THINGS CAN YOU BUY?

"Listen, dungeon," the second adventurer said. "Not to be rude, but I think you fundamentally don't understand how people operate."

ELABORATE, it wrote. It certainly didn't understand how people operated. They were a constant confusion to it.

"We need... we need to eat to survive. To have pure water to drink. We need to sleep, and sleep somewhere warm, or we'll get ill. It takes time and luck to grow food. You've said, repeatedly, you don't understand our preoccupation with value: this is why. Money — resources — give us access to the materials of life, without which we would die. We're not like you, immortal in a mountain fastness. If I wasn't able to pay for food, I would die within days."

("You can hunt, though," the third adventurer said, and got elbowed in the side for their words.)

Something here didn't add up. WHAT ABOUT MANA? it asked.

"What about mana?"

WHAT ABOUT SURVIVING OFF MANA? Many of its creatures still survived partially off their mana current, even with harvested fish and fungi supplementing that. Adventurers also had mana. So...

"That's not— you'd need an enormous amount of mana. Oh, you can do it. But you have to be high level. Level 100 is... some people call that 'the threshold of immortality'; that's around where you can cast off most mortal concerns like needing food and sleep. But the people who pass that threshold... they stop being people, really."

ELABORATE, Goblin Cave went to write, but the adventurer resumed speaking before it was done.

"Well, I know you're not that good at metaphors like that. They're still people. But..." They made a facial expression. "Once you don't need to eat, you don't need other people. Once you can deflect blades with your bare skin, or take a fireball to the face without injury, what does it matter that your only place to sleep is a thorn-thicket in the dead of winter? People are weak, and that makes them band together. I'm Kerey, you know?" Goblin Cave had no clue what that meant. "We have festivals to keep the whole tribe fed. So that even the weakest among us can survive. Because... we care about each other. Because we're born into the world together.

"People are weak, and so they band together. Once they get strong... a lot of them cut those connections away. It pricks their sense of pride to ever think how they were weak, pathetic, easily crushed by anyone higher level than them. It rankles, I think, once you're strong, to find yourself beholden to the weak." They snorted. "Would you ask for aid from something that could kill you with a thought?"

"So, yes, we care about your valuable metals. Because they could make our lives easier. Because they could secure a future for the weakest among us. But— even as you've started talking to us, you've still killed us. You were born an immortal lord; you've never known what weakness was. You have no connection to anything."

The adventurer didn't sound angry, precisely, just exhausted. Like an adventurer bleeding out, after it had finished screaming.

I HAVE BEEN UNDER ATTACK SINCE I STARTED EXISTING, it wrote. THIS PLACE IS MY BODY, AND EVERY DAY THINGS LIKE YOU COME HERE AND KILL THEIR WAY THROUGH IT. IF I DIDN'T PROVIDE SIMULACRA TO DEFEND MYSELF, A SINGLE ONE OF YOUR KIND COULD KILL ME. WHAT USE IS A DUNGEON CORE THAT DOESN'T PROVIDE DEATH? LIVING THINGS NEED TO DIE TO PROVIDE EXPERIENCE. THE COST OF CREATING EVERY GOBLIN YOU KILL HERE WAS PAID FOR BY THE DEATHS OF YOUR COMPATRIOTS: THAT IS THE WAY OF THE WORLD. IF YOU HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE, SPEAK IT NOW.

"I— I don't know! But... you certainly seem dissatisfied with your work. Crawling through a cave killing goblins isn't ideal for us either. Surely there's something we have in common?"

Goblin Cave wasn't sure there was. Everything it had ever read or heard about the way they lived their live was a confusing whirl to it. Its own desires seemed profoundly difficult to communicate to them.

The adventurer sighed. "Well, thank you for... listening. We could tell people not to delve too deep...?"

It was strange. When things started, it would have been exhilarated to get adventurers telling it that. Finally, they would avoid its core! Now... it was difficult to say what had changed. Oh, certainly, it still didn't want adventurers shattering its core. But now there were so many more factors involved. The world was bearing down on it.

WHAT DO ADVENTURERS DO WITH DUNGEON CORES?, it asked. The adventurers shared a look.

"Uh— we don't do this, but, it's said it's possible for a person to... control, or compel a dungeon core. Uh, the mage-city Opone, across a sea of fire, is said to be built from an enslaved core. But cores can shatter themselves, and they often do to avoid that fate. When aspiring mages try, they often only get handfuls of glass dust. Supposedly there are secrets to... cleave a core, taking control of a sliver of its power, but they aren't known to us." The adventurer shook their head. "Dungeons are already sparse enough here without us shattering the few that remain."

That sounded profoundly unpleasant. Had it been spawned elsewhere, or picked a different creature focus, would that have been its fate? The ranking charts took on a more ominous tone: the total number was constantly going up and down as cores were created and destroyed, but this gave a context to just what 'destroyed' entailed.

The other question it had... WHAT OF YOUR SOULS?

They made a facial expression. "What souls? We're not claimed by any god."

Goblin Cave could only really feel the souls of adventurers when they left, but it had yet to feel that on each adventurer's death. AS FAR AS I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO ASCERTAIN, EVERY SYSTEM-CONNECTED ENTITY HAS A SOUL. Maybe its worms and ants had souls also, but it couldn't say conclusively either way, and it was leaning towards 'not'. THEY ALLOW YOU TO RESPAWN OR BE REINCARNATED.

"When we die, that's it." The adventurer crossed their arms. "Never heard of anybody respawning like a dungeon mob. Reincarnating..." They shrugged. "Who knows. But it wouldn't be us. We'd be dead. And... some gods may be merciful. But some snatch their champions' souls up to conduct horrors on them. Don't think we'll be peaceably reborn elsewhere if you thresh us like wheat."

It wasn't as if Goblin Cave was eager to kill adventurers. But it wasn't opposed. They did come here to kill. That they were unable to be respawned... well, that wasn't its own fault. Why should it privilege the desires of them-as-they-were-now over the potentiality of their next life? It had reaped more than a few of its own mobs to recreate them in a shape that was more useful to it.

It dismissed the adventurers and remained there, glowering at its goblin spawn statue. Rare metals, they said. The entire situation was... beyond its ability to imagine. What interactions did adventurers have, outside its caverns? What did they do, if not group up to kill mobs? Evidently, quite a lot.

It was a few days after that that a familiar adventurer showed up again. Goblin Cave felt a little uneasy to have recognized an adventurer, instead of letting them go by as interchangeable irritants. It was the survey-adventurer from before, the one with the secret message, the one who had warned it. And they were entering into Goblin Cave— that is to say, the goblin caves part of it. Not the new manastone passage.

"Did you know you have guards on both entrances?" was what they opened with, apparently not considering for even a moment that they might not hear or be paying attention. "Looks like neither the duchy nor the horde wants word getting out about you."

Goblin Cave formed a writing surface on the side of the entrance cave. That cave was more than sixty years old. It hadn't touched it since it had first dug it out at the very beginning. All things would change, it supposed. And more and more rapidly, it seemed.

GUARDS?, it wrote. It couldn't see any on any of its imaging tubes. And it still had those two other entrances that had yet to be visited. It was a strange thought: if it had surfaced at a slightly different time, in a slightly different place... it would still be anticipating its discovery. None of this would have happened. It was difficult to not long for that alternate reality. It had been bored, then — these days, it was nothing but overwhelming stimulation, day after day.

"Guards. There was another closed session of the house of lords, too. Presumably all about you, again." Goblin Cave didn't even know what that meant. Before it could think of any response, the adventurer continued: "Have you made any progress in non-natural mana values?"

Oh right, that. Things were piling up so rapidly it hadn't had a chance to properly think about anything. NO, it wrote. Then it wrote a somewhat longer chunk of text about the nature of spawn templates and how they all produced creatures with at least one mana, since there were no stable zero mana spawns. Theoretically it seemed possible that something with a negative mana cost could exist, but it had just as little an idea about how to produce negative mana as when they first mentioned the concept.

"So what have you been doing?" they asked, walking through its linear tunnels and absently dispatching the goblins on the way. They hit the new hallways on the second floor, and then the dirt-floored chambers on the third. This made it obnoxiously difficult for Goblin Cave to actually respond.

I HAVE BEEN STUDYING THE NATURE OF SYSTEM MOB SPAWNS IN COMPARISON TO NON-SYSTEM-EMPOWERED ANIMALS, it wrote. DON'T STEP ON THE ANTS.

"You're the first talking, lucid dungeon ever, you can create a fortune in resources, the dutchy is scrounging around for adventurers to try to enslave your core, and you're making an ant farm?!" they said, volume increasing throughout the statement. "That's what you're spending your time on?"

I HAVE GOTTEN VERY USED, it wrote, TO HAVING AS MUCH TIME AS I PLEASE.

The surveyor sighed. "Great. I don't know what I was expecting. Well. At least I have a little more time to talk this time." They sat down, perched on a slimy boulder at the edge of the old cave. "And I brought some more books."

It had gotten partially through several of the other books. It was still struggling to put them into context. The vast majority of their books on magic seemed to be utterly useless to it currently, since it didn't seem to have any way to access of the mana chords their mana-manipulation techniques were based around. It had contained a chart of their system of mana notation, which allowed it to decode some mysterious old scrolls it had collected thirty years ago and shuffled away in its 'untranslated; unknown language' corner. Spell scrolls. Not that it could cast them. It could make some materials that did it, maybe, but... that would take time.

It did have some questions. WHAT IS THE NATURAL MANA HARMONIC OUTSIDE OF THE DUNGEON? it asked. I HAVE YET TO FIND A MANA WAVE THAT IS NOT DISTRESSING OR HARMFUL TO LIVING THINGS. Adventurers, sure, but mostly it was asking to see if it could restructure its mana to allow it to interact more directly with the worms and ants.

"Oh boy. Well, let's see," they started, and then started down a byzantine series of explanations of mana rhythms and chord progressions that Goblin Cave could only barely follow even while trying to read the mana dynamics book at the same time for reference. It ultimately attempted to just transcribe their words, hoping they could refer back to them at some later point once they more fully understood the theory. The overall theory wasn't difficult: most living things tended to share certain harmonic resonances when they interacted with low-energy mana systems, and on a large scale it was those harmonics that became dominant, which in turn helped to enforce the continued dominance of that particular harmony. This lead, apparently, to a constantly evolving symphony where minor harmonics reasserted themselves in a structure that adventurers — and other living things — apparently found physically and psychologically pleasing. "Mana weather", "the Gaia harmonic", and so forth. It could follow the high-level concepts well enough, but in terms of understanding it enough to replicate it within its own cavern — absolutely not. Their interaction with mana was so different from its own — slowly coaxing disparate mana sources to flow together, in comparison to its precise and controlled manipulation of its solitary mana source — that it was difficult to find a common ground. Again.

"— I just realized," the surveyor said, cutting themselves off. "This is about your ants, right? You're asking because of your ants."

YES, it wrote, and the surveyor let out a sharp puff of breath.

"Well. While we're asking questions. That amount of manastone you're trading with the duchy. That's an absolute pittance to you, right? You can produce as much as you like, right?"

YES, it wrote. Again. WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS.

"What kind of limits?"

Goblin Cave had always tried to be vague about its precise capabilities. Information was dangerous, apparently. What information, it still wasn't entirely sure about. Certainly most information it had received from the outside world had been stressful. IT COSTS ROUGHLY 100 MANA TO PRODUCE A METER CUBE OF MANASTONE, it wrote, and drew a helpful meter-sized square on its surface for scale.

"What— what? Wait, that's..." the survyor said, face scrunching up. "That's impossible." They paused, then elaborated. "The standard alchemical dose for a low-grade mana potion is 80 grams of finely-crushed manastone, and the resulting potion restores between 20 and 30 units of mana. A cubic meter would be, what, three tonnes? Roughly? That would make, what, around forty thousand mana potions? That's... that's off by four orders of magnitude."

Goblin Cave decided not to mention manacrystal. THAT IS THE SYSTEM COST FOR PRODUCTION.

The surveyor let out a slightly hysterical laugh. "Oh? You don't say? And you can just keep producing that endlessly?"

Goblin Cave wasn't about to write out its raw mana values and regeneration rates, but, yes.

"You know, there was a theory. From analysis of inoperative dungeon cores. That seemed to imply they had incredible general-purpose construction and reshaping abilities. That for the most part they just... don't use. So, okay. You can produce tonne after tonne of manastone, and you're a goblin core. Anything else?"

MOST MINERAL OR METAL SUBSTANCES, it wrote, and then with a wry humor, added, I HAVE BEEN STRUGGLING TO FIND A MATERIAL TO PRODUCE MY CORRIDORS WITH THAT ADVENTURERS DO NOT CONSIDER VALUABLE.

The surveyor snorted. "That would explain the quartz, I guess. Don't let the guild of engineers get ahold of you, they'll be mining these for crystals. Listen, I'm out of the loop, but I'd be shocked if the house of lords wasn't authorizing some kind of core-capturing delve. But they also don't want to let anybody else know of a gold mine like you."

I CAN ALSO PRODUCE GOLD, Goblin Cave wrote, since it kept coming up. What was so special about gold anyway?

"Of course you can. Uh. Mithril? Adamantine?"

Adamantine? That was something it hadn't heard of before. I DO NOT WISH TO ENUMERATE EVERY MATERIAL I CAN PRODUCE, it wrote, because that sounded tedious and counterproductive, and also now it was really curious about just what other minerals were out there.

"But," the surveyor continued, "Nobody really cared about charting Goblin Cave, and the Dutchess doesn't have the fullest coffers or a reputation for pulling off any kind of skillful magic. They might not have enough money or leverage to get an experienced team of dungeon-crackers. For a while at least."

This was concerning. But also... LEVERAGE, VALUE. IS THERE ANYTHING YOUR LIVES REVOLVE AROUND THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE IMPARTING VALUE INTO ONE THING SO YOU CAN EXTRACT IT FROM SOMETHING ELSE?

"Yeah. Welcome to economics, I guess. People want things, and if you can provide them, then they're willing to pay. You're already trading. You clearly already understand this."

I HAVE BEEN CONSIDERING IT AS AN ABERRATION. YOUR ENTIRE SOCIETY RUNS OFF THIS? NOTHING BUT PEOPLE EXCHANGING THINGS FOR OTHER THINGS?

"Well. The alternative is what you're going to see soon: if you have enough power, you don't need to trade. You can just take."