Goblin Cave was hoping it could fall into some kind of routine. Before, the adventurers within it had receded to being a dull itch, beneath its concern. Now they were constantly pulling its attention, either through speech or action. The new information about just what adventures used dungeon cores for gave them a concerning tinge: certainly, it had rarely had adventurers attempt to delve all the way to its core. But now it had shown off what were, apparently, impressive capabilities, and that had made it a much more attractive target.

In retrospect, it had been somewhat hasty. Why not wait another five years before digging out to the surface, when it would have had enough soul to pack its lower floors full of ogres? It was easy to make that observation now, but it remembered quite well how it had felt in the moment: frustrated, pent-up, anxious. It was the nature of hindsight to see better options, but without the knowledge of experience those better options were lost in the haze of potentiality. Certainly there were things, now, that it seemed as if it should pay more attention to, but it was impossible to say for sure. It was impossible to see what it didn't know yet.

In the mean time, all it could do was what it was already doing: slowly struggling through the new books, further inspecting its mana machinery, slowly letting soul accumulate within its goblins. If nothing else, it could kill them all and have a regiment of tier 48 [Ogre Champions] available, which was certainly better than nothing.

WHAT IS THE HIGHEST LEVEL ADVENTURER YOU KNOW OF, it had started asking adventurers. The low-level adventurers had said much as it expected: level 50, level 60. Old heroes with levels rumored to be in the 70s. Challenging, but maybe not insurmountable, given that its floors had ended up roughly scaled for that level. Floor 49, with its groups of ogres and the double-stacked boss investiture its [Ogre Champion] had gotten, could maybe handle a level 70 foe. They certainly had knowledge of adventurers over level 100, but it was a vague, hazy thing, half legend, with no one having living memory of anyone who had achieved those heights.

The surveyor-adventurer, before they left, had a very different answer: "Calculator Martine is level 9973," they said. The knowledge sent a pang of terror through it. "Most of what's publicly known about experience curves past level 2000 is because he wrote out a huge book of his experience requirements. There's a formula for it that has, uh, three variables under level 144, but more and more get added, or grow to become noticeable, as higher and higher levels are reached. And there are some unknown variables that cause it to fluctuate slightly for each individual." They continued to talk on, but Goblin Cave was consumed in its own thoughts. Level 100 was... intimidating, but maybe something it could tackle after a few years of soul-farming. Level 1000 was... impossible. Approaching level 10000... what kind of power did that even look like? The ability to crack the world in two?

WHAT KIND OF POWER DOES THAT ENTAIL?

"Oh, uh... I mean, Calculator Martine is actually a [Calculator], right? The class is mostly about digging into the aspects of mana harmony that are mathematically approachable. He's the primary scholar in system studies, so he doesn't really... fight much. It's... a lot, though. Moon-caller Lonway wasn't just called that for fun. He made a moon."

WHICH MOON? It had seen a total of three, slowly advancing across the sky from its entrances. A big purple one, a small red-brown one, and a slightly-smaller yellow-brown one.

"Oh, it's not around anymore. Moon-eater Managarm isn't just called that either. But if you're asking if people at the highest levels are living nightmares, the answer is generally 'yes'."

This had invited a follow-up question: WHAT IS THE LARGEST DUNGEON YOU KNOW OF?

"Uh, the Abyss, probably, that one's kind of famous. Plenty of dungeons — like yourself — aren't mapped, but they follow fairly well-established trajectories for depth and mob difficulty. The Abyss broke all projections. Uh... darkness/spatial-themed. An underground cave dungeon, like you, at first — but the interior space grew hyperbolically, so by floor 10 it was giant caverns, and by floor 20 it was... a great sea of darkness. It was impossible to get much further than that. Measurements of the internal volume started being impossible after floor 24, and that one was... as big as the entire realm above. But, uh, it isn't around anymore. It folded itself away, maybe...? It vanished a few hundred years ago, and what was the dungeon entrance is now just a tiny little crack in the rock."

That had been... overwhelming. The surveyor-adventurer blithely stated things it had absolutely no reference point for, things that it would have said were impossible. Spatial? The dungeon vanished?

Maybe it had made an error in asking 'largest', rather than... 'most powerful'.

Now, looking through its books on dungeons, there was nothing like that. Just page after page of brief, boring summaries: This dungeon specialized in fairy-type mobs, recommended level 32, and allows for harvesting of glowdust and mothlight crystal. That dungeon specialized in rock golems, recommended level 26, and was mostly notable for regrowing resource nodes of demoniron. Nothing particularly remarkable about any of them. No listings of impossible dungeons with mysterious powers beyond comprehension. Several with notes that they went down over a hundred floors, but nothing... notable about any of them. Just categories and level ranges, slowly advancing up until it reached in 90s at the end of the book. The discrepancy between that and the purported level of 9973 was vast. It didn't know exactly what the experience requirements were for adventurers, but if they were anything like its own, then it would be profoundly impractical to try to grind to level 100 in a level 90 dungeon, much less to level 1000. Unless Calculator Martine had been murdering thousands upon thousands of mobs, how was it even possible to accumulate that much experience? Where were the level 1000 dungeons?

Conveniently, that was when the sages arrived.

They were visibly aged, which the vast majority of its adventurers were not, and they entered in a pair from its original, cave entrance. They were dressed differently from the other adventurers, and had backs that were weighed down heavily with an assortment of strange objects.

"Ah, excuse us," one of them said. "Greetings, if you are indeed the speaking dungeon."

Goblin Cave was so exhausted with dealing with adventurers it was tempted to not respond at all. But. It still wanted answers.

HELLO, it wrote. I AM GOBLIN CAVE. It was strange to write; it had never really claimed its identity so directly to anyone yet.

"A mutual acquaintance recommended we visit your dungeon for the advancement of our studies," they said. "May we enter?" They were already within it, in the cubbyhole of an entrance hall before the cave opened up into its first true room.

YOU ARE SAGES? They nodded. I HAVE PREPARED ROOMS FOR YOU, it wrote. ON THE SIXTH FLOOR. It did not mention how the rooms were just a set of caves full of dirt and grass and lumenrock, with the only truly notable feature being the low-intensity mana. If they wanted something more involved they could say so later.

Goblin Cave directed them down, and they both enabled some kind of stealth skill that let them walk straight past its mobs, including its bosses. Well, that was a profound threat. It could still sense them, but it seemed quite possible that there was a system skill that hid even their mana emanations. That was one more thing to add to its list of threat considerations.

On the sixth floor, it directed them to the secret door (here, enabled by a depression curled behind a craggy outcropping that caused the rock to split apart) and then past it, into its experiments with decreasing the mana density.

EXPLAIN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD, it wrote. One of the sages laughed: "Oh, all of it? You have not put a simple task before us, young dungeon."

'Young' was a strange idea. It was used to thinking of itself as much older than the adventurers within it, but looking at the aged sages, sixty-five years was probably considerably younger than them.

"Let us begin with introductions. I am called Khnum-tabal, sometimes named as a Sage."

"And I am Djehut-mos," said the other, "sometimes named as a Sage."

Goblin Cave still had not determined why adventurers — well, people, it supposed; these two as far as it was aware were specifically not adventurers — insisted on telling it their names constantly. It was one of their more obnoxious traits.

"We have dedicated our scholarship to the study of the intricacies of mana, and our... mutual acquaintance recommended you to us in pursuit of her study of mana blight, what is termed Hex here."

That sounded about right. Hex, or mana blight, or whatever they were calling it, was very interesting, but as of yet it was a totally theoretical concept, which limited its practical impact. The adventurer-surveyor casually revealing impossibilities had somewhat changed its priorities.

THE SURVEYOR-ADVENTURER CLAIMED THAT 'CALCULATOR MARTINE' WAS LEVEL 9973. HOW WAS SUCH A LEVEL OBTAINED?

"Ah," one of them said. "What is your interest in this matter?"

DUNGEONS EXIST TO TRANSDUCE MANA FROM SYSTEM-SPACE INTO USABLE PHYSICAL MANA, WHICH IS THEN INVESTED INTO MOBS, WHICH YIELD EXPERIENCE WHEN KILLED. AS FAR AS I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DETERMINE, A DUNGEON AS A WHOLE IS ENGINEERED BY AN UNKNOWN FORCE TO BE A MECHANISM FOR CREATING EXPERIENCE FROM DEATH. I AM NOT AWARE OF ANY DUNGEONS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING THE EXPERIENCE NECESSARY TO REACH LEVEL 1000, MUCH LESS NEARLY LEVEL 10,000.

"The answer, to this degree, is simple: Calculator Martine, as with all termed legends, is a man-killer. He, along with his contemporaries, was a participant in the old war, and it was through that war he gained the majority of his experience."

Arguably, it was a man-killer. It had certainly killed its share of adventurers. But...

DO ADVENTURERS OBTAIN EXPERIENCE FROM KILLING OTHER ADVENTURERS?

"Under certain circumstances, yes."

WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES?

"Ah, if you could elaborate on your interest again...?"

ADVENTURERS WITHIN ME CLAIM EXPERIENCE GAINED UPON DEATH IS A FUNCTION SOLELY OF LEVEL AND CATEGORY, WHICH DOES NOT SEEM FULLY ACCURATE TO ME. IF 'ADVENTURER' OR 'HUMAN' IS A CATEGORY, THEN EVIDENCE THAT EXPERIENCE IS ONLY GAINED UNDER SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES WOULD BE A SIGN THAT EXPERIENCE TRANSFER BETWEEN CREATURES IS MORE COMPLEX THAN THAT, AND PERHAPS REVEAL SOME WAYS IN WHICH DUNGEON MOBS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFER FROM ADVENTURERS. Aside from the many ways dungeon mobs already differed from adventurers, as in, their subsistence on mana and inability to leave its dungeon. But this would be a difference assigned to it by the system.

"Humans may gain experience from other humans," the sage said. "If and only if they consume the soul of their victim."

That was unusual. WHY DOES THAT ONLY APPLY TO HUMANS? ADVENTURERS DON'T CONSUME THE SOULS OF MY MOBS, AND THEY STILL GAIN EXPERIENCE FROM KILLING THEM. I GAIN EXPERIENCE FROM ADVENTURERS' DEATH WITHIN ME, AND I CAN'T TOUCH THEIR SOULS. I CAN ALSO OBTAIN EXPERIENCE FROM CONSUMING THEIR BODIES, WHICH HAVE NO SOULS.

"Oh? Your mobs have souls? And, what sensation is associated with experience gain for dungeons?"

The question was confusing at first. What sensation? But then it remembered what the adventurers had said: they didn't have knowledge of their own experience levels.

I CAN DIRECTLY SEE IT, it wrote, AS A NUMERIC QUANTITY IN MY SYSTEM STATUS.

"Ah," they said. "Well, if we may begin." They nodded to their companion, who pulled a heavy roll of papyrus from their back. "As you may know, it is unprecedented to get access to a dungeon's system interface. At your permission, we would like to transcribe any system interface you have available. You may continue to ask questions."