Chapter 522: Dungeon Core
“Hm… do I even need to take this thing out? It should be fine if it stays here.”
Roland stood before the entrance to the dungeon core chamber. Inside, the core floated in a mostly empty room. At the center stood a round column resembling a pedestal, and above it hovered the object in question. From a distance, it looked like a magical artifact - something meticulously crafted by a master artisan. However, to someone like him, a true master craftsman, it was clear this wasn’t the case.
The floating orb, the dungeon core, was not an artifact but it also wasn’t perhaps truly alive. Roland tried to examine it but stepping further into the room would bode bad for his current expedition. The core's surface shimmered, shifting between an opaque sheen and translucent clarity. It pulsed with so much mana that it would probably cause regular mages to be repelled but his mind was not filled with the beauty of what he was seeing but how he could use it instead.
“What if I just left it here? I could perhaps use it…”
A thought crept into Roland’s mind. He didn’t fully understand how these dungeon cores operated, but he suspected they might function similarly to artificial tower spirits - something between a living being and a programmed machine. The cores appeared to absorb massive amounts of mana from the environment and the adventurers they defeated, using that energy to gradually expand in size. The process was slow, often taking hundreds of years before any noticeable change occurred.
This realization sparked a new question in his mind: what if he could influence that change? What if he could control the core and bend it to his will? If that were possible, would he still need to venture into other dungeons in search of monsters? Or could he simply command the core to spawn whatever creatures he needed?
‘The ground is covered in runes, similar to the ones in the other hidden chambers, with time I should be able to dismantle the defenses, perhaps if I make it think that I’m part of the monsters in the dungeon, it won’t trigger the traps?’
Roland contemplated ways to gain access to the chamber. Once inside, he could examine the floating dungeon core more closely. His goal wasn’t to destroy it but to harness its power for his own purposes. If he could decipher how to make it spawn specific monsters, that would be enough. Perhaps he could command it to produce powerful boss monsters he could farm for resources or even bypass the conventional process entirely. Rewards like Agni’s Egg might become obtainable, or he could potentially create tier 3 enemies for training.
However, he knew this wouldn’t be a task accomplished in a single day. The runes on the core were likely of tier 4 caliber, far beyond his current mastery. The intense pain he experienced while attempting to transcribe them into runic programming language confirmed as much. Even if he managed to decode the rune he observed, critical portions seemed to be missing.