Chapter 164 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Enn

"We will be in port in 30 minutes," a sailor informed me and immediately went to inform other passengers. I watched as he went. There was something pleasing about sailors and how unapologetically efficient they were.

It kind of reminded me of home, but I still had many months before I could get back. Packing everything up in my cabin, I felt the weight of the full bags when I walked to the deck to see my destination: a port town that was nearest to Father. It looked so ordinary.

Sailing on the sea was also so different from using an airship that could fly so fast in the trade wind. If I had to sum it up, the first part of my trip was fantastical, and the Blue Lagoon, my destination, was incredible. It was sad to leave that place, but I had everything I needed. I still dream of that beauty.

The trip back, however, has been—well, the best word I could describe it was ordinary. The carriage rides, walking—this was the third ship I have been on. They were all the same.

I kind of wished that I could have just used airships to get back, but it would have been a much longer journey than coming back the ordinary way. Unfortunately, the trade wind only flows in one direction, and if I wanted to make it to the northern trade wind, it would have taken longer than to come here.

Not to say that this hadn’t been fruitful. I have been able to enter nine dungeons, but unfortunately, none of them were that special. They were differences. They had different stones, different monsters, different designs—but somehow they still all felt the same. They also felt cold, like there was no life in them compared to Father, who seemed like a blazing sun.

Still, I recorded everything just in case Father found it interesting. In all honesty, it seemed simpler to simply buy all the materials about the dungeons in question, as they were so well documented. Every monster spawn location was known, and which monsters could spawn there, every piece of loot calculated down to their drop chance percentages.

It was the same in father's dungeon as well, but that was only for the upper floors. No one was even close to figuring out the entirety of the later silver floors, not to mention the gold ones. Eventually, adventurers should make it that far, but knowing father, he would probably change everything simply to mess with them. That thought brought a smile to my face.

It was fascinating to see the sailors so efficiently barking orders and quickly tying us up onto the dock. They seemed more experienced than the airship sailors.

After thinking about it more, I decided this was worth noting down in my report. There might be a chance that sailing on the water was a lot more difficult and dangerous than doing so in the air, and that was something father would definitely want to know.

The dock, at first glance, looked clean, but that was because it was made to look so. There was a difference between this and what an actual clean dock looked like. As I entered the town itself, everything became even more evident. This place was filthy, and a lot of people had hard eyes. The fact that this town had a gold rank dungeon and they were still in such a sorry state made me angry.

One thing that I have learned is that no matter how poor a village or town might be, that didn’t factor into how miserable the state of the common people was. Through my journey back, I had gone through many villages. There were some that looked rich but were miserable places, while others that could barely get by yet still looked welcoming and pleasant to be in. All of it seemed to come down to leadership.

The adventurers called it corruption. It was something completely foreign to me, and I hate it with a burning passion. It's a vicious cycle, this corruption, and it could start so easily from just a single individual.

It’s like a disease spreading and continuing to corrupt others until you are left with a populace that hates each other for even minor differences. Be it wealth or culture, it doesn’t matter. They just need to blame someone for their failing society.

My journey towards the adventurer guild and the nearby dungeon brought me through quite the terrible neighborhood. Everyone either cowered as I walked past or looked at me with hungry eyes.

That was another thing that was missed in the training we had. Females of adventurer species were most of the time treated differently, and from what I could see, it was even worse for anyone who wasn’t an actual adventurer.

Their advances sickened me in more ways than one. It was fun to break their noses and that one time when I was able to pull off that lower brain some males seem to think with made my week.

I think I’ve gotten a bad habit of purposely putting myself in bad situations just so I could fix a little bit of this corruption. In the end, I knew that I wasn’t doing anything, but it was making me feel better, so it was good enough.

It didn’t take long until I could sense movement that wasn’t natural. Slowly, as I continued to walk, more and more people started to follow me or rush in front of me through alleyways. Then it finally happened.

“Hi there, pretty thing, you lost?” There was a lot of mirth in his voice, but I could understand their confidence. There were eleven surrounding me, and five of them were gold rank.

None of them felt dangerous even combined. This was another thing that I had learned. Most adventurers were strong on paper, as they had high ranks and many skills, but in reality, they seemed to fight like wet paper.

The amount of adventurers I saw torn apart by weak monsters out in the wilderness was ridiculous. I partly blame the dungeon out here. They are simplistic, and something in them just feels off.

“I’m where I need to be. Would you mind starting this? I’m growing tired of the outside world.” My words halted their advance for a moment, yet they were so corrupted they couldn’t see reality even if it was shoved down their throats. How could you so easily dismiss simple facts? I must warn my kind of this corruption; we must never let it get ahold of our species.

It surprised me when I felt two different debuffs land on me. Instinctually, I tried to resist them and readied for a proper battle. The fact that immediately when I started resisting them the debuffs broke surprised me enough that a spear almost hit me. No time for that, focus. My sword flashed out of my scabbard, and I quickly took the hand of the spear wielder.

A scream started, but I didn’t let that bother me as I started to attack the others, which meant more screams. Some of them were decent enough, but I overpowered them. It seems like whatever life they were living was dangerous enough to teach them something. It had taken me mere moments, and half of them were already dead.

The debuffs landed on me again, and this time I couldn’t shake them off so easily. "So you can learn?" I said while looking at the two weaker-looking humans. One of them pissed himself while the other started to run away. Two daggers ended their lives.

The rest then tried to run, but they were too slow. Before I started to clean my blade, I noticed one of them was still breathing. Quickly, I ended his life and then cleaned myself, gathering my two daggers I left this place.

It would be a good idea not to stay here for too long. The dungeon here was on the list of the ones that I should delve into, but from everything I had seen, I doubted I could go there.

It took me half an hour to find the entrance, and to no surprise, absolutely every adventurer who came out was checked thoroughly so everything they had gotten could be taxed. That was something I could not let them do as my packs were filled with too many valuables and things that would make them question what I was doing.

That was disappointing because this dungeon did look interesting. It was a large rocky hill with an entrance. The strange part was that there was a flood of water coming from the top, a lot of it and it was running down into the river.

That water seemed to also supply at least part of the town's water supply. Dungeon water disappeared if it was too long taken out of a dungeon, so why were they using that water for the town?

It took me half a day to find the answer. Apparently, this dungeon loved water. There were something called waterways that adventurers could use to travel long distances inside the dungeon. There were also some special crystals that produced water. Apparently, that was how the water didn't disappear when it left the dungeon.

For the next four days, I gathered all the information about this dungeon as I could and even a few samples of those crystals while dodging people who were trying to find me and avenge their dead.

There was no doubt in my mind that they didn't actually care about them and only wanted what I had. It was quite fun, and I was able to kill a few more of them before I put this down to my back and started to head towards father.