What's a Dungeon? For many, dungeons are large, illogical, and enigmatic spaces, sometimes subterranean, brimming with mysteries and challenges. They come in various forms, each with unique treacherous passages, hidden chambers, and unfathomable secrets. These dungeons can be found scattered across the land, spawning in different regions and housing a variety of creatures, traps, and magical phenomena. There's no explanation as to how they appear, but one day they may just spontaneously manifest.

  Just like there are no explanations as to how they appear, there are no explanations as to why they spontaneously appear anywhere. They are, like many things in this world, complete mysteries, but with their monster-spawning attributes, climate-affecting properties, and powerful and mysterious magical phenomena, they might be one of this world’s greatest mysteries.

  That's how I believe most people would describe a Dungeon when asked.

  It's "a" right answer, especially for just anyone, but for me, a Dungeon Master who knew better, understood that that answer is incomplete. Or to be exact, that question was missing its most important element, who or what runs the Dungeon. The answer to that was simple: a person, well, actually, it's not right to say a person since it may or may not be the case for all Dungeons. Let's say that the ones in charge of Dungeons are sentient entities known as Dungeon Cores. In my case, I was a Dungeon Core with a past as a former human from a world without a System, or power and even less so, monsters.

  As a Dungeon Core, we had access to a completely different system than the one I currently possess. It encouraged me to harvest a certain resource that could only be gathered through system-interfaced living creatures or objects. To be even clearer, just like for Highbreed and Verdenkind defeating monsters was the optimum path to harvest experience and level up, defeating and harvesting humans is, for a Dungeon Core, the most optimal path to achieve strength. At least that's what we once believed, then we found a smarter alternative.

  While the common system's strength is expressed in status, skills, and abilities, Dungeon Core systems are a little different. Dungeon’s strength is expressed through something else: spawn.

  On their own, Dungeon Cores are no different than a mere floating theoretical brain in a cave. To do their bidding in the guise of limbs, they spawn beings that their system allows them to conjure and, to a certain extent, control.

  Dungeons produce spawn both inside and outside a domain. However, Dungeon Cores can only control the spawns inside a domain, the place that delimits what can be considered "in the dungeon". The spawns produced outside the domain are more of a byproduct; they are spawns that the Dungeon Core has no control over. So, even if I, as a former Dungeon Core of sorts, considered the possibility of establishing a friendly relationship with another fellow Dungeon Core, that is assuming they're sentient as we were, I can't reason with the spawns it uncontrollably produces. My only options are to either defeat them or avoid them. In my current predicament, I chose the latter.

  ***

  I ran through the mountainous pass, the backpack on my back bouncing with every desperate step. My breath came in ragged gasps, and the mist that covered the whole area made it hard to see more than a few feet ahead. I looked apprehensively into the swirling fog, my eyes darting around for any sign of monsters, whether it was another undead like the Ice Specter I had first encountered or some other dungeon spawn like the demonic creatures I had narrowly managed to defeat. My heart pounded in my chest as I scanned the mist, looking not just for threats but for a place to hide.

  Tom had mentioned a safe spot around here, a cave that should be on the left side of the pass. His words echoed in my mind, a lifeline in the chaos. After what felt like an eternity of nerve-wracking search, I finally spotted it, a dark opening nestled into the hard ground of the mountain. Relief surged through me as I recognized it from his description.

  I rushed into the cave, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground. It wasn’t very deep, just about the size of a moderately sized house. When narrating how he survived, Tom told me about this place, how he had used it to rest and stay away from the monsters that roamed the pass. That was years ago, though. Things could have changed since then.

  I quickly checked out the cave, my staff clutched tightly in my hand. Thankfully, it seemed empty, no monsters lurking in the shadows. Wasting no time, I used [Ice Magic] to seal the entrance, a hand-thick layer of translucent ice forming a barrier between me and whatever horrors might be out there. Only then did I allow myself to feel a measure of safety.

  I let go of my staff and dropped the backpack, collapsing to the ground in exhaustion.

  A sigh of relief escaped my lips. "I made it somehow," I murmured to myself.

  My legs were sore and my waist ached, the fatigue of my relentless training with Justaff nothing compared to the sheer exhaustion I felt now. I didn’t have the energy to entertain a single thought; I simply lay there, my body giving in to the weariness.

  I must have passed out, because when I woke up, I had no idea how much time had passed. From how my fatigue percentage had dropped from 91% to 82%, and how the ice barrier I had created had only melted to leave a small puddle at the base, I guessed I couldn’t have been out for more than a couple of hours.

  Groaning, I brought myself to a sitting position and inspected my body for injuries. There were no serious ones, just bruises and minor burns from my battles against the dungeon spawns. I sighed in relief, grateful that I had made it through relatively unscathed.

  I leaned back against the cool cave wall, feeling the residual aches and pains in my muscles. I had been pushed to my limits, but for now, at least, I was safe. And that was more than enough.

  Having finally regained enough energy to manifest a logical thought, I began to think about what had just happened, about the spawn I had encountered. From the look of it, the dungeon that created these creatures specialized in undead monsters with a clear taste for demonic entities. In short, it was a Demon Undead spawning dungeon.

  Or perhaps “Undead Demon” would be the more accurate term, since they were undead first before becoming demonic. As for what kind of undead exactly, I hesitated between zombie and revenant. At first, I thought they were the latter, but considering how they still seemed very demonic, I became more inclined to believe I was dealing with revenants, a variant that simply wasn’t very lucky with the decaying state of the corpses they rose from.

  Revenants are undead creatures that are born with little difference from their formerly normal, living counterparts. A revenant that spawns from a Hexfen, for example, wouldn’t be so different from a normal Hexfen. The difference is that upon returning, it gains the typical undead attributes: hatred for the living, weakness to light and holy-type damage, and a putrid state that depends on when the undeadification process occurred.

  After all, revenants are much like zombies. They use the corpse as a vessel, and the process that turns the corpse into a zombie changes little to nothing about that vessel. They rise as they died. This is why a requirement for the spawning of a revenant is typically a corpse in good condition. A mutilated corpse is far more likely to spawn a different kind of undead. Because of this, some revenants can almost pass for living beings.

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  But that is only one end of the spectrum. On the other end are the very obvious types, which seems to be the case here. I had literally assumed they were zombies at first, given how far along the decomposition was for supposed revenants.

  Despite having stumbled upon dozens of them, so far, I had met four types of dungeon-spawned revenants on my journey through the pass. Some were "born" of a Hellfire Reaver, others of a Netherclaw Maleborne, a Hellborne Blightfire, and an Abysswing Vilethane, the demonic revenant creature I first encountered. All of these were creatures never mentioned by the man who was supposed to know this pass best.

  I muttered, grinding my teeth. "Tom, the menace, my ass. If I ever stumble upon you dude, I'll show you what a true menace is."

  While I genuinely felt like strangling that man for not mentioning anything about these creatures, I understood that it was most likely less about him simply not mentioning it to me for some mysterious reason and more likely that he simply didn't know about the Dungeon spawns or the Dungeon itself. Chances are that the Dungeon is a very new one, one that wasn’t there when he last made his way through the pass. Otherwise, there was no way a level 11 like he was back then could have made it past so many revenants. Sure, he did survive at the cost of losing his comrades, but even then, he still managed to make it more than halfway through the pass on his own. So, most likely, the Dungeon spawned after his passage 13 years ago.

  Now that leaves the unsettling question of how a Dungeon was able to get that strong in such a short time span. For humans, 13 years might be a long time, but for Dungeons that can exist for tens of thousands of years, 13 years is a mere blink of an eye.

  How could a Dungeon be able to spawn such strong creatures in such a short time span? Could it be that this Dungeon is similar to our Dungeon. In other words, a Dungeon whose Dungeon Core has the memories of someone from the other side? No, that wouldn't even explain it. Even we needed at least hundreds, if not thousands, of years to achieve that level.

  The thing about Dungeons is that the more people they engulf, the stronger they grow. As I explained, Dungeons primarily target humans because generally, humans are the only beings drawn toward Dungeons, most of the time out of curiosity or perhaps stupidity.

  To get stronger, a Dungeon Core has to wait for a human, ideally several of them, to walk into their domain for them to harvest them. Whether or not the Dungeon Core is sentient, it remains a slave to the cycle of waiting for humans to somehow end up in their domain. Becoming powerful is thus, for a Dungeon, a process that can easily take hundreds and even thousands of years. That's what I would be stuck on thinking if it weren't for me knowing the existence of something that can shorten that process. Well, to be exact, it didn't shorten the process; it sped up the power-acquiring process. That thing was called an Authority.

  It is an Authority that turned the tide for us, making our Dungeon more unique than other Dungeons, so much so that the world now knows it as the oldest and most dangerous Dungeon in the world. The thought of me stumbling upon an authority made my heartbeat race like it long since last did this way. The reason for our reincarnations into this world, despite death, was because a mission given to us was to retrieve authorities from those who don't deserve to hold onto them.

  Now the question of whether or not the Dungeon running this one deserves that authority is on the table, but I decided to ignore it. For several reasons, one being that regardless of whether or not this Dungeon Core is holding onto one of our Goddess's precious authorities, it wasn't up to me to retrieve it.

  Well, that was a very undedicated thing for me to say, but I knew that in my current state, attempting to retrieve an authority from an authority wielder, especially one that is a Dungeon Master, is nothing but a suicidal mission. I don't even know what the authority in question does, as all authorities left by the goddess are unique in their kind. But no doubt, if it is an authority, that would explain the spawns getting that strong in such a short time span. I shouldn't mess with that.

  Now, I can't say that the thought of talking things out, assuming that the Dungeon Core is sentient like us Dungeon Masters, didn't cross my mind. But remembering how unfriendly we were to literally anything living, especially humans, made me abandon the thought.

  Becoming a Dungeon changes a person a lot. Not that I was a particularly good person to begin with, but being a Dungeon Core sure does warp one's vision of things. Not that it makes one view life as lesser in value; far from it, it actually does the very opposite. It gives life a GP value. For a level 1 Verdenkind, it was less than 0.5 GP.

  Remembering those days made me feel nostalgic. They felt so far away, but at the same time, I understood that it wasn’t so long ago.

  Anyway, I couldn't consider that option because I knew that, just as we would, the Dungeon Core would see me as nothing more than a walking bag of GP waiting to be harvested, to make its domain bigger and its spawn stronger.

  As a feeling of hunger took shape in my stomach, I reached for my bag, scavenging for food.

  "What I should be doing now is pushing forward, not backing off."

  Sure, the situation hadn't turned out as I expected. I hadn't foreseen a Dungeon in the equation, even less one that is potentially a wielder of an authority. But this path is the better one. "No way I'm turning back now to take that other path," I muttered to myself.

  As I rummaged through my bag, I found some bread and cheese. With nothing to cook it, the pan having been lost with the horse, I just ate the thing as it was.

  While the circumstances weren't within my expectations, I had been able to defend myself from the Dungeon's spawns thus far. It's a good sign, if not it’s at least a good beginning. As long as I can keep up this pace, I should eventually make it to the other side of the mountain. Sure, it’ll be hard and will most likely get progressively harder, but if one just didn't focus on that part, one could see the benefits to be reaped. Namely, gathering more intelligence about this Dungeon that is obviously, from the direction the spawns were flooding from, deeper into the pass. And second, using this situation as an opportunity to level up.

  That's right. Just fighting my way here, I was able to level not once but twice, bringing the level 13 Hexcaster that I was to finally level 15. Quite the leap. I'd never leveled twice in a single day before. Today I did.

  It was exactly for that reason that I believed while it would get progressively harder, my leveling up should even things out.

  Speaking of which, I should be using this opportunity to distribute my attribute points. I had done that for the first level up I acquired during my fight against the spawns but didn’t get the opportunity to do so for the second, leaving me with over a dozen A.P. to distribute between my eight attributes. I opened my system interface. Just as I summoned the familiar blue holographic screen, a low, rumbling noise reached my ears. It felt like the ground outside was experiencing some kind of seismic shift.

  I froze, every muscle tensing as I listened intently, but before I did, I froze, Impotence was already in my hand.

  The rumbling grew louder, reverberating through the mountain pass, then subsided into a faint, almost imperceptible hiss. My heart pounded as I strained to hear more. A snake-like hiss echoed faintly, sending a shiver down my spine.

  "Shit! Not now."

  There were mainly two things Tom, the menace, warned me about in the pass. One was the ice specters, undead creatures that spawned from the people who died trying to make the journey through the pass. The other was the responsible entity for most of the deaths that allowed the ice specters to spawn en masse due to their victims: large animalistic monsters that, by Tom’s words, had thrived on these mountains, it was only now as I noted that the description he gave me back fit that of the creature beyond the ice barrier, that I realized how suspicious it were that I had yet encountered any of the creatures.

  I remained perfectly still, my eyes locked on the translucent ice barrier. Through the hazy, frosted layer, I saw movement. A long, sinuous shape slithered past, its form only partially visible through the ice. The creature was immense; though I couldn’t determine its exact length, it seemed endless, a white serpent gliding with eerie grace.

  "Not now...I'm still recovering," I internally lamented, checking my percentage level and seeing it barely went down.

  I held my breath as the head of the creature approached the barrier. The ice began to melt quickly under the heat of its breath, tiny droplets of water forming and trickling down the surface. For a moment, I was convinced it had spotted me. I readied myself to unleash an attack, my muscles coiled and ready to spring into action, even if I was praying for that not to happen.

  But then, I realized the serpent was not attacking. It was drinking from the melting ice. The creature's tongue flicked out, tasting the droplets. Through the translucence, I tried to discern more details, but the ice distorted my view, keeping the serpent's features obscured.

  Eventually, the giant snake finished its drink and moved on, the rumbling of its passage slowly fading away. I exhaled softly, my body finally relaxing as the danger passed.

  "I should allocate these points and rest to recover some more."