chapter 1189: jumping the gun

    aurivy’s experiments with the hidden dungeon took just over an hour to complete, after which she was shocked by the power of this reward system. “so, as long as it can be properly defined under third-tier runic magic, the system is able to generate it?” she muttered to herself.

    she had gathered roughly a tenth of the reward spheres from the uppermost floor of x-392 to use for her experiment. she had created weapons, elixirs, and even the divinity-granting stone. whether the item was made for a god, a fallen god, or a mortal, the system was able to immediately put a price on it if it were described in third-tier runes. even knowledge was available.

    aurivy had tried to ask for a complete and detailed map of x-392, but the required price was a full five million points. even if she cleared out every orb on the upper two floors, that wouldn’t be enough for that map. they probably set that extreme price to prevent anyone from choosing an option like this, unless they had already made it to the lower floors.

    additionally, only runic magic knowledge was available. when aurivy tried to ask for geometric magic information, she couldn’t, because there was no proper definition for it. although the individual runes technically existed, they would not mean the same thing in context when used together. for the same reason, she couldn’t ask for magic cards from deckan, or cultivation resources from lorek.

    even so, the freedom of the rewards was somewhat astonishing to her. this can only be because of how bihena and i originally worded the system request. the world was meant to represent a training dungeon, and we filled out pages upon pages to specify how it would operate, but we never wrote anything detailed about the other planets beyond the starter location. the system must have decided to use these extra worlds for high-level training.

    if that’s the case, will there be hidden dungeons with a starter level of twenty-thousand, or even thirty-thousand? we wouldn’t know unless we searched each one. aurivy had tried to ask for information on the ‘hidden dungeon’ system as one of her rewards, and even found that it was rather cheap. however, the information provided was rather limited.

    according to the information, hidden dungeons are an extra type of dungeon world meant to challenge exceptionally skilled combatants, offering them additional rewards based on their capabilities. every floor further down a challenger descends, they will face stronger adversaries, and will be given the chance to obtain more points to exchange for various rewards.

    there was no specific information about the starter level for each dungeon, or whether there were dungeons of different difficulties to begin with. however, it did say that there were exactly ten thousand reward spheres on every floor, and these spheres would refresh in random locations once every ten years. but, the maximum amount of reward spheres any one individual can receive from any floor was capped at ten thousand. this was probably to prevent a single person from repeatedly monopolizing the rewards over a long period of time.

    with this information, aurivy was able to make a few deductions. the most profitable floor would undoubtedly be the centermost floor of any hidden dungeon. however, that was also the most dangerous location. the total surface area of the first floor of fyor was only fifty square kilometers. that meant roughly two hundred spheres per square kilometer.

    however, the monsters faced on this floor would have a level of roughly sixteen thousand. even a casual attack from a creature that strong would be able to decimate an area of that size. let’s assume that there is only a single boss monster serving as the final guardian. if tsubaki and this monster were to get into a serious battle... tsubaki might be able to win, but the central spire would absolutely be destroyed.

    no matter how aurivy imagined it, she could not picture an outcome that did not result in the central spire of x-392 being destroyed during their battle. this meant that the only way to leave would be for tsubaki to use her own mana to repair the spire, or sit there and wait for it to repair itself naturally, hoping that the boss did not respawn during this period.

    aurivy paused at that, blinking. “well, i uh... i had only been thinking about physical items, and just a bit of magic knowledge. i didn’t really think... would that be possible? i’ve still got about a thousand points left over from my tests, if you want me to pop over to check?”

    i nodded my head, and aurivy quickly disappeared. after she left, i turned my head to look at tsubaki. “i know that you sent your own avatar out, as well... how are you planning to find the hidden dungeons? or did you have aurivy send you?”

    tsubaki shook her head. “i asked lady aurivy to send my avatar to another hidden dungeon during your conversation. with her assistance, i’m moving through the floors to a level where i feel comfortable fighting.”

    i let out a long sigh, nodding my head. naturally, tsubaki isn’t there for the rewards. she just wants a place to train herself. the only rewards that she’s interested in are the results of that training.

    as i was thinking that, aurivy appeared in another flash of golden mist. “okay! confirmation has been made. a single level in any normal class costs one hundred points, whereas a level in an advanced class costs one thousand points. i don’t know what the limits on purchasing these level upgrades is yet, though. i mean, it’s not like they’d let you just buy ten thousand levels at the same rate, right?”

    i nodded slightly at that. “it’s probably related to the actual level of the class being enhanced. if i were setting this system up, then once someone reached a certain level to fight on that floor with that class, the price would be raised to match the orbs on the next floor.”

    of course, there was always the possibility that this was wrong. there could either be a hard limit, or no price adjustment at all. i was only making an assumption based on the system’s normal methods of operating. especially since we learned that there is a limit to how many spheres you can redeem per floor.

    “that’d make sense.” aurivy nodded her head in agreement. “do you want to announce these hidden dungeons to the public?”

    i thought about that, crossing my arms over my chest. “rather than announce it to the public, give the information to fyor’s guild, but make it level-restricted. so, people will only be able to obtain that information if their personal level is at least six thousand. otherwise, we will have people going out and trying to find those dungeons when they don’t have the power to clear even the first floor of them.”

    aurivy seemed happy with that. “saves me some trouble. you know people would just be praying to me nonstop to try to send them to these dungeons. as the goddess of travel and dungeons, it would only be natural for them to assume that this would be one of my duties.”

    i simply chuckled, grinning towards the relieved goddess. “no, don’t worry about that. anyone that wants to go to a hidden dungeon can seek them out with their own abilities. the greater pantheon will not be responsible for providing a taxi service. this way, people will only go if they are confident that they can survive the vast expanse of fyor’s space.”

    with any luck, this would encourage people to explore in groups for greater security, including at least one expert with a travel-related power. if a lone explorer were to go off on their own without the proper preparations, it was unlikely that they’d even make it to a hidden dungeon, let alone survive long enough to claim any of its rewards.