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[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 39: Dungeon Lore
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 18:00:07 +0000 UTCGram gave the order, and the wagons came to a stop an hour before sunset. In part to give everyone a chance to get situated before they lost the light, but mostly to maintain enough distance that the expedition didn’t have to worry about beasts living in the high-threat biome sensing their presence and attacking during the night.
After checking in with Tessa and Mel, Edge spent the rest of the evening enjoying the company of Trapper’s crew. This was their last full day together. Once the base camp had been established, Jumo and Edge would start clearing the Savage Garden, while the other hunters secured the area and supported the operation from outside the dungeon.
After they gathered around the fire, they reviewed everything that they knew about dungeon lore over bowls of spicy chili and rice. Although Edge had never seen one himself, he had watched more of the Prison World broadcasts than the rest of the crew combined and was eager to pool his knowledge with the rest of his team.
There was some dispute as to how dungeons came into being. Whether the System built them from scratch or was capitalizing on a naturally-occurring phenomenon. While most dungeons were discovered deep within the frontier, they occasionally appeared in settled regions too.
They were generally located in areas with unusually high concentrations of magicytes, and if left unchecked, dungeons placed considerable strain on the local ecosystem. Regardless of their origin, there was universal agreement that the System cultivated nascent dungeons, seeding them with chests and other valuable resources.
They were invariably populated by powerful monsters, although most had plants and small animals living in them too. The monsters usually left these lesser life forms alone—likely because the dungeon provided sufficient energy for their needs. That being said, they were more than happy to feast upon any people or beasts who were foolish enough to venture inside.
In their natural, pristine state, unconquered dungeons represented a deadly threat as well as a valuable opportunity. Over time, they would release a portion of their population, unleashing a horde of monsters into the wild. Some scholars thought that all monsters were originally the inhabitants of dungeons, although there were countless competing theories regarding the matter.
One thing that everyone agreed on was that unconquered and conquered dungeons posed categorically different threats. Until a dungeon was cleared for the first time, it would continue to grow, spawning more monsters of higher stages with every new cycle.
Dungeons that popped up near settled areas needed to be cleared to make civilization on Ord possible, and there were always people who were willing to put their lives on the line to do so. All dungeons were laden with sealed chests and high-grade natural resources. On top of that, the System always offered a top-tier quest to anyone who attempted to clear a pristine dungeon, with fantastic rewards to match the deadly danger found within.
These unparalleled opportunities for advancement were infamous for luring people who were too weak to tackle the challenge, providing Prison World with some of its most popular footage.
Killing the dungeon’s boss—an elite monster more dangerous than anything else in there—would permanently change its nature. Once a dungeon was conquered, it would seal itself for a few years before it was ready to be entered again.
Clearing a conquered dungeon was far safer than the first time around. They were still a source of precious resources and a prime means of cycling up, but the other rewards would be significantly diminished. Once its energy was completely dispersed, the dungeon would vanish, and its territory would revert to natural land.
There was a vast body of knowledge dealing with conquered dungeons, but far less information regarding pristine ones. One thing was certain though; to conquer a dungeon and complete the System’s quest, the boss monster had to die.
Each dungeon had its own theme and contained threats that were centered around it. In the case of the Savage Garden, it was expected that the monsters inside would be adapted to a forest or jungle environment.
In addition to the entrance and boss’s chamber, dungeons were subdivided into areas known as regions or zones. The challenges contained within each region could vary from monster extermination to environmental hazards, or even some manner of puzzle or trial. Each dungeon had their own rules regarding how many people could enter at once, and other twists that made tackling each a unique experience.
The overall difficulty of a dungeon generally corresponded to the threat level of the biome that contained it. Judging by the highly-concentrated magicytes flowing in from the frontier regions now bordering the Ivory Plains, Edge was certain that the Savage Garden would have stage-two monsters living inside and that its boss would be stage-three.
Whatever was waiting for him in there, he was certain that there would be powerful skills to steal, the thought of which set his core grumbling. As the conversation on dungeons wound down and the crew slipped into their bedrolls, he turned his thoughts toward Skill-Eater—the mysterious being that was slumbering inside him.
Edge had spoken to Skill-Eater on two separate occasions. Their first conversation had come only moments after he forged a pact and bound the unique core within his chest, and the second was when he had evolved to stage one.
He was still wrapping his head around the idea that his central chamber was located inside of a titanic entity bound by endless black chains. If he could believe its claims, his core was an ancient creature that had once possessed unimaginable power.
He didn’t know why Skill-Eater was restrained by those living links. How the giant had been defeated and transformed into a core—diminished and sealed away for centuries, waiting for someone to open its reliquary and form a contract that would change their life forever.
He hoped to learn more about the matter eventually, but Skill-Eater had said that they couldn’t speak again until Edge grew more powerful. He didn’t think it would happen until he evolved to stage two, given everything that had occurred so far.
The ravenous lord bound in chains was a fitful sleeper. It sporadically woke up long enough to offer a suggestion, communicating through images and emotions that were usually accompanied by a primal hunger. It was clear that Skill-Eater had some sense of what was going on in the outside world and had offered insights that saved Edge’s life on more than one occasion.
After coming to his aid during the battle with the Garax, Skill-Eater had entered a deeper state of stasis, recovering from what the conflict had cost it. The only time it had woken since was during his meeting with Sakura.
It still reacted to his thoughts every now and again, but Edge had the sense that they were subconscious responses rather than deliberate acts. The black chains were always alert and responsive. But they were more like beasts than people, although they could communicate with him in their own way.
If Edge was being honest with himself, having Skill-Eater bound inside him both frightened and excited him. He didn’t completely trust his core and had to fight to keep its desires from overriding his own, since most aspects of their relationship were based on mutual self-interest.
Not that he had much choice other than to work with his core and hope for the best. For the rest of his life, their fates were bound as one. They were partners, and though he found many aspects of the situation unsettling, it was also encouraging to know that something with vastly more experience than himself was watching his back, at least some of the time.
On that note, he didn’t know much about the true nature of cores in general, or why unique cores were so different from any of the others he’d heard of. Maybe Sakura has some of the answers. He decided that when he had a chance to talk with her at length, he would broach the subject.
All in all, Edge’s relationship with Skill-Eater was opaque, and he had far more questions than answers at present. But since he didn’t have a way to pursue them now, he slid the issue onto the backburner while he pondered his immediate concerns, surviving the dungeon and plundering its riches.
As the minutes ticked past, his thoughts grew vague as sleep rose to claim him. As evening dusk faded to the black of night, Edge stepped into the land of dreams.
