Infinite Mana - Chapter 169: A Better Kind of Treasure Map (Thank you for your support, J3_Haustkottr!) (Patreon)

Sieghart opened his Status long enough to confirm the new branch remained there beneath Wrath, then closed it before curiosity convinced him to start experimenting immediately.

The dungeon was still active. More worms remained nearby. And he had just learned that ordinary-looking cores could still contain principles capable of interacting with Sin Magic. That was new information.

Previously, Sieghart had associated those strange mental effects almost entirely with corrupted cores. This core had shown no visible corruption whatsoever. Either corruption was not required for conceptual contamination, or Sin Magic itself was the dangerous part.

Neither possibility was comforting. Sieghart looked deeper into the dungeon while Magic Vision returned. Several mana disturbances continued moving through the surrounding stone.

Smaller. Manageable.

He still intended to train.

But absorbing every interesting core he found had suddenly become even less intelligent than before. Sieghart sighed and started walking.

Sieghart encountered nobody during the climb toward the surface. Every tunnel remained strangely empty, with abandoned lanterns and discarded equipment providing the only evidence that dozens of people had passed through recently.

Apparently, the camp had already realized he never returned with the rescue party. Nobody had come searching for him, however, which Sieghart considered considerably more reasonable than sending exhausted workers back underground after someone who had deliberately stayed behind.

Morran might be annoyed once he understood what happened, but entering the dungeon after Sieghart would have accomplished little. The man was a merchant, not an Aura warrior, and his niece had only recently escaped three days of constant fighting.

Sieghart continued upward while maintaining Magic Vision, checking the surrounding walls for movement despite the absence of attacks. The smaller earthworms seemed unusually quiet after the death of the massive creature deeper below.

Perhaps they sensed it. Or perhaps the dungeon was already beginning whatever process allowed defeated creatures to return. That thought remained with Sieghart until the distant glow of lanterns finally appeared ahead. Voices reached him shortly afterward, accompanied by the sounds of healers, workers, and relieved relatives moving through the camp outside.

Sieghart stopped before reaching the entrance. Walking directly outside would inevitably produce questions. Where had he gone? Why had he stayed behind? What happened to the large earthworm? Why did he smell faintly like an alchemical sewer despite using Wind Magic to clear most of the poison from his clothes?

None of those questions were particularly difficult to answer. Sieghart could simply ignore them, reach his carriage, and leave without explaining anything to people he would probably never meet again.

He considered doing exactly that. Then decided it felt unnecessarily disrespectful.

Morran had paid him properly, trusted him with dangerous cargo, and asked for his help when his niece remained trapped underground. Silently walking past everyone while refusing even basic questions would make Sieghart look like an asshole for no useful reason.

Avoiding the interaction entirely was different. Probably. Sieghart activated Phantom Image. The familiar illusion spread across his body, but rather than changing his face, age, or clothing, he reduced the apparent light reflected from his entire figure until his outline gradually disappeared against the stone.

Perfect invisibility remained difficult, especially while moving. Magic Vision could expose him instantly, and anyone staring directly at the distortion from close range might notice something strange. Fortunately, nobody outside was looking for invisible teenagers.

Sieghart reduced his footsteps with careful Wind Magic and moved toward the dungeon entrance while keeping close to the wall, where shifting shadows from lanterns made minor distortions harder to notice. The camp had changed considerably since his descent.

The rescued expedition occupied most of the central area now, surrounded by healers, blankets, food, water, and enough concerned workers that reaching them without stepping over someone looked difficult. Several injured miners rested on stretchers while White Magic users moved between them. Others sat around fires eating slowly, their hollow expressions gradually becoming more human now that they were outside.

Sieghart spotted Morran near the medical tents. The merchant sat beside Lysa, who remained asleep beneath two blankets while a healer occasionally checked her condition. Morran looked exhausted himself but considerably less tense than earlier.

Sieghart paused for a moment. Everyone seemed fine enough. He continued moving. Nobody noticed the faint distortion crossing the outer edge of the camp, though one guard briefly looked in Sieghart’s direction after hearing gravel shift beneath an invisible boot.

Sieghart stopped moving. The guard stared for several seconds. Then looked away.

“Still needs work,” Sieghart whispered.

He reached his carriage without further problems and slipped into the driver’s seat before releasing Phantom Image. The vehicle stood exactly where he had left it, untouched except for a layer of dust from arriving earlier.

The entire escape felt slightly ridiculous considering nobody had actually forbidden him from leaving. Still, avoiding ten minutes of explaining himself made the unnecessary stealth exercise worthwhile. Sieghart placed both hands against the steering wheel but did not activate the engine immediately. His attention drifted back toward the mountain and the creature lying somewhere beneath thousands of tons of stone.

The giant earthworm no longer had a core. That should normally make death rather permanent. Dungeons complicated that assumption. Once sufficiently established, dungeon ecosystems could reconstruct destroyed creatures through gathered mana, and Dungeon Guardians were especially difficult to eliminate permanently without addressing whatever structure maintained their existence.

The giant earthworm had possessed enough power to dominate everything nearby. Whether that made it the dungeon’s actual boss or simply one unusually developed monster remained unclear. Either way, Sieghart doubted removing its core guaranteed it would remain dead forever.

“What happens when you rebuild?”

The mountain obviously did not answer. Sieghart leaned back. If the dungeon reconstructed the earthworm from an original template, then eventually another identical creature might appear with a completely new core.

That possibility was extremely interesting. It was also slightly horrifying. If the dungeon reconstructed monsters using information from their final state rather than some fixed template, then Sieghart had just left behind several tons of earthworm saturated with Poison Magic.

The corpse had changed visibly before death. Blood, tissue, respiratory organs, and probably several other systems had adapted as much as possible while trying to survive the toxin. What if the dungeon copied that?

Sieghart imagined returning months later and finding a giant poison-resistant earthworm capable of eating magic while releasing toxic gas through every tunnel.

He slowly frowned.

“That would be inconvenient.”

There was no evidence that would happen. Unfortunately, Sieghart had experienced enough magical nonsense to know that lack of evidence was not the same as impossibility.

Maybe the dungeon would simply dissolve the corpse and create another normal worm later. Maybe removing the core would force reconstruction from scratch and erase every change caused during the battle. Or perhaps he had accidentally provided evolutionary pressure to an environment specifically designed to recreate monsters repeatedly.

“Still not my problem.”

Sieghart paused.

“For now.”

He finally activated the carriage engine. Fire Runes warmed beneath the frame, pistons began moving, and the familiar mechanical rhythm settled through the vehicle. Before driving away, Sieghart glanced toward the mountain one final time. The dungeon had given him considerably more than one hundred silver.

Several ordinary earthworm cores had provided Personal Experience. The large creature had unlocked Gluttony and Magic Resistance. The fight itself had improved his use of Impulse, Poison Sphere, Enhanced Smell, Focus, Magic Vision, Wind control, and simultaneous spell management.

That was an absurd return from one accidental delivery job. Sieghart slowly smiled. Dungeon bosses possessed stronger cores. Stronger cores meant more experience. More importantly, unusual dungeon bosses might possess rare abilities that the System could interpret into entirely new magical branches or spells.

Finding one powerful monster might accomplish more than weeks spent repeatedly training familiar techniques underground at Lunar Arc.

“That sounds almost too easy.”

Which naturally meant there were problems.

His recent absorption had already proven the largest one. The giant earthworm’s core had not looked corrupted, yet absorbing it still triggered an overwhelming foreign desire and unlocked another branch beneath Sin Magic.

Sieghart could no longer assume only corrupted cores carried dangerous conceptual influences. Every sufficiently unusual monster might contain something capable of affecting him. That meant hunting dungeon bosses for power was not remotely safe. It was still efficient. Sieghart disliked how much that mattered.

He guided the carriage slowly away from the camp, keeping the engine quiet enough that nobody immediately recognized the vehicle leaving through the darkness. The road remained empty beneath the early morning sky, giving him enough silence to continue thinking while the mountain gradually disappeared behind the trees.

Ronan’s map returned to his thoughts. The moron had listed towns, bridges, forests, rivers, dangerous roads, abandoned settlements, and enough border information to keep an inexperienced traveler from wandering into enemy territory accidentally.

Dungeons were conspicuously absent. Sieghart understood why now.

If every dungeon represented experience, unusual monsters, rare materials, magical resources, and potentially new powers, giving Sieghart their locations would effectively have been handing him a list titled Places You Should Definitely Investigate Alone.

Ronan knew him disturbingly well. Sieghart would need another map. Not a normal travel map. A dungeon map.

Mining companies probably maintained records. Adventurer organizations almost certainly knew regional locations. Merchants like Morran supplied expeditions and could provide information indirectly. Local governments might even publish warnings about dangerous ones.

Gathering those locations should not be difficult once Sieghart started asking the correct people instead of relying entirely upon Lunar Arc. The more he considered it, the better the idea sounded.

He could travel between human settlements as originally planned, trade goods for money, search for books, learn unfamiliar magic, and investigate nearby dungeons whenever opportunities appeared. Dungeon bosses could become milestones along the route.

Not something he needed to attack immediately. Something worth knowing about. Sieghart preferred that wording. He could examine each dungeon first, determine the creature involved, learn whether its core looked useful, and decide whether the danger justified the potential reward.

That was much more responsible than blindly consuming everything powerful enough to interest him. Probably. The carriage rolled onto the main road while faint morning light began appearing beyond the horizon. Sieghart increased mana through the controls and listened to the engine accelerate beneath him.

There remained one uncomfortable question.

If dungeon bosses returned after death, could he repeatedly collect their cores? Sieghart stared straight ahead. That possibility sounded broken.

Kill a boss.

Take the core.

Wait for reconstruction.

Return.

Repeat.

Even if respawning required months or years, keeping records of several dungeons could eventually create a renewable source of powerful monster cores. His System gained personal levels from those cores. The implications were obvious enough that Sieghart became suspicious immediately.

“There has to be a catch.”

There was always a catch.

Perhaps recreated bosses returned without cores for a long period. Maybe repeatedly killing them destabilized the dungeon. Perhaps stronger guardians eventually appeared in response. Or the dungeon could adapt specifically against whoever kept farming it.

That last possibility sounded especially believable after what he had seen from magical ecosystems and corrupted creatures.

Sieghart imagined returning for the fifth core only to encounter an earthworm immune to poison, Wind Magic, Ice Magic, Telekinesis, and every other technique previously used against it.

He sighed.

“That would definitely come back to bite me.”

Possibly literally. Still, ignoring the idea entirely would be stupid. He needed information before deciding anything. That was supposed to be the purpose of traveling in the first place. Learn first. Experiment afterward. Try not to create disasters between those steps.

Sieghart adjusted the steering wheel as Greymill’s distant road markers eventually came back into view beneath the growing morning light. His original journey toward the human capital had barely begun, yet his list of objectives had already expanded again.

Sell improved goods.

Study Barrier Magic.

Find Beast Taming or creature Summoning.

Improve Protection.

Find information about dungeon locations.

Investigate dungeon bosses.

Determine whether respawning bosses could actually become renewable sources of experience and magical principles. And somewhere near the bottom of that list, remember not to absorb suspicious cores simply because they looked interesting.

Sieghart considered moving that one higher. He probably should.

The carriage accelerated toward south.

Behind him, somewhere beneath the mountain, an enormous poisoned corpse waited for the dungeon to decide what happened next. Sieghart decided not to think too hard about that part.

He had already gotten what he wanted. Now he needed a better map.