Infinite Mana - Chapter 206: Dead Floors (Patreon)

Sieghart remained inside the ruined Guardian chamber until his breathing settled enough that standing no longer felt like an unnecessary argument with his own body. The corrupted red waves had almost completely vanished, leaving only ordinary dungeon mana drifting through the damaged stone.

That should have been enough reason to leave immediately. He had already pushed himself farther than planned, discovered Magma Magic, absorbed another corrupted core, and acquired Assimilation Magic while exhausted enough that responsible experimentation had become increasingly questionable.

Instead, Sieghart looked toward the passage beyond the second Guardian chamber. Curiosity remained irritatingly functional despite everything else hurting, and leaving without checking what existed immediately afterward would guarantee that he spent the next several days wondering about it.

He dismissed most of the lingering spells, kept Protection active, and walked deeper while Magic Vision scanned the surrounding stone. The passage descended gradually, its walls smoother than the upper levels and threaded with denser veins of metallic ore. Sieghart expected another golem within minutes. The previous floors had been crowded enough that reaching this point required constantly breaking, crushing, melting, or throwing constructs into one another whenever they blocked his path.

Nothing appeared.

He continued walking.

Five minutes passed without a single signature appearing through the walls. There were no heavy footsteps ahead, no vibrations through the floor, and none of the familiar mana concentrations that normally formed around dormant golems.

That was strange enough for Sieghart to slow down. He expanded Magic Vision as far as his tired concentration reasonably allowed and searched every visible section of the passage for hidden constructs embedded inside the surrounding stone. There were none.

The dungeon itself remained active. Mana still moved through the walls, mineral veins continued carrying faint magical energy, and the surrounding environment possessed the same artificial order Sieghart had noticed throughout the entire structure. Only the monsters were missing.

Sieghart continued farther until the tunnel widened into another chamber. Empty alcoves lined the walls, and several places looked suspiciously similar to the depressions where golems normally emerged from the floor. Nothing formed. He waited several minutes specifically to test whether his presence would trigger anything. Dungeon mana shifted around the chamber and flowed toward several formations, but every movement weakened before completing whatever process should have followed.

Sieghart narrowed his eyes and approached one of the depressions. Magic Vision showed mana gathering beneath the surface, spreading through a shape roughly humanoid in size, then dispersing before enough structure formed to create a body.

That was new. The dungeon was trying to do something. It was failing. Sieghart crouched near the unfinished formation and watched another cycle begin. Mana collected, organized itself into several pathways, attempted to stabilize, and then collapsed back into the surrounding floor without producing even a hand.

The timing of that failure made the cause rather obvious. He had destroyed the corrupted Guardian. More importantly, he had absorbed the core instead of merely shattering it. Sieghart slowly stood and looked farther down the empty passage. If his assumption was correct, then the corruption had not simply strengthened one monster. Somehow, whatever principle existed inside that Guardian had become connected to the surrounding dungeon zone.

Removing it had broken something.

The question was exactly what.

Sieghart walked deeper for another twenty minutes, checking side passages and several smaller chambers. Not one golem appeared anywhere beyond the second Guardian chamber, regardless of how long he remained inside each location. Eventually, he turned back. The return trip was faster because nothing attempted to stop him. That alone felt wrong after spending so long treating every corridor like an ambush filled with several tons of animated mineral waiting to punch him.

When Sieghart crossed the second Guardian chamber and entered the previous section, he expected the situation to change. That floor had contained enough golems earlier that he had practically constructed a mobile siege weapon from their remains.

It was empty too. Sieghart stopped completely. The remains of previous battles were still present where he had abandoned them. Cracked mineral chunks covered sections of the floor, several walls remained damaged, and some passages still showed impact marks from his improvised Telekinetic weapon.

No new golems had appeared.

Sieghart traveled farther upward while Magic Vision searched ahead. The same failure repeated in multiple places where he remembered encountering monsters earlier.

Mana gathered. Shapes almost formed. Then everything dispersed. By the time he approached the first Guardian chamber, Sieghart had stopped treating the situation as coincidence. Something had changed across an enormous section of the dungeon after he absorbed the corrupted core.

The reconstructed first Guardian was gone from sight, though Sieghart avoided approaching its exact chamber again until he understood whether another reconstruction cycle had begun. He continued toward the earlier floors instead. Eventually, he found monsters.

Several ordinary mineral golems wandered through a passage located before the first Guardian zone. Their amber cores pulsed normally, their bodies showed no corruption, and nothing about their behavior suggested the dungeon had suffered any widespread collapse.

Sieghart watched them from a distance without attacking. That established a boundary. Everything before the first Guardian chamber still functioned. Everything after it appeared partially dead.

The second corrupted Guardian had affected only a specific portion of the dungeon, and absorbing its core had apparently removed something that entire section needed to continue producing monsters. Sieghart leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead while trying to organize the implications. He had expected the core to contain power. He had not expected removing that power to interfere with the dungeon itself.

The simplest explanation was that the corrupted Guardian had somehow become a regional control point. Perhaps dungeon mana passed through its core before reaching deeper formations, turning the Guardian into something closer to a magical regulator than an ordinary boss.

That still failed to explain why corruption was involved. If the Guardian naturally controlled the lower floors, then its reconstructed version should eventually restore the missing functions. If corruption had hijacked that control instead, then Sieghart might have removed an artificial replacement without restoring the original system.

There were too many possibilities and almost no evidence. One possibility bothered him more than the others. Maybe the problem had nothing to do with the Guardian itself. Maybe it was him. Sieghart looked down at his hand, remembering how quickly the corrupted core had turned into dust once absorption began. He had not merely drained some mana from it. The entire magical structure had disappeared into him.

Cores normally gave him Experience, spells, or conceptual fragments without apparently damaging the world around them. This one had been different enough that its removal seemed to leave an entire region incapable of functioning normally. Could his ability affect the world itself?

The thought sounded dramatic enough that Sieghart immediately disliked it, but the evidence made dismissing it equally irresponsible. Something had existed inside that dungeon, he had absorbed it, and afterward part of the dungeon stopped working. Maybe Infinite Mana was not the important factor.

Perhaps the strange ability allowing him to learn magic from cores removed more than ordinary adventurers did. If so, every corrupted core he absorbed might permanently alter whatever system originally produced it. Sieghart stared toward the lower passage. Or perhaps dungeons were special. That possibility was considerably less alarming.

Dungeons already behaved unlike ordinary environments. They created monsters, reconstructed bosses, expanded materials using mana, produced cores, and reorganized their internal structures according to rules nobody seemed particularly interested in questioning. Removing one important component could easily break part of that machinery without implying that Sieghart could walk outside and accidentally remove properties from reality itself.

He preferred that explanation. Unfortunately, preference did not count as evidence.

Sieghart considered testing the effect eventually on another dungeon. If absorbing a similarly important core caused another localized collapse, then he could start determining whether the phenomenon belonged to dungeons specifically.

That experiment could wait. Repeatedly breaking dungeons to satisfy curiosity sounded like an excellent way to attract exactly the kind of attention he spent most of his life trying to avoid. There was also the practical problem that other adventurers would notice.

The golem dungeon supported miners, merchants, healers, equipment sellers, and combat groups around the permanent camp outside. If half its deeper floors suddenly stopped producing monsters, people would investigate.

Someone would eventually compare timelines. A strange young merchant named Sieg arrived. Golem numbers changed. He joined Aldren’s expedition. A corrupted Guardian died. Then Sieg entered alone. Afterward, enormous sections of the dungeon stopped functioning. Sieghart grimaced. That sequence was far too convenient.

He had already sold equipment to enough people that pretending he had never been present would not work. The best option was simply making sure nobody could connect his final solo descent directly to the new changes. That meant leaving before anyone noticed. Sieghart took one final look toward the deeper floor and decided his curiosity had consumed enough time. He had learned far more from this dungeon than originally expected, and staying longer only increased the chance of creating another problem.

It was high time to bail.

Another dungeon was waiting somewhere on the map Ronan had suspiciously refused to provide properly, and Sieghart had already purchased enough updated information in the capital to choose several possible destinations. Preferably the next one would contain something softer than metal.

Sieghart moved upward without fighting unless necessary, keeping Phantom Image active and avoiding the most common mining routes whenever possible. The dungeon felt almost peaceful after the endless battles below. That peace made the consequences more obvious.

Even several floors above the broken region, monster numbers seemed lower than they had been when Sieghart first descended, though ordinary golems still appeared frequently enough that nothing looked completely unnatural yet. By the time he reached the entrance, exhaustion had settled heavily across his entire body. His head still ached, his knees protested every long step, and Assimilation Magic continued whispering unpleasant possibilities whenever he noticed useful materials.

The night outside was cool enough that the first breath of fresh air felt almost magical by comparison. After spending so long surrounded by stone, molten metal, smoke, and dungeon heat, even ordinary wind felt unusually pleasant. The mining camp was mostly asleep.

A few lamps remained burning near guard posts and storage tents, while distant workers moved quietly around areas that apparently operated through the night. Most merchants had closed their stalls hours earlier.

That was fortunate. Sieghart did not want an audience.

He maintained his ordinary traveling illusion and walked toward the section where he had parked the carriage, making no effort to run or behave suspiciously despite wanting to disappear before sunrise. Nobody stopped him. One guard glanced in his direction and apparently recognized the young merchant who had been selling runic equipment and healing injured adventurers. The man looked tired enough that curiosity lost against sleep almost immediately.

Sieghart reached the carriage and checked everything before entering. The wheel chains remained intact, the removed steering wheel had not been disturbed, and none of the simple precautions around the vehicle showed signs of tampering.

That improved his mood slightly. He restored the steering wheel, completed the mana connection, and allowed energy to flow through the carriage systems. The familiar mechanical vibrations felt almost comforting after several days of dungeon unpredictability. Sieghart did not immediately activate the engine at full output. Leaving the camp like someone fleeing a crime scene would be far more memorable than simply departing during the night like an impatient traveler.

The carriage rolled forward slowly. Only after the dungeon camp disappeared behind the ridge did Sieghart increase the mana supply. The pressure system responded, pistons accelerated, and the carriage began gaining speed along the empty road. Sieghart looked once toward the darkness behind him. By sunrise, people would probably start realizing that the deeper dungeon had changed. By then, he intended to be far enough away that nobody could casually ask Sieg whether he knew anything about it.

He faced forward again and increased the speed.