Darius looked upon the entrance to the dungeon with a smile. Before entering though, he used his Analyze skill on it to see if he could glean useful information on it before entering.

As usual, the Itemancer skill did not disappoint.

[Unnamed Dungeon - Dungeon

Element(s): Darkness

Durability: 45,000/45,000

Floors: 3

Amateur Monsters: 234

Journeyman Monsters: 123

Adept Monsters: 56

Amateur Boss Monsters: 1

Journeyman Boss Monsters: 1

Adept Boss Monsters: 1

Dungeon Core(s): 1

Core Grade: Newborn (Damaged)

Maximum instances: 100

Maximum persons per instance: 50

Energy Gathering Rate: 2 SE Per Death

Energy Gathering Efficiency: Abysmal

Total Energy Gathered: 19,346 SE

Total Energy Spent: 0 SE]

Darius blinked at the long display and forwarded it over to Gunner. Reading this, Darius was excited for it revealed a lot of information to him that he planned to slowly explore later.

Darius possessed some knowledge of how dungeons operated in other high fantasy media. Those dungeons would be spawned by something called a Dungeon Core.

What he knew was that Dungeon Cores had absolute control over their territory and spread their unique energy over it to permanently wrest this space over.

In other words, the entire dungeon one was traversing and happily slaughtering monsters in was actually the body of the Dungeon Core!

That crystal itself would contain a fledgling consciousness that created and operated its 'body' using a unique form of energy collected from slain adventurers that had lusted after its rewards.

As beings created through universal laws, Dungeon Cores were not like humans that had free will and embodied chaos.

Dungeon Cores were entities of order, and they displayed it through restraint and mutual symbioses.

They would create a place where living entities like humans and other races, even beasts, could freely traverse and gain lucrative resources and rewards which had been inputted into the core's DNA as a means to attract said fellows.

However, they also created monsters near such rewards to protect them. Kill the monsters and take the rewards was fair in the Dungeon Cores' eyes, as it was your spoils!

Nevertheless, they didn't act altruistically, as they aimed to kill the adventurers through their monsters and traps so that they could wholly absorb you into their energy pool, your everything becoming nutrition to strengthen them, allowing them to expand their territory, create new as well as better resources and even stronger monsters.

It was a perfect cycle that embodied a special ecosystem in fantasy media that Darius had found intriguing due to its design. From what he had learned through Faust's books, Vena had apparently used the very same system for her world.

The only difference was that, for some reason, she had made it so that dungeons - at least in Faust - possessed this trait of instancing, instead of a dungeon being traversed by all who came.

Darius wasn't sure of the logic behind her action, but he also wouldn't be too surprised if the decision hadn't been based on logic, but merely the Goddess' whim.

Vena was the Goddess of Games and Recreation after all, so perhaps she had seen the concept applied in online games who would use instances to prevent overcrowding as well as server destabilization and just copied it.

However, these were all conclusions derived from what he had seen in his analysis. Darius would still have to head inside to see what was up with this dungeon and whether his actual theories were true, though the screen before him made him confident in that.

In fact, what intrigued Darius the most were three things. Firstly, the fact that the screen read 'Element(s)'. This might seem unimportant, but in grammar, this represented the possibility for a subject to possess either one or more properties.

So if the english was correct, dungeons in Fallon could be multi-elemental. This was a discovery that was no less than astounding for Darius, also opening new possibilities for him.

First and foremost, if he found this dungeon's Dungeon Core, would it be possible to transmute it to possess more elements? After all, he could now transmute semi-sentient items, and a Dungeon Core should fit that category.

That was if he found it though. Hmm, if he transmuted it statically, could he increase its grade as well? From Basic to Grandmaster? It seemed likely, and was something worth exploring, just in case the price range was not too outrageous.

Hold on. Why go so far? If Darius was dissatisfied with this dungeon, he could transmute his own Dungeon Core, right? Couldn't he possibly create a core that outright had all elements and was of the highest grade?

'I wonder what stage I would have to reach for that to be feasible.' Darius mused with a smile.

He didn't even have to know that it would cost far more than the measly 100 CP he had access to right now.

The only way to do so as a Journeyman would be to abuse Transmutation's rule #5.

So far, the only thing of value he could reliably convert down into CP had been the Lunar Dew, but he would not do so for two reasons.

The first was that Lunar Dew had far too many uses with how little he could make made every day in that small bowl. The second was that the conversion rate for items being transmuted down was outright abysmal.

Using the same Lunar Dew as an example, directly changing a bowlful of Pure Water was impossible for him, as it cost 345,000,000 Conversion Points.

According to the Transmutation ability, this should even be the lowest possible cost since Pure Water was the closest base material to Lunar Dew.

This was why there was no loss in quantity after the Bowl of Nuwa spent 24 hours refining it. Otherwise if one put a bowlful of normal river water in, what would come out might be a single droplet of unconcentrated Lunar Dew, if one was lucky.

And so, with this price as a standard, converting according to rule #5 yielded 1% of the total value of the item... with a cap of the current CP daily limit.

In other words, no matter how valuable whatever he was converting down, he would only gain a maximum of 100 CP as a Journeyman, instead of what should have been 3,450,000 which was 1% of the Lunar Dew's cost.

As one could imagine, this was a serious waste. However, Transmutation could no longer be called a sensible ability if would allow Darius to gain more than three million CP per day that never expired. Even for a Supreme-grade ability, it would be ridiculous.

Darius had a suspicion that it might have paid out more, and that Caesar had once again changed some things around, but he didn't mind.

Having double his daily CP if he converted something he didn't need with a high value was fine too.