Mash didn’t know if his brother would be willing to share, but he was growing tired of missing out on so much. He was able to see his brother hesitate, but Mash didn’t have some better argument, it was merely to satisfy his curiosity.

“The dungeon was not natural. From the little bit of information, we could glean from the inside, we realized that it was an artificial construct. Whatever those monsters had been, they were capable of making dungeons.”

Arthur sighed before speaking with similar tiredness to what Mash felt. Mash recovered from his tiredness as the words shocked him. The implications of those words would send the kingdom into chaos.

It was a firm belief that dungeons were a blessing by the gods, and this would spit in the face of that belief. That was only a small part of the thoughts that were racing in Mash’s mind. He had suspected that the dungeons were artificial but didn’t actually believe that it was possible. His brother’s words told him that they were.

His thoughts flashed to the other dungeons he had visited, and many of the known dungeons that were scattered across the land. Things he should’ve realized already, but his mind had been ignoring unconsciously surfaced within his thoughts. It was so obvious, but only now did he consider it.

There were both natural dungeons and artificial ones. Some of the dungeons he had been in or knew about were extremely structured, with general rules that it conformed to. The labyrinth for instance was probably an artificial dungeon, and he guessed it was made by the snake or possibly whoever ruled this world.

On the other hand, the dungeon his friends had gone into sounded like it had no rules, and only the entrance was restricted by level. From their story, it sounded like they were just thrust into another world and had acted like conquerors. Mash didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that, especially considering the dungeon always presented the same situation.

That dungeon probably just led to places of war on the world and deposited people in front of aggressive cities. Mash wished he could’ve entered and explored the rest of the world, rather than merely fight the enemy. Honestly, the prospect of exploring a new world, and discovering what they had done to gain power, would be incredibly interesting.

There was still another dungeon to visit nearby, though it was a lot more dangerous than the first. Mash didn’t know if it was an artificial dungeon or not, but there was some general knowledge on the place. It was supposed to be a maze of some kind, but from what he knew the shape of the maze never changed. People could only enter it once a year, but it became easy after clearing it once. The real problem was the warping of time. The dungeon typically took three to five days, which was somewhere between one and two months. It was a popular dungeon, despite the danger of the first attempt.

That dungeon sounded far more artificial than the others, and Mash would at least try and see if he could prove it. Honestly, he didn’t know if he wanted more dungeons to be natural, or if he wanted them to be artificial. The implication that they were made by someone and used to weed out weak people was a bit harsh. Assuming that there was an entity like the World Carrier for his world, then that was who probably made dungeons.

Or maybe not, considering those monsters had managed it, he guessed that meant that anyone could theoretically do it. Were there human dungeons? What of the other races? He knew that elves tended to have a higher affinity with mana, so it wasn’t impossible. Plus, he had wanted to visit the cities of the other races, and this seemed like as good a reason as any.

Mash’s mind wandered to what he would do if he had the knowledge and power to form a dungeon. Would he make it safe, so that people could level without much danger to themselves? While that might have sounded nice in his head, his body revolted against the idea. That might have been a reaction due to the system, but he guessed that it had much more mundane reasoning.

It would feel unfair to him, and those who risked their lives for the power that they have. He knew it was selfish, but he had earned his power and wanted to be special for it. He would still want the dungeon to be difficult, but maybe not as life-threatening. Though, the thought that he had the right to decide how to make dungeons was arrogant, and beyond what he should be considering. He had zoned out, but his brother just sat there, patiently waiting for Mash to finish his internal dialogue.

Mash didn’t hesitate in sharing his own speculations, and he raised an eyebrow when his brother nodded along.

“You have come to the same conclusion as me and some of the others who know of this information. The only thing we don’t know is who is making the artificial dungeons. As we filter through the list of known dungeons, we estimated that over half of them were artificial.”

His brothers’ words came out slowly, a look of deep thought crossing his face. Mash did have his own ideas on who made the dungeons, and shared what he knew of the world owners and his speculations of other races.

Arthur dismissed his notions on the other races, claiming that would know if that was the case. However, he agreed that whoever made the class system would likely be able to make dungeons as well. Their conversation shifted then, moving to the obvious question of why someone or something would do that. What was the purpose of creating things to make people stronger?

No answers came to mind and sitting there didn’t accomplish much else. Soon, they started hearing the others coming and decided to get up for now. Only once Mash got up, did he remember what had even started their sparring session. Remembering it was not enough to rekindle his anger, the two of them made their way to get a meal. Casually, he asked Arthur if he could share the information with the others.

He didn’t seem to mind, saying it should be fine. The kingdom had been extremely cautious around the treatment of his brother already, and his recent advancement had only given them another incentive to stay on his good side. So, Arthur would probably be safe so long as he didn’t do anything directly treasonous.

With that bit of confirmation done, Mash decided to share his findings with the others. They deserved to know, and he didn’t really want to hide it from them either. The conversation happened over a meal; thought they were busy discussing the implications to eat properly. Alex looked distinctly unhappy with both Mash and Arthur. It was obviously because they had revealed something that would widely be considered sacrilegious. However, she did defend her stance with a point that Mash hadn’t considered. Gods were probably people who had and could make dungeons, so there might be some truth to that claim.

The rest of the night did not go smoothly. Mash’s mind was swimming with ideas, and he couldn’t sleep. Instead, he went and trained with his dragon form, trying to figure out how much he would need to hold himself back to use it. The form was a double-edged sword in non-lethal combat since it drained his energy rapidly. He was just as likely to end the fight in a few blows, as he was to lose because he ran out of energy. He believed that there had to be a workaround, a way to use the skill as he had before.

He had managed to figure out how to use persist for fights, and he was determined to make hunt work outside of it. It wasn’t just for sparring. His real motivation was that he wanted to be able to fly freely once again. He sat in the training ground trying to figure out how to change the skill to work as he wanted.

“You’ve been pretty silent so far. Got any ideas, Priscilla?”

Mash was getting tired of trying to make him feel like he was fighting to death because there was no amount of mental effort that could make a wooden dummy feel like a life-or-death fight.

“It might be related to your survival instincts, rather than your mindset.”

Priscilla's words made a little sense, but he also knew she was holding something back. He gave her what she wanted and asked the obvious question.

“Well, how do I trigger my survival instincts?”

“I think stabbing yourself in the chest could work. Try puncturing a lung or your heart.”

Mash could only sigh at Priscilla’s words.

‘You know I can’t just stab my own heart.”

She just sent him the mental equivalent of a shrug, followed by a roll of her eyes. She was picking up her human habits from him. her idea wasn’t immediately discarded though. If it was a matter of his survival instincts, he would simply need to find a way to trick them. Maybe, Mash could find an item or a skill that would kill him if he ran out of energy. Hopefully, that combination would let him have unlimited energy.

Shaking his head violently, he dismissed the thoughts. That was clearly too extreme an option, and he wondered why his mind wandered to it. Thinking about it, his mind seemed to do that often. He always bounced from extreme to extreme, rather than try to find a middle ground. Doing things like that would eventually kill him. Another thing for his list of things that he needed to change about himself.

Another thing that might be due to the class system rather than his normal mind. Honestly, he didn’t know which was more likely. It could just as easily be both as well. Shaking his head slightly he decided that it wasn’t something he would worry about right now. He felt like dwelling on those thoughts would make it impossible to try and accomplish anything else. He continued to train, and instead of focusing on what he could do about his mentality, he decided to try and figure out his next steps.

There was only one day left of the tournament. Jill, Red, and Luke had some colosseum fights that would hopefully get Red and Jill to their next advancement. His sister wanted him to attend something at the end of the year, but what about after all that?

The dungeon seemed like the obvious answer, and it would be a good way to get to the end of his contract. Assuming it took them around two months to finish that dungeon, there would still be a few months left on his contract. He could head away from the beast-men city. Go and visit some of the other races, and their dungeons. Obviously, he would need to discuss it with the others, but he thought it was a pretty good idea.

His thoughts of the future naturally brought him to the path at level one hundred. Killing another person at that level would be hard but would certainly be easier than clearing a dungeon meant for someone at that level. However, Jack had said the dungeon could be anything, so it might be easier. Mash just didn’t trust the system to offer something like an easy alternative. With his luck, the dungeon would probably be a hundred times harder than it needed to be. However, that was the path he would choose, nonetheless.

It would take a conscious effort to regain what he believed the system had taken from him and killing people for power was not the path he wanted to take. It was what he had been doing, and he could accept that there were things he needed to kill. From Luke’s story, Mash guessed that demons were probably things he was ok with killing. Most mindless monsters would be fine, as well creatures like Priscilla. She didn’t even bristle at the thought, and seemed, if anything, to agree. Mash wasn’t so altruistic to spare overtly cruel monsters or those that dominated regions with force.

Priscilla fell into both of those categories as it was in her nature. He had discussed it with her plenty and learned more about what she had been and what her nature entailed. She had a way of connecting to the minds of lesser creatures and would dominate the environment around her. Almost every creature within a vicinity would be nothing more than a glorified puppet for her.

Mash had no doubts that she had been dangerous and was glad that she was inheriting so many things from him. he was worried about the reverse, but she insisted that it would go against her very nature to try and control him now. She was now in the same position as those she had taken control of and would not rebel against someone who would grant her power. That sounded like a poor argument, though there was not much he could change about their situation. Plus, he could see into her mind and would know if she ever considered anything nefarious. Mash seemed to be really good at getting into complicated situations.