I had arrived at the dungeon with the break of dawn, the sun cresting behind me; it was low enough on the horizon that the scattering light shone red and orange. I was down the steps to the second floor; We had cleared the dungeon of monsters in the night; the scouts had dropped cannisters of compressed gas, flooding the dungeon. It was easy enough to produce with salt stolen from the corpse of the town. Gas went in, wagons of incapacitated monsters came out.

It was a shame we had only found one dungeon so far.

Scouts buzzed above my head, drones that were propelled mechanically and loaded with basic automation software. I checked their feeds, scouting out the next floor. We equipped them with top of the line IR and visual imaging suites, enough to see the still uncapped floor of the dungeon ahead of me. Part of the next floor hovered above this room, casting the edge of it into shadow.

A figure lurked there, visible on IR by heat signature, but completely hidden to visual scans.

These creatures shrugged off the gas, only seeming to grow irritated by it.

The visible creature, which I had tagged GOAT01C, attacked the cannister dispersing gas on the ground. It had white fur with swirling patterns of red-orange mixed through it, horns glowing at the tip like heated metal. Four arms emerged from its torso, its bottom half the body of a goat, and when it raised its char-black hands, fire poured out from them, pouring over the capsule.

It was a shame it wasn’t explosive.

The goat’s fire stopped, and it stepped forward, sniffing at the white-hot metal cannister. It made another noise and galloped away from it.

The drones were endlessly useful. We had produced them 2 days ago, sending around a hundred in a radial search pattern, building a local map of the geography and searching for dungeons. AI615 could integrate our maps once it returned to service. We could only update a limited segment of the map, though. In 24 hours, we lost dozens of drones over specific deadzones. Monsters plucked a few from the sky. Others simply stopped transmitting, presumably destroyed instantly. This was doubly true of any human settlement. The farther we went Northeast, the taller the human settlements became, covered in walls and manned with archers who shot the drones down unerringly.

Instead, we were producing drones modeled after rats, heading towards the deadzones that the aerial drones couldn’t scan and working on infiltrating cities. They clutched onto the bottom of trade wagons, hung in trees, and crawled through sewers. We would start infiltrating and searching the nearest cities within a day or two.

I approached the stairs to the next floor of the dungeon.

///YOU HAVE COMPLETED HARDRADA’S DESCENT, FLOOR ONE

///CHOOSE YOUR — ERROR

///ERROR: DUNGEON COMPLETED FROM OUTSIDE OF DUNGEON BOUNDS

///THIS INCIDENT HAS BEEN LOGGED

///YOU HAVE COMPLETED HARDRADA’S DESCENT, FLOOR ONE

///SIGNET RING, RARE

Accessory, Ring. Increases command by 1.

///POTION BANDOLIER, COMMON, HEALING

Set of 3 Lesser Potions of Healing. They restore 50 HP each.

I chose the signet ring, watching as it materialized around my finger, and then moved up the stairs.

I didn’t bring many undead with me, and the ones that were here were outside; there was more than one purpose to my visit today. First, I needed to gain XP by clearing floors, in order to raise my command cap high enough to integrate the dungeoncore.

Second, I needed to test the power of what higher-level monsters were like. Their threat level had to be analyzed; books said that they increased exponentially, but what did that mean? Double the power of the starting monsters? Or were they all as strong as this floor’s ‘boss’?

I crested the floor and the GOAT01C charged me. The hidden monster, dubbed SHADOW01, circle around in the foliage. SHADOW01 ducked below the foliage, which rose feet tall.. I fired the Nova-3 at the GOAT, plasma impacting it… and sliding around its flesh like water.

Plasma burned away skin, revealing muscle and sinew, covering it in burn marks. Its charge didn’t stop.

My prybar extended from my arm, vibrating and ready.

The goat roared as it beat its hooves across the clearing. GOAT01C raised its hands, glowing with light and power, pointing them towards me. My Nova-3 fired first, this time carving open a hollow in the exposed flesh of its chest, and it stumbled to the side, skidding across the ground towards me, right as the SHADOW reached me, my prybar stabbing into it.

The SHADOW shoved itself forward, impaling itself on my blade. I carved upwards, and the blade bounced as it hit the creature’s bones, before settling back upwards, slowly oscillating through them —

The shadow tore my head off, crunching on steel. It was a cat covered in mottled green fur, or something like a cat

///ALERT: HP AT 50%

Its claws dug into my arm, ripping it out of the socket.

///ALERT: HP AT 25%

I kicked the SHADOW01C with maximum force, sailing backwards and over the dungeon, completely outside of it. The ground slammed into me, dirt erupting around me from the ground.

///ALERT: HP AT 10%

A system diagnostics check started as I was on my back, searching for the worst damage and disabling motors that would cause further damage if activated. My left arm and head were gone, already regenerating via [Skeletal Regeneration]. A black smoke enveloped the end of my body parts where they terminated in nubs, slowly disappearing and being replaced by recovering machinery.

I began making notes on the second floor. This confirmed that scaling was exponential. More than I expected. Dungeon monsters appeared to possess a natural statistical advantage over non dungeon life. I would have to record the exact numerical values when I activated the dungeoncore.

All future surveys should begin with low value, expendable assets.

My diagnostic reports finished, and I stood up. The glyph from the Skeleton binding ritual that had been carved on my face plate hovered in midair above my head, constructed with flickering purple mana. It moved with me as I turned to return to the ship colony. I would have to split off some of the undead from guarding Tobias to continue leveling.