The shield-user moved forward, covering the longsword-user. A sense of danger came over Silvy, who dodged to the right. A spell had been cast by the mage, earth moving upwards where Silvy had been, trying to catch her but failing. Silvy rushed towards the shield-user, who braced himself, with the longsword guy behind ready to support him. His sword tried to hit her from the left, shield still covering him. Silvy swung from below against his sword, making it going off course. But the longsword was coming from her right, trying to block her from two sides simultaneously. Silvy jumped left, trying to circumvent the shield while dodging the longsword. But a golden halo surrounded the shield-user for a moment, and his speed increased. He recovered from the hit, managing to turn with Silvy to block her attack. But why should she lose time with these two? She kept running towards the two women in the back. The priest had just cast a buff for the shield-user, but the mage was ready. Earth shot up in front of the mage, creating a wave of earth and rocks. It was a bit higher than a person, so she doubted she could jump over it; it was quite wide as well. Silvy turned around, running back towards the two front liners, who had stopped their chase and were ready to trap her between them and the wave. She rushed left: she was faster than they. The couple tried to intercept her, but Silvy outran them. The longsword changed position, moving again behind the shield-user. Silvy was starting to realize how hard it was to fight against a coordinated group. The shield guy would pressure her, with the longsword guy helping out. The priest would cover their mistakes, buffing them, and the mage would attack from the back at any opportunity.

Winning without getting hit… That would be hard. In a normal situation, she could’ve just rushed forward, uncaring of the damage, trading away wounds. But a fight like this…

Silvy dodged left, avoiding the same spell from before from the mage. That was a mistake: creating a rune required time, and the mage had just cast without her allies between Silvy and herself: this was probably the difference between a bronze team and a more advanced one.

Silvy grasped the opportunity, rushing again towards the women in the back. The two men tried to stop her, but they were too slow and too far: the mage was trying to quickly cast a spell, but the priest beat her to it. A golden halo surrounded the woman, who moved forward, trying to punch Silvy.

Silvy was confused for a second, but then a strong sense of danger warned her: this punch was dangerous! She let herself fall, sliding under the fast punch; she hadn’t expected it to be so fast. A decent wind picked up from the punch, ruffling Silvy and the priest’s hair. Who had her eyes wide open: she clearly hadn’t expected Silvy to dodge it. Silvy pushed herself off the floor, delivering a powerful kick in her face. The priest’s head shot back and she fell, unconscious. The mage cast a spell at that moment, creating a square of earth that shot towards Silvy. It was different from before: that one was a wave that rose the earth when it passed, while this one was a literal wall of earth coming towards her, a couple of meters tall and wide. And the two men had closed the distance as well, blocking the escape on the left. She moved right instead, faster than the group expected. Time to take out the mage: she threw the sword the moment she appeared from behind the wall, hitting the mage in the forehead. A yelp escaped her mouth, hand cradling the hit. Two out.

The men were armed and Silvy was not, but that did not worry her. They struck one after the other, trying to overwhelm her. But they were too slow: she weaved and danced around every hit, waiting for an opportune moment. Which came from the longsword guy overextending, blocking the way of the shield guy. Silvy took the opportunity, sliding closer to the enemy, elbowing him hard in the stomach, followed by a strong uppercut in his chin, moving out of the way on his left. The guy was still standing, folded in half, confused and in pain; Silvy finished him off, kneeing him again in the stomach: he was now on the ground, throwing up.

Silvy took a few steps back, shield guy not advancing.

“Alright, you win.”

He looked at his companions, one busy throwing up, another unconscious and the last one with a bleeding cut on her forehead.

“Impressive. You are a silver rank, for sure… Thank you for going easy on us.”

The longsword guy stopped retching, looking at Silvy in anger: she wasn’t sure if he was angry at her or because his pride had been wounded.

“Easy, right…” he coughed again, unable to speak.

“That was… illuminating. Throwing your weapon like that… Were you in trouble, or you knew you could dodge their attacks?”

The mage woman looked at her, a napkin now on her forehead to stop the bleeding.

“I knew they were slow. They were not the problem: you two were, so I took you out.”

The mage nodded.

“We should probably head inside; maybe the others are already there. Can we get a bucket of water for Leila?...”

Silvy left them and went inside the guild, leaving the team to their own devices; Genne was coming towards the door.

“I was just on my way to call you. The other team and the examiners are here: we are just waiting for you and the other team. Are they still outside?”

Genne pointed to a group of people sitting at two tables joined together to create a single one. Two people with a complete set of steel armor were talking to a group of four adventurers dressed in leather armor, one with a steel chest piece. Silvy nodded to Genne, who went into the courtyard to call the other team.

Silvy approached the group, noticed by them. One of the full armored adventurers, probably a gold rank examiner, stood up and shook her hand.

“You must be Silvy, right? We are ready to move out when the last group reaches us; we will reach the dungeon tomorrow around noon.”

Silvy nodded, sitting down. The group was talking about the test, trying to calm down the rookies.

“The first floor is not hard: just don’t be surprised by the monsters and you’ll be able to fight them off. We will wait for you at the stairs: you’ll have six hours to reach them, ample time if you ask me. We’ve got some healing potions but no priest. Try to not get killed inside.”

The last group arrived, the one who had been in the courtyard with Silvy. They didn’t show any sign of weariness or wound; even the cut on the mage’s forehead had been healed.

“Good, everyone’s here. Let’s get going: the earlier we depart the sooner we arrive.”

The group moved outside the guild: two carriages pulled by horses were waiting outside.

“Get inside.”

They entered the traffic, moving through the city, going out the east gate, a route not taken by many. In the distance, Silvy could see the forest, home of the elves, place of her… rebirth?

----

“How is it possible…”

Iolas, one of the elves following the child, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Not after everything that had happened: it was like the world was conspiring against them.

Haryk was silent, but his eyes were betraying anger. They had lost the child after she had gotten out of the inn, losing the chance to make a move on her. They had almost been caught by the guards of the city, something unthinkable: but for one reason or another, a strong wind had suddenly arrived, dragging their hood down and flailing their hairs wildly, forcing them to move down hallways, trying to lose their pursuers, as a group of guards had seen their ears. Elves were not stopped from entering the city, but humans did not have sympathy for their kind. And every movement of elves inside the city had to be recorded, and their entrance had been unannounced. If they were to get caught, the guards would check everything was in order, and they would have surely found out their clandestine entrance. And if they discovered that a grand master was in the city, who knows what the humans would do.

But the baffling fact was that it seemed almost like the guards knew where they were going. Around every corner, at the end of hallways: those guards appeared out of nowhere, searching for them, almost as if they were everywhere at once. And they couldn’t use magic: that would mean exposing their mana, most likely attracting the attention of the mages in the city. They had wasted the entire morning trying to lose their pursuers, managing to do it only around noon. The child was long gone: their only option was to search the places she had been seen, hoping to find her. If Haryk didn’t know better, he would think that someone was interfering…

-----

The group of adventurers traveled the quiet road until night when they stopped and camped. The journey had been without incidents, for now, but it wouldn’t last; they had entered the forest now, and monsters were more abundant. Guard shifts had been distributed in the group, with Silvy volunteering for one; most likely they would have left her out otherwise. At least she could stop pretending to sleep for a couple of hours; laying down and staring at the sky was not fun, but at least her boredom was suppressed.

Nothing happened during the night, and only a sighting of a shadow wolf, that ran away right after, happened in the last stretch of the journey.

A small village appeared at the end of the road: the road did not continue further, stopping here. A wooden palisade, a couple of meters high, surrounded the sparse housings. Most were tents, with only a few buildings made of wood; there were not many people, and it was more an encampment than a village. The group went inside, followed by the stares of the people. Silvy could see almost everyone was armed, with many having adventurer’s badges on their clothes or armor: these people were all adventurers. Mages, priests, warriors, all here to test themselves against the dungeon.

“Alright, we have arrived. You can rest, relax, prepare, whatever you want to do: we’ll regroup here in an hour.”

The gold rank adventurers, Baomut, went towards one of the wooden buildings, followed by the other gold rank, Grer.

The two bronze rank teams divided themselves, taking out some food and chatting between themselves. They stayed in the proximity of the carriage, not wanting to miss the deadline.

Silvy had talked with them during the journey, learning their names. The two groups had no official name, as only after passing the test to silver rank could they choose one. And they knew each other: there was a sort of friendship/rivalry between them, as they had similar strength.

The guild master had told her to join a group inside the dungeon, but she was not sure she wanted to do it: their levels and power were too low, and she did not want to raise too many questions.

The hour passed with Silvy training in creating a line with mana, as she had done for the last few days. The two groups were tense, but Silvy wasn’t: courtesy of her core and the fact that if they could do pass the test, she could it as well.

Was she too confident? Maybe. But joining a team was not an option: her secrets had to remain unknown.

The two gold ranks coming back, the others grouped around them.

“Alright, listen up. We are going inside now: wait for ten minutes and then go inside as well. You may move alone or in a group all together, it doesn’t matter: the only requirement is reaching the stairs for the next floor. And don’t use a map: we’ll know if you do. If you can’t reach the stairs in six hours, we’ll go through the dungeon and bring you outside. Any question?”

Silence was the only answer: the two examiners walked inside the dungeon without another word.

The group waited ten minutes and moved inside after that. Silvy was the last of the line; the two groups had even squabbled over who could go in first, deciding it with a coin flip in the end. Why did they even do that? Maybe to show supremacy or something, especially given that only the male members had actually fought over it. No matter.

A mound as tall as two men with a tunnel leading underground marked the entrance of the dungeon. There was no door, no special feature: it was a tunnel leading underground, made of compressed dirt, large enough to accommodate three people walking next to each other comfortably and two people standing on each other.

The first thing the groups did was to light up various torches or lamps, illuminating the surroundings. There was no source of light other than those carried by the adventurers, but Silvy, as always, had no problem seeing in the dark. They walked for a bit, descending underground, quickly reaching an intersection. Four tunnels branched off, not counting the one where they had come from. The group in front tried to understand where the examiners had gone, but there were footsteps everywhere: people had moved through these corridors many times.

Silvy had no idea where the gold ranks had gone: that was not her specialty. She chose a tunnel at random, not sure if there even was a right one: did they all bring to the next floor? Were there dead ends?

The groups, seeing Silvy moving away, stopped discussing with each other, choosing each a different route, seemingly at random.

The tunnel was quite unremarkable: dirt, dirt and more dirt. Nothing distinguished it from the other: getting lost in here would be easy. But Silvy already knew that the memory of undeads was perfect, infallible; she would know exactly where she had come from.

But that didn’t mean she hadn’t prepared: she was clad in full armor, sword in hand.

She stepped forward on a very thin thread a couple of centimeters above the ground she had not noticed. Movements came from the top of the tunnel: spiders, five of them, came out from small holes invisible from her height. She saw them and threw a dagger, hitting one spider; the other four shot out threads almost invisible to the naked eye. Silvy tried to step back, but her right foot was stuck to the thread, making her fall. The threads attached themselves to her armor, creating a small net to immobilize her. The spider started to scuttle back into their tunnel, trying to attach their threads to a rock stuck in there. Silvy rolled to the side, pulling with her the threads, sacrificing her left arm, now attached to the chest. Two spiders didn’t detach their thread in time and were dragged forward, falling beside Silvy. Her left arm was unusable, stuck to her chest armor; she let go of the sword, killing a spider with a dagger while the other tried to flee up above; Silvy threw the dagger, hitting and killing him. The two remaining spiders were nowhere to be seen, having escaped from the dangerous prey.

Silvy was feeling stupid: she had not heard or seen those spiders, and neither she had seen the thread on the ground. And they were dangerous; she had been captured in little time. She tried to cut away one of the threads with a dagger, but it didn’t seem to work; they were tough. So, she took out one of the acid flasks, pouring a few drops on each thread, making them evaporate, freeing herself. That had been dangerous: without a ranged attack, being stuck to the ground would have been a death sentence.

She cut up the spiders, locating the core in the middle of their body: it was tiny. She popped it into her mouth, knowing that her undead core would absorb it. The energy coming from it was minuscule, insignificant.

Cores of such power are useless now. Feed it to the sword: it might have some uses for it.

Alright, she would do that: but later, after the dungeon. She recovered the cores and daggers and kept going forward, now paying more attention to the ground and the above; the tunnel was tall, and she could hardly see the very top.

After a couple of turns, while watching the ground carefully, she saw a hole in the ground; it was not well hidden, but a careless person would have missed it. She scanned the surroundings but didn’t see any thread: another monster perhaps?

She took out a coin from her bag, throwing it in front of the hole. A serpent shot out instantly, biting his long teeth into the metal. Or at least trying; the coin was too tough, and it let go and hid in its hole again. Silvy was pretty sure she could dodge something like that, especially if danger sense warned her. She was not so sure about the other adventurers, but they were not her problem anyway.

Silvy moved next to the hole, sword ready to impale the snake. She dropped another coin in front of the hole, the snake repeating its attack. Silvy brought down her sword, impaling it into the ground through the head, dead in one hit. These monsters were sneaky, adopting surprise attacks. Then again, even the bigger shadow wolf was like that, trying to surprise their prey. After all, they were predators: they went for the kill as fast as possible.

Another monster core collected, she kept going forward, reaching a room with three other tunnels leading away. There was not much to see: it was a room made of dirt, as the tunnels. This place was dangerous and not enjoyable; she felt like a trapped animal lost in a labyrinth, even if the interiors were quite spacious.

Silvy stopped at the entrance of the room, noticing displaced dirt around the floor. Not displaced by footsteps, but by… digging? She wouldn’t have noticed it if it wasn’t for a patch of conspicuous dirt in a corner. She thought back at the monsters on the first floor: the serpent attacked from below, while the spiders from above. Underground… the rats? Silvy took out a coin, thinking that maybe it would work again even against the rats. She threw it in the middle of the room, displacing a bit of dirt: nothing happened. Had they gone away from here? She cautiously stepped inside, sword in hand and dagger ready to be thrown.

She moved towards the closest tunnel, trying to reach it as fast as possible, taking a couple of steps before many rats surged forward, coming out of the holes. There were so many: they rushed towards Silvy, jumping, biting her. She didn’t panic, swinging her sword precisely, cutting the rats leaping at her, stepping around, kicking and crushing rats under her feet, creating a carpet of blood and guts on the floor and walls. She swung the sword freely, uncaring about their bites. They couldn’t penetrate her armor, leaving only scratches on the scales. The rats had probably realized that as well, because after a minute of rushing forward they dispersed, hiding back in their holes. Silvy looked around, dozens of corpses all around. She cut a few, taking their cores, when something strange happened. The corpses were being absorbed by the ground, together with the blood and guts all around. She cut as many rats as she could, giving her thirteen cores. They were small as well, probably very weak; she popped one in her mouth, feeling even weaker energy filling her.

She kept going, creating a mental map of the dungeons, helped by her infallible memory. This place was big, even for a single floor.

And it had traps as well: Silvy had discovered a pitfall trap with wooden spikes; a room that filled with strange smoke when she entered but didn’t block the exit; and at a certain point she had been buried alive by dirt falling from above, making her lose some time excavating herself out.

And even then, there were always monster ready to jump on her, hiding in their holes, trying to bite and eat her. But they were predictable: the snakes were always in a hole at the bottom of the tunnels, while the spiders came from above, with rats coming from the ground. And if they didn’t surprise her, she could kill them easily, taking their cores and stashing them in her bag. In the end, this was just the first floor: a decently skilled and careful person could go through it even alone.

Silvy heard sounds coming from a room before her: steps. Other people? She moved forward, careful not being heard: what if they were hostile?

Two people were standing, sometimes moving around, blood on their bodies, missing pieces of armor and flesh: undeads. One of them had a weapon to his side, a mace, while the other was unarmed. Both undeads’ leather armors were broken and tore in multiple points, exposing cuts and deep wounds, some even reaching the bone.

Silvy, sword in hand, was ready to eliminate them: they would attack the moment they saw her. One of the undeads turned, facing her, maybe hearing her steps. He stared at Silvy, unmoving; the other undead turned right after, staring as well. The first undead moved closer, shambling towards her, but it didn’t seem… hostile. Normal undeads would shamble closer as fast as they could, usually even tripping up. This one’s movement seemed… careful.

Silvy moved her sword, readied to cut off his head at the first sign of trouble. The undead came closer, and then stopped. He turned and walked away for a couple more steps, stopping in place; even the other undead had turned around, uninterested in her.

‘Uhm… core? Are you doing this?’

You mean why they didn’t attack you? You are undead, why would they attack?

That was… interesting. She had never seen an undead so close. They were… ugly. Flesh pieces were almost falling off them, connected only by a few strings of meat. Broken bones and chewed meat, Silvy wondered how they were moving. And they stank: they had probably been here for some time.

Silvy went closer to the first undead, poking it with a finger after a second of contemplation. Even if it attacked, she was sure of her victory. The undead didn’t react, ignoring the poke on his arm. Silvy gave a stronger poke, then a shove. The undead fell but stood up with difficulty as if nothing had happened. He was completely ignoring Silvy as if she didn’t exist. She tried to move in front of him, waving her hand in front of his face. His right eye, the only one remaining, focused on her for a second, and then went back to staring at the void.

‘What do I do with them?’

Why do you ask me?

‘Aren’t they like… your family or something? You are of the same race, right?’

I hardly care for- mh. Let me try something: touch one of them.

Silvy complied, touching the undead in front of her. He stared at her again for a second, and then at nothing again. She felt her mana… link with the undead in front of her, as the core had done with the sword. But the flow was… stranger. It was not a simple link as it had been with the sword, but it was more… complex, with something else.

At first, the undead didn’t react in any way, just staring at the air. Then, after a few seconds, Silvy could see something different in his eye: before it had been unfocused, dormant: but slowly, his look was becoming more focused. After around twenty seconds, he blinked, with a semblance of confusion on his broken face. His stare moved from the air to Silvy, looking at her right in the eyes, purpose behind them.

If Silvy still had a beating heart, it would be beating crazily right now. She wanted to move her arm, unsure of what was happening, scared by it. But it didn’t budge: the core was controlling it, maintaining the mana flow.

The undead moved his arm, watched his hand. And then he tried to touch Silvy as if trying to caress her. And then he just… melted. One moment he was there, trying to reach Silvy, and the moment later his body splashed on the floor, covering most of the room. Fortunately, the liquid was mushy and no drops splashed on Silvy, who now took a step back, looking around. The other undead was staring at her, purpose, intelligence behind his eyes. He took a step towards Silvy, trying to reach her like the other undead, before becoming a puddle on the ground as well, joining the other. Silvy stared at the remains, who were slowly being absorbed by the dungeon, disappearing into nothingness.

‘What was that?’

A test. But their core was weak, too weak to understand something other than hunger. Maybe a stronger undead would be able to, but I’m not sure. You may be surprised, but I have reasons to believe I am the strongest undead core in existence at this moment.

‘What? Strongest? Why? For the energy I gave you?’

That, and the… other emotions you made me understand. Even if an undead becomes stronger, it will only know one thing: hunger. How are you to think if you only know one thing?

‘But that’s… wait, did you just try to create smart undeads?! It would be a disaster! You can’t do that!’

And why can’t I? Who are you to tell me my race cannot live like yours?

Silvy had no answer to that. But the undead would kill all living things, no?

Undeads, and probably monsters as well, are extremely aggressive because they are single-minded, driven by a single instinct. If undead were to understand other things, they would not be mindless monsters anymore; they might be able to live with other races. But that’s just a supposition: the repercussions are beyond what I understand. After all, my intelligence is capped by yours: I cannot be smarter than you, just as smart.

‘Wait, how do you know so much stuff if you are as smart as me?!’

What do you think I do whenever I’m not speaking with you or helping you out? I think, I ponder. It’s the only thing I can do, trapped in your body. I may be limited by you, but I spend my time thinking, unlike someone else.

-----

While the child and the undead core bickered with each other, even resorting to insults at a certain point, something else was happening, unbeknownst to every normal being.

What was the purpose of mana? What was the purpose behind the cores?

Mana didn’t know, but for one of those reasons, the mana around the melted undead had new information, new instructions to deliver to other undeads.

Rivers of mana flowed through the dungeon, beyond the control of the dungeon itself, making contact with the mana outside it. The rivers flowed into each other, transferring the new information.

The mana flowed forth, through the land, searching for the closest undead: an upgrade had been found.

A corpse was moving through the forest, driven by his core and the mana surrounding him. Dressed in broken leather armor, he had no intelligence to speak of anymore, only driven by hunger.

Mana flowed into him, overriding his core, adding new instructions, new thoughts. His eyes focused, hunger subsided; it did not disappear, but was merely another thought in his mind, now full of other emotions, sensations. He looked around, starting to realize to… be.

And then he melted in a puddle, splashing onto the ground, attracting some insects searching for food.

Other nearby undeads went through the same process, all of them dying in the same manner. Something was wrong, incorrect: the hosts were dying. Why?

The mana processed the information, trying to find a solution: weak. Stronger undeads were needed.

The mana flowed forth, searching high and low, flying over mountains, crossing the oceans. They found weak undeads all around, people dead in the wild or forgotten long ago.

That was what was needed: long ago.

A city, dead centuries ago, resided in the southwest of the Grumira continent, the seat of the human empire’s capital. Inside, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of undeads resided, surrounded by the city walls, undisturbed by travelers and explorers.

The humans knew of this city: it had been created thousands of years ago, by fugitives running from one of the many wars; in its prime, it had become a beacon of hope for war refugees searching for a neutral nation. It resided deep in the mountains, that created a natural barrier against invaders; its surroundings were unforgiving, hard to live in, with little natural resources. Life in there had been hard but peaceful: no nation had had interests in invading a mountain with so little resources around.

But a great calamity had befallen the city, a powerful disease spread by small creatures living in the mountains, freed by an excavation. It had stricken the whole population of the city, showing no symptoms until it was too late. The city had fallen in two days, people falling dead every minute, creating hordes of undead in a matter of hours, rendering any escape impossible.

After all this time, adventurers and monsters had learned to stay away from it: angering an undead would mean angering every undead in the surroundings; in that city, it meant creating a snowball effect that will bring the whole city down on the unfortunate victim.

In these ruins, mana searched for a candidate, finding three choices. It changed the first, who didn’t melt: it had worked. The undead watched around herself, seeing destruction and ruins everywhere: undeads, her comrades, moving in the streets aimlessly. She could feel them, connected to each of them by a mental link through mana. Two more like her were created in the city, giving life to three abominations, capable of threatening all sapient life on the planet.

The mana didn’t care about it: it had just followed its instructions. It searched for more candidates, throughout the whole planet, neither satisfied nor repented for what it had done and what would follow.