08

Charles went back down the stairs and got in queue. There was a long line of people in front of the counter, but it was advancing quite fast. Most of the people just took out a bag full of spherical gems and handed it to the clerk, who paid them after counting and checking the gems. Other people just went there, asked for their quests to be registered as complete, and left after a few motes of light entered their bodies. It was just like when the master gave Charles his token, just with much less lights dancing around and with the color changing based on the person’s rank. Most people were iron or bronze rank, but a few were silver ranked individuals who even he could tell were pretty strong.

By his estimation, the motes of light entering their bodies indicated that their status within the guild increased because of the quests they did. It begged the question of how did the guild know that a quest had been completed, and by who, considering that they were not doing anything to identify the people or to check if the quest had actually been completed.

It was as if the quests were being tracked by some sort of magic, maybe even by the system itself, and if they had rewards, then those were being handled separately. If that was true, then it made sense to think that both quests and rewards worked via the system. It was omnipresent and didn’t need any human intervention to work after all.

The tokens instead were a part of the guild and needed the actual presence of the person to be updated. There seemed to be no gold rankers in the queue, but Charles had no way to check the other people who were not interacting with the clerk. Perhaps the staff had some identification skill to do that, or maybe they could access some sort of list of rankers. He’d have to ask, if he even decided to bother with that.

He arrived at the desk after less than five minutes of wait. It was impressive how fast the woman at the desk could work, considering that she had to count hundreds upon hundreds of various colored spheres. Perhaps a skill was at play, he had no idea. He had no way to gauge just how pervasive skills were in the lives of people for now, but he had plans to rectify this lack of knowledge.

The woman was a short brunette lady, middle aged and very composed. She was not to be considered beautiful, but she wasn’t bad looking either.

“Good day, sir.” She said, smiling warmly at Charles.

He, instead, struggled to suppress a frown he just noticed he had. A frown that had slowly crept on his face without him noticing ever since entering this room. He tried to force a smile. He had no idea why he was even frowning, perhaps it was the loud noises coming from the room nearby where people were drinking quite heavily.

“I happen to have a pile of monster corpses from the dungeon, do you perhaps know what to do with them?”

He had planned to just dump the stuff and get paid, but seeing the others he feared that things were not like this here.

“You didn’t take out the cores?” The woman asked, politely.

“Cores?” He paused a moment. “The spherical gems?”

The woman sighed, her entire body language collapsing into annoyance and resignation.

“I see you are an iron rank, so perhaps you don’t know about cores?”

She was probably taking Charles for a weakling newbie who just got their token and went into the dungeon for the first time. She wasn’t wrong, no matter how much the thought irritated him.

“Indeed. Care to give me a rundown?” He asked.

The woman motioned for another clerk to come over, then took Charles to a private room. She was mumbling under her breath as she walked, complaining about how she always had to deal with newbs. Charles ignored her and looked around. The private rooms were empty apart from a table in the middle, which was covered in dried blood and other fluids. The floor was made of stone and was sloped, with a ditch at one side.

“Alright, I’ll give you the basics. All dungeons have monsters, that’s common sense, right?” She asked him. He nodded.

“Dungeon monsters are different than wild ones in two ways. One: they can never leave their dungeon, and they respawn. Meaning that they can be farmed in relative safety if you only go as high up as your strength allows. Two: they give loot. Our dungeon here in Unica is known to be useless because it gives no loot. Well, at least that’s what people like to say. They are wrong, because even if there is no loot awarded for killing monsters or no bosses, the corpses still contain a core.”

She paused for a moment and studied Charles’ face. “Only dungeon spawned monsters have cores, and cores can be used for a myriad of things. The stronger the monster, the better the core. They can be used as mana batteries, although not before they are converted into crystals unless you have a skill to do so. Otherwise some use them as cultivation resources, but you should never do it unless you wanted to go insane.” She said, ending her speech with a warning that felt like she was forced to give rather than coming from her heart.

“So wild monsters do not have cores?” Charles asked.

“No, they don’t. That’s one reason why most professional adventurers are only dungeon delvers.”

“Okay.”

The woman looked at Charles with some expectation, and he looked back at her in the eye.

“What?”

“You’re not going to ask about the other reason?”

He looked at her, wondering for a moment what sort of mental issues she had. Why was she leading him in circles like that, instead of just telling him the right things and then be gone?

“Alright, what’s the other reason?”

“In the wild, you never know what you might find. In a dungeon there is the loose rule that in order to find stronger enemies you have to explore deeper. Everyone can just stop when they feel that the enemies are getting too strong.” She said, rolling her eyes.

Charles was fuming already, but kept his temper in check. She was annoyed for some reason, even though it was her who made him ask this question.

“Got it. So, this dungeon only gives you the corpses, basically.” He said. The woman nodded.

“Yes. All dungeons do, but most of the times the corpses are disregarded because of the more valuable loot. Even here unless you kill a powerful monster you usually just dig out the core. The whole economy of the city is based around the damned things.”

“You don’t seem to like cores too much.” He joked, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“You try counting them all day every day.” She said with a huff.

“I get it. And other dungeons have loot you said?”

“They have different rules and different rewards. This type of dungeon we have here is so basic that it’s almost uncommon. No special rules and no special rewards. The more powerful ones are almost always sentient and evil, warped and with rules made specifically to torture and kill you.”

The speech came to an end. Charles was quite satisfied with how it turned out, as it gave him valuable knowledge on this world that he could use.

“Thank you for the explanation, really.” Charles said, and took out a gold coin from his ring. As soon as the woman noticed the coin her eyes sparkled for a moment, then she gave him a cold look.

“I’m not that kind of woman. And you should not show that much money around, you know.” She said sternly.

Charles looked around for a moment and noticed that they were still in the empty room, door locked shut behind him. He chuckled.

“You misunderstand. I don’t give two shits about your body, miss. You were helpful, and I wanted to say thanks, that’s all.”

“With a gold coin. Yeah, sure.” The woman said, arms crossed.

She seemed offended. Charles decided that he did not care in the slightest. She could act offended all she wanted, so long as she was helpful. If she didn’t want the money then it was her problem. Instead, he took out a dead goblin.

“What do I do with this, then? Do I take out the core?”

The clerk’s eyes widened. “Where did that body come from?” She asked frantically.

Charles tapped his ring.

“Ring.”

“Ah, I see.” She said, and collected her breath a moment.

She straightened her back and puffed out her chest, while he watched her actions intently. It was confusing, how her whole demeanor changed from before. She was being wary after he took out the money, but now she was being almost seductive. Not that he cared in the least, knowing full well that she was not the woman for him. It didn’t take Eve to notice that.

He tapped his foot impatiently. She was still eyeing him up and down, seemingly studying his suit with renewed interest. He faked a cough, then decided to bring her out of her reverence.

“You alright?” He asked.

“Uh? Uhm, yes, sorry…” She said hurriedly, little beads of sweat on her forehead. She bowed deeply. “I ask for forgiveness. I have been offensive, and acted in a very unladylike manner. I did not know of your status. Please forgive me.”

“What are you talking about? Just tell me what the hell should I do with that!” He pointed at the body.

“Ah, do not worry my lord. Just take them all out and I’ll personally dismantle them and pay you accordingly.” The woman said. “My name is Isabelle, by the way.” She said and winked, now seemingly unaffected by all that happened before.

“Alright, Isabelle. Do you have a mana source? I do not have enough to take them all out at once.”

“Do you have a skill, or do you need refined crystals?”

Charles thought about it for a moment. He had no idea about the differences between the two, but going by what he now knew he should be able to use the crystals without issues. Maybe the cores as well, if the LAI could somehow make sense of the problem with them, and why they could not be used directly.

“Crystals, please.”

Isabelle hurried out of the room and came back with a large amount of shiny crystals. They were pulsing with concentrated mana, and he could feel them even from this far away. Fortunately, he had the LAI stop the cultivation after leaving the master’s room or they would have already disappeared into his own exp bar.

He took out some silver and some gold coins. “How much for them all?” He asked. He could already taste the sweet levels that would come from them.

“Ah, sir, you should not use them for cultivation. They are just to replenish mana.” Isabelle said, tentatively. She was struggling now, and seemed scared of potentially offending him. This was even worse than when she was just being a bitch.

“Still,” Charles replied, still salivating. “I’m interested.”

“I’m sure the guild will not mind donating some crystals to a figure such as you.” The woman said reverently, but with a distraught look on her face.

Charles once again frowned. They were mistaking him for someone else, and this odd charade began the moment he used the ring. But he had to keep it up now, or they would suspect that something was wrong and that he had stolen it.

“Nonsense.” He said, making his best impression of the high society he read from the web novels. The LAI was helping him as well but, in the end, he was trying his best not to cringe out badly after seeing what he was supposed to say. “I will pay for them, of course.”

“Thank you very much, kind sir. I will have another clerk come after we are done, then.” She said, and handed one crystal to him while half bowing.

The crystal was shiny, faintly luminescent and perfectly smooth. The edges were sharp and clear, and distorted the light exquisitely. As soon as Charles touched it, he could feel his mana pool marge with the crystal and enlarge by at least 100 MU.

Using the many crystals, he took out corpse after corpse from the ring. In just a few minutes, the room was almost overflowing with the bodies of various animals and beasts in different states. Most were almost perfectly intact, however, showing the deadly precision of the LAI as it farmed the creatures.

“You… killed all of them by yourself?” Isabelle asked, shocked and with her mouth wide open.

“Yes.” Charles said flatly.

They were all low level and quite weak, but the sheer amount of bodies was impressive. He hoped at least some money would come out of this, because he wasn’t about to dig in their insides next time he went in the dungeon. If they turned out to be unprofitable, he’d just leave the bodies there until he reached a high enough floor. It was not like he needed the money anyway.

“Wow… I, uh, it will take some time for me to process them all. Would you like for me to appraise their value as they are now, or-”

“Do it later, after you have processed them all. And also detract enough money to pay for your work.”

“Sir! There is no need to-”

“Do it.” He said, interrupting her again.

“Thank you.” She said and bowed.

She left the room and returned soon after with three other people, every one of them armed with knives and appropriately clothed.

“You can come tomorrow to get your money.” She said, then seemed to change her mind. “Or just come whenever it suits you best.”

Charles nodded and left the room, quite happy. He had a decent amount of mana crystals in his ring now, and even a couple cores he managed to have Isabelle get for him. Their power was calculated based on the dimension and the purity, it seemed, and these two were of average quality and size. Which, for an infinitely tall dungeon, was equivalent to saying nothing about them, but whatever.

He had already planned to have the LAI come up with a better scale, something similar to the Mana Units it came up with while in the dungeon. Instead of worrying about the cores, he instead focused on another thing that he noticed while he was inside.

“LAI?” He called, and the AI responded by making its presence known in his augmented vision. “Did she just use a skill in there?”

The LAI took a moment to process the recorded data, then a few diagrams appeared as holograms floating close to Charles. He was the only one who could see and interact with them, of course, because they only existed within the closed cyberspace of his implants and were beamed into his eyes through the implants.

Affirmative. The LAI said in its monotone voice. Charles hated this voice, but he hated the sensation of its words appearing in his short-term memory directly even more, so he stuck to this method of communication. The analysis of the flow of mana allows for recreation through imitation. Preliminary scans suggest that the mana was organized by the system, probability of it being a skill unknown but very relevant.

“Can you create a spell out of it for me to use?”

Yes.

“Do it, then.”

New spell created. Choose a designation.

“How would I do that if I had no idea about its effects? Show them to me please.”

A large hologram appeared. It was made of lines, blue and red intertwining and morphing before his eyes. It was a thing of beauty, of elegance and perfection. Something a human mind could never conceive alone, proof of the interference of the system. The lines organized into packets, and the packets interacted with each other forming nodes and connections.

It was code. The code of magic and the underlying foundation of the reality of this whole universe.

“Alright. I might not be as smart as Justin, or a genius mind like Luke…” Charles smirked and laughed for a moment. Then his face relaxed into an easy smile. “Damn that man. I bet ya don’t know about anyone else able to create an intelligent, sentient AI like Eve in the 2020s.” The LAI did not respond. “Right? No-one. I definitely am not like them, but I’d be damned if I can’t read this code.”

“Call it Appraise.” He finally said.

Affirmative. Use it now?

“Do it.”

Suddenly, a surge of information came to him. The LAI quickly stepped in and interpreted it into a nice game window, displaying a picture and information about the item scanned.

It was one of the cores. The window said:

Monster core [common, no level]. This core originated in the dungeon of Unica, and originally came from a [INSUFFICIENT SPELL TIER]. Color: Green-white. Radius: 12cm. Energy stored: [LAI Interpretation: 1340 MU; cannot use directly]. Focusing index: 1.2. Refraction index: 1.1.

It was useful information, and it also told Charles a great deal more about the world than a normal person would think. It clearly said that the system was almost omniscient, as the spell did not just output information that he could know himself. It delved deep into the history of the item, and gave clear information about it. He was sure that with the right spell he could even know the name of the adventurer who killed the monster the core belonged to. This meant that the system knew it, and it made the information available to whoever used the right tools.

Or perhaps it was not the system. If a spell like this existed before the system came then the origin of the information could not be the system, for obvious reasons like the fact that it did not exist at the time. Then it was the mana itself perhaps, that at least carried information or was sentient, sapient even. He’d have to investigate thoroughly.

The spell cost him more than 70 MU to cast, which made him sigh. He could not abuse it, it appeared.

“The girl did not seem to have used this much mana, right?”

Data suggests she used less than 1MU

“Fucking system. Now I understand why people don’t do old school magic here. Anyway, what was the deal with her odd behavior?”

The mention of the ring, and its use, caused a cascading effect in her brain’s electrochemistry. Emotional state fluctuated between fear, awe, reverence and sexual desire.

“Damn. Just what the fuck am I wearing? Can we appraise it?”