Well, that was eventful. Valens watched as a human dodged out of the way of a wolf. Their party had made it back up to the fifth floor. It seemed like they would be the first invaders to enter his dungeon and live to tell the tale.

Yes, well do you see what I mean about the third-tier human now? Magnus commented distractedly while playing with glowing wisps of different mana types.

I suppose. It had been frustrating how easily Sora had been taken out. She had only managed to kill a single adventurer, but there wasn’t much else she could have done. That tier-three human had had a huge advantage over her and had actually gone into the fight seriously unlike the other boss fight. Valens wasn’t sure if was pleased that he had warranted such focus or upset that Sora hadn’t made any more kills. When will Sora and Aspen be back by the way?

Magnus fumbled a spark of mana and the whole thing blew up in his face with a small puff. That's an interesting topic. You see the bosses are resurrected or respawned automatically by you the core. Your spirit bond protects the consciousness of your bosses as well as storing their pattern which means they just need enough mana to come back. Usually, you can just wait, ambient mana will ‘charge’ the pattern so that Sora and Aspen will come back on their own.

How long will that take? Valens didn’t want to wait too long to have his defenders back, he felt vulnerable without them between him and any enemies that might come. Also, have we had this conversation before? Some of this seems familiar.

Yes, we have talked about this before but you weren’t paying attention at the time, and about 24 hours for Sora, and about twelve hours for Aspen.

Why such a big time difference? Aspen took half as long to respawn as Sora did.

It's because Sora has the stronger spirit bond with you which allows her to grow into a tier-three creature, while Aspen does not. The time for Sora and Aspen to respawn will remain mostly static as they grow stronger alongside you, but any lower-tier bosses will have a progressively shorter respawn time.

That was interesting and all but Valens wanted at least Sora back and didn’t want to wait a full day for her to respawn on her own. I’m going to at least bring back Sora immediately. You did say it only takes mana right? I’ll just feed the mana into the spirit link manually instead of waiting for ambient mana to do it.

Magnus nodded his head agreeably and went back to messing around with different mana types. Valens focused on the bond between him and his first boss, she wasn’t too pleased right now, dissatisfied with how her fight had gone. The bosses weren’t awake when they didn’t have bodies; it was more like they were dreaming as they waited to be reborn. The core poured out mana that flowed down the spirit link and to Sora. The individual pattern that made Sora who she glowed with accumulated power, and silent ripples of mana began to fill the core room.

With a slight pop, Sora appeared on the floor of the core room, looking a bit startled at her new location. Valens smiled to himself, it was time to get started expanding again, he liked growing but he felt so sluggish right now. His thoughts flowed like molasses, darkness crept over his vision and he finally had the presence of mind to check on his mana, empty.

Valens woke slowly and painfully, a pounding headache in his nonexistent skull. Ouch, that was stupid of me, it's been a while since I exhausted all of my mana though. Doing a quick check he found Sora sleeping in her boss room, and Aspen was also back in her’s so he must have been out for a while.

You really should be more careful, it's not dangerous to run out of mana but I can’t say it's pleasant even for those of us who are less reliant on it. Magnus was doing just fine as well, not that he had expected any difference from the drake who was currently messing around with an orb of mana that was quite a vivid shade of purple. You were out for about a day by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed Aspen respawned quite a while ago.

Valens groaned, it hadn’t even been worth it to respawn Sora early. Well, I’m not doing that again, it wasn't worth it.

Magnus shrugged and dissipated the ball of mana he was holding. I don’t know if you need more protection quickly. It might be a smart thing to do, but you’re right it didn’t make too much sense in our current situation.

Sora got up and started pacing around her room, Valens reached out to her a little concerned as she was usually the calmest of his two bosses. She was anxious for lack of a better word, she had always been the predator in the dungeon, even when she was weaker than another monster she had never doubted her ability to bring down her prey. Now she was doubting, the humans had made her feel like prey and she didn’t like it. She wanted to grow stronger and was getting very impatient with his standing orders not to hunt anything on the eleventh floor.

Doing a quick check of the eleventh floor he nodded to himself, there were enough tier twos around for some hunting even if the humans had culled the population a little. Looking at the levels of both of his bosses, Valens received a bit of a shock, for the first time Aspen was ahead of Sora in levels, Aspen being level 27 while Sora was level 18. Aspen had managed to take out a few more humans than Sora which he supposed accounted for the difference but it was still startling. Sora was supposed to be his strongest monster, his trump card in the dungeon, it wouldn’t make her weaker than a fellow boss, Magnus did not count.

Besides there probably wouldn’t be enough prey for two of his bosses to go on a killing spree, he would need to get back to expanding for that to happen. The core rubbed his hands together with glee, he had gotten so much experience from the humans, he probably had enough to do at least another five floors.

Hey Magnus, I’m going to send out Sora to do some hunting now.

The drake lay his head down on his claws and closed his eyes. That's fine, they’re your bosses anyway.

With a quick mental command, Sora went bolting out of the boss room obviously eager to get back to growing stronger. Valens grinned as he watched her throw herself into a pack of greater wolves. She was either going to get quite a few levels out of that or have to respawn again, and he wasn’t going to spend mana to speed things up if she got herself killed again. Sora would just have to wait 24 hours, not that he thought a soul could tell time without a body. It seems like he was worrying too much anyway as Sora tore her way through the wolf pack, there were only three greater wolves with a smattering of normal wolves after all.

By the way Magnus, I know you said that my core was extremely valuable with the amount of experience it can bring, but why were those humans killing each other over my core? The adventurers had never been a real threat, Magnus had been hovering right in front of his core ready to turn them into ash if they tried anything.

It has to do with the kingdoms we're situated in right now. For the longest time, their people had a problem of killing every core they came across for experience. Eventually one of the tribes had the clever idea to stop doing that and instead protected one of the dungeons. This idea caught on and the current kingdoms were formed as a result, and they’ve been trying to discourage the idea of killing dungeons as much as possible, their power rests quite literally on the power of dungeons.

Why would killing every core they came across give experience? The ones at lower tiers than them wouldn’t help them at all, right?

Magnus shifted uncomfortably. Well, that's not necessarily true. You’ve noticed that you still get experience from tier-one creatures dying in your dungeon right. Valens nodded, it had been an interesting discovery but ultimately not one that he had asked Magnus about yet. Well as you may have gathered, that’s unusual, only dungeon cores can get experience from creatures at a lower tier than themselves.

That’s interesting and all but what does this have to do with killing cores. Magnus would go off on large tangents sometimes, but Valens wanted to get back to growing his dungeon as quickly as possible. Not listen to an hour-long lecture.

I was getting there, so just like dungeons can get experience from any tier of creature. Everyone else can kill any tier of dungeon and get some amount of experience. Valens thought about this and grew distinctly uncomfortable with the idea. That means that a tier six could kill a tier-one dungeon and still get some experience from it even if it wasn’t a lot to the tier six. So because of this the Allied Kingdoms, which are the kingdoms I have been referring to, work very hard to discourage the practice. Almost anyone would take the opportunity for some easy power without thinking of the long-term consequences, so the punishment for killing a dungeon is death with no exceptions.

Valens nodded, it made sense to him, dungeons were long-term sources of resources and experience for anyone with half a brain, and killing them for short-term gain would defeat the entire purpose. One thing was still bothering the core though. Hey Magnus, not to be rude but if dungeon cores give experience to whoever kills them why didn’t you go on a core killing spree to get to the immortal tier? He liked the drake, and he was also sure that he wouldn’t harm Valens with the spirit link in place but he did want to know why he hadn’t done so. It seemed like a fast and easy way to level up, even if the prospect sickened Valens a little.

You seem to be underestimating the truly massive amount of experience needed to become an immortal. I actually tried to get there by killing anything I came across including dungeon cores, it didn’t work out, I still didn’t get enough experience. Also don’t worry I have no interest in killing you for experience, so long as the bond remains if you die I die now.

That was a bit of relief for Valens, he had known Magnus for a little while now and he didn’t think the drake would hurt him but it was nice to hear it said straight up. It was too bad about Sora’s fight, I feel like she didn’t get to shine, she was shut down almost immediately by that tier three.

Magnus yawned widely and stretched, it was quite impressive now that he was full-sized. That's just kinda how it goes, higher tiers are just a lot stronger than lower tiers. That being said I don’t think you’ll see any more tier threes coming in here until you start making tier-three floors.

Why would that be? It might take a while but Sora’s going to get into tier three eventually, they could fight her.

The problem with fighting bosses is that firstly they’re a lot more dangerous than normal monsters, and secondly, they get no experience from fighting bosses.

Wait, they didn’t? Why wouldn’t they get any experience if the bosses die don’t they?

It has to do with their functional immortality, at least that's the theory. What is widely accepted is that when someone dies their soul leaving this world for the next releases a form of energy that we absorb as experience. Since the bosses aren’t really dying their souls don’t give off experience and the only reward adventurers get is the loot from the boss room.

Valens nodded to himself, he could see why the humans would rather wait until he had actual floors for their tiers before coming. It was also interesting, the thing about souls the drake had mentioned, it made sense logically but something told him that wasn't quite the case. The core shrugged to himself, it's not like he could disprove the theory, maybe one day he could but for now, souls weren’t something he could see at all. Magnus had succeeded in falling asleep while Valens wasn’t paying attention, and he chuckled softly, he was going to have to ask why the drake slept so much at some point. Turning his attention back to the dungeon at large he took a hold of the edges of his aura and pushed and the dungeon began to grow once more.