Magi’s death rattle made the trees around the Boss Mob quiver. The Cardinowl fell silent, almost as in mourning.

Gem recovered the Boss Mob’s personality and released treasures among the group. A collective gasp escaped many tired mouths. Gem tried to not feel pride. Over the endless stream of hours since he’d re-opened his doors, Gem had focused on using his Fabrication upgrade to its fullest extent. He now had a good mixture of weapons and armor to put as loot drops, and his coin production wasn’t lacking either.

His airlock system was working as intended as well. Groups like this one—folks who barely managed to survive Magi’s attacks—were allowed to leave, but weren’t forced to re-run the dungeon to try again. And groups like those led by Ata and Baldur were allowed to skip the first floor entirely to test their mettle against Gem’s significantly beefier second floor.

Gem thought absentmindedly.

“Who? What? A competent adventurer?” Chesu grinned as if he told the world’s best joke.

“Sakir died.” Chesu’s grin faded. “No. Haven’t seen them in the queue outside either.”

“Can be. But they could be training a bit more down in the Ostrum farms, or maybe they’re finding a new Enchanter. Could be both. Maybe they hit Copper One themselves and have been doing all their tier-increasing activities.”

Chesu laughed. “Adventurers, right? Some ingenious idiot gave the adventurers a way down onto the surface, thinking that would expedite them being able to retake the surface. Instead, the adventurers use the stairwell to gather up and fight the Ostrum. It’s a dangerous way to gain experience, and you’ll be hard pressed to find groups that are willing to take on the risks for such little reward. Ostrum can’t drop items.”

Gem felt a wiggle of jealousy rip through his core.

The wisp shrugged. “Honestly? Could be. They’re an ambitious group with nothing to lose by gaining some experience. The Ostrum farm would also teach them how to work together better. A well-oiled group like that? I wouldn’t be surprised to find them down there.”

“Do you want me to go check?” Shriek’s multi-eyed stalks narrowed slightly. “I could stealth around the town and try to find where they are.”

“Good idea, Shriek! You could scare up some more interest while you’re out, too.”

Gem sent both wisp and Plantling an image of a core shaking its head no.

He quickly shifted his attention to the front door. There was still a crowd outside, all watching the little indicator at his entrance.

Gem was surprised the group in Magi’s room had survived. They weren’t a very coordinated group, and most of their members didn’t have Copper One yet. But their healer was over-leveled—most likely due to the presence of that Ostrum farm—and he seemed to carry a lot of the weight of the group’s success.

Gem added after a moment.

But Chesu and Shriek weren’t paying attention. Instead, they were whispering to one another and pointing at Gem’s core in excitement.

“They’re continuing!”

Chesu grinned and waved a hand at Gem’s core.

With an un-aired sigh, Gem swapped his vision to Magi’s Boss Room.

The pile of gear and coins had vanished, all likely residing in the inventories of the five exhausted-looking adventurers who peered at the stairwell down to the second floor.

“We should head back,” their tank—a meek Human man named Silver—whined. “I need to get my armor repaired and Kendra is likely making dinner.”

The healer—the statuesque Janken with his pompous green hat—seemed to ignore the comment. Instead, he stepped forward into their stairwell. After barely a moment he poked his head back out. “Are you guys coming?”

“We should leave,” another member of the group said. This was Laena, a dark-skinned Human woman who was an Archer.

“You keep saying ‘should’ like it’s some moral quandary,” Janken said with a roll of his eyes. “We either go or we don’t. Choose.”

“Don’t,” Laena said.

“Absolutely don’t,” Silver added.

“Gotta agree: don’t,” said their Enchanter as he leaned on his staff. His name was Riger, but everyone seemed to call him Null, which confused Gem endlessly.

The last member of their group was a small girl that seemed to be too young to delve into dungeons. If Gem had to guess she was still a teenager, but the others seemed to look at her with respect, so perhaps it was just a racial quirk. Her long hair was piled into a nest on top of her head that did little hide the ant-like antennae that protruded from her forehead.

Instead of voicing her opinion, the girl tilted her head towards the entrance. Her antennae quirked.

“Bah. Well, I’m continuing on. I just want to see the new floor,” Janken said with a pout. “We don’t even have to stay long. The second you guys say to go, we’ll go.”

Instead of arguing how they were saying they didn’t want to go now, Janken’s group rallied and fell in behind him.

Gem thought as he watched the terrified group descend the stairs.

Chesu shrugged. “He’s their leader.”

“They think he has their best interest in mind. That they can’t see the grand plan he’s got for them. Even if they know he’s just human and isn’t thinking about them as anything more than fodder to fulfill his plans, they have to trust in his sense of self preservation because he’s the leader. He knows better than they do.”

Chesu laughed. “Well, obviously. Again, he’s only human. But you can’t expect adventurers to be something more than they are, and what they are is gullible. They hear stories about adventures of old and get excited. That becomes their all-consuming goal: to be like someone who’s been dead for an indeterminate amount of time, who might not have even existed. Especially not in the way they’re described.”

“Don’t take too much offense to this, Gem, but you only say that because you don’t have one.” Chesu snorted with laughter when Gem sent him an image of a frowning core. “Being functionally immortal has given you a very different perspective. I couldn’t even begin to describe to you exactly how. It’d be like telling a tree how it isn’t a seed anymore.”

Shriek added with a tilt of his petal-encased head.

The two of them continued the conversation, but Gem let their chatter fade to the background. He didn’t have time for an existential crisis of the self; the world was ending and he had adventurers to train.

Even if the adventurers in question were making stupid decisions based on faith instead of logic.

If they had stopped to think about it, they would have realized they were outmatched. Most of their group was barely Copper One. They didn’t have good communication, no Rogue, and they were exhausted from their fight with Magi.

A sensible group of Hero Cores would have evaluated their situation and left.

I need something to distract myself, Gem thought in a callous tone. If I just sit here and watch them die, I’m going to grow frustrated.

He had plenty of side-projects to focus on. There was the eternal grind of material farming. He could have Chesu be his eyes for other islands to give him some more unique trees or other materials. Gem could start on his quest system, or do some calculations for his Fabrication needs.

All of it seemed like not enough.

Every thought was constantly drawn back to the frustration he felt for the adventurers who crept forward through the safe room, jumping at every shadow.

He didn’t mean to think the thoughts out loud to Chesu and Shriek, but they both looked up at him.

Chesu looked at his core with sympathetic eyes. “You could. They’d return back to town and tell everyone there’s some reason they weren’t allowed to continue. A level requirement? Lack of gear, maybe. But they wouldn’t learn the lesson you want them to learn, and so they’d create a reason. You can’t tell them why they can’t continue, and they won’t realize it for themselves. So you’d just be delaying the inevitable. And potentially hurt other adventurers who might be ready but think there’s some extra component they don’t have.”

“Right. You’d only get experience from Magi’s floor, and now that you’re Copper One, that experience is going to be a real trickle.”

Gem had noticed the difference already.

Every rank of Tin had required 300 experience points. It meant that a few daily quests would be enough to rank up, regardless of Hero Core deaths.

But Copper ranks required 900 points.

He could only imagine what Bronze or above would require.

Daily quests weren’t going to be enough. He needed adventurers to die in his dungeon. And he wasn’t going to get them to die if he was playing at keeping them safe.

He had a job to do, after all.

There are just so few of them, he thought, careful to keep it to himself. I don’t know the exact numbers, but adventurers are a precious commodity. I need to balance my need for experience with my need for them to survive. To help me retake the planet’s surface.

he finally thought aloud.

“There’s the spirit! I think.” Chesu looked concerned for a moment and then shrugged. “Come on, kid. Let’s watch some adventurers get demolished by your awesome Hallow mobs. Then we can keep expanding.”