Fenrir

The shady man closes the entrance behind him before stepping into the center of the room and taking something out of his cloak.

My attention is instantly drawn to the item as I sense void energy coming from it.

What is he...

The man places the item on the ground in the middle of the room before stepping back and saying, "This is a gift from my group to you, dungeon core."

A... gift?

I study the item before finding it to be another one of those orbs.

The man waits for a few seconds before giving a short bow and leaving my dungeon without another word.

Okay, what the hell just happened?

I stare at my dungeon entrance for a few seconds before moving the orb to my core room.

That was weird.

Why would he just come in to give me an orb full of void element World Energy before leaving?

Actually, how did he even get the void element World Energy in the first place?

He said that it was a gift from his group, but who is his group, and why are they giving me a gift?

I place the orb on the opposite side of my core room from my core before glancing back at the hole to the Arachnid nest.

I hope she comes back out soon.

The outskirts of the dungeon valley within the Lost Mountains.

A man wearing a black cloak suddenly appears within a tree outside of the Wolfdenn city walls.

The man sits in the tree for several seconds before a second figure appears in the tree, cloaked in shadows.

The first man bows his head and says, "I have given the orb to the dungeon as commanded."

"Good work," a strange voice says from amidst the shadows. "Now we wait to see if the dungeon can absorb the element or not."

The first man asks without looking up, "And if they do absorb the element?"

The shadowy figure shifts around before saying, "Then we will wait for this dungeon to become strong enough to help us."

Leon

"But I haven't been able to do any mercenary jobs since the Goblin extermination," I say to Damien as I sit back down in my chair again.

Damien just smirks and says, "Oh, don't worry about that. You just barely reached the required amount of points from the report that you made earlier. Merit points are called merit points for a reason after all. You are given them for performing actions that deserve merits, and not just for completing jobs."

Oh.

Damien turns serious as he declares, "Leon Raizel, you are now officially a Three Star Mercenary."

The second he says that, the golden contract that I had signed when I first became a mercenary suddenly appears in between us.

Just like when I was promoted the last time, the wording on my contract changes in front of my eyes before the contract fades away again.

I sit there in stunned silence for several seconds.

Damien just chuckles at my reaction before saying, "Tell me whenever you become a Knight and I will gladly recommend you for another promotion."

My mouth drops open in surprise before I quickly close it again.

I sometimes forget that Damien is a Tier 5 Guildmaster.

He really doesn't act like it most of the time.

"Thank you," I tell him before saying, "I have some paperwork that I have to take care of, so I will be going back to my office."

Damien nods before looking down at his desk, "So do I, unfortunately."

Fenrir

It takes about an hour and a half, but Dawn finally comes out of the hole.

"Are you okay?" I ask her as soon as I sense her enter my dungeon.

She briefly turns yellow in surprise before saying, "Yeah, and I found something that could be extremely useful to us in the spiders' nest."

What looks like a piece of glowing ore suddenly appears in front of Dawn before falling to the ground.

I glance at it before saying, "Before we get to that, some shady person came in earlier while you were away and gave us a gift. What do you think we should do with it? I am not entirely sure, but it looks safe."

"A gift?" Dawn asks in confusion, "Where is it?"

"In the corner of my core room," I say to Dawn while focusing on the small little black orb.

Dawn floats over to the orb before she examines it.

"You said that it looks safe?" Dawn asks without pausing in her examination.

I suddenly feel several intruders enter my dungeon before I answer, "Yeah. I can't find anything wrong with it. In fact, it looks just like the last orb that I got, except with more void element World Energy this time."

Dawn looks surprised for a second before saying, "More void element World Energy than last time? That's interesting."

"I'm a little confused thought. Didn't you say that extremely few people in Midgard even know of the void element? If that's the case, then how do we keep finding people with void element orbs?" I ask Dawn a question that has been eating at me ever since I found the first orb.

Dawn just moves away from the orb and says, "I have no idea."

"Huh?"

Dawn looks at my core and says, "The orb itself should be safe to use though, assuming that you have carefully looked it over to make sure."

"Really?" I ask Dawn in surprise.

I would have thought that she would want to just keep it somewhere and not use it out of suspicion.

Dawn teleports to fangs room before laying down on him as she says, "Yeah, why look a gift horse in the mouth after all? It's not like they can force you into doing anything just because you used the gift they dumped here. Not if the orb itself doesn't have any sort of hidden restrictions, which you as a dungeon core should easily be able to sniff out. Come get me when you finish with the orb. I still have to tell you about what I found in the nest."

Oh.

I guess she has a point.

I go over and check the orb one last time before moving it over to my core.

The moment it touches my core, the void element World Energy within immediately begins flowing into my core.

Time to start cultivating.