Goblin Cave stopped caring at all about the adventurers. What was that?! There had been a mana interaction along the interface, and then... It couldn't follow exactly how things had happened; the eruption of external mana clouded its senses enough that it couldn't precisely follow how all the branches and loops had done... whatever it was they did.

The [Flame Wisps] bobbed there: not dungeon-creatures, but not not dungeon creatures as well. They had been mostly... 'spawned', if that was the right term, by its mana. They floated aimlessly on the mana current, drifting along the slow circuit of the mana bellows.

The adventurers, for their part, all froze, silently staring at the wisps. That was admirable. One fewer moving part. Also, now that some flame wisps had finally spawned, it would be somewhat upsetting for them to all instantly be killed.

The adventurers spoke with each other in low tones, but Goblin Cave was beyond caring. What had happened? Clearly, there was something about the interface between different kinds of mana sources that did something. Or was it something else? Adventurers' mana was structured in a totally different way than its own, which in turn was (presumably) structured in a totally different way than the mana in the air outside. But there was some quality there, some aspect, that gave rise to the spawn.

And why the spawn? It could explain monster spawn templates, certainly: balanced loops of knotted mana threads formed resonances with aspects of system-space, which allowed it to instantiate templates. Obviously there was a deeper question for why that was, why the resonances were distributed the ways they were and how those were aligned with the system-space spawn tables. But there was something approaching a mechanism. This... Goblin Cave had no idea what had just happened. And even more frustratingly, since the action was utterly outside its control, it couldn't even glean anything from repeated experimentation.

Perhaps that was too hasty. There were all sorts of aspects of what had just happened that it could try to replicate. Still, it was very tempting in the moment to simply speak to them and demand they cast another spell.

Goblin Cave didn't have any immediate way to produce the same puff of destabilized mana from a spell implosion — it couldn't exactly just cast [Create Light] itself — and even if it could it had seen similar effects: if it was all its own mana, the turbulent flow would smooth out instead of fold up.

This was going to require more study. Could it form something like mana explosives? Replicate the effect of a spell just by directly altering the mana flow? Well, it was certainly possible; that was what its mana goblins did when they cast spells as innate abilities. Whether or not it could do that was another question entirely. Arguably, it could spawn a soulless mana goblin and command it to cast via a control node, but that seemed like a boring solution compared to actually understanding the process.

In any case, the adventurers seemed distinctly discomforted to see a bunch of mobs — monsters? — spawn in. They also had some kind of reaction to the mana flow itself, the usual malaise from being subject to mana flows. Goblin Cave had yet to see a mana flow they didn't take affront with: still was bad, and turbulent was bad, and now this smooth current was still also bad. After a long pause and some low talking, they continued on, upstream, in the opposite direction the wisps had drifted.

This did, unfortunately for them, lead them, after two chambers, a balcony, and a stairwell, to one of its rooms filled with mobs. Two [Manaflame Guardians] and one [Mana Elemental], to be precise. Goblin Cave still wasn't sure how it felt about them. They weren't goblins. It did like goblins. They were definitely a little more exciting than goblins, though, what with their broad array of spells. It had given the manaflame guardians [Manaflame] as their primary attack, reasonably, and the [Mana Elemental] both [Mana Ball] and [Manablast]. It mostly noted that because, in the ensuing battle, it watched their spell effects closely, keeping a close eye on how they burst through the constantly-streaming mana flow. Nothing particularly exciting happened.

The adventurers made quick work of them — one summoned an energy lance, another used a continual [Mana Beam] — which discomforted Goblin Cave a little. It was one thing to trial-run its dungeon alterations here, but... well, it still didn't enjoy drawing more attention to itself.

"Those were definitely dungeon mobs," one of them said. "They even left drops:" they continued, and used some kind of analysis skill on the drops. One chunk of manastone, weakly pulsing, and one heap of manadust, already starting to scintillate from the continual mana flow streaming over it.

The thing was — this was all, to some degree, a farce. Just as much now as before, it was watching adventurers storm its dungeon, kill pointless, endlessly-respawning trash mobs, collect experience and loot. Certainly it had changed the decor, but... this wasn't satisfying. Pretending it was a collection of black glass corridors instead of a wet, dripping cave full of goblins. It wanted to know why these adventurers were here. What paths had its harvested manastone moved through, to come to their attention? Why did they want manastone? Would they cast [Create Light] a few dozen more times as it varied the mana flows?

Goblin Cave was deeply distrustful of its instincts. Oh, certainly, it wanted to protect its core. But on reflection, adventurers had rarely tried to reach its core, and adventurers-as-a-whole had never seemed to take issue with it killing entire parties who delved too deep. It also wanted to continue creating sprawling labyrinths full of goblins. It did like goblins, after all. But it wanted to do more than that. And its instincts had been screaming at it to never reveal itself to others: not as something unusual, not as something thinking and planning. Just a cave full of mobs.

Ultimately, it needed answers. And, oh, finding a point of confusion and digging in, slowly experimenting to explore all the manifold ways a problem unfolded itself, all of the disparate aspects that combined to present an issue, and one by one solving them until it could synthesize a complete solution, a new artifact that presented itself as a meaningful expression of knowledge and learning — that was certainly enjoyable. But there were adventurers within it now, and they moved fast. Unfortunately, it would need to match their pace if it wanted to stay abreast of their movements. It had taken years to dig out its new corridors, but how long would it take to walk all the way down to its core?

So, while the adventurers were conversing over its mana chunk — "A purely mana-aligned dungeon? What else can manifest mobs like that?" "Could someone have actually subverted a core?" — it focused on a room that shared a wall with the chamber the adventurers were currently in. In order to speak, it couldn't do it audibly; it would have to construct a whole artificial diaphragm and voicebox. Not difficult, with two dozen examples inside it, but more time-consuming than it liked. It didn't have the system connection required to speak directly into their minds, the way it could with its spawned mobs. And the fact that its mana control was impinged by the presence of other mana flows — well, it had already found a solution to that. It manifested a mana lock, sealing its new chamber off from the flows in the other room, and it placed down an ink-black plate of voidstone along the wall behind the lock. Then...

The wall next to the adventurers dissolved apart into shards, revealing the black backdrop. Into it, Goblin Cave had carved a single word in lumenrock, in the same language as its books: GREETINGS.

Every instinct it had, of course, was screaming to not do this. That was a large part of why it did it.

"'Greetings'...?" their leader said. "Are we speaking to someone?"

YES

It took a while to subsume the old lumenrock, resurface with voidstone, and then extrude new lumenrock. If it hadn't been for all the frenzied digging it had done over the past several years, it would've taken even longer. Still, it had spent so much of its life frustrated by the rapid pace of the adventurers within it; they could stand to be left waiting for once.

The adventurers shared a glance, looking around nervously. "May I ask to whom we are speaking?" their leader said.

Goblin Cave debated its response. It didn't want to flatly state, 'the dungeon core of this dungeon' quite yet, lacking so much context, but it seemed like an affront to everything it was trying to do to add one more layer of fabrication: oh, I'm the sorcerer that subverted this dungeon. Oh, I'm the keeper of the ancient hex kept in these halls. And so forth and so on.

THE ONE WHO MANAGES THESE HALLS, it wrote out, after a longer pause.

Their leader kept their composure, despite their underlings seeming increasingly ill at-ease. "What is your duty here, if you do not mind me asking?"

That one was easy. EXPERIMENTATION, it wrote. AND UNDERSTANDING.

"What... is this place?"

This was leading the dialog down a tedious path. Goblin Cave had priorities. WHAT DO YOU DESIRE TO LEARN FROM THIS PLACE. It had thought about opening with 'WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE WORLD' but it figured that might have been a little too open-ended.

"We're mage-technicians, under service to her highness the Duchess of Masqar. We're here to survey this site." Their face made a slight motion. "If our presence here offends you, we may leave."

Goblin Cave was tempted to simply say, leave. It wasn't— it hadn't— Conversation was something it overheard and ignored, not something it participated in. That hadn't really answered its question; told it what it wanted to know. What did it want to know? How could it convey that? SURVEY TO WHAT END?

"For manastone, primarily. As— as you may know, this region is one of the lesser states of the empire, and impoverished in mana. It was thought this place was a... fresh manastone vein, or something to that affect."

The use of 'region' sparked something in its mind. Its rankings included 2283 dungeons in total, and it had no idea of how wide a net that cast. HOW MANY DUNGEONS ARE YOU AWARE OF?

"W-what? In what sense?"

IN ANY SENSE.

"The royal library is said to contain annals that record tens of thousands of dungeon varieties, spanning over centuries. Personally, I have overseen survey of twenty seven dungeons in my employ. Is this place a dungeon?"

ARE YOU AWARE OF THE MECHANISM BEHIND THE GENERATION OF THOSE FLAME WISPS, THAT YOU PARTICIPATED IN?

"What?" Even the leader was having a difficult time maintaining composure under the barrage of questions. This whole situation was making them uneasy; even Goblin Cave could discern that. Good. "They don't— the mana flows here are very turbulent. It is said that wisps like that spawn in regions of high-energy, unfocused mana."

HAVE YOU PERSONALLY OBSERVED THIS BEFORE? WHAT IS THE PRECISE MEANING OF 'UNFOCUSED'?

"I— No, I haven't personally observed wisps spawn before. Unfocused... I don't know. I suppose there must be some specific condition, or else they'd spawn everywhere; it's just said that there needs to be a level of interface between competing strong mana sources. Did... you manage to construct this mana rhythm?"

DOES THAT NOT INTEREST YOU?

"What, the specifics of wisp spawns? No, I haven't... it's not something I think of."

CAST [CREATE LIGHT] AGAIN. I WILL MODULATE THE MANA FLOW.

"What?" they said, and elsewhere, Goblin Cave shifted some gates, allowing the current to pick up, folding over itself in choppy waves.

The reaction was less than positive for the group. One of them let out a groan, staggering, and their mana shield caught the increased flow wrong and tore itself apart with a flash. They collapsed, and two other members leaned over them, struggling to overlap their own faltering shields upon their body.

The leader turned back towards the glowing words. "Regent! Please, desist! Have mercy!"

None of them cast [Create Light]. What a disappointment. Goblin Cave stilled the flow, although not before another member of the group collapsed.

"Please, permit us to leave," the leader said, making some kind of gesture.

What a mess. Goblin Cave would have to figure out whatever kind of mana flow didn't make adventurers ill, because so far it really did seem like it was 'everything'.

VERY WELL, it wrote. Then...

As it had been talking, it had decided to be compassionate. They wanted manastone? It would give them manastone. Despite the unpleasantness of having them crawling through its corridors, and their gross self-interest in nothing but raw power, they were at the very least a source of information it didn't have. Potentially; it hadn't learned much of note from this conversation.

It had constructed a neat stack of fist-sized manastone blocks: faceted rhombic dodecahedrons, stacked in a neat pyramid. It extruded a slope on its side of the mana lock, and then used a trap component to shove the stack down the slope, sending a clattering heap of manastone blocks rolling out and across the floor. A few of them reacted like it was an attack, jolting back; one reflexively put up a [Barrier].

FOR YOUR EFFORTS, it wrote. RETURN HERE IN TWO DAYS AND I WILL GIVE YOU MORE. Rank bribery was just how adventurers operated, regrettably.

The leader stared at the heap of stones, then jerkily reached down and picked one up. They gestured to the others to do the same. "Thank you," they said, voice visibly strained. "May we go?"

YES

The group limped their way back the way they came, half-dragging their two unconscious members. "Was that—" one of them said, and the leader gave a sharp hiss, shh. Aside from that, they remained silent all the way to the entrance.

Goblin Cave thought that had gone fairly well, all things considered.