Mission Too many sapients have karma levels of 25% or lower. The System created Dungeon Cores with the intention of having them kill off these bad people while making good people stronger. Dungeon Cores are given loot to lure greedy people to their death, while the promise of more power will lure the power hungry.

This… Changes everything… Sarzina Acacia realized. But I can no longer tell anyone!

Immediately, her gut - or rather the System - informed her she could tell people about the purpose of Dungeons, just not how she got the information.

Zina gave a relieved sigh. The System is helping me navigate this, so I must be on the right path!

… Maybe…? I know it's not part of a request anymore, but…

Holy System! Please inform me, so I might better myself and others: What is a karma level?

But, just as expected, the System didn't reply.

Zina wasn't too disappointed. The context of the Mission had told her enough to know that a low karma level was for bad people, while good people had high karma levels.

Besides, she had put her old dungeon professor on the job of researching that particular topic. Professor Cercis had loved a good research project as long as Zina had known her. And while Zina would have liked it if she could have done it herself, she had too many other things to think about these days.

And of course her Professor had access to more research materials and contacts than Zina had while positioned in the middle of no-man's-land.

So… Every request I make of my Dungeon has to either aid in killing bad people, particularly greedy and power hungry people, or not stand in the way of that goal.

I can work with that!

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It had been nerve racking to simply wait for the Lightning Mage to accept my Rule enforced deal. Especially as she stopped muttering to herself after her outburst, meaning I had no idea what was going through her mind.

And if she didn't accept it, there would be nothing stopping her from exposing my intelligence. And I just wasn't ready for that kind of attention.

Finally, after 11 agonizing minutes, she accepted my deal.

Good! I thought in relief, before trying to determine how the Lightning Mage was reacting to my Mission.

Only for her to contemplate it silently…

Now of all times to be silent?!

While I could send her a false request simply asking her to speak her thoughts, this would reveal my spying, which was too valuable to give up like that.

So, instead I resigned myself to not knowing.

Your linked activator requests to know what the secondary trigger for the traps of The Dungeon of Karma is.

Will you allow this?

Yes/No

Pa! Hahahaha! I stutter-laughed at the sudden request. Of course she found a way to bend the rules!

Heh. Requesting knowledge instead of specific creatures!

After a bit more laughing I sobered up and considered her request.

On one hand she already knows my Mission, so her knowing my traps are triggered based on karma levels might not do any difference. On the other hand it might cause her to stop bad people from entering my Dungeon, which would stop me from tiering up.

… Oh no… Simply knowing my aim is to kill bad guys might cause that reaction! I just don't know what her opinion is on killing bad people! She could be okay with it or see the death of anyone as bad or anything in between!

Why did you have to stop speaking your every thought out loud!

I mentally sighed.

Well… Since she already knows just enough to make her react badly should she be against my Mission… She might as well get a way to know how to determine who is bad and who isn't.

Send her the description of 'Karma Traps'. I ordered my Mimicking Fake Core as a way of accepting her request.

The request prompt disappeared and an 'oh!' followed by scribbling could be heard from the Lightning Mage. But still, no muttering under her breath.

Your linked activator requests to know how intelligent you are.

Will you allow this?

Yes/No

She's already sworn to secrecy so yeah sure, but just how can I even answer that question? I mean, I don't know how intelligent I am!

The prompt disappeared and while no words came from the elf, her excitement was still audible.

I wonder how the System defined my intelligence…

Actually, let's stop having a one-way conversation. Send her a request to enter my Dungeon. If she can make unorthodox requests why wouldn't I be able to do it too?!

Seconds later I had gotten a 'yes' reply and could hear the elf packing her writing supplies and start walking. It was late in the day and the sun had technically already set, though it was so close to sunset I doubt she would question why my Dungeon was still open.

Once she entered I had her greeted by a rock-shaped, Mana Form mini mimic.

Over the next hour I informed her of my dislike of slavery, the reason why the boulder in the room was black and suggested the 0%'er be given to me, as in case of mind control I would be able to undo it - I saw little reason to hide that I could do that - and I gave my opinions of her intentions regarding my Dungeon. Most of her intentions wouldn't change anything for me or the Tribe, so I didn't have a lot to add. My only real request was that she didn't try to stop bad people from entering my Dungeon.

My secrecy was already mostly secured by the Rule, but I made sure to discourage her from telling other people too much. Stating things like ‘you would be unable to tell them like how you know that’ and ‘would they believe you?’ or whatever seemed to fit the situation. I had no intention of telling her my actual reason for the secrecy. I didn’t trust her enough for that and she didn’t deserve an explanation either.

If she proves herself trustworthy, maybe I’ll tell her one day. Then again. Maybe I’ll be big and strong enough to not fear getting more attention.

… Or maybe I’ll always fear attracting the attention of something or someone strong enough to…

…

Oh! And I did smugly inform the Lightning Mage that my Dungeon did indeed have a theme!

She didn't doubt it at this point.

At one point she had even suggested removing the Cage around my Core.

The suggestion stunned me. I had not expected that. Especially not at our first actual meeting.

But… In the end, the Cage didn’t make me feel caged. It was the presence of the elves which did that. The Cage actually allowed me to gain more information on the current situation by allowing me to spy on the Lightning Mage through the link between the two.

But of course I couldn’t tell her that I could no longer spy on her if the Cage was removed. Instead I pointed out how we could use it to communicate even while she was on the Surface World.

Which, admittedly, was a nice option.

I just had to be careful not to accidentally reveal my eavesdropping.

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Zina didn't get any sleep that night. She was too busy going over everything she had learned from her Dungeon - it had denied freedom and had thus accepted her claim as its guide - and applying it to her plans for the future.

She had always considered herself religious, without it being her whole life, but after this? Clearly this Dungeon had been blessed by the System with actual sapiency! Such a thing couldn't simply happen through a random mutation. And if the System felt the need for a sapient Dungeon there must have been an important reason behind it!

Most likely due to normal Dungeons being ineffective at achieving their Mission. But it wouldn't surprise me if there were more than one reason for it. For that reason Zina had begun planning for how she could best help the Dungeon, and by proxy the System, who had never asked for anything but for people to work hard in order to get Skills and levels.

4 things had stuck out to the noblewoman during her conversation with the Dungeon - and wasn't that an odd thought! Having a conversation with a Dungeon!

The first had somewhat been mentioned in the Mission: The Dungeon had to kill 'bad people'. The so-called 25% or lower karma level, which the Dungeon had been kind enough to explain to the elf. It had even mentioned how not only would only these people trigger the traps in the Dungeon, but they were also unable to focus on the Dungeon's bìxiés.

If the System wanted them killed, then Zina trusted that judgment.

However, the conversation had added perspective to the Dungeon's Mission. It wanted to kill bad people and only bad people. Yet it didn't seem to be able to mourn for the good people it had already killed. It wanted to avoid killing good people, but didn't particularly seem to mind if it did end up happening. At the same time, it wanted to kill bad people and found joy in doing so.

In that way, the Dungeon was very much the embodiment of its Mission.

The second thing she had noticed was how the Dungeon had been able to detect people with 0% karma. People who, the Dungeon had informed her, had done something so evil the System felt personally insulted by the act.

Or: People who had been mind manipulated by someone like that. Or mind manipulated by someone mind manipulated by someone like that. Apparently while someone is mind manipulated, you take on the karma level of the one manipulating you.

And additionally there was a cult around here doing just that with the goal of collecting Dungeon Cores, killing the Dungeon in the process.

But the Dungeon had some way to undo mind manipulation…? It didn't want to specify how it did that, only that it could and that the System would reward it more for doing instead of killing them.

At this point in the conversation Zina had suggested making the Queendom aware of the cult, so their Dungeons could be better protected. She was then about to suggest for the victims of the cult to be brought to the Dungeon of Karma to have their mind freed, but before she could the Dungeon demanded that this kind of knowledge couldn't come from her, as she wouldn't be able to explain where she heard it from.

That, along with several other similar comments, had clued Zina into the third thing that had stuck out to her: The Dungeon didn't want to attract attention.

This concept was almost foreign to Zina, whose goal since childhood had been gaining fame. It wasn't completely foreign, however. ‘Cause getting attention for having done something embarrassing was undesirable even to her.

But what could a Dungeon be embarrassed about? Its low kill count? Its age or size, perhaps?

No matter which one it was, Zina concluded the Dungeon would one day be over it, but that it might be best to respect its reluctance for now.

She would order Alnus to spread the knowledge of the cult to the Queendom. He could claim he heard it in one of the towns he would have passed through at that point on the way back to the capital.

Lastly, the Dungeon had kept stressing how it hated sapients who enslaved other sapients. Zina hadn't at first been sure if this had been meant as a comment on how the cult took away the freewill of its members, if it was aimed at her for having placed an Enchanted Dungeon Core Cage around its Core, or both.

Zina had tested the waters by asking if the Dungeon wanted the Cage removed, not sure if it would be a good idea, but prepared to claim that the process of doing so was complicated and would take some time to prepare. That way she would have enough time to figure out if removing the Cage was actually the best action and to come up with a reason for why she couldn't remove it.

After a long moment of consideration, the Dungeon had declined wanting the Cage removed, as the link between Zina and the Cage gave them a way to communicate through creative requests, which could be used even while Zina was outside the Dungeon.

The slave comments must have been aimed at the cult then. Zina had concluded.