Chương 2: Apparently, the Loot Is an Energy Source

Jack Mercer stepped out of the dungeon carrying a rusted sword, a kitchen knife strapped to a wooden pole, and one small blue crystal that would eventually matter more to the world than almost anything else currently inside his house. The storage shed returned around him. Old tools, faded wooden walls, the covered window, and thin traces of blue light leaking around the blackout tarp replaced the stone corridor all at once. Jack turned immediately. The gate remained exactly where he had left it.

DUNGEON GATE Type: Layered Dungeon Status: Unclaimed Current Accessible Layer: 1 Current Threat Rank: F First Clear: In Progress Floor Guardian: Alive Nothing had changed. Good. Jack closed the shed door, checked the tarp over the window, then walked around the outside once more. The property was large enough to give the building some privacy, but not enough for him to become careless. No neighbors watching from upstairs windows. No cars slowing on the road.

No one standing beyond the fence with a phone pointed in his direction. The shed looked like an old shed again. Mostly.

"Still hidden." That was enough for now. Jack carried the Rusted Sword into the garage and laid it across the workbench. Fifteen years from now, no experienced Delver would have bothered carrying this thing home. A Common Item Level One weapon in Poor condition was practically scrap. Today, it might be one of the first genuine Dungeon weapons in private hands anywhere in the country. He opened an old metal cabinet and placed the sword inside.

"Stay there." The improvised spear went beside it. He had thanked the thing for its service already, but throwing away a perfectly functional reach weapon while he was still Level One would have been stupid. Sentiment did not need to override inventory management. The Mana Stone came inside with him. Jack locked the garage and entered the house through the side door. His phone was still recording. He had nearly forgotten. Jack stopped in the kitchen and opened the footage.

The entire run was there: entering the impossible gate inside the shed, the System interface, the Burrow Rats, the Scrap Goblin, and the Rusted Sword dropping onto the stone floor. It was excellent evidence. Which meant he absolutely could not post it. The footage proved far too much at once. It showed that Jack had access to a private gate, that the gate was inside a building, that he had already entered, and that he knew enough to move through a dungeon without panicking.

Even if the location itself wasn't obvious, somebody sufficiently motivated could work backward from details. Jack saved the recording locally and disabled cloud synchronization.

"This stays private." Maybe someday. Not today. He brought up his Status. JACK MERCER Level: 1 Life: 49 / 61 STR: 14 DEX: 14 INT: 14 Job: Unassigned Skill Gem Slot: Locked Forty-nine. Exactly where it had been when he left the dungeon. No obvious passive recovery. At least not fast enough to matter. Jack leaned against the kitchen counter. Part of him wanted to go back immediately. The First Clear was still available. The Floor Guardian was alive.

He had a real Dungeon weapon now, even if calling the Rusted Sword a weapon felt generous. If he reached Level Two, his Job would unlock. Warrior. The same choice as before. No hesitation there. He had spent fifteen years learning exactly what he was good at, and he had no intention of abandoning that experience simply because he had another chance. But he had no Life Flask, no healing Skill, no Portal Scroll, and no confirmed emergency exit beyond physically reaching the gate. Jack dismissed the Status.

"No." The Floor Guardian wasn't going anywhere. The world outside his backyard was changing by the minute. That was more urgent. He sat down in front of the laptop and reopened the forum he had left less than an hour earlier. The page loaded. Jack stared.

"… That got worse." The entire front page had become gate coverage. Not most of it. All of it. [GLOBAL MEGATHREAD #4] GATE EVENTS — VERIFIED REPORTS ONLY FIRST CONFIRMED FATALITIES INSIDE GATES WHY DO KNIVES WORK BUT BULLETS DON'T I THINK PEOPLE HAVE POWERS NOW??? BLUE CRYSTAL DROPPED FROM MONSTER — ANYONE ELSE? VIDEO: MAN IN TEXAS KILLS GOBLIN WITH AXE JAPAN HAS SEALED MULTIPLE GATES NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED TO SEVERAL US SITES The terminology was already stabilizing.

An hour ago, people had called them portals, structures, anomalies, alien doors, and half a dozen worse things. Now a growing portion of the internet had settled on gates. Plenty were already calling them dungeons. Humans were remarkably efficient at naming something once they needed to argue about it. Jack opened his GateGuide account. The notification counter had become almost meaningless. Thousands. His first post had been quoted across multiple threads. Normal firearms are not dealing meaningful damage.

If you absolutely insist on entering, use handheld melee weapons. Most people had mocked him when he posted it. Now they were supplying evidence. More footage of rifles knocking monsters down without killing them. A man using a fire axe. Someone else with a steel pipe. A woman wielding what looked suspiciously like a decorative sword from her living room and somehow managing to kill a small creature despite having no idea how to swing it. One reply had more votes than Jack's original post.

GateWatcher88: Okay seriously how the hell did OP know this before everyone else? Another: ActualEngineerMaybe: Thought this guy was making stuff up. He posted before the second knife video went viral. Then: DungeonDad42: GATEGUIDE EXPLAIN YOURSELF Jack smiled.

"Good question." He did not answer. Anonymous did not mean invisible. Jack knew that. He had posted useful information before governments understood what they were dealing with. He had publicly claimed knowledge nobody should reasonably possess yet, and the timestamp proved it. If GateGuide kept doing that, people would eventually start looking for the person behind the account. Government agencies. Researchers. Companies. Journalists. Probably several categories Jack would rather not think about yet.

That was the cost. The potential benefit was much larger. Jack entered a new search. Blue crystal. Thousands of results appeared. Photos. Short videos. Livestream clips. Monster corpses dissolving and leaving behind small blue crystalline objects. Nobody agreed on a name. Blue Crystal. Portal Rock. Goblin Stone. Magic Crystal. Mana Crystal. Someone had already used mana stone, though most of the replies were arguing over whether the word mana was appropriate when nobody had proven magic existed. Jack laughed.

Fifteen years later, nobody debated the terminology. Mana Stone. That was simply what they were. As ordinary a word as copper or gasoline. Jack reached into his jacket pocket and placed his own Stone on the table. Small. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Blue. Faint light moving beneath the surface. Not impressive at all. He activated Appraisal and deliberately requested the complete information. The simple display expanded.

F-RANK MANA STONE Rarity: Common Type: Material / Energy Source Purity: 68% Mana Capacity: Low Remaining Mana: Full Effect This Stone responds to the wielder's intent, converting the pure magical energy contained within it into a variety of physical phenomena. Heat Conversion Converts stored Mana into heat according to the wielder's intent. A basic conversion is sufficient to bring approximately one liter of water from room temperature to boiling almost instantly.

Electrical Conversion Converts stored Mana into electrical energy according to the wielder's intent. A basic conversion can fully charge a typical smartphone battery in moments. Physical Interference Stored Mana may be converted into physical force according to the wielder's intent and precision, allowing lightweight objects to be lifted or moved. The magical energy contained within the Stone is finite. Once completely depleted, a Mana Stone becomes nothing more than an ordinary stone.

Flavor Text As the gods punished Prometheus for stealing fire from the heavens, will we too be punished for stealing this new fire from beneath the earth? No. This is not punishment. It is a blessing, given so that we may step into the next age. Jack remained quiet for a moment. He had not read that Flavor Text in years. Why would he? F-rank Mana Stones were industrial feedstock in his time. Power companies bought them by the ton. Hospitals consumed them. Transportation networks consumed them.

Farms, factories, logistics companies, construction firms, and data centers all consumed Mana Stones in quantities that would have sounded absurd today. Jack read the final line again. It is a blessing, given so that we may step into the next age.

"… Yeah." Whoever—or whatever—had written the System's Flavor Text had been annoyingly accurate. Humanity had spent the first few days terrified that the gates represented the end of civilization. Instead, this little blue Stone had helped create the next version of it. Jack looked at the forum again. Dozens of people were asking what their blue crystals were. He could answer. More importantly, he could establish that GateGuide was worth listening to. That meant attention. Attention meant risk.

It also meant something else. People would send him things. Jack looked at the endless stream of photographs already appearing online. California. Texas. Florida. Japan. Britain. Germany. Australia. He could not travel to every gate. He didn't need to. Appraisal had never required his physical presence. A clear enough image could carry enough information for the Skill to identify the subject Jack deliberately focused on.

Direct observation gave the best results, while blurry photographs, obstructed views, and poor footage could return incomplete information. The monitor itself was not the target. The object in the image was. That had been useful fifteen years from now. Today, with the entire world uploading unknown Dungeon material faster than anyone could catalogue it, it was absurd. Jack slowly sat forward.

"If they trust me…" They would bring the Dungeon to him. The risk was worth taking. For now. He opened a new post. The blue crystals are called Mana Stones. Here is the identification result. Jack took a photograph of his Stone. Then stopped before uploading it. Metadata. Location information. Device information. Timestamp. He stripped anything useful. Then he inspected the photograph itself. Plain tabletop. No window. No kitchen layout. No reflection. No family photographs.

Nothing that could reasonably identify where the picture had been taken. Good. He continued writing. I obtained one from inside a gate. My Unique Skill can identify objects. This is the full identification result. He copied the Appraisal information. Name. Rarity. Type. Purity. Mana Capacity. Heat conversion. Electricity. Physical interference. The warning about finite Mana. The entire Flavor Text. He left out one detail. The rank of Appraisal. People could know he had an identification Skill.

They did not need to know it was A-rank.

"Free information has limits." Jack reread everything once more. Then hesitated. This was the actual decision. Posting meant making GateGuide much harder to dismiss. It also meant establishing a pattern: one anonymous account repeatedly knew things before researchers and governments did. Someone would notice. Possibly today. Definitely eventually. Jack looked at the Mana Stone. Then at the flood of unknown items being uploaded from across the world. He pressed Post.

"Worth it." The first reply arrived before he finished refreshing. NoManaNoProblem: fake Second: RifleGuy1776: YOU AGAIN Third: BatteryNerd: ENERGY SOURCE??? Jack refreshed. Twenty-three replies. Refresh. Seventy-nine. Refresh. Two hundred. He stopped refreshing.

"That was fast." The reactions were exactly what he expected. If it can boil water then do it. Full phone charge instantly? Bullshit. Where are these descriptions coming from? Dude wrote fanfiction about a rock. Why are you calling it a Mana Stone? How did you know about melee weapons before anyone else? Video or fake. That final one climbed quickly. Jack stared at it. Eventually somebody else would prove every word he had written. Researchers would acquire Stones. Governments would test them.

Independent laboratories would measure them. The truth did not need GateGuide. But GateGuide needed credibility. And credibility bought Jack access to information worth far more than one F-rank Mana Stone.

"Fine." He stood.

"Let's make a video." Jack was not a content creator. He had never wanted to be one. He did, however, understand evidence. One continuous recording. No cuts. No face. No identifiable background. Nothing that revealed the private gate. He positioned his phone above a section of kitchen counter and checked the frame twice. Then a third time. Only his hands and the testing area were visible. Good. Jack started recording.

"This is the F-rank Mana Stone from my previous post." He held the Stone close enough for the camera to capture it clearly.

"The identification says it can convert stored magical energy into heat, electricity, and physical force. People asked for proof." Jack lowered it.

"So here's proof." He held a measuring container beneath the camera and filled it with one liter of tap water. The markings were clearly visible. Then he poured the water into a stainless-steel pot and placed it on the counter. The mundane sound of the faucet running made the entire situation feel faintly ridiculous. Jack picked up the Mana Stone.

"This is approximately one liter of room-temperature tap water." No dramatic gesture. No incantation. The Stone responded to intent. Heat. Blue light pulsed inside the crystal. The water erupted into a rolling boil almost instantly. Steam rushed upward. Jack automatically took half a step away from the pot. He had known exactly what would happen. It still looked insane when performed in an ordinary kitchen.

"…Yeah." He let the camera linger on the boiling water.

"Heat conversion confirmed." He turned the effect off and moved the pot aside. Next came his old smartphone. Jack woke the screen and held it toward the camera. Battery: 34%"No charging cable." He put the phone down. Picked up the Stone. Focused. Electricity. Not raw current. Not uncontrolled discharge. Just the result he wanted. Charge the battery. The Mana Stone pulsed. The phone screen lit. 34%. 56%. 81%. 100%. Jack waited another second before lifting it.

"Full." He showed the battery indicator directly to the camera.

"Electrical conversion confirmed." One final test. Jack put an ordinary metal spoon on the counter.

"The last effect is inefficient with a low-rank Stone, but the identification says physical interference is possible." He focused. Lift. The spoon trembled. Rose several inches. Jack moved it sideways slowly, held it there for a moment, then released the effect. The spoon fell with a metallic clatter.

"That's enough." He stopped recording. Before uploading anything, Jack checked Appraisal again. F-RANK MANA STONE Purity: 68% Mana Capacity: Low Remaining Mana: High Still plenty left. Good. Jack reviewed the recording from beginning to end. No address. No face. No useful reflections. No accidental family photograph. No view through a window. No gate footage. Nothing that told anyone where he was. He uploaded it. The caption was simple. Fine. Here's the proof. One continuous take. Heat. Electricity.

Physical movement. F-rank Mana Stone. Jack watched the upload complete. He had just spent part of what might currently be one of the rarest privately held resources in America to win an argument on the internet. Fifteen years ago, that would have horrified him. Today, the resource itself mattered less than what credibility could buy. Jack went to make coffee while the video spread. When he returned, he stopped in the doorway. The notification counter was no longer useful. It had surrendered. Jack sat down.

The video had already escaped the original forum. Someone had reposted it. Someone else had clipped the boiling-water test. Another account had isolated the phone charging. A fourth had slowed the spoon footage frame by frame, apparently searching for wires. The view count changed as Jack watched. Then changed again. And again. The replies had stopped resembling a conversation. They were weather.

WHAT THE FUCK THE WATER HE BOILED THE WATER THERE'S NO CUT HOW DID THE PHONE CHARGE FAKE HOW MAGIC BATTERY THAT IS NOT A BATTERY WE HAVE MAGIC ROCKS NOW??? Jack took a sip of coffee and watched the chaos. The first meaningful shift came less than twenty minutes later. A new video appeared. Different house. Different voice. Different Mana Stone. The uploader had apparently recovered the crystal from a small gate on private property somewhere in Arkansas. A man held the blue Stone beside a coffee mug.

"Okay, that GateGuide guy said heat. I'm trying heat." Someone laughed nervously behind the camera. The man concentrated. The coffee erupted upward in a violent cloud of steam. He screamed and nearly dropped the Stone. The person filming laughed so hard the camera shook toward the ceiling. Jack watched the clip twice.

"Too much." Intent took practice. People would learn precision. Eventually. The video went viral. Then another appeared. A flashlight charging without batteries being replaced. Another. A university student heating a metal plate. Another. A woman sliding a coin across a table without touching it. Independent replication. Different users. Different locations. Different Stones. The argument did not end. The internet was constitutionally incapable of ending an argument. But the default position changed.

The question stopped being: Is GateGuide lying? It became: What the hell are these things? Jack refreshed. One post caught his attention. My brother brought one home from a gate. I've never entered one. It still works for me. Video attached. Jack opened it. A middle-aged woman stood in a kitchen holding a Mana Stone while someone off camera explained what to do. She had clearly never entered a dungeon. The Stone still heated a frying pan. Of course it did. Mana Stones were resources. Not Delver equipment.

The System did not care whether the person using one had a Level. Jack closed the video. Another fact the world had just learned. The tone of the discussions began changing. Plenty of people were still making jokes. Others had stopped. An electrical engineer wrote a long post Jack only skimmed. Someone claiming to work in battery research started asking about depletion and measurable energy density. A physicist demanded controlled testing.

Several people argued over whether the word magic had any scientific meaning if the phenomenon could be reproduced reliably. Others wanted to know whether the Stones could power cars. Houses. Factories. Aircraft. Someone was already asking where they could buy one. Jack laughed.

"No market yet." Give it a little time. Then he found the comment. Buried beneath one of the larger threads, with only a few dozen votes. Wait. If monsters inside the gates drop these things, and even the lowest-grade ones can do this, why are we treating the gates only like disaster zones? Isn't this basically a gold rush? Jack stopped scrolling. Read it again. Then smiled.

"Close." Gold had made people rich. Mana Stones would make civilizations rich. That distinction did not matter yet. Someone had finally asked the right question. Jack leaned back in his chair.

"Welcome to the next fifteen years." His Mana Stone still contained plenty of energy. Jack put it inside a padded container rather than wasting the remainder on demonstrations. Then he returned to GateGuide. The account had become a problem. A useful one. Direct messages were arriving faster than he could open them. Some were insults. Several people wanted to buy the Stone. One person was convinced Jack was an alien. Another wanted him to prove he worked for the CIA. There were at least three marriage proposals.

More importantly, people were sending photographs. Jack opened one. A crude axe filled the image. He deliberately focused Appraisal on the weapon rather than the photograph itself. The Skill responded. CHIPPED HAND AXE Rarity: Common Item Level: 2 Required Level: 1 Physical Damage: 7–12 Jack smiled. Still worked exactly as he remembered. Next message. A monster photographed from twenty feet away. Blurred. Partially obscured. Appraisal returned only fragmentary information. Species classification. Approximate Level.

Incomplete traits. Jack closed it. Image quality mattered. Good. Next. A strange bottle. Jack hesitated before opening it. Then looked at the number of unread messages. This would become unmanageable very quickly. He created another public post. If you find an unknown item, monster, crystal, weapon, or other object inside a gate, send a clear photo or video. I may be able to identify it. Do not send your home address or personal information. Also: Do not eat unidentified drops. Do not drink unidentified liquids.

Do not equip unidentified items just because they glow. Do not activate something merely because it has a button. Yes, I am serious. Jack posted it. He stared at the last five lines. Fifteen years of experience strongly suggested that at least one of those warnings would be ignored before the afternoon was over. Humans remained human. The messages multiplied anyway. Ten. Twenty. Dozens. Images from around the country. Then outside it. Unknown monsters. Unknown materials. Weapons. Crystals. Bottles.

Objects nobody had names for yet. Jack watched the flow increase. This was what he had bought with part of one F-rank Mana Stone. Not followers. Not popularity. Access. A global information network composed entirely of people voluntarily bringing unidentified Dungeon discoveries to an A-rank Appraiser. Jack smiled.

"That was worth it." He opened another message. A small red crystal rested between two fingers. The sender had written: Found this after killing something that looked like a wolf. Anyone know what it is? Jack's attention sharpened. Appraisal responded through the screen. A familiar System format appeared. SKILL GEM Jack stopped. There it was. Already. The rest of the information began resolving beneath the name. Jack smiled.

"Now we're getting somewhere." The television behind him suddenly changed. A breaking-news tone sounded. Jack turned. A banner appeared beneath the anchor. UNVERIFIED VIDEOS SHOW CRYSTALS RECOVERED FROM GATE SITES PRODUCING HEAT AND ELECTRICAL ENERGY Jack's own recording appeared on screen. Only his hands. The Stone. The stainless-steel pot. Good. A scientist appeared beside the footage.

"If authentic, the implications could be significant. Controlled testing would be required to establish energy density, repeatability, depletion characteristics, conversion losses, and whether the observed effects—" Jack looked at the word beneath the video. UNVERIFIED"Significant." He smiled.

"That's one word for it." The broadcast cut to government vehicles transporting recovered materials away from a secured gate. They would verify it soon enough. Everyone would. Jack lowered the volume and checked his Status again. Life: 49 / 61 Still no reason to rush the Floor Guardian. He had entered one dungeon. Killed a few beginner monsters. Found one Mana Stone and one terrible sword. And before lunch, he had deliberately made himself interesting to half the internet. Possibly several governments too.

Jack understood the trade. He was not invisible anymore. Not really. GateGuide now had a history, timestamps, behavioral patterns, and increasingly valuable information attached to the name. Someone would eventually come looking. That was tomorrow's problem. Today, hundreds of images from the first hours of the Dungeon Era were arriving on his screen. Fifteen years ago, Jack had been one more confused beginner among millions.

He had picked up things he did not understand, sold things too cheaply, ignored things that later became valuable, and waited for other people to slowly turn chaos into knowledge. This time, the chaos was coming directly to him. Jack reopened the photograph of the red crystal. The sender had added another message. seriously though what is this? Jack looked at the glowing words only he could see. SKILL GEM His fingers moved toward the keyboard.

"Yeah." Jack smiled.

"I know."