Chương 42: Chapter 41: Luxury of Sympathy

In all of Nero's life, he'd imagined many things. Like rescuing princesses from distress. Slaying dragons in one swing. Or relieving the few people who didn't deserve a life in the slums. Or maybe going over to the headquarters of the Church to beat up that one Cardinal who'd ordered priestess Sofia to be lashed for selling the sigil of the church in exchange for aid money. A Cardinal said to be the tenth strongest being in the entirety of the city of silver.

Or perhaps eat good food, burgers, pizzas until he felt like his stomach would burst without worrying about money. But not even in his wildest fantasy had he imagined sitting across a table, speaking with a literal dungeon core. Is this a dream? Have I fallen unconscious after cultivating for too long? Or did I fall asleep while sifting through those endless pages of guidebooks? He couldn't have been at the library, sleeping, mainly because that librarian, senior Xiao, kept a sharp eye on him.

Sometimes she'd even come over to help him out. She'd have certainly woken him up by now if he was sprawled on the floor of the library like some drunkard.

"Nero, hey, Nero!!!" A childlike, bubbly voice called him out of his stupor as Nero shook his head.

"Were you even listening?" The avatar of the dungeon core waved its hands in front of his face.

"Yeah, where were we?" he asked, not clearly recalling the topic of their discussion.

"I was explaining to you the steps I've taken to teach dance moves to these seemingly brainless phoenix kins!" the kid-shaped, boyish avatar of multicolored mana said. Its pupils seemed to contain a picture of the cosmos, the kind he'd seen in storybooks.

"Right." The avatar the dungeon had formed looked exactly like a 10-12 year old boy, except with a much more neutral facial and physical structure. Being made up of pure mana, the surface of its body shifted between different colors as it spoke. Nero could see its face turn red when it got angry, and when it felt shy, the color of its cheeks tended to shift to pink. Looking at this glowing bulb of a creature made his headache worse.

"Okay, enough with that, how about you explain the reasons behind all this? You hadn't descended in that body just to yap about your chickens' dance moves, have you?" The avatar huffed, puffing up its cheeks.

"Of course not!" It slammed the table, its full color turning black.

"Now, let us get to the business talk, then!" The explanation began, and Nero's eyes widened progressively at its contents. This dungeon had been here on the mountain for as long as it could recall. It had been here so long that it could even remember when the seventh circle was formed as a place for sapient races to live. Now Nero didn't know exactly how many years ago the circles were established, but it had to be at least two to three hundred years.

"Y'know, at first I was just a normal dungeon core, sitting atop this desolate mountain, which back then had little vegetation. The spawns were small too, very similar to small doves compared to what they are currently. And I had little energy to spare for thinking up some elaborate plan to attract adventurers. So I just ordered them to go outside and fetch live creatures to eat inside the dungeon."

"Since I couldn't produce any mana crystal because of the lack of any substantially dense souls, the souls of these small insects and rats they brought over were what allowed me to get enough energy to survive. It was rough, at times I literally felt like I'd die of starvation. And since no strong dungeons were around me, I couldn't feed off any residual energy they tended to emit." This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"But all that changed within days, when mother earth's grace fell upon me. The leyline that had come to be beneath me was mid-sized, so I stopped lacking energy. And since no one visited this place, I began my grand plan to skip the initial levels and directly ascend to a dungeon spirit by birthing an A-rank creature! And then…"

"And then I came along," Nero finished for it. He could see the fists of the avatar turning red from anger.

"Now, enough with the lore dump—why'd you suddenly decide to contact me?"

"Industrial mana extraction." The avatar's voice immediately turned serious, and Nero's ears perked up at the mention of something familiar.

"The recently ascended dungeon core #13566 has developed industrial mana extraction. Normally, these devices would suck mana directly from the air. But since this region is full of mana veins, it developed an underground industrial mana extraction mechanism instead—which has thinned the supply of mana that usually flows beneath me by roughly 99%. And for the last few days, I've been unable to feed my subordinate phoenix kin the required amount of mana crystals, since I need the stock for myself to survive."

Nero finally understood the creature's desperation. He was basically snatching up and selling off potentially its last bits of food stock daily. And at the rate he'd been taking, he could probably empty the supply within a few more days. It continued, "Plus, the snowfall brought in by the Dungeon Spirit to the south has also reduced the number of live animals around my vicinity by a large amount. I can't even have the phoenix kin go out and bring them over like before.

Plus, their biology has become so demanding, they'd surely die from a scarce diet if things continued as is…" Nero could literally see the avatar of the dungeon, bubbly until now, shrink in on itself, turning blue.

"So, what I want from you, dear adventurer."

"Nero. Just call me that." The dungeon core immediately caught onto the implications of that, its eyes brightening as its avatar's color shifted to yellow to reflect it.

"N-Nero, m'kay. What I really want from you is help. Help me so my spawns and I can survive this drought."

"And what would I get in exchange for going through that hassle?"

"My friendship, and access to unconditional aid once I get out of this situation." Nero eyed the avatar, expecting something more, but it just looked back at him expressionlessly, its edges slowly turning blue as the moment stretched on. Nero sighed.

"You really don't have anything else as compensation?" The avatar shook its head left to right, the blue engulfing nearly 60% of its body.

"Okay, deal." The spread of blue halted immediately as the avatar gingerly looked up.

"Really?"

"Yep. Except I won't stop selling these mana crystals for cash," he said, standing up from the chair and hauling the bag back onto his shoulders. The avatar's color shifted from blue to violet at that.

"But then, I'd die…" Nero turned around, leaving.

"You won't. I'll make sure to bring live animals every day." The dungeon cores avatar took a second to digest that, before jumping to its feet.

"Tha-thank you, Nero! Really, thank you!" Nero smiled and came out of the cave, resuming his usual routine. A relationship with the dungeon core was a unique thing, a very unique thing. And it was a dungeon that could produce phoenix kin, and potentially another phoenix, once it regained access to the dragon veins.

"And with Sylvie departing to kill that Dungeon Spirit soon, I'm pretty sure this ordeal will be solved soon." Naturally, the reason he'd agreed with the spirit hadn't been out of sympathy. Slum rats like him had no such luxury. Instead, he planned on keeping the core alive and bringing over a binding vow contract to form a formal treaty—with himself holding the high ground.

Once the situation got better, the dungeon could resume producing phoenix kin, and he could use them to extract beast souls, which he could then feed his own Nascent Phoenix, allowing it to grow up faster! Plus, he could even sell some of those beast souls at an auction. Phoenix-type beast souls were bound to fetch a high price.

"In fact, if I can hunt all the weak dungeons around the western side and feed their spawns to this one, it would potentially be able to produce spawns even before the situation with the dungeon spirit improves." For now, Nero put the plan aside. Before he could even enjoy the thought of abducting dungeon spawns from nearby dungeons, he'd have to awaken his core. Otherwise, with only his talent and Cypher Art, he wouldn't be able to pull enough numbers for the dungeon core.

He soon saw the city as he trekked through the snow, the underground tunnel, before reaching the guild, where he was greeted by a desolate guild hall. Everyone had really been sent to the dungeon spirit's layer, huh. He greeted Miya, handed over the supplies, and after getting five more gold crowns, learned that the dungeon spirit's forces were pushing back the adventurers deployed there, advancing toward their location rapidly.

"The situation is looking pretty grim," he remarked.

"Not really," Miya beamed.

"You haven't heard of the new announcement that has arrived from the City of Silver?"