Now that they had a clue about where they had to go, that was their focus instead of trying to keep taking down more workers. They could do that later on their way back, where they would end up closer to the dungeon’s entrance in case something went wrong.

  The way they were moving, it didn’t take the pair all too long to get to their destination, and they were soon just a little bit away from the space that Ryan guessed to be the office. Maximus seemed to be getting more motivated to continue on as well, as if he was sensing what it was that made him want to come here in the first place.

  However, there was an issue. There was a monster walking through that hallway, and if it had just been a worker, that wouldn’t have been an issue. But it was a foreman. Those metallic flowers that sprouted from the buds couldn’t just be cut apart, so they would probably have to be destroyed otherwise, and the foremen definitely wouldn’t go down with just a single attack either.

  But that wasn’t even the worst part. The foreman was based on a cyclops. A three-meter mountain of bricks and metal. Copper tendrils were covering nearly its whole body, with reddish-brown buds carefully sprouting along them. This was clearly a more advanced version of the foreman, and Ryan didn’t know if that already made it stronger than others.

  He thought for a moment. It would be too risky to just face the foreman, and due to the position of the metal flower that they had to destroy, the difficulty was raised even more. It was right in the center of its face, where its eye would usually be. He tapped his foot on the ground nervously, trying to come up with a solution. If there were just some kind of entrance to the office already, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. He could probably just sneak past the foreman somehow. But there wasn’t; Ryan would need to try and break through the wall somehow. And that would not only take time, but also make plenty of noise; it was not the kind of thing he could do sneakily.

  But then, an idea came to him. Maybe he could lure the foreman away after all. He pulled out his phone and double-checked the map, looking for a good spot to execute the idea. Ryan used one of the entrances leading away from the foreman and sneaked through the foundry, soon finding the rails that he was looking for. If he followed these rails, then he would end up in one of the storage rooms with those massive piles of ore. He slowly made his way down the rails toward a specific area where he could hide out and wait for an opportunity. And it didn’t take long for a worker with a cart to come by either.

  Since Maximus and Ryan already had some practice with these guys, it wasn’t particularly hard to take the worker down. And once he did, he took his pickaxe and lodged it under the wheel, trying to tip the cart over somehow. Luckily, the handle of the pickaxe was also made of metal and was well reinforced, so there was no threat of breaking it. Though, Ryan had to shovel parts of the ore out of the cart first to make it a bit lighter, but soon managed to finally tip the whole thing over.

  Immediately, Ryan picked up as much of the ore as he could possibly carry, creating small mounds of it at regular distances leading back to the tipped-over minecart. He was creating a trail for the foreman to follow right back to the minecart filled to the brim with ore.

  As he was making his way here, he had spotted two other foremen that he had been able to avoid easily enough. But each of them was picking up any copper that was left behind on the ground, ignoring the carts and storage rooms completely, so Ryan figured they only “cleaned up” any ore that wasn’t going to be directly used to create more foremen. And by tipping over that cart, Ryan hoped that it would count in the same way, and would keep the cyclops foreman distracted for long enough.

  Ryan turned around the corner, placing down the last small pile, holding one of the clumps of ore in his hand, getting ready to bolt down the hallway in the other direction. He could see the foreman in the distance, its back turned to him right now. Ryan took a deep breath, and threw the ore into the hallway, specifically aiming for a spot without grass or moss. But before it even landed, Ryan was around the corner and rushing toward one of the nearby doorways, as he heard the footsteps of the massive monster come closer to the corner. They stopped for a while, then moved on. Then stopped for a while, and moved on. It seemed to be working.

  Now, he just had to get back to that hallway.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Core Room

  Ryan carefully peered into the hallway. The foreman was gone; he could now try to break through the wall into the hidden office space. However, he still had to be careful; he had no idea if that monster would come back, or if another one would come around the corner any moment now. Just in case, Maximus would stand in a position where he could see if anything was approaching so that he could warn Ryan.

  But first, he had to take a look around to see if there was any spot that he could break down more easily than others. After all, at the end of the day, a dungeon was created as a reflection of the space it infested, and the rules of the space before did usually influence the dungeon itself. And a simple rule of buildings like this was that every room needed a door. Of course, if Ryan was right about this, then the dungeon was already smart enough to hide the office away, but he doubted that a young dungeon like this could just ignore rules like that. If it could, it would be able to close off whole corridors that would lead to this space instead of just hiding away the room itself.

  And as Ryan made a loop around that closed-off room, he found what he was looking for. The outline of what seemed to be an old doorway. You saw this kind of thing often when the area around an old brick house was reconstructed; shapes that were clearly once doors but were turned into walls by simply filling in the doorway.

  Right now, it was also covered in layers of moss and ivy, as if the dungeon was trying everything it could to hide it away. Ryan took the serrated knife that was originally part of Maximus’s arsenal and started to cut away the ivy while tearing off as much of the moss and the rest of the plants as he possibly could. It didn’t take long until Ryan had exposed nearly the full doorway, and it became even more clear that the dungeon was trying to hide something behind here. The ivy and moss was growing back rapidly over the doorway. Well, rapidly compared to normal plants, at least. He could see them wriggle and move, but it would take a while for them to be able to cover the whole thing again. By then, Ryan would hopefully be done.

  After putting away the serrated knife again, Ryan grabbed his pickaxe, and didn’t hesitate to swing it at the filled-in doorway, specifically aiming at the gaps between the bricks. The sharp tip dug into the mortar, and as he kept going, he could tell that the wall was getting weaker. He did have to hide a few times while some workers walked past, but it seemed that overall, the noise that he was making wasn’t actually too much of a bother. It didn’t take long until the first bricks were quite loose, so Ryan pulled off his backpack, reattaching the pickaxe to swap it for the sledgehammer he had been carrying with him as well. All this stuff he was carrying with him was super heavy, but also clearly worth it.

  Ryan grabbed the hammer and swung it at the loosened bricks. The first seemed to fall into the space beyond, and Ryan’s motivation only rose. Hit after hit, the door opened up more and more, until it was large enough for Ryan to squeeze through. Maximus came running over, and the two stepped into the dark space together. Ryan reached backward and grabbed the torch hanging on the side of his backpack. The moment he pressed the button to turn it on, the thick dust in the room was illuminated.

  As he moved the light of the torch around, Ryan was left just a little confused. There was nothing here. Of course, he did end up finding the office, but that was really all it was. An old, dusty office with a single desk in it. Piles of boxes with paper that had already turned back into pulp, and rusted filing cabinets. Nothing but a trashed and ravaged room that you could find in any building that’s been left abandoned and rediscovered by bored teens.

  Ryan let out a deep sigh, shaking his head a bit annoyed. Did he go through all of that for nothing? Was that just a false lead from Maximus?

  However, as Ryan took a breath in again, he could feel an incomparable dizziness come over him. It was like when he first stepped into the barrier surrounding the dungeon, just a lot more intense. The amount of mana in this room was completely oppressive. That could only really mean one thing. Why didn’t he realize when he noticed that the office was this hidden away?

  This was the core room.

  “Shouldn’t it be way harder to get to this place … ? Core rooms should be far better protected than this … !” Ryan muttered with an awkward expression. He thought that there would be more office spaces scattered about, and that there was just going to be some special item or something in here. That’s what was usually supposed to happen in dungeons like this. This was bad. Really, really bad.

  When a dungeon’s core room was invaded, it would go on high alert. When a dungeon was more advanced, it would have an extremely powerful monster within the core room, but this one was clearly too young for that, and made do with a cyclops foreman. If that was the case, it had to be on its way right now.

  Ryan picked up Maximus off the ground and rushed back to the hole in the wall that he had created, but it was too late. Heavy footsteps approached as the already dim light from the hallway was completely blocked. A large head with a metallic flower in its center stared in through the hole, and the monster quickly pushed its arm through, tearing at the loosened bricks to expand the opening so that it could step through as well.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Ryan’s heart pounded heavily. This was a massive mistake. There was nowhere for him to run. It was only a matter of time before the foreman made its way inside.

  “Think, Ryan, think! You finally awakened, there’s no way you’re going to go out at level fucking 2!” His teeth were being pressed together so hard that Ryan was almost worried they were about to crack, but the adrenaline being pumped through his veins didn’t let him keep an all too clear mind.

  There was a reason why the core room was protected in every dungeon; it was the only place that a dungeon could be killed, or “closed” from. Of course, Ryan had no clue how to do that. It was a complex process where the mana of the space was interfered with in some very particular ways. The DMB had specific task forces for this, since it was a dangerous process.

  However, there was something that Ryan could do. Every dungeon had a “heart.” In advanced dungeons, it would often turn into a sort of monster itself, but at this stage, it could only be something in the form of a small object, hiding out somewhere in here. If Ryan could destroy that object, he could at least make the dungeon go to sleep for a while. It wasn’t the same thing, but it was something like a “temporary closure,” since the dungeon’s mana wasn’t able to spread any further during this process, and monsters would be strongly weakened until the dungeon was able to form a new heart.

  “Maximus, do you have any idea what it could be? You’re the one that wanted to come here in the first place,” Ryan pointed out, nervously glancing down at the small knight, who just shook his head in response, even if he was clearly looking around in search of a clue.

  But it was too late. The foreman was pushing its way into the office. However, even when it came inside, different to what Ryan expected, it didn’t attack immediately. Rather, it seemed like the foreman was going to try and catch him.

  “So you can’t be too reckless in here either?” he guessed, a slight grin forming on his face. The foreman was extremely large. It seemed to have grown a bit in size compared to before. And this office was extremely narrow; if the monster just recklessly attacked him, it was possible that it was going to damage or destroy the dungeon heart on its own. That did make things a little easier.

  Ryan pushed his hand behind him and grabbed the drawer of one of the filing cabinets. He quickly pulled it out and threw it at the monster. As it raised its arm to block the throw, lumps of old paper flinging around, Ryan was able to focus a bit more on the monster’s appearance. It wasn’t just taller; it looked completely different.

  It no longer had those flower buds growing all over its body; instead, they had all blossomed and it was covered in what was basically a field of copper wildflowers. And the core that had grown on its head changed quite a bit as well. The monster’s head had basically been fully replaced by a large flower, its glistening petals protecting it. It had gone a step further, and had become the last monster that had apparently been observed in here.

  On the forums, it had been dubbed the “manager.” Honestly, Ryan didn’t care much for the names, especially not right now. If this was really the monster’s next stage, then being grazed by it could be a death sentence. Those flowers’ petals were supposed to be extremely sharp, so Ryan could end up in pieces instead of being crushed by a pile of bricks.

  “Maximus, I have an idea, and it might be reckless, but—” Ryan started to say, but the knight was just staring back intensely. Even though he wasn’t actually saying anything, Ryan somehow could tell that Maximus was fine with whatever he had planned.

  As he moved around the room, Ryan pulled another one of Maximus’s weapons off; the pestle. It seemed like the best blunt weapon for restricted spaces, since Maximus would just be able to slam it straight down. He gave it to the knight, and then threw him up toward the flower that had replaced the monster’s head. Luckily Ryan used to play basketball all the time, because the knight descended perfectly into the flower. While the monster was still trying to reach out to Ryan, Maximus started his attack on whatever was contained within those petals. The monster grasped at its head, trying to get Maximus out. But at the same time, this sudden invasion made it a lot more reckless. It moved around, bumping into the shelves and desk, and crushing some of the random objects scattered on the ground under its immense weight.

  Of course, Ryan wasn’t protected from this chaos either. As the monster flailed around, it just grazed his shoulder and he was thrown into the cabinets behind him. The air was pushed out of his lungs as his back hit the rusted metal, despite the backpack acting as a buffer. He fell to the ground, struggling to breathe in again.

  But then, Ryan noticed something on the ground. It had fallen out from his jacket’s pocket just now; his phone, the screen illuminating his face. And that was when an idea crossed Ryan’s mind. Without even being able to breathe properly yet, he picked up his phone and shakily navigated to the camera. He reached out for the high-power torch laying nearby on the ground, and held both forward.

  “Dungeon air,” or rather, the mana within that air, heavily distorted the images of regular cameras. And that distortion effect became stronger the more concentrated the mana was. And since all of it originated from the dungeon’s heart, it had to be the most dense right around it. Ryan looked around the room, barely able to see anything beyond the heavily distorted image and the bad lighting. The flailing metallic cyclops in the room didn’t make it any easier either.

  However, just a moment later, Ryan found it. A spot that was far more distorted than any of the others. It was a classic location as well. The painting on the wall, though the canvas itself was heavily damaged already. Ryan forced himself off the ground, though his right arm didn’t let him put any pressure on it. He stumbled over the trash on the ground and moved behind the desk. Ryan tore the painting off the wall, revealing an old, rusted safe. Roots and ivy were growing out through the ajar door. After pulling the safe open, Ryan almost wanted to vomit as a thick wave of mana flowed right into his face. But he pushed through, grabbing the object in the center. It was an intricate copper brooch depicting a bouquet of wildflowers. His hand burned as he touched it, despite his gloves, like he was trying to pick up red-hot metal. But it was better than dying.

  Ryan dropped the brooch onto the desk. His hammer was somewhere in the rubble, so Ryan pulled the pickaxe off his bag. He felt a searing pain in his right shoulder as he tried, but it was too dark to see what was going on, so he simply pushed through, soon holding the pickaxe tightly in both his hands.

  He raised it high over his head and, without hesitation, swung it down at the piece of metal. The moment the pointed tip dug into the metal flowers, a flood of mana once more poured out against Ryan. He felt dizzy and fell to the ground. This time, he couldn’t hold back his nausea and vomited. A system window popped up in front of him, but his sight was too blurry to read what it said on it.

  However, he clearly wasn’t the only one that was affected by the destruction of the dungeon heart. The “manager” monster fell to its knees as well. The copper petals that were reflecting the light of Ryan’s torch were practically wilting, until it finally fell forward. Maximus climbed out of the monster’s flower-head, dragging the scratched-up and dented steel pestle behind him. Ryan carefully got off the ground. Right now, the most important thing was to just leave this room. The mana would grow weaker as the dungeon entered hibernation, so they could just wait things out for a little while.

  Carefully, Ryan climbed over the monster’s slowly crumbling body and stepped out of the office. Once he was finally outside in the hallway again, he dropped down onto the ground. The air here was already so much better, and as if that fact triggered something in him, he felt massive, searing pain in his hand and shoulder. He tore the glove off his hand. It was bright red, but not just from the heat that the brooch had produced while practically melting away the glove, but also from a thin layer of blood that was dripping down his arm.

  Glancing over at his shoulder, Ryan saw that his jacket and shirt had been cleanly cut apart, right next to where the armor pads had been placed, and were soaked in a deep red as well. Trying to not hurt himself even more, Ryan let his backpack slide off his shoulders, trying to carefully open his jacket. But before he could do it himself, Maximus jumped in, having thrown the pestle to the side, so that he could help Ryan. Luckily, with the knight’s strength, it was an easy job, though Ryan still cramped up a bit in the process. The whole right side of Ryan’s chest was covered in blood, and it was continuing to drip down his arm.