Lucian came out of his trance feeling battered and tired from the day before, his body was covered in bruises and scrapes, that turned his fair skin, green, blue, and purple all over.
It was the first time he had a wound on his body for longer than a few minutes and he didn't like it one bit, every movement hurt and so did sitting still.
But without any solution to sort it out, he soon put it out of his mind and returned to the dungeon, not to fight the spiders, he was far too exhausted to do that but to analyze, he first cheeked on the eggs, they grew a little bigger than the day before but showed no sign of hatching.
As he walked into the next room he found eggs sprouting from the walls, these eggs he decided to burn with the torch before heading into the final room he explored.
He grabbed all the bodies and cut them open to find their cores, each corpse in this room bore a red core.
He pocketed the pebble-sized cores and returned for the day.
Like that, a few days passed.
---
Entry 399: The Journal of a Slothful Prince
The Day is Slinco, the 16th of Ignos, the year 106 996 P.C.
I have spent the recent days healing from my wounds afflicted by those nasty insects…
But I have been certain to check in on the changes in the dungeon…
Three days after my fight the eggs hatched, this means that the dungeon has a five-day cycle to restore its population, but it should be noted that the newborn spiders were weaker than the ones I initially fought…
Also, none of them had a core, I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that the dungeon requires time to strengthen its inhabitants…
Also, I am now certain that as I go deeper the creatures will grow stronger, I already found one of the cores was a slightly brighter red than the others…
Another interesting find was those cocoons of web, I wondered how the spiders were feeding and finding prey, but as it turns out there is an entire ecosystem in that dungeon…
The floor is crawling with insects underneath, which the spiders prey on, this dungeon is every bit as fascinating as I imagined it to be…
I shall return tomorrow, now that I have had my weapons replaced and my body is feeling better.
---
Lucian returned the next day and made further progress, pushing himself in a way he had never done before in his exploration.
A week soon passed and then a second as he pushed himself harder than ever before, by the time the second week came he understood all the tactics of the spiders and came up with counters and maneuvers to escape their stick threads and attacks.
Despite the increase in strength, he was able to cut down at least fifty a day.
At the end of the fourteenth day, Lucian kicked the corpses to the side as he stepped past them, he could hear what sounded like water dripping into a large pool of water coming up ahead.
He held the torch ahead burning whatever webs remained and followed the sound, his steps were careful and measured as he searched for any threats that lurked in the shadows.
As the firelight raced forward it hit a series of sapphire blue stalactites on the dungeon ceiling, the ceiling was almost 3 meters high, and with the light reflecting off the stalactites, it lit up the entire room in a dull blue glow.
Lucian pushed the torch into a wall and walked forward to examine the stalactite, little droplets of water coalesced at the base of the stalactite and crawled down slowly dripping into a hole in the floor.
Lucian looked down barely able to make out anything more than the water at the bottom, after a couple minutes he left to explore the rest of the room and was surprised to find that it was a dead end.
He looked at the wall with growing confusion, his steps echoed as he paced around the room looking for the big bad boss, only to find nothing, he searched the ceilings and found nothing not even a web, then he made his way around the room tapping the walls hoping to find some hollow area or an illusory wall in some place.
Lucian wasted an hour searching the room to find nothing not even the dungeon core, eventually, he got tired and turned back checking everywhere for something he missed, he spent such a long time inside that when he returned it was already night-time.
He immediately started to complain internally about all the time he could have spent doing nothing, but instead used up pointlessly tapping walls and checking ceilings, only to come up empty.
When he returned he found Diego packing his bags stuffing the items of their temporary camp into bags.
"Going somewhere?" Lucian asked with a raised brow as he emerged from the forest.
Diego stood up straight and so did the coachman.
"Don't tell me that just because I've decided to come back a little late you believed I was dead?" he laughed as the two looked at him like they were seeing a ghost.
"You're always back before noon my prince," Diego cried in disbelief.
"Yeah well, I am currently facing an unexpected problem," Lucian complained and walked over to the campfire, he dished out a bowl of vegetable soup and gulped it down with bites of stale bread.
"I can't find the boss of the dungeon, I cleared every room and decimated every last one of those bugs, but there is no boss or dungeon core anywhere in sight, I've spent all day searching for it," he grumbled between bites.
"Ah," Diego nodded with a look of understanding, "The dungeon has begun to expand, in a few months it will either elevate its rank to D-class or it shall cause an incursion,"
"Yeah that's all nice, but it doesn't help me find the boss," Lucian groaned as he poured the soup down his throat.
"The dungeon is expanding," Diego repeated, "Look for a weak point in the floor or ceiling, in most cases, the dungeons create a new floor, if there is no visible entrance then it must be a new change in the dungeon, meaning if you find the entrance it will take you straight to the core and the final creature of this dungeon," Diego explained.
Lucian paused and thought about the last room, he checked the walls and ceiling, but the floor, his eyes immediately widened when he thought about the pool of water in that crack on the floor.
With that positive thought in mind, he went to his tent and let himself fade into a trance.
---
The next day Lucian raced to the dungeon he was extremely excited to finally be done with this nonsense task, he was going to go explore that crack and find his way to the next floor.
Beat the living crap out of the spider queen, then kill it and take the damned dungeon core, after that, he would finally be able to go home and wear clean clothes that didn't reek of sweat and spider guts.
He'd be able to have hot baths again and eat proper quality food, but the most important detail was his bed, he was sick of lying down on some forest floor with a couple of cushions to comfort him, he'd lost count of how many times a stray twig prodded his ass as he tried to find more comfortable positions.
But now all of that would be over, he laughed as he burned the spider eggs on the way down and made it to the final chamber.
As he looked down he could tell that it was a long drop almost 6 meters down, Lucian grabbed his gear bag and pulled out the rope and a long metal pin.
He knocked the pin into the floor and tied the rope around it before sending it down, after giving it a few yanks he made his way down, when he reached the water he moved the torch over the surface to get a good look at the bottom.
As the light passed through the water a crease formed on Lucian's brow the water was deep, and there was no open area with just air.
Even if he could swim to the area with the boss it would be bad news for him, the torches would get drenched leaving him blind to fight against the most dangerous creature in the dungeon.
He climbed back up and returned to the surface where he explained the situation to Diego.
Diego shook his head, "Like I said the dungeon is expanding I do not know what will happen, once it is done there is a chance for the water to drain out, but it could also remain as it is,"
"If you had enough energy I could show you an array to keep the water of torches, but you do not have the energy to maintain it, and it is already too late for you to start cultivating, only two weeks remain before the end of this assignment, you either return with the core or you die trying to obtain it," Diego summed up.