Chương 59: Chapter 58: Live Testing

As the winter sun broke through the clouds and lit the land, a party of Black Iron-rank adventurers was the first to enter Blackstone Dungeon that morning. However, when the light of the portal faded, the scene before them was completely different from what they remembered. The familiar passage still lay directly ahead, but a dark opening had appeared on either side, each leading into an unknown area. For a moment, the party members had no idea which way to go.

One after another, they turned toward the captain at the front. The buzz-cut captain did not hesitate for long. He studied the three routes for a moment, then decisively turned and stepped back through the portal to report the dungeon's changes to the Guild. Once the news spread, the entire Guild camp erupted into commotion. The Guild staff immediately organized a series of tests.

Party after party entered the dungeon until the eighteenth adventurer successfully passed through the portal and the nineteenth was blocked outside. Only then did everyone confirm that Blackstone Dungeon's simultaneous entry limit had increased from six to eighteen. Upon learning the result, the adventurers gathered nearby burst into excited cheers. Heaven knew that their greatest wish while lining up outside the dungeon every day was simply for their turn to come a little sooner.

No one had expected Blackstone Dungeon to act as though it had actually heard their complaints and triple the number of people who could enter at once.

"My god! From today onward, Blackstone Dungeon is the only dungeon for me!" Someone in the crowd shouted excitedly. After a brief silence, enthusiastic cries of agreement immediately rose from all around them. ◆ ◆ ◆ As Owen watched the lively scene outside the dungeon entrance, his entire core felt warm and fuzzy. The words "Blackstone Dungeon is the only dungeon for me" went straight to Owen's heart. For a moment, Owen almost forgot that he did not have much Soul Energy left.

He wanted nothing more than to shower that adventurer's party with extra rewards. Fortunately, he managed to stop himself from acting on such a dangerous impulse.

"Come on, I can barely afford to support myself! The current rewards are already good enough. Anything extra will have to wait until I have more energy to spare." Even so, Owen quietly opened the system memo and jotted down a description of the adventurer who had shouted those words before he could forget what they looked like. Whether Owen might give them a little special treatment in the future was a matter for another day. Before long, three adventuring parties had claimed all eighteen entry slots.

The starting chamber had never been particularly spacious, and with so many people crowding inside at once, it became packed. Some were examining the three passages, while others were busy discussing routes with their companions. The chamber was filled with overlapping discussions and arguments. Even Owen could not help feeling a little troubled by the sight.

"It's a shame I can't modify the starting chamber. If I could make this place a little larger, they wouldn't all have to squeeze together like this." In the end, the captains of the three parties simply played rock-paper-scissors to determine the order in which they would choose their routes, finally bringing the endless argument to a close. Before long, the three parties left the starting chamber through separate passages.

After confirming that all the adventurers had moved far enough away, Owen quietly shifted his attention toward a corner of the chamber. Hidden inside a narrow crack in the wall was a small gray figure that was almost impossible to notice. At Owen's command, the tiny figure slowly crawled out of the crack. It was a small, unremarkable gray mouse. Owen had even shaped it to look a little cute, or at least harmless enough not to resemble an aggressive dungeon monster.

Otherwise, someone might kill it as vermin the moment it appeared. The sight of the gray mouse emerging made Owen's core tremble faintly. He had no idea whether his next attempt would succeed. He was even a little worried that the Guild might grow unnecessarily wary if it discovered the dungeon secretly sending living creatures outside. But he desperately wanted to know what was happening outside. Back when Owen had drifted around as a soul, he had only been able to make out vague impressions of his surroundings.

Since becoming a dungeon core, even those brief memories of the outside world had begun to fade, leaving many of them as little more than blurred outlines.

"If this really works, maybe I'll finally get to hear Rayne's story!" With that thought, Owen immediately ordered the gray mouse to approach the portal. The little mouse crept forward cautiously. Every time it moved one step closer to the portal, Owen felt as though the flow of time slowed a little more. Eventually, the gray mouse arrived in front of the portal.

Its nose was almost touching the gently rippling light, while Owen was so nervous that he could practically hear rapid pulses echoing from the depths of his core. Owen had initially worried that the gray mouse would cause the portal to flare with white light when it passed through, immediately drawing the attention of everyone nearby. However, what he feared did not happen.

The gray mouse slipped through the portal without difficulty and, while the nearby Guild staff and adventurers were not looking, scurried into the grass beside the entrance.

"Yes! It worked!" Once Owen confirmed that creatures from inside the dungeon could truly leave, his excited cheers echoed throughout the Core Chamber. To celebrate the success of the experiment, he even made his core flash in a riot of colors, filling the entire chamber with a festive glow. However, Owen immediately discovered another problem.

He did not know whether he had invested too little Soul Energy in the gray mouse or whether its body was simply too small, but the view through its eyes was extremely narrow and somewhat blurry. Since its eyes were also very close to the ground, almost everything in sight consisted of swaying blades of grass and boots.

"Still, being able to see what's happening outside is already worth celebrating. I can figure out how to solve these problems later!" Owen cast the issue aside and began directing the gray mouse to dart around the camp in search of Rayne and the others. However, after searching for only a short while, Owen suddenly realized something extremely serious. He had absolutely no idea where in the camp Rayne's party was staying.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The gray mouse came to an uncertain stop in the grass. Inside the Core Chamber, Owen also dropped dejectedly onto the stone platform and began rolling around in frustration.

"Damn it! I should've paid attention to where they went yesterday!" After searching for a while longer and confirming that he truly could not find Rayne's party, Owen had no choice but to give up. He allowed the gray mouse to roam freely around the camp, then minimized the mouse's view and moved it to the upper-left corner of the light screen. That way, if anything noteworthy happened nearby, he could enlarge the image again at any time.

Although failing to locate his target during his first scouting attempt left Owen somewhat discouraged, he quickly recovered and shifted his attention back to the dungeon. Since he was unlikely to find Rayne anytime soon, Owen was more interested in whether the adventurers could adapt to the newly redesigned Sinner's Canyon. However, when Owen switched the main display back to the dungeon, the scene before him made him freeze on the spot.

The buzz-cut swordsman was walking along the passage while glancing back to speak to the party members behind him. At that exact moment, a figure dropped from the shadows high on the rock wall, driving both short blades through his chest at once. The [Dual-Blade Executioner] did not hesitate after landing. It seized the buzz-cut swordsman from behind and swiftly dragged his corpse back into the shadows, leaving the remaining Black Iron-rank party members frozen in shock.

Owen stared at the scene on the light screen in silence for quite some time before finally bursting into laughter. The scene had such an absurd horror-movie quality that he could not help remembering all the tired old clichés he had seen in his previous life. Still, jokes aside, Owen shook his core and pulled up the battle log, carefully checking exactly why the buzz-cut swordsman had died in a single strike.

Then he saw that while exploring an unfamiliar dungeon, the man had not only failed to watch the shadows above and around him, but had even taken the time to turn around and chat with his party members. Only then did Owen breathe a sigh of relief and speak in a teasing voice.

"You actually got distracted while exploring a dungeon. No wonder you had no idea what killed you."

"You almost made me think I'd designed the monster too strong. I was this close to holding a press conference to apologize!" Before long, Owen saw the buzz-cut captain, fresh from Trial Return, stagger up from behind them and rejoin the party. The other members visibly relaxed when they saw him return safely, but concern soon appeared on one member's face.

"Are you sure you'll be all right coming straight back after being revived?" Owen had been wondering the same thing. Although Trial Return could bring dead adventurers back to life, it could not immediately heal the Soul Damage left behind. If someone refused to rest after dying and simply pushed onward despite the discomfort, wouldn't that make the dungeon even harder to clear? The rest of the party had clearly thought of the same problem and urged the buzz-cut captain to leave the dungeon and rest first.

However, the buzz-cut captain merely shook his head and insisted that he could keep going. Owen could not help sighing helplessly at the sight. When the man had first discovered that Blackstone Dungeon had changed, he had immediately withdrawn and reported the news to the Guild. Owen had assumed he was thoughtful and cautious. So why had he suddenly turned into a reckless idiot the moment he actually began exploring? The contrast was far too extreme! Still, the buzz-cut captain did seem to possess some real skill.

Although the Soul Damage left his steps slightly unsteady and his face somewhat pale, he still managed to turn in time when the Dual-Blade Executioner attacked from the shadows again, raising his longsword to block the descending blades. A piercing metallic crash suddenly rang through the passage. The tremendous impact forced the buzz-cut captain half a step back, but he did not lose his balance. Instead, the moment the Dual-Blade Executioner's attack stalled, he swung his sword in retaliation.

The sharp blade sliced across its shriveled wrist, nearly severing its hand. At that point, Owen finally relaxed completely. It seemed the Dual-Blade Executioner was not too powerful after all. The only reason it had killed the buzz-cut captain instantly the first time was that the idiot had turned around to chat while exploring and had paid absolutely no attention to his surroundings. After that, the buzz-cut captain's party moved with noticeably greater caution.

Not only did everyone remain constantly alert for shadows on either side of the passage, but they also looked up at the rock walls from time to time, clearly guarding against another Dual-Blade Executioner suddenly attacking from above. Owen smiled knowingly at the sight as familiar memories gradually surfaced in his mind. It had been the same whenever he played games.

Once a trap had caught him in a particular place, he would become especially cautious whenever he returned, terrified of falling for the same thing twice.

"Bet you didn't expect this! I only placed one Dual-Blade Executioner along each main route!" Owen's smug laughter echoed throughout the Core Chamber. Joking aside, Owen was actually quite satisfied with the party's performance so far. At the very least, after being caught off guard once, they had genuinely remembered what they needed to watch out for. As long as they did not repeat the same mistake in the same place, the death had not been entirely meaningless.

"Heh heh. It looks like I'm not the only one with plenty left to learn. The adventurers still have a long way to go too." Owen gently rocked his core, then shifted the light screen toward the other parties to see how the adventurers who had selected the other two routes would respond to the newly redesigned Sinner's Canyon. The party traveling along the central route encountered a group of Desiccated Corpses led by an [Elite Jailer].

As soon as the battle began, the party's poor coordination was immediately exposed. The Elite Jailer charged into the middle of their formation with its shield raised, cutting the front line off from the rear. The surrounding Desiccated Corpses seized the opportunity to rush in from different directions, throwing the already disorganized adventurers into complete chaos. Before long, every member of the party had been forced to fight independently.

Although they ultimately managed to defeat the Elite Jailer and the remaining Desiccated Corpses, two of their members died in the process. After the battle, the captain stared at the pile of bone dust left behind by the Elite Jailer, his chest heaving violently with anger. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Finally, he raised his foot and kicked the pile of bone dust apart. Just as the captain opened his mouth to curse, a gust of wind happened to sweep through the canyon.

The bone dust he had kicked into the air immediately blew back toward him, showering him from head to toe and pouring directly into his open mouth. The captain's expression instantly froze. Owen also stared blankly at the scene on the light screen, unable to think of anything to say. Only after quite some time did he rock his core in disgust.

"Gross... Suddenly, I'm kind of glad I don't have a sense of taste anymore." However, when Owen shifted his view toward the final party, he found the circular prison compound silent once more. Bonecrusher dragged its heavy feet back toward the spot where it had originally been crouching. As for the adventuring party, its members were now scattered across every corner of the circular prison compound.

Some lay crumpled against the walls, others beside shattered stone pillars, and one person had even been smashed into the iron bars of a cell. The scene was so brutal that Owen began to wonder for the first time whether he had strengthened Bonecrusher too much. He hurriedly pulled up the battle log to find out what had happened. The light screen showed him an utterly absurd scene. It was a White Porcelain-rank party. That was right. Every single member of the party had only reached White Porcelain rank.

They had encountered several groups of ordinary Desiccated Corpses along the way, but had barely managed to defeat them through sheer numerical advantage. Their luck had also been remarkably good. They successfully avoided the side passages where the Elite Jailers were stationed, and because their party did not even have three Black Iron-rank adventurers, they never triggered the Dual-Blade Executioner's ambush.

And so, they had wandered around gawking at everything and strolled into Bonecrusher's boss room with almost nothing standing in their way. Even more absurdly, when they saw Bonecrusher crouching in the center of the circular prison compound, they did not retreat immediately. Instead, they drew their weapons and prepared to challenge it directly. What happened next was exactly what Owen had just seen. Bonecrusher stood up and sent them flying one by one, each with a single swing of its club.

The battle was over in moments, leaving the six White Porcelain-rank adventurers scattered across the prison compound. Owen remained silent for quite some time. Then an enraged roar suddenly thundered through the Core Chamber.

"Fuck! Tonight, I'm putting restrictions on all three boss rooms! Those doors won't open unless the party has at least three Black Iron-rank adventurers!" Owen hurriedly switched his view back to the starting chamber. The six pale-faced rookies stood before the portal, looking blankly at one another. Even now, they did not seem to have fully processed what had just happened.

Seeing that none of them appeared to be suffering a mental breakdown, Owen felt his entire core relax as he slowly settled back onto the stone platform. He had genuinely been worried that experiencing death for the first time might have been too great a shock for these rookies. From the looks of it, the battle had ended too quickly for the deaths to feel real. From the moment Bonecrusher stood up, it had taken only moments to smash them one after another.

The captain of the White Porcelain-rank party briefly checked everyone's condition before ultimately deciding not to continue exploring. He led his party out of the dungeon, freeing their entry slots for the other parties still waiting outside. That allowed Owen to breathe another sigh of relief.

"At least they aren't as bullheaded as that buzz-cut guy." He watched the six rookies pass through the portal and was about to shift his attention back to the other parties still exploring when a familiar figure suddenly appeared in the minimized image at the upper-left corner of the light screen. Owen froze. Then his entire core shot up from the stone platform. The little gray mouse! It had actually found Rayne and the others!

"That's amazing! Little gray mouse, I love you!"

"I promise you'll become the first mouse in the dungeon with Bronze-level strength!" Owen eagerly enlarged the little gray mouse's view until it filled the entire light screen. No matter how much of the conversation he had already missed, all he wanted now was to hear what Rayne was about to say.