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However, this trick alone wasn’t enough for him.

He buffed himself even further by manipulating his Dark Affinity. The trait could never replace Overwhelming Darkness. But with enough manipulation, Zarian could layer his body with the condensed weight of the dark.

He stacked more and more on himself, especially around his fists.

Meanwhile, his body thrummed with a vigorous heat. He was like an engine revving up, his heart pounding like a piston.

When Zarian threw his next punch, with his gauntlet-clad fist shrouded by his Dark Affinity, he sent a flaming golem man flying across the chamber. The blue runic eye on the construct’s face flickered off while it died from the crater in its blocky chest.

The epic construct was a mere soda can against one physical attack from the buffed up Madness Wizard. Yet another golem man jumped in as a replacement followed by many more.

Zarian fought like a compact boxer, his fists raised, his steps light. He acted less like a dancer and more like an efficient slugger. In this situation, he stayed ahead of the golems in the movement department because he had the speed advantage.

He sidestepped the blocky punches of a golem man with lightning and thunder fists. He dodged another golem with windy cyclones roaring around its fists.

He retreated backward and nearly off the edge. At the last second, he used an enchantment on his boots to stick to the sides of his current platform. He raised his arms and blocked laser shots from the more elevated golem men that attacked like murderous droids, but with more accuracy.

The walls kept emitting warp energy, an anti-void measure that made it costlier for Zarian to use his void spells. However, the energy was nowhere near enough to stop him completely.

He retreated further down the side of the white platform. He went under and out of sight of the constructs. They stopped shooting and waited to see where he would pop up from.

The next time he appeared, Zarian had the drop on them from several platforms up after using an expensive cast of his Void Waltz spell.

Zarian slammed down like a mega weight and crushed a construct under his boots. He swung around his arm and smashed the head of another golem man with the back of his gauntleted hand.

Snapping his head aside, he avoided a point-blank laser beam meant for his face. He twisted on his heels and landed a metal-crunching gut punch to the shooter, sending the construct careening across the chamber like a ball shot out of a cannon.

In a few seconds, Zarian cleared out the platform of constructs. There was no more above him. The rest came from below, like swarming ants trying to get to the top of the hill.

But Zarian wasn’t an ant.

He was a titan.

He was still warming up as his body became hotter and a little hungrier. The parasitic bonds increasing his physical prowess intensified, leveraging the huge buff that came from his Floridian Mindset.

“Come! Come! One and all! I’m barely getting started!” Zarian laughed as more constructs jumped onto his platform.

They wielded various elemental magic on their blocky fists, throwing punches or shooting lasers. But he was so tough at this point he didn’t even have to dodge.

He tanked.

Flame bolts and punches? They snuffed away like embers on the surface of a wide ocean.

Lightning and thunder? They did nothing but give him a pleasant massage to his muscles.

Misty frost attacks? He was tempted to take out a drink to go along with the nice chill.

Ripping cyclones? Super vibration impacts? Laser beams? The golem men came at him with a wide variety of elemental attacks and couldn’t make anything stick.

Zarian stood against the gauntlet like an unbeatable tank and remained the king of the mountain. He beat so many golems out of commission, there was no more space for them on his platform, forcing them to spill over the sides.

They rained down on the chamber floor in a heavy deluge. The sound of Zarian’s fists landing quickly on constructs was like hearing rapid snare drumming. He laughed and laughed as he enjoyed himself, using a combination of abilities to fight like a warrior even when he was a wizard.

He could use more void flames for the ‘EZ GG’ but it felt better to save the special stuff for special cases. He did, however, incorporate his Level 0 Rune Alteration more. He scrambled the enchantments on golems he struck with quick jabs, stopping them in their place to set up his bigger insta-kill punches easier.

Finally, there were no more golems, and Zarian could move on.

The ceiling walkway had columns on the sides holding up the white path. It was more narrow near the ceiling than when the path was on the ground. There were deep recesses above his head and shifting cubes all over just like the reconfiguring mechanisms on the ground.

Zarian looked around for more traps. He was still excited after the warm-up session against the epic golems.

His appetite rose a pinch, but that was more of a feeling than a need. Nothing new revealed itself to him, so he followed the white path while sticking close to the edge.

He liked the view. It was almost bleak, in a mechanical and inhuman way. Hannah really made for a great and scary dungeon designer.

He wondered what it would take to turn an artificial dungeon into a real one. He knew a dungeon core was needed.

But how did those come to be?

Had Reiki been someone major back in Carrowmore a long time ago? How had she gone from that to being a dungeon boss and the sole personality of her core?

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“Do you think there’s supposed to be a sacrifice to make a real dungeon with a dungeon core? Or does it happen in the wild through magic? Or is it a System thing?” Zarian asked aloud, not expecting any responses.

“You can make a dungeon come to exist with a sacrifice, but only under rare conditions that are mostly dictated by the Star System.”

Empress Ruvaria appeared from nowhere and was hovering next to him as he jogged toward the exit of his starting chamber. She looked pristine and ethereal, her bare feet floating inches above the walkway’s surface. She wore an embroidered green and brown robe that was casual and fitting for someone of her immense pedigree.

The thing that wasn’t fitting was her hair. It was bouncy and filled with rings and curls, which Zarian imagined was Bianca’s work. The cutesy style didn’t match the empress whatsoever, yet Bianca had gotten her way somehow.

Zarian tried not to laugh.

He did crack a smile.

The petite elf pretended not to notice as she continued lecturing.

“Most dungeons are formed in the wilds, especially when strong monsters form a nest. Once that nest becomes like a large enough grave for locals and adventurers, it becomes a monster lair. If that lair stands to exist for long enough, the boss monster can receive recognition by the Star System.”

Zarian reached the opening to a hallway that was painted entirely white. It was bright with little to no corners for shadows to lurk. White lights shone from within glass fixtures and bounced off the walls that had mirror-like polishes, which would’ve irritated his eyes if it wasn’t for his enchanted sunglasses.

Other than that, the hallway seemed wide, airy, and open.

Zarian adjusted his sunglasses with a finger. He pulled down at the brim of his wizard hat to shade his face a little more. Then he headed forward into the glassy and reflective hallway.

The empress trailed behind him while continuing her lecture.

“After System recognition, a dungeon core is formed from the heart of the boss, and the dungeon comes to exist at the heart of the lair. The lair doesn’t necessarily go away at first, however it is quite often that a dungeon will cannibalize a lair for sustenance before reaching out for more food to fuel its expansion. This is the main way dungeons come to exist. However, there are exceptions.”

Zarian didn’t respond even though he had multiple observations and thoughts spilling between the gaps of his mind. Most of his focus was on the highly strange room and heavily obscured enchantments.

There were invisible walls standing in his way. He bumped into a few that forced him to redirect.

Some were plainly perpendicular. Some flanked him. Others were weirdly oblique. Then the floor became uneven at odd angles that forced him to rise or fall and maneuver on slanted surfaces.

The problem was the translucency of the walls and floors.

With the rise of levels, vitality, and stats, Zarian’s base senses rose as well. While the Wonder stat had the highest influence on supernatural perception, all the stats had their own unique effects on the senses, too.

Willpower seemed to affect the sense of mind. Strength and Agility affected the potency and speed of the senses. And mysticism affected aura senses.

These effects were minor additions on stat choices and builds. They weren’t major compared to how Wonder dominated perception of the supernatural.

Still, this was valuable information Zarian had seen from the many uncommon books hoarded inside the Dancing Librarian Dungeon.

This was the reason Zarian had stellar senses for the esoteric stuff that covered his mind, the strangeness of the world, and aura. His Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism were much higher than his Strength and Agility.

This was also why he could sometimes be a little slow when something surprised him in the more physical sense. This was the case when he’d faced the Scout Slayer Master by himself. However, his physical buffs, especially the buff from Parasite Cloak +2, helped mitigate the lack in Strength and Agility in some cases.

But not in all cases.

So he was a little troubled when he faced a more physical challenge he couldn’t outright dominate without leveraging his nuke options.

Granted, he was a wizard, so it made sense to have this problem. It was just unique to face those weaknesses when he’d covered his physical bases in ways that would thwart ninety-nine percent of cases.

I’m facing Hannah, and she’s a top one percenter for sure.

The hallway became a maze of see-through material Hannah had somehow dug up and crafted into a devious trap. Because there was carefully obscured magic involved and a physical challenge with little magic Zarian could sense, he was finding more and more trouble progressing forward.

He did feel something change. But it was quick and shifty. By the time he swept his aura manipulation around, the effect had already done its work.

The walls had shifted. An invisible wall replaced the empty lane in front of him.

When he turned, he saw a distorted tunnel of his own reflection repeating endlessly, all the copies looking back at him. He reached out to what he thought was empty space and found another invisible wall.

Zarian glanced at the empress. She wasn’t physically here. This was a projection of her, which could either be a sound and light illusion or a direct projection to his mind.

He felt around in his head to see if she was in there and she wasn’t. She would’ve had to ask permission to be in there anyway.

In other words, she was making an illusion while two thousand feet above him, ignoring the walls and earth in the way. And ignoring Hannah’s enchantments that would’ve normally blocked such projections.

The empress examined Zarian curiously.

He smiled. “Pop quiz time, empress! What do you think I’ll do next?”

He would set aside his questions about dungeons for later. He was curious to see how well the empress knew him.

The petite elf blinked slowly. She took her time as always. An hour passed before she answered.

“First, we must consider the trap young Hannah has placed for you. Not only has she harnessed the true power of Glacial Air Stone to its full effect, she did so while retaining ninety-nine percent of purity. Most miners haven’t discovered this much Glacial Air Stone since the past era, and many crafter types would’ve found such work impressive for a young woman who has been in the Star System for less than a year.”

Empress Ruvaria rubbed the illusion of her hand across the invisible ceiling above Zarian’s head. “It’s a material that isn’t just invisible to the eyes but nearly invisible to the aura controlling abilities, so it’s difficult to sense physically and magically. Additionally, she’s made good use of obscurements and alteration blockers to deny you easy access to her enchantments. I approve of all of her approaches even though I think they are still rudimentary and rough.”

The petite elf hovered close to Zarian, face to face. Her eyes shone with an ethereal greenness that was alluring and powerful.

“Naturally, you should use your spectral spiders and parasite to find chinks in this trap,” she said.

“Those are traps as well. Hannah knows I can do that. She would have countermeasures. In fact, she’s goading me to do that,” he said.

Zarian traced his finger along the wall. He used his Identify trait and received his own description. He nearly laughed.

The glacial air wall had reflected his Identify trait on him.

He’d skimmed a thin book about magical materials, but he hadn’t taken those materials seriously. A while ago he thought about crafting, but he was already juggling enough disciplines already.

Clearly, Hannah had gone the extra mile in the crafting arts.

I should brush up on it just in case I run into more unique craft materials that can do weird stuff.

The empress finished her thoughts before continuing the academic lesson. “You are a more clever wizard than most, I see. That is what I should expect from someone with this free evil of yours. To believe that Hannah has more traps in place for your usual scouting routines is a very reliable assumption to make. Thus, I must think you would attempt something unique. And if you are a worthy wizard, then you will use your aura manipulation ability uniquely. I’ve seen enough of it to know you have it.”

Zarian nodded. He looked around. The place was bright and full of light. The illumination had a magical effect, too. His Dark Affinity was weaker and less reliable here.

There was no warp energy, which was telling. Zarian predicted Hannah was waiting for him to use a void ability. If so, then she would spring a countermeasure against that, too.

With most means countered based on educated guesses, Zarian had to look at his list of options. Then he realized there was nothing else but aura manipulation itself just like the empress had said.

He knocked his fist against the wall and nodded. He closed his eyes. He narrowed his focus.