RISE OF THE SWARM

Horizon looked at the glowing core in his hand. Mana particles swirled around inside it. It was just as he had thought; the cores weren't just a source of strength—no, they were much more than that.

They were a set of instructions for the creature, handed down to it. In essence, they were a code, a guideline for the creatures to follow. And for the instructions.

Horizon directed mana into the core, analyzing the mana patterns in the crystal. It was a lot like his spellcode, only much more complex while being simultaneously simple.

As Horizon deciphered the code, a single instruction could be boiled down: Protect. As to what it was protecting, Horizon was sure it was the dungeon core.

Inside the core, Horizon also discovered a rudimentary fighting sequence—a set of moves and skills imparted to its host. He turned back to Khurzak, watching his body turn to grey goo. It seemed he was also nothing more than a robot. Every enemy here was a robot created with the sole intention of protecting the core.

Horizon stuffed the core into his body; he would research it more in his spare time. There was a lot to unpack, information that would give him a huge boost to his spellcode abilities.

He turned his head to a corner. A doorway had appeared when they defeated the dungeon boss. It was the treasury. Each dungeon had a treasury, the end goal for all adventurers who dungeon dived.

The door opened up to another cavern, only this time there were no enemies in sight, only a raised platform in the middle. On it sat a wooden chest with golden engravings.

Horizon walked over to it and opened it. Inside was a pile of golden coins as well as other precious gems. Mana crystals could also be found among the pile.

He clutched a fistful of golden coins. He looked at them briefly before crushing them. Gold coins and gems were of no use to him. Perhaps to adventurers this would have been enough, but he was after something else, something much more valuable.

He paced around the room, tendrils extended, grazing the wall, searching for something.

<Large mana signature detected.>

His head turned to a wall. His sensors fired; something was different about this wall. The grain pattern was different; it didn't match the rest of the treasury. It almost seemed artificial.

His hand began to change and shift, replaced with a plasma blaster. He aimed it at the wall and fired. The shot landed, and the wall caved in. Where the wall had been, a corridor now stood, leading to somewhere unknown.

Mana began gushing out in droves from the opening.

"Found you," Horizon muttered.

He walked into the corridor. Along the walls, goo squirmed and wriggled, forming faces—orc faces. A factory, Horizon recognized.

The corridor led to a large open room. All along the wall, multiple incubators were placed. Inside, figures could be seen being formed; green cores could be seen subtly glinting, supplying mana to the forming creature.

One incubator next to Horizon burst. Yellow liquid splashed everywhere. What emerged was a fully developed goblin, its yellow teeth bared. It charged at Horizon. A tendril swiftly decapitated it, launching its head high into the air.

The body melted back into grey goo that was absorbed by the ground below. Horizon looked around; there were at least a hundred incubators in this room alone.

In the middle, a large glowing blue orb could be seen between two giant pillars. Each time it pulsed, mana wafted from it, drawn from the pillar below it. Blue lines coming from the ground seemed to provide a steady stream of mana to the core. From where it got the mana, Horizon didn't know, but he would find out. His eyes glowed as he moved towards the core.

He stood in front of the core, suspended by his tendrils. He raised his hands, clutching the core. His arms turned into tendrils as he stabbed into the core.

"Begin analysis."

<Beginning analysis.>

His head lurched back as information flooded his interface. After what seemed like hours, he let go of the core, slowly drifting back down onto the ground.

It seems this world is much more of an anomaly than I had first anticipated, he thought to himself. For what he had learned was truly mind-breaking.

Firstly, to begin, this dungeon itself was an organism. Its origin, he found, was from an alternate dimension termed the Abyss. They fed on this world's mana like leeches.

They latched onto the world, drawing mana and creating labyrinths to defend themselves. But these labyrinths served another purpose. The mana they got from the world wasn't enough.

They attracted the races of the world into the labyrinths, tempting them with treasures, only for them to die and be recycled into mana, which the dungeon feeds on. The only way for the dungeon to be destroyed would be to destroy its core.

But the dungeons also served a second purpose. They acted as gateways to the Abyss. When a dungeon reaches maturity, it would collapse into an interdimensional tunnel where Abyss creatures could cross and attack this world. These were known as outbreaks; the higher the grade, the bigger the outbreak.

But none of this was what concerned Horizon. The Abyss would only be a problem if a grade SSS dungeon collapsed. If that didn't happen, his plans remained the same. But the thing that worried him most was one crucial piece of information.

This world—it was alive.

The world itself was a living organism. It was actively fighting the dungeons and the Abyss, for they were a danger to it. It knew everything that occurred on it. Nothing could hide from it as long as it happened on its surface.

That meant it knew of Horizon's existence. It knew his location, what he was doing. But it had yet to intervene. This made it especially difficult, for how was one to hope to beat an enemy that was omnipresent?