"Good morning! Good morning!" Professor Thim greeted them as he entered the auditorium from the lower entrance.

Nar had just made it back in time to catch his party as they left their room, and their reunion had been loud and exuberant, though cut short, as Kur ushered them out the door.

"Nar…" Rel had said, approaching.

"Later, okay?" he'd told her, smiling in the hopes that would convey to her that he wasn't mad at her in any way. "We're going to be late, but everything's okay, you hear me?"

"Alright," she said, with a short, uncertain smile of her own. "But you're not running away from me."

"I'm not! Don't worry."

And after a quick breakfast, they now found themselves back in that large auditorium for their next great theoretical lecture.

"It's been a while since I've seen most of you," professor Thim said, smiling widely. "I hope you've been keeping well. Today we're going to explore a fascinating subject, and one of, if not the most important subject for a delver. Dungeons!"

Professor Thim clasped his hands behind his back and paced the podium.

"As always, I've refrained from using any sort of visual media that could spoil you from your first delve," he said, grinning. "Therefore, I'm afraid all of my presentation to you today will be mostly text and diagram based. But trust me, it's worth going into your first dungeon without knowing what truly awaits you there."

His grin enigmatic as he called the screens into being, and the lights dimmed above their heads, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

"It better be a good surprise," Mul said, his tone shifting mid-sentence as his suppressor kicked in. "So far, none of them have been great."

"No, they haven't," Nar muttered.

"And why does everything have to be a surprise?" Mul asked.

Between the den and the confluence, Nar was going into his first dungeon feeling very apprehensive, and more than just a little nervous. Despite whatever his master might have told him, and now Professor Thim seemed to be implying as well, he wouldn't believe a word until he saw it with his very own eyes.

"Alright, let's begin with the basics then. What are dungeons?" he asked the class. "Anyone? Yes, up there!"

"Dungeons are special places, separate from our reality," someone said from higher behind them. "You go in through dungeon portals, and you exit once you've fulfilled whatever exit conditions are there. Dungeons are the biggest source of resources for the Nexus, and are filled with monsters and/or beasts."

"Excellent!" Professor Thim said.

"Sounds like a know it all," Mul whispered. "Party leader too, probably, with that fancy lingo."

Cen elbowed her brother from the other side. Mul's suppressor was still a disconcerting development, and it still caught Nar by surprise every time it triggered, but he was relieved to see that beyond the suppression, Mul was still very much Mul, just toned down. Which, if Nar were to be honest, did come in handy sometimes.

"That is a good summary to get us started, and today, we'll learn all the basics of what's there to learn about dungeons," the professor said.

A drawing, or diagram of some kind, appeared on the big screen up on the wall.

"This is a map," he explained, dragging his finger across it. "Maps will tell you everything you need to know about a dungeon's terrain. Forests, swamps, lakes, seas, elevations and depressions. Routes to take. Routes to avoid. Beast areas. Monster locations. And of course, the all-precious resources you will be collecting, just to name a few of the crucial characteristics of dungeon maps. And these…"

The professor ran his finger across the lines that demarcated the map. "Are the dungeons boundaries."

He looked up from his screen and considered the apprentices.

"The first thing you need to pay attention to are the dungeons' limits, the so-called boundaries," he explained. "These represent the outer limits of the dungeons and should not, under any circumstance, be crossed! To do so, can result in death, and will likely do so."

"Damn…" Tuk said, from Nar's other side.

Damn… Nar thought. How did I end up sandwiched in between these two?

Tuk on one side and Mul on the other? That was a recipe for disaster!

"However, don't fret. You will receive plenty of warning before you accidentally wander off past the boundaries, and the warning is pretty hard to miss. You won't be crossing any boundary by any simple accident," the professor told them. "Now, when you enter the dungeon, you will almost always arrive somewhere near its boundaries. Some entry points are fixed, some entry points are variable, it depends on the dungeon and the entry portal you take."

The screen flickered, and a number of colored squares replaced the map.

"Dungeons follow a grading system, based on the color that their portals shine in," the professor explained. "This is called, boringly, the Dungeon Color Grading System. It goes from green, meaning it's of easy difficulty to clear, but that the resources found within are at the lowest spectrum of value. Next, yellow, easy difficulty, low-medium value resources. Orange, medium difficulty and low to medium value resources. Red, medium-hard difficulty, with medium to low-high valued resources. Purple, hard difficulty with low-high to high valued resources, and finally dark blue, the hardest difficulty, and the one containing exclusively high to very high valued resources."

Next to the squares a diagram appeared, one that Nar recognized as being a smaller version of the Nexus and Labyrinth areas that they had learned about in Nexus 101, just a few weeks back.

"This grading scheme however, only applies to the Outer Edges and the Deep Zones of the Labyrinth," the one-eyed, orange man added. "In the Deep Deep, all portals are colorless, and it's impossible to tell what difficulty they are. Of course, being the Deep Deep, those dungeons all carry extremely high valued resources and in extremely abundant quantities, and they are all of incredibly hard difficulty. In terms of the levels of beasts and monsters within the dungeons, dungeons always come in ranges of levels. 10-15 or 30-40, for example, and this is displayed on the gate."

The screen flickered, and it showed a cube of indeterminate size, with various lines and patterns carved into it. It shone in a yellow light, and in a darker tone of yellow, the words 50-55 were clearly visible on the top right corner of the front facing side of the cube.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"This is an example of a dungeon portal, of the obviously yellow grade, levels 50 to 55," Professor Thim said. "It will only be open to party leaders, who, upon touching the cube, will be prompted on whether they wish to enter the dungeon or not. On confirming their intention to go inside, the entire party is then teleported into the dungeon."

The screen flickered again, and this time, it showed a variety of cubes, their colors ranging from green, to yellow and orange, and they were stacked up high above each other, built, or protruding, from a nook in the walls of the Labyrinth.

"This is what is known as a dungeon cluster," he continued. "And it's where you will find yourselves heading to in a few days. A dungeon cluster is exactly that, a location where the aetheric conditions for dungeon spawning are extremely good, thus resulting in several of them appearing together. These dungeons will actually be different parts of the same overall dungeon, and they might even be linked, through connections in their boundaries. Usually, however, they are kept separate."

The image changed once more to this time reveal a cube that barely shone red. "Of course, aetheric conditions will change over time, and what was once ideal will slowly ebb and wane away, resulting in what's called "dungeon death". This is a slow process however, and dying dungeons might take centuries, if not thousands of years to fully disappear. A dying dungeon's population and resources will slowly dwindle as it reaches its end, but savvy delvers can find opportunities everywhere, and this is something that we might discuss in the future…"

"Why does everything need to be so complicated," Mul half muttered, half whispered to himself. "Even the damned dungeons."

"Next, let's talk about something that is incredibly important. Dungeon exit conditions," Professor Thim continued.

Above his head, the screen changed into a blank one, showing five empty and gray oval shapes.

"You see, while everyone enters a dungeon simply through its portal, or portals, more on that in a bit, it's not so simple to exit a dungeon," Professor Thim explained. "You need to fulfill some sort of condition, sometimes even a quest, in order to be allowed to leave once more."

"So, we're just trapped in there?" Tuk whispered.

"It looks like it…" Nar said, frowning.

"Yes, that is indeed the case," the professor said, raising a hand to still the murmur that swept the hundreds of apprentices. "When you enter a dungeon, you are effectively trapped inside it until you clear the exit conditions of that dungeon."

Mul sighed and leaned his head over his hand. "Well… Not even gonna say anything anymore."

"Dungeon's exit conditions usually fall into five categories. The first is slaying conditions," Professor Thim revealed, and the first oval shape filled in with the word "Slaying". "Slaying conditions are exactly what you're thinking… You jus need to kill either a combination of optional bosses and the final dungeon boss, or just the final boss itself. Once you do, you can leave."

"But if we can't, and we get hurt, we're still trapped in there," Kur whispered to them. He had learned everything he could about dungeons, but had elected to allow Professor Thim to be the one to teach the party first.

"Crystal…" Tuk whispered. "That's terrifying!"

"The second condition is by means of a challenge. This might be locating an object, solving a puzzle, or surviving through a series of challenges," Professor Thim continued, this time ignoring the hushed hubbub amongst his audience. "This can mean anything from obstacle courses, to fighting difficult and tricky encounters, to puzzles, to mazes, to questions and riddles, to timed survival and so on and so on, in a great and endless variety."

"The fuck…" Mul mumbled into his hand, despite his earlier assertion of saying no more.

"Thirdly, we have collection-based exit conditions," Professor Thim said. "As you might've guessed, the condition for exiting these dungeons is usually through gathering a certain number of items, either by locating them or by retrieving them from bosses and other challenging enemies. And, in these dungeons, you can usually over-collect the required amount for bonus gains. For these reasons, collection dungeons are an incredibly popular stop for apprentice-ships."

Guess that means we'll be going to one at some point, Nar thought.

"Next, we have the quest exit condition," Professor Thim said, and here, he hesitated. "Quest exit conditions can be… Odd. On one side, they can look like simple slaying, or challenges or even collecting, or they can even be mixes of all these three. However, quest dungeons will change, for lack of a better word, based on what the parties within do. Certain events will and won't trigger, expanding the quest into certain directions and closing others… So, depending on what you do, and how well you do it, you can unlock different scenarios that can lead to extremely different encounters and rewards. And it's not unheard of for a dungeon that has been delved for billions of times to suddenly show an entirely new and unknown quest chain. Rare? Yes, but not impossible."

He moved a hand over the screen and the last bubble filled up with the word "Variable". "Lastly, the exit conditions can simply vary. This is rare to find, however. Variable dungeons are those that can completely change from one delve to another, going from a water aspect to a lava one, to a forest, to a desert, to underground, underwater, in the sky, and so on. Usually, all variations have been mapped out, but you never know which one you are going to find until you enter, and as I'll mention later on, acquiring dungeon maps and guides may not be exactly simple either."

"Getting lost in all this," Tuk whispered. "He's just dumping it all on us."

"Just try to listen as best as you can for now," Kur told him. "I'll go over it again later on, don't worry. It's pretty simple once we start delving, you'll see."

"Cheers, man," Tuk said, visibly relieved.

"Hang in there," the professor said with a compassionate smile. "I know that this is a lot to take in at first glance, but once you've heard it a second time, and have gone through a few delves, you'll see that this knowledge becomes a lot more organic with time and experience."

Tuk groaned. "He heard me… I mean, thank you Professor Thim."

"No worries," Professor Thim said, looking around the auditorium. "You guys are not the only ones feeling lost." "Oh!" Tuk said, looking around him in surprise, and Nar too, gazed across the rows of students, and found several others looking just as confused and surprised as the ring tosser.

"See," Kur said, elbowing the lanky trugger. "Relax. It will be fine."

"Alright…" Tuk said. "You know I'm no good with this kind of listening and studying stuff."

"And that's why you have me," Kur said.

"Shhh!" Gad told them.

The two of them flinched and shut their mouths.

"... are three types of dungeons, largely based on size and their delver limitations," the professor was saying. "The first type is simply called a dungeon. These are usually small, and can be finished within a few hours to a couple of days."

"Days?" Tuk whispered. Then he covered his mouth and looked sideways at Gad, who sat besides Cen. The tank lifted a clawed finger to her lips then pointed at the professor, her intentions clear, and Tuk nodded in return and made a gesture of sealing his mouth shut.

"Dungeons have a 10-delver, single party limit," the professor said. "Once you go in, nobody else can until you leave again."

Which also means that if we get in trouble, there's no help coming, Nar thought, his stomach clenching. We're on your own, and there's nothing anyone can do… Crystal.

"Above dungeons, we have domains, which are significantly bigger than dungeons, and fully exploring one in complete depth can take months, if not years."

"Years!" Cen gasped, not the only one in the auditorium to do so.

"Indeed. Some of these dungeons stretch across thousands and thousands of square miles, and across difficult and nigh impassable terrains sometimes," Professor Thim explained. "And because they're so much bigger, they can support multiple parties, and up to tens of thousands of delvers at once, meaning that you are likely to run into complete strangers while within them."

"Does that mean what I think it does?" Mul asked.

"Considering this, there are two extra points you need to keep in mind when delving in a domain," the professor said. "The first one is what is called the Crystal's Mercy. This means that if you encounter another party in trouble, or danger, and they claim the Crystal's Mercy, you are obligated to provide any assistance you can to help them. While you're not exactly expected to automatically risk your life for them, you'll still want to help them… And why is that, you might ask? Simple, all dungeons are maintained by a dungeon guardian, and while its role towards delvers is simply an observational one, maintaining challenges, assigning quests and so on, it will report on your behavior to the System, and from there, that info is available to any of the Nexus Offices, delving guilds and anyone really. And once your reputation is tarnished, it is nigh on impossible to fix it. Furthermore, the Office of Delving can lower your delving rating as punishment, and you do not want that to ever happen!"

"Not like we would just not do anything," Tuk whispered, unable to keep his mouth shut. "Right?"

"I guess…" Nar whispered back.

"Of course not!" Kur said.

"And the second thing you need to take into consideration is not attacking other delvers."

The auditorium burst into gasps of surprise and bursts of hushed conversations that quickly rose in level.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.