A couple of hours later, Seth gained another title of the same nature. So far, the other title didn't have a noticeable effect; it was just 5% after all, but now he had a 20% higher chance to meet elite mobs. This was great! Maybe he would even get some usable materials he could bring back for the little ones.
The other four dungeons he looted were a goblin cave, a kobold shaman dungeon, a Trap Spider Nest, and the one he just left was a desert realm full of armored sand beasts and sand worms. The blacksmith had to deliberately expose his presence in the last two to summon the hidden beasts.
He now had over one thousand souls, most being common and medium in size. A couple of elites and massive beasts dropped a handful of bigger ones, but the best rating was only rare for the dungeon bosses.
Considering that he intended to smelt them down and refine them, it was a good haul. Especially since most of the souls had some sort of magic specialization or talent. The exception was the sand beasts that were focused on melee battle and defense.
It was past lunchtime time but he still had one more dungeon to visit. It was called "The Dark Mage's Laboratory" and was a lv.75 dungeon. Based on the information, it sounded very promising. The theme of the dungeon was a laboratory, where the boss, a level 80 dark elven wizard, did his experiments.
The monsters ranged between lv.75 and 80 and were said to be strong for their level. With that level range, it was one of the most dangerous dungeons of Delta. It was especially dreaded because of the dark elf's peculiarity.
When caught by the dungeon monsters, they wouldn't kill the adventurers, but bring them to the boss room. The wizard would then use the captured people as test subjects for their experiments. At that point, the only way to escape was death. They either had to take their life or hope for the experiments to end it quickly.
Not only because escape was nigh impossible, but it was the only way to return to their original self, apart from finding a high priest, maybe. Losing the experience was not a problem in that case. But even if they escaped, the trauma would stay with them.
Then why didn't the guild already allow the closure of the dungeon, considering the potential consequences? On one hand, there was no danger of an outbreak, since a sufficiently strong party had no problem clearing it. On the other hand, the materials coming from that dungeon were profitable, as the experiment subjects almost always dropped a mana crystal.
But Seth doubted that was the true reason, but unless the Dungeon god didn't allow it for some reason, he couldn't think of a better one. It didn't matter anymore. After Seth was done with it, the dark elf world was gone for good.
The blacksmith arrived at the dungeon entrance some time later. The building he came to in front of was an abandoned office complex, with access to Delta's first underground layer. The dungeons actually began at the small staircase down and occupied the building's underground garage.
Coming down the staircase, he found the door to the garage cordoned off like the other dungeon entrances he had come by today. The only ones here were the guards from the guild. There was no crowd. Not just because this place was cramped. Even among the people with the fitting level in delta, there were a few people who ran this dungeon voluntarily despite its profit.
He waved at the guards as he arrived. Despite recognizing the Tower Master, they still checked his guild card before he was allowed to pass by them. The door was the simple, ordinary kind of steel door painted in a dull gray, which everyone knew from any modern concrete architecture.
Yet, past the door waited a medieval dungeon. A proper dungeon, not just a word used for instances created by the titular dungeon god, but a place that looked like an underground prison. Uneven stone tiles covered the floor, many broken, some missing.
The walls were built from big gray stones, darkened from the soot of smoking torches illuminating the place with a flickering orange light. Surprisingly, the place was bone dry, and there was no moss or other signs of light to be seen.
Only the lit torches, emitting the smell of burned oil, gave the impression that someone had to change them from time to time. Of course, this wasn't true in a dungeon. These fires were simply burning on the places' power and would never have to be exchanged. Considering they were merely decorations, it was concerning that they had to smell this strongly.
The Helm of Hades was already equipped, meaning Seth's shadow did not join the play of dancing shadows on the walls. He simply walked down the hallways in silence, and it was as if nobody had entered the dungeon.
As for the dungeon itself, the blacksmith already had all the information. The manic test subjects used to guard the rooms and hallways would wander randomly, catching whoever they met. There were also ones placed in fixed positions to guard certain laboratory rooms.
Apart from the creatures stalking the hallways, there was nothing to the dungeon. No traps, no riddles. Adventurers could farm the subjects and loot some resources in the laboratories. Apart from the boss's horrifying methods, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.
Seth ran down the hallways until he detected the first mob. He touched the discolored back of the beast to reap the soul, but there was... nothing. It was empty. There was no soul. He halted to look at it. Had someone else already killed it? Did it die standing?
To put it mildly, the creature was ... ugly. Frankenstein-style monster looked cool in animation or comics, but in reality? It didn't work. Seth had experience with the chimeras, but they were not sewn together corpses. This thing was.
It stank like an undead and was held together by roughly sewn seams. It looked like the work of an absolute quack. That the different parts of monsters even held together was a wonder. Apart from the shoddy craftsmanship, the choice of body parts seemed random and unaesthetic.
The blacksmith felt especially offended because he recognized what it was, now that he saw it for himself. These were not monsters, mutations, or undead. It was like a meat golem. A flesh puppet made of mutated and doped body parts
It had no soul, because it was just a corpse, powered by a mana core and moved by a rotting brain. No wonder these things often dropped mana stones; it was their power source. The mana forced the body to keep functioning, and the rotten brain allowed it to show a minimum of intelligence. These things were only left with rudimentary instinct.
It felt like a mockery of his works, an inversion even. Like someone spat in his face. The biggest problem, however, was that these things had no worth to him. There was no soul, the only reason he was here.
The beast turned to ashes before it could even realize it was on fire. The only thing left, glinting in the pile of aches, was a mana stone, engraved with runes. With some interest, he picked it up, but the circuits were only comparable to a simple golem circuit.
Placing it in his inventory, the blacksmith stepped over the pile of ashes and aimed straight for the boss room. If all these beasts were just meat puppets, then the only soul in this dungeon was the boss. He didn't care for the mana stones.
The guild had given him maps for every one of today's dungeons, so he had no problem finding them.