I shot up into the air using my flames and went higher and higher as the temperature rose dramatically the closer I got to the giant crystal. When I actually arrived it was as though I was standing in an oven. The light and heat coming off the crystal was intense but I ignored that and stretched out my hand to rest it on the crystals surface. For the first time in quite some time I felt an intense "gaze" fall on me as the dungeon itself seemed almost nervous at what I was doing.-
"Easy there, I'm only taking a small amount not destroying it." I said seriously and the "gaze" seemed to ease at that and fade away.
I did as I said and used my technique to take off a chunk roughly the size of me which was barely anything given the sheer size of the thing. Once removed from the whole the chunk I had cooled dramatically and reduced it's glow to an almost soft red from the harsh shine it had before. I let my flames die down to take me down to the sand slowly as I simultaneously refined the crystal as much as I could. After reducing it's size by half roughly I could refine it no further which told me this was a high level material.-
'No wonder the dungeon was nervous. Creating so much of a resource like that couldn't be easy for it. Repairing it after it was destroyed probably wouldn't be either.' I thought noting that down for later.
Most knowledge of the dungeon was only gained accidentally or through long research of it and even then the secrets of the thing were myriad and indecipherable.
Learning about the dungeon even in a small way like this is valuable and worth it. My unique relationship made it easier to learn about the dungeon but still a fairly slow process. The greatest discovery of mine so far was when I learned how monsters were formed by it. I almost died after fucking around with that process but I still learned it. Now I learned that the dungeon was especially protective of certain material structures it made at great difficulty. This discovery helped me understand why sometimes the dungeons reaction to damage varied from the usual. Small damages were easy to repair so it either wouldn't respond at all or would merely send some extra monsters to chase away the problem.-
If the damage was much bigger however the dungeon would create monster hoards to drown everything in fang and claw in that area. I didn't doubt at all that if I had truly gone ahead and destroyed that crystal I would not be having a good time right now. Not to mention it would sour the all in all decent enough relationship I have with the dungeon. After all even Ouranos had confirmed the dungeon treated me with both exasperation and fondness. -
Compared to literally everyone else that set me apart as probably the only person who wasn't straight up hated or treated with cold indifference. I might be a tad insane but even I could understand not fucking that up if I didn't need to. Anyways I put away the chunk of crystal in my loot sack without landing on the sand and instead leaned forward and blasted forward with my flames to fly quickly across the floor without setting foot on the sands below. The next two floors I repeated this process of collecting a bit of crystal before crossing the desert sands.-
Floor thirty six however was a sort of peaceful zone at the end of this desert designed labyrinth. Unlike the harsh light of the above floors this ones was lit as though at night time and like any true desert the night cycle was bitterly cold. Monsters still spawned in on this floor but there was an oasis of water and a few plants at it's center that most parties would stop at to rest as no monster spawned there specifically and if anything avoided the place. Clearly there was something special about the place and I intended to find out what.-
With my flight speed using my flames even at a leisurely pace I reached the oasis and landed smoothly. The trees here were the coconut producing sort and even had a few of the fruit on them while the other plants were just normal desert ferns. The water of the pond was clean and see through all the way to the bottom, nothing special. I crouched down and pressed my finger into the sand before closing my eyes and activating my technique. Immediately I perceived the area of several dozen meters in all directions even as the dungeon itself settled it's "gaze" on me warningly.-
I could "see" why it did so too as below the sand of the ponds water lay a very unique sight. It was a monster corpse about the size of a green dragon that looked vaguely like a scorpion but stretched, distorted almost. All along the carapace of this not scorpion however was strange script that made my cursed energy quicken as though excited. The dungeons "gaze" grew much heavier as I pushed my perception to the limit to thoroughly expose these characters. Once I had them I moved to shape the sands above the ground to copy them.-
The dungeon seemed almost relieved when I did this as it's "gaze" lessened. It seemed content to merely let me make my copy so long as I didn't disturb the corpse. I found it odd that the dungeon was so intent on preserving this singular corpse rather than reabsorbing it like most others but I suppose it didn't matter really. Soon enough I had all the characters from the script copied to perfection on the sands and canceled my technique.