After a few hours, a man came into to the room. He nodded to the core.


    "Nice to meet you. I''m Lieutenant Delars. I''m here to debrief you on what we''ve figured out in regard to your transition to civilian life here and to help you get started. First off, have you decided on a name for yourself?"


    Hmm... I''ve given it a bit of thought. I''m going with Null.


    "Got it. Null it is then."


    Null felt like blinking. To his surprise, it actually worked. It made sense that it worked, since he replicated his human senses with magic apparently.


    That''s it? Just... got it? No questions? No, what a weird name? Nothing like that?


    "Dungeons have weird names in general. At least you didn''t choose Super Death Chasm of Ultimate Death."


    That''s a thing?


    Lieutenant Delars sighed.


    "Yes. Yes, it is."


    Null blinked again.


    Okay then. Well. I don''t feel so awkward with this name now. At any rate, what''s the plan?


    "So, you have a few options available. In regard to the magic use situation, we consulted with some of the Military Intelligence dungeons, and they figure that since you were previously a human, maybe going through a human style mage training course would be the best option."


    They don''t have a way to help me out with that themselves? I''m a dungeon core after all. Why wouldn''t I go to a course for dungeons.


    "Because despite being incredibly good at magic, they make for terrible teachers. For dungeon cores, it''s like trying to teach someone how to breathe. They don''t understand the struggles non-dungeon cores have, and as such, they don''t really understand how to teach with those difficulties in mind."


    Null thought about it for a second before agreeing.


    Yeah... I guess it would be pretty difficult to teach someone how to do something you do so naturally.


    "Exactly. Now, we are busy contacting the various academies to get you enrolled. We''re still waiting to hear back from them. In the meantime, I''m going to be giving you a crash course in how life works here so you don''t go into it totally blind."


    Got it. Let''s go.


    "To start with, let''s talk about moving around. As you are aware, you don''t exactly have legs. For the most part, Dungeon cores move around using Hover Pedestals. However, we are not sure yet whether or not that is a viable transport method for you yet, since it does require some pretty serious magic control for regular people. We have some artificers that are going to come by later to work with you to figure something out. Don''t worry about the bill, we will foot the cost ourselves."


    A bill? Actually wait, that makes sense. Can''t have a large civilization without currency.


    "Exactly. Which is where we move on to the next point. Money. Now, currently the plan is to send you to a magic academy. We do plan to give you a paycheck while you''re there, but once you get things figured out, you will have to get things figured out in that regards. Now, most dungeons make money doing requests for the dungeon guild. However, there are various options available to you other than that."


    Lieutenant Delars stroked his chin.


    "Actually, now that I think about it, you probably have no idea what the Dungeon or the Adventurer''s guild is in the first place...."


    You wouldn''t be wrong there. A bit of explanation would be appreciated.


    "Right. So, quick discourse on the Adventurers and Dungeon guilds. This world has what we call the tier system. Mana can be turned into resources, and the use of those resources reinforces your soul. Gain enough of those resources, and you can achieve the next soul tier, which exponentially increases your individual power. It also results in benefits, such as not requiring as much rest, longer lifespans, increased intelligence, memory, strength, the works. As such, advancing tiers is highly sought after. Furthermore, while there are the demon invasions to worry about, stagnant mana tends to convalesce into monsters that like to wreak havoc. That''s where the guilds come into play. They are organizations to assist people in attaining increased tiers as well as deal with the monster problems. The way it typically works, is that the Adventurers guild puts in a request with the dungeon guild, the dungeon guild puts out a request to its members, and once the request is fulfilled, both sides profit."If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Okay. I''m still a bit confused here. Can you give me a concrete example?


    Lieutenant Delars nodded.


    "Alright. Let''s suppose that a party of new adventurers want to get some training in. The Adventurers guild puts a request to the Dungeon guild for something typical, like a slime training session. The Dungeon guild puts the request out to its members, who set up the slime training scenario. The Adventurers come and kill the slimes. Now, the adventurers and the dungeon core will typically split the resources. Slimes can be harvested for slime cores as well as slime. Slime cores are utilized as resources for soul reinforcement. Slime is highly sought after in the medical fields, as well as in the fashion industry. The dungeon and the adventures will split the resources. Typically, Eighty percent of the cores will go to the adventurers, while eighty percent of the resources go to the dungeon. However, this split is negotiable. Furthermore, completing requests gets you towards the next guild rank, which allows you to take on more challenging requests which result in higher profit."


    Okay... So, what''s to stop a dungeon from just creating stuff to farm its own monsters? Let''s say that I was to make a bunch of slimes and then make some slime hunting monster to take down the slimes to get all the cores and all the profit. What would stop me from doing that?


    "Got you. That is a fair question, and if you found a way to solve it, you would be the richest dungeon core in the world. In fact, there are several research teams trying to figure out the answer to that right now, as well as a huge cash bounty for anyone that can figure it out. The main issue in that regards is the monsters naturally absorb any cores immediately when they get the chance. In fact, the example you gave has been tried numerous times. Typically, what ends up happening is the slime hunting monster absorbs all the cores from the slimes immediately. The slime can still be grabbed, so there is that going for it, but at the same time, when the slime hunting monster gets more powerful than the core, it will then cease following the commands of the core, resulting in the dungeon core having to hire adventurers to kill the monster, which is typically pretty expensive. Now, the core of the monster that hunts the slimes is obviously more valuable than the cores of the slimes, but that power does have a conversion cost. Typically, Seventy-Five Percent of the mana used to create the slimes is lost when the core is absorbed by another monster. So, for example. You create 500 slimes that get hunted down by five slime hunting monsters. Those monsters then need to be hunted down. Instead of that, you could create twenty of those monsters from scratch, resulting in four times the profit. In the first case, since typically eighty percent of the monster cores go to the adventures, you would get one core. In the latter case, you would get four cores. Furthermore, it takes time to accumulate the mana required to make those slimes in the first place. Typically, a tier one dungeon core such as yourself, can make around 20 slimes a day. Meaning that it would take you four times longer to achieve the same result in monster core value."


    Got it. That makes sense. What about the materials you gain?


    "Well, monsters aren''t exactly careful when it comes to preserving materials. Slime is typically not too much of an issue, since it''s kind of hard to damage, but at the same time, other monsters will be more problematic. Let''s say wyverns. Wyverns are another monster higher tier dungeons can make. Way more mana intensive to make, but at the same time, the scales, bones, and other materials are highly sought after for industrial purposes and require precision and care to take out in a way that maximizes profit. A monster created to hunt wyverns typically won''t have the precision and care to do so."


    Okay... So, what if I made the monster that hunted the wyverns have the precision and care required to maximize the material profits?


    "That would be even more expensive mana wise, since you''re specializing the monster even further for the harvesting. Dungeon Core research teams have tried that method, but the latest research shows that it''s typically five times more expensive in mana cost to do so. Furthermore, monsters like that are even more costly to get rid of, to the point where the profits from the materials go down the drain disposing of the creature."


    ....


    Oh.


    Lieutenant Delars nodded.


    "Yeah. It''s a tough problem. If you do figure out a profitable way to do it though, there is a huge reward for doing so."


    Got it. Well. I guess that makes sense. At any rate, sorry for going down that whole side tangent. But thanks for the explanation. So, let''s talk about the currency system. How does that all work?


    "Alright. On to the currency system. Now, we use a magic based currency system. As such, each unit of money corresponds to a certain amount of mana that can be gained through absorbing it. The basic unit of currency is a small bronze coin, which can be used to gain 1 mana. Then there are the medium and large bronze coins, which respectively can be used to gain 10 and 100 mana. Then you have silver, gold, and platinum coins. Which go for a thousand, a million, and a billion mana respectively. These each have small, medium, and large variants as well."


    Got it. That actually makes a whole lot of sense. What happens to the coins when they are used and how are they made?


    "When you use a coin, it gets absorbed into your mana pool, disappearing. As for how they are made, there is a spell anyone can learn that converts mana into coins. Typically, it does have a loss factor associated with it of around ten percent. There are better versions of the spell you can purchase, but those are typically quite expensive."


    Wow. This is just causing me to have so many more questions.


    "Keep asking. We have quite a bit of time at the moment"


    With that, their conversation continued for several hours of questions and explanations until finally another man walked in, notifying Lieutenant Delars that the while the talks with the magical academies was still ongoing, the artificer team had arrived to help Null out with his mobility issue.


    "Well, it''s been a good conversation with you Null. I will be available to help you out with any more questions you have once the team has helped you out."


    Got it. Thanks for the help again. I appreciate it.


    "See you later"


    With that, Lieutenant Delars walked out, and four eccentric looking people walked in.