The room was bright, the wind was cool, and the forest tranquil. That was how Xu Han designed the Bamboo Forest Room and for the first time, he wondered if he had taken nostalgia too far. Maybe he had been too kind to the adventurers. He should have made the room creepy, with dark shadows, wailing screams, and scares at every turn.

  Xu Han was intelligent enough to know it would not help his current predicament, but making things hard for these adventurers would certainly make him feel better.

  The cultivator-turned-dungeon core turned his attention to the Bamboo Forest Room and the group of adventurers who was in there. There were five of them, and Xu Han’s core shook the moment they entered his dungeon.

  “This is bad.” Jemma murmured.

  “Jemma, who are they? I thought you said high levelled adventurers like these do not challenge new dungeons.” Xu Han asked his dungeon fairy, whose full attention was on the ‘Dungeon View’. The spell allowed Jemma to share Xu Han’s view of his dungeon, and she had been anxious since she first laid eyes on the adventurers.

  “Someone must have hired them; the male human in the middle of the formation if I’m not mistaken.”

  Xu Han had noticed that the party was walking in a diamond formation with a man in the middle. Unlike the adventurers who were in armour, the man was dressed in expensive finery and armed with nothing but a thin rapier. He looked young, so he probably was young.

  When he was a cultivator, Xu Han learned not to judge a stranger’s age by his looks, but that seemed less of an issue in this world. Now that he was paying attention to him, Xu Han realized that his dungeon fairy was right. The young man was much weaker than his companions, and he was being protected by the other four adventurers.

  Xu Han could not tell the levels of the adventurers entering his dungeon, but he could guess how powerful they were based on their equipment, the way they carry themselves, and the divine power they were feeding him.

  Adventurers are blessed by the Gods, and they give off divine power just by their presence. Jemma called this ‘leakage’, and the more powerful an adventurer was, the more power they leaked. As a dungeon core, Xu Han could feed off the leakage, and he could also tell something about the adventurer based on the leakage he absorbed.

  For example, Xu Han could tell that the adventurer leading the point was a powerful knight of some strange variety. He was wearing heavy armour and had the normal sword and shield combo, but the power he gave off had a sense of doom and gloom. This was very different from what Xu Han usually sensed from other knights. Most knights gave Xu Han a sense of honour, protection and holiness. This knight was almost the direct opposite.

  Behind the dark knight, walking on either side of the young man, was a swordsman and an archer. They both gave Xu Han a sense of sharpness and ruthlessness. The last adventurer was a mage. The divine power he was feeding Xu Han was one the dungeon core knew well. The sense of wonder with a hint of madness was something Xu Han once possessed when he was a cultivator.

  Xu Han watched as the party walked down the forest path. The adventurers were alert but did not seem overly bothered by the sounds of the forest. The dungeon core soon saw why.

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  A cat appeared.

  In a blink of an eye, the knight got into a defensive stance, the archer placed an arrow on her bow, the swordsman had his sword out of its sheath, and the mage’s hands were glowing with energy. The arrow flew and when it hit the cat, it did not just kill the poor animal. The cat exploded, its body becoming a mess not dissimilar to the poor cat Xu Han had experimented on recently.

  Jemma whistled in appreciation, and Xu Han understood it. He knew these adventurers were powerful, but the force of the blow shocked him. Worse was how causal the archer looked. She was fast and smooth, but it did not look like she was straining herself with that shot.

  “Wow. That’s one unfortunate cat. Told you it was a bad idea to just let them roam around.”

  Xu Han mentally sighed. Once again, his dungeon fairy was correct. Although there were sounds of birds and insects in the room, those sounds were strictly there for ambiance. There were no animals in the Bamboo Forest Room. Originally, Xu Han wanted to create them, but Jemma told him, quite rightly, that it was a waste of divine power to create animals just for decorative purposes. Some dungeon core did that, but Xu Han was not at that level. The dungeon fairy suggested that he create some monsters instead.

  Xu Han understood her point but was loathed to do so. The Bamboo Forest Room was based on Xu Han’s memories, and there were no monsters in his memory of the place. So, the dungeon core and dungeon fairy compromised.

  Instead of animals, Xu Han just created some sound effects for the room. Xu Han had the intention of creating real animals when he got stronger, but the plan changed when he received delivery of the cats.

  Jemma wanted him to keep the cats locked up in cages near his core room, but Xu Han wasn’t going to have a group of meowing cats near him all day. So, he scattered the cats throughout the rooms on the second and third floors, with the intention of letting them breed.

  Now, one of them was dead.

  “Looked like there are animals on this floor. I was wondering about that since we hadn’t seen any. Try not to destroy it so thoroughly next time Jessica, dungeon creatures are always fun to examine.”

  “Why bother? This dungeon won’t be around for much longer.”

  Xu Han saw the mage and archer exchange banter and immediately had a bad feeling about them. He turned to Jemma and noticed that she was looking at the party with a frown on her face. Both dungeon core and his dungeon fairy quietly watched as the party reach the spilt in the path.

  Three of them immediately went down the one that had the ‘Toward the camp’ sign, leaving the swordsman behind to guard the young master. To others, it may seem foolish, but Xu Han thought this was a sign of confidence on the part of the party. They did not view Xu Han as a threat.

  The three members of the party walked in to the clearing where the puzzle was located. They sat down, but none of them bothered with the jig-saw puzzle that appeared. As the timer began, the adventurers decided to explore the area around the clearing. It was clear they were waiting for the Boss.

  Xu Han’s irritation rose. He hates it when adventurers don’t even bother with the puzzles; they were the main point of his dungeon.

  The search would prove to be a fruitless endeavour as Xu Han never bothered filling the floor with anything. To his embarrassment, Xu Han hadn’t done anything outside decorating the room with bamboo trees and the Boss. There were no monsters, special plants, or anything of note. Before the cats, there wasn’t even any animals in it.

  Watching the adventurers explore the room, Xu Han decided that this was something he need to tweak in the future. It wouldn’t even be that hard. A few traps, a few sculptures, and a special herb here or there would be enough. The Dao of Farming wasn’t something he enjoyed, but Xu Han was good at it. He knew there are some special magical plants in this world, and the former cultivator wondered if he could recreate some cultivation plants like the Verily Flower, or the Seven-Fold Moonlight Herb. Xu Han could recreate cultivation techniques, so cultivation plants should be possible. In theory. It would be an interesting experiment.

  “This is bad.”