Beyond the guild's imposing facade, many adventurers privately speculated that this building must harbor unknown structures—perhaps hidden basements beneath its foundation.
Of course, this was merely one of countless wild fantasies that adventurers indulged in.
However, Mirabelle knew clearly that while the adventurers were merely guessing blindly, they had guessed correctly. There truly was a basement beneath the guild.
Moreover, buried deep underground, the magical beasts from the mana surge hadn't been able to cause any damage to the basement. Every brick here was from the original guild.
At this moment, she was walking through the passage leading to that basement... accompanying the new guild master.
Besides the two of them, there was only that ever-present maid who served Guild Master Fal like his shadow.
Having already inquired about the new guild master's relationship with the headquarters' guild master, Mirabelle had originally worried that her position would be replaced by subordinates the new guild master brought with him.
But after several days of interaction, he seemed to recognize her abilities well enough, never mentioning anything about work transitions.
This brief tranquility hadn't allowed her to completely relax. She had already vaguely sensed that this new guild master wasn't someone who just wanted to maintain the status quo at the branch.
Under his leadership, she definitely couldn't slack off and coast through life like before.
Sure enough, he'd only been in office for a few days, and here came the work.
The air in the passage was cold and stagnant, carrying the scents of dust and dampness. Clearly, people rarely passed through here.
The stone steps spiraled downward, as if sinking into the earth's core.
With each step the three took on the stone stairs, their footsteps were mostly swallowed by the thick darkness, leaving only hollow echoes that spiraled and dissipated in the unseen depths below.
It was as if some giant beast below was devouring everything.
Fal suddenly stopped, frowning as he looked at the small magical crystal lamps on the wall, then at the darkness below the stairway.
"Mirabelle, is the guild's budget very tight?"
"Huh?" Caught off guard by this unexpected question, Mirabelle took two seconds to respond. "No, it's not particularly tight."
"Then why aren't the lights turned on? Don't you think it's a bit too dark?"
"Oh! Yes! Yes!"
Following Mirabelle's somewhat flustered movements, the formations within the walls activated, and the small magical crystal lamps lit up with orange-yellow radiance.
The underground passage immediately brightened.
Though it still carried a dusty smell, at least it no longer looked like they were heading to some dungeon.
Before long, the group reached the end of the passage, before a stone door protected by defensive formations.
Fal raised the branch master's seal, injecting mana to activate the insignia.
The massive stone wall slid open silently, without a trace of friction noise, revealing the monitoring room behind it.
Waving away the falling dust, as Fal stepped forward, Lillian had already entered first and swept the area with her gaze.
This was a monitoring room for the dungeon, though an old version.
Dungeon monitoring work had long ago been transferred to the intelligence department's jurisdiction.
The intelligence department had several detection devices placed in different floors of the dungeon to collect mana fluctuations, with the sole purpose of predicting mana surges in advance.
As for the monitoring room before them, it was responsible for directly monitoring the dungeon core.
The principle was actually much the same—through equipment installed near the core, it collected mana fluctuations for analysis.
However, this thing hadn't been used by anyone for a long time.
Since the equipment was installed roughly two hundred years ago, many of its alchemical designs had become obsolete.
Compared to those newly installed monitoring devices, it consumed high energy, provided fuzzy information, and was troublesome to operate.
Most importantly, it couldn't obtain any useful information.
The core was just there, looking the same damn way for hundreds of years.
If it was just for mana surge warnings, the new equipment was sufficient.
During Oberon's tenure as branch master, he never used it even once. Mirabelle wasn't even sure if this thing could still operate!
She had no idea what Guild Master Fal was thinking, insisting on using it once to take a look.
Looking at the old and complex equipment structure before her, Mirabelle could only pull out the instruction manual and operate the formations on the equipment according to the specific runic instructions.
Fortunately, although Mirabelle wasn't familiar with this device, her professional competence was still there.
With the help of the instruction manual, she successfully activated this antique in just two hours.
Seeing it light up, Mirabelle's only thought was: This thing can actually still work!
Soon, the information gathered by the monitoring device was displayed before the group.
No images, no specific conditions—only data about mana fluctuations near the core.
Looking at the data, Mirabelle immediately frowned.
She repeatedly cross-referenced the instruction manual with the data before her.
"What's wrong?" Fal asked.
He wasn't an expert in this field and didn't understand what the content meant.
Mirabelle looked several more times before responding: "How strange. It shows that the dungeon core's mana activity level differs greatly from what's recorded in the instruction manual, and moreover..."
"Moreover what?"
"Moreover, it seems to be continuously declining?" Mirabelle herself didn't quite believe the answer she was giving. "But this is impossible! Dungeons have never exhibited this kind of situation."
At least not before.
Mana activity continuously declining?
If the activity kept dropping, what would happen to the dungeon?
Mirabelle didn't know, but she was terrified of that possibility occurring.
Fal, however, wore an expression of "just as I expected."
Just as he'd speculated on the road, the magical beasts crossing floors was indeed because something was wrong with the core.
Though he'd guessed correctly, he felt no joy about it—this was big trouble!
Thinking of the worst case scenario, the Amethyst Dungeon risked collapse.
So the question was: did the magical beasts cause the core's changes, or did the core cause the beasts' abnormalities?
What was the situation with other dungeons? Was only the Amethyst Dungeon like this, or were they all the same, with this one just being discovered first?
The Tidal Sanctuary in the western archipelago, the Amethyst Dungeon in the kingdom's south, the Scarecrow Abyss at the junction of elven, dwarven, and human territories.
These were all dungeons under guild management and needed to be checked thoroughly.
Thinking of this, Fal said: "Mirabelle, directly activate the communication equipment to contact guild headquarters. Explain the entire situation clearly, have them notify the other dungeon branches to conduct inspections as well, and send 'experts' over!"
The so-called experts referred both to engineering personnel familiar with formations and alchemy, as well as truly high-end combat personnel.
Venturing deep into a dungeon core was no picnic—magical beasts far exceeding diamond-level strength were numerous inside. Without sufficient military protection, going down there was no different from suicide.
Mirabelle quite approved of the new guild master's behavior of passing off this trouble to others. She feared those hotheads who wanted to solve everything themselves, ultimately making fools of themselves while dragging their subordinates down too.
However, Fal's commanding tone toward guild headquarters still made her eyelids twitch. Probably only someone with Fal's background dared speak like that...
She also understood the importance of the matter, so she hurriedly shut down the old equipment and ran off to the communications room.
As for Fal, he didn't plan to do nothing while waiting for headquarters' 'experts' to arrive.
The 'experts' would be responsible for investigating the dungeon core, while he planned to start with these abnormal magical beasts to see if he could gain any insights.
...
...
...
Two days later.
In the adventurer's guild, within the conference hall used for receiving important personnel.
A dead puffshroom lay quietly in the center of the long table, surrounded by elites who had come either voluntarily or by invitation to participate in the operation.
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