With everyone seated comfortably, Julian, who was chosen to lead the meeting due to His military background, began talking. "I believe that we are responsible for the state of the world right now. I believe that yesterday at 11 o'clock, the time we decided to explore the dungeon, a faint untraceable mana wave expanded out from Mateo's dungeon core, activating the mana in the environment which responded by creating dungeons, just like it happened in one of those fantasy novels I read last night.
"Woah bro. You finally read a novel. So how was it, did you like it? Do you finally understand how normal and healthy my so-called addiction is?" asked Mateo, unable to hide the wide smile plastered on his face as well as Leone and Carmen were doing.
"First and most important is the fact that I read some novels does not make us equal. You are still my son, and I your father. Secondly, I read them purely for informational purposes and not because I got hooked unto the first one, hence you have no excuse for being addicted and finally, meet me later to discuss more about novels, more specifically the ones containing the SYSTEM and OVERPOWERED tags, solely for informational purposes of course." spoke Julian who was fighting back a smile that was trying to destroy his firm facade.
Catching the not so subtle hint, Mateo nodded and decided to drop the issue for now. The meeting continued with Julian stating that the confirmed number of dungeons worldwide was 217 and rising. Using Mateo as reference, they decided that it was possible for dungeons to be owned and hence made a plan to have everyone in the room own one. Leone then brought forth a plan which involved paying anyone who reported the location of an undiscovered dungeon a substantial amount of money. The nearer, the better.
After some calls made to various news channels, the idea was brought to life, with the message being broadcasted across many social media platforms, it was only a matter of time before the families' business phones started vibrating and pinging.
Some calls, both useful and useless ones, later, the families had gotten the location of a dungeon nearby and decided to depart in 30 minutes, giving everyone enough time to prepare. With the meeting officially adjourned, Julian and Mateo met to discuss professional business which just happened to involve a magic book that turned a human to a supernatural god, and an all knowing green eyed fiend who broke some rules and got turned into a human being. Both different but classical books which were both kings at their respective timelines. Seeing a serious faced retired Colonel talk about novels like a girl at a mall clearance was a unique experience, but seeing his father loosen up for a bit made it all the more worthwhile.
With the short chat about fictional characters over, Mateo walked into the dungeon in an attempt to quell the nagging feeling at the back of his head. As soon as his feet made contact with the dungeon soil, he got teleported into the room with the dungeon core, his personal control room. The core floated towards him, like that of a child seeking its parent praise. His attempt to caress the core like a child backfired, as instead of a warm soothing feeling being transferred, a cold migraine like pain got transferred, and it was clawing at his brain.
With no one around to save him this time, his torture session lasted longer until every piece of information related to the dungeon was absorbed by his brain and ingrained into his memory. Opening his eyes when the pain became bearable, he found himself surrounded by slime dogs, the beasts of the dungeon and as a sane human being wanted to run away since he was unarmed and injured. Well at least he tried running until he realized that he was surrounded on all sides and not being attacked. In fact, if his brain wasn't finally fried and playing tricks on him, it looked like they were bowing down, worshiping him.
Wanting to confirm if they were truly docile, Mateo stretched his hand to touch their foreheads just like a sickly cartoon character did to a terrifying dragon in an animated movie, earning a yelp of delight from the excited slime dog pup who could hold back its excitement no longer and licked Mateo's face. His bursts of laughter prompted the other dogs to join in on the lick attacks.
A few moments of indulgence was enough for Mateo who wanted to try out the other cool functions of his dungeon. Grabbing the core and placing it over his chest, Mateo watched as it fused with his chest, filling him to the brim with the purest mana he had ever seen or felt. Turning his head, he tried communicating with an expecting Slime dog mother, whose shocked face showed that his experiment was successful.
In his Dungeon king mode, that was the name he had given it, he could see everywhere and everything happening in the dungeon, sort of like the security system control room, instead the feed was sent directly to his brain. Luckily for him, the feature could be turned off, which was good news for his overtaxed brain that didn't want to watch the daily lives of Slime Dogs.
Another feature he had access to was the dungeon store where he could by things to upgrade the dungeon or its inhabitants with a currency known as kill points. As the name suggested, they were gotten from the death of adventurers and invaders which would have generated some sad thoughts had Mateo not thought about the death of his own subjects at the invaders' hands, a thought which filled him with so much rage, probably a side effect of the short bonding period he had with the slime dogs.
Clearing the rage from his system, Mateo then skimmed through the other benefits as quickly as he could before teleporting to the dungeon mouth, dungeon core in hand. Repeating some gestures from his implanted memories, Mateo sucked the dungeon into its core, something that could only be done when the dungeon wasn't being challenged. Wiping a little bit of slobber left on his face, Mateo sped off to his room, making good use of his increased speed stats.