What exactly were dungeons?
The simplest answer? A mess of space-time nonsense held together by monsters and bad luck.
More specifically, dungeons were hotspots for mana beasts, places where the very fabric of reality twisted itself into a knot, creating pocket dimensions separate from the world outside. Step into one, and you weren't just walking into a cave or ruin—you were entering something entirely different. Something that shouldn't exist, yet somehow did.
Dungeons were ranked from 1-star to 9-star, just like mana beasts.
Except 1-star dungeons didn't actually exist.
They were more of a footnote, a theoretical baseline, like writing "Level 1" in a game where the tutorial tried to kill you. The real dungeons started at 2-star and climbed up to 9-star, each one home to a boss monster matching its rank and a horde of weaker creatures swarming within.
And if the boss died? The entire dungeon collapsed.
