“Those Poison Mushrooms have no souls,” he said. “I wonder why.”

“Indeed, I can’t see them,” said Darcia.

“Isn’t that because they’re plants?” Bilde asked.

“Even plants have souls, Bilde,” Vandalieu told her.

He didn’t know about other worlds, but plants in Lambda had souls. To be more precise, a soul resided in every living thing.

It was true that he didn’t know if microscopic organisms and viruses had souls; he couldn’t see them without an electron microscope. But plants had souls, so it was difficult to imagine that Poison Mushrooms wouldn’t have them.

“Also, Poison Mushrooms we defeated in other places had souls,” Vandalieu pointed out.

“Then why in the world don’t they have any?” Darcia wondered.

“Aren’t the souls still somewhere inside?” Vigaro asked.

“No, they’re already dead,” said Vandalieu. “But let’s check whether there are Magic Stones.”

Magic Stones normally appeared in the parts of the monster where their hearts were when they died. Thus, if Magic Stones were present in a monster’s body, it was certain that the monster was dead.

Cutting open the Poison Mushrooms’ bodies revealed that Magic Stones had indeed appeared. These Poison Mushrooms were unmistakably dead.

“Hmm, I don’t understand,” said Vandalieu. “It’s not like I broke their souls, but they were able to exist without them. Luciliano, do you have any ideas?” he asked.
“Master, I am a mage, not a Spiritualist, so I could not possibly know,” Luciliano replied.

“Jyuuh~ I did not pay it much attention earlier, but thinking about it again, it is strange after all,” said Bone Man. “Could it be because this is a Dungeon that you created, my lord?”

“Indeed, it is difficult to say as I have never heard of an artificially-created Dungeon before, but… Well, apart from Undead, only Spiritualists and you can see whether they have souls or not, boy,” said Zadiris.

They couldn’t be certain of anything. It was unclear as to what principles and mechanisms were at work to generate monsters inside Dungeons, so they didn’t know anything at all.

“Well, as for why they have no souls, the next time I have the opportunity to meet a god, I’ll ask,” said Vandalieu, but there was no telling whether any gods would even answer his question.

This question was stepping into the realms beyond mortal knowledge.

Dungeons generated monsters one after another thanks to the Demon King Guduranis’s circle of transmigration system. The countless souls flowing through the system were used to create the monsters of the Dungeons.

This applied for Dungeons created by the evil gods as well

But Vandalieu didn’t have his own circle of transmigration system, nor did he know of a way to use the other systems.

Because of this, the monsters in the Dungeon created by Vandalieu were like soulless robots with living bodies. The exceptions were monsters that had entered the Dungeon from outside or monsters whose empty bodies had been possessed by exterior souls.

The same applied for Heinz’s Skeleton Caverns near the city of Niarki; the monsters had been programmed to move based on Vandalieu’s hatred and obeyed this programming the moment they were born. Other than the monsters in this initial monster rampage, the monsters of that Dungeon didn’t have souls.
But this information was only known to the gods, so Vandalieu and his companions couldn’t even make such conjectures. They had no choice but to put this matter aside for now and continue on.