Dungeon Exploration in Innworld
I'm on volume 5 at the moment, about 2/3 through in a section with the Half-Seekers and Gryphon Hunt, and I keep thinking about dungeons following their conversation about the different "dungeon types".
They've spoken about how dungeons attract monsters through their magical auras, and how they generate danger, reset traps, often reshuffle their interiors, and some dungeons have had people diving into them for years and years to find loot in deeper and deeper parts of the dungeon.
My question is; are dungeons purely kept around for adventurers to use to level up, and the subsequent economic benefits to nearby towns and cities? Or are they kept around as historically important the same way in our world ruins are preserved to study? Because if they're kept around because people want to get at the loot they contain surely there are much more efficient ways to get to that loot. It's especially perplexing to me especially when thinking about the Antinium considering they're such capable builders / construction workers. If the dungeon is posing such a threat to their hive, why do they not start at the surface, excavate AROUND the dungeon, and just descend disassembling it room by room as they go?
You wouldn't get backed into a corner, you could always retreat into open space or to behind the walls of a nearby city. Parties of adventurers could establish camps around the perimeter and just turn it into a matter of containment. The risk posed by traps would be way less. Stuff wouldn't respawn and reset because it wouldn't have anywhere to do that.
I can't help but think you'd be able to 100% a dungeon and get everything inside it if you just erased it top-down with a massive construction team over a long period, pocketing all the loot as you went.
Niche for a new "Dungeon Demolitionist" class maybe?
I'd love to know more about the magical aura of a dungeon though. Would the aura be dispelled as the structure was taken apart? Would the magic linger in the building material like bricks and stone blocks? What would happen if a dungeon was deconstructed, and the building material utilised for expansion or maintenance of the city? Would the city start showing weird dungeon characteristics?
I know that there's a lot of pretty loose worldbuilding, but I do actually love the fact that it makes me think about all of the unanswered questions and implications of things!