[Raising an eyebrow at the one floor to move to; shouldn't there be more than that given the size of the monolith? But he doesn't bother mentioning that aloud and does his best to answer the question on malevolence.]

It's something that's generated by sentient beings, yeah. I guess it's a...spiritual impurity in the world caused by the negative actions and thoughts of people. Wars and battlefields generate a huge amount of malevolence, for instance.