My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1193

“So, I really can’t break through the door.” I muttered.

“Should we look for this boss?” Celeste asked.

“Finding an invisible boss, I supposed that fits within this dungeon’s theme. There are so many ways dungeons can circumvent the rules. Are the rules established by the council?” I wondered out loud.

I had always known that dungeons had certain rules they had to follow. One such rule is that there had to be a means of getting from the entrance to the boss room. They couldn’t just barricade themselves up. If it did happen, it could only be maintained temporarily, and such barriers became more and more brittle the longer it happened. As a dungeon master, I felt an intense discomfort when I had tried to shut my dungeon up. It gave the feeling of holding your breath. I could only hold it for a brief amount of time.

However, such a rule could be circumvented in a boss room. As long as the boss still existed, your progress could be impeded. Bosses existed every 5 levels, with a miniboss on the 5th level that roamed freely, and the main boss that took up the entirety of every 5th floor. Of course, then there were also the rules regarding safe rooms. They existed roughly every 4-5 floors. Mobs didn’t seem to notice them and would walk right past them.

Bosses were aware of them. However, entering them could cause damage and weaken a boss, so they avoided them. To a mob, they would either lose their mind or be destroyed based on their strength. Essentially, safe zones didn’t have miasma, and creatures attached to the dungeon were repelled by their safe rooms.

Those were the rules for the standard leveled dungeons. Then, there were the open-level dungeons like Twilight Dungeon and the soul dungeons like the Illusory Sword Dungeon. One could become an academic and spend a lifetime learning about all the rules and subsequent exceptions to the rules. I supposed the same could be said about life. Life was messy and didn’t follow clear-cut rules. The only thing about dungeons that seemed definitive is that they fed on mana and converted it to miasma to sustain themselves. Well, my god-tier dungeon didn’t do that, so even that had exceptions.

The reason I was working through such questions in my mind was that Celeste was giving me a blank look, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to help in such a conversation. Maybe I should have dragged Elaya with me. At the very least, she could explain why she didn’t mention anything about a dungeon council before. Although it was possible that new dungeons under a certain age weren’t approached. It was also possible that the new Widow’s Dungeon was controlled by the Demon Lord. They seemed to have been warned against my dungeon too.

The point was that while dungeons had rules, these rules weren’t necessarily set in stone and exceptions could be made. A boss that couldn’t be seen and who you had to defeat might be one such exception. The boss could be a fly on the wall impossible to see or a microscopic bacteria. What if the boss was a water bear? How could I go about defeating that? I had no such clue if that was possible, but that certainly gave me thoughts for the future.

In the meantime, I could fill the entire room with destruction and hope I got it, but some instinct inside me decided that this method probably wouldn’t work. That would be the first thing he’s thinking about. Thus, I had to come up with another option.

My body began to glow as I accessed my dungeon blessings, resetting my skills and then optimizing for strength. Once I reached that state, I attacked. My blade struck the floor with a resounding boom. The floor exploded open, creating a hole in the ground.

“Ah! Master figured it out!’ Celeste declared excitedly.

I just decided to test the floor. The door might be reinforced, but it looked like he didn’t reinforce the entire room. The pair of us jumped down to the 11th floor. If he was honest when he said 20, then we only have 9 more to go.

Chapter 1194

Boom!

We leaped down to the next floor.

Boom!

One more down.

“Alright, this should be the last floor.” I lifted my sword and slammed it down.

A few moments later the pair of us leaped down into a boss room. It was a lot quicker. I should have done it this way from the start. Did I just discover a cheat that made all dungeons super easy? Such a method would only work on this kind of dungeon. Other dungeons were maze-like places, and I could end up opening a hole into anything from the floor above. That didn’t even mention open dungeons, soul dungeons, and the mega-dungeons. I couldn’t assume what worked once would always work. Dungeons were tricky things to peg down.

However, in this case, I leaped down to the final dungeon floor. Located there was the little boy, and beside him were various undead. There was a skeleton knight, a busty lady in full witch attire, and a ghost-like creature.

“You still persist!” He hollered angrily, throwing out his finger. “Attack!”

I wasn’t sure if these were the minibosses, level bosses, punishments, or what, but they likely had all of the strength of the dungeon in them. Rather than slowing me down by having me fight one at a time, the dungeon master had gathered them all in this room to fight at once. Could it be that this particular dungeon master was kind of weak? I didn’t have much time to think about it because the skeleton knight charged and the ghost flew up into the air. The lady backed up, seemingly casting spells as she remained in front of the master defensively.

This guy seemed to fight a bit like me. He stayed in the back and send out his subordinates to fight. It had been some time since I had fought like that. I kind of missed it. When you were in the front of the battle, it was difficult to keep track of things and see what was happening.

“Alysia, with me… Celeste?”

“On it!”

Celeste took the ghost while I went for the knight. Her wind magic was able to render the ghost mostly useless as it floated up in the air. With a few air blades, she had managed to cut it to shreds. With Alysia in hand, I was able to recieve blows from the knight without much trouble. A moment later, the knight dodged as several spells came my way from the woman. This turned out to be a bit trickier. I leaped to the side a bit later, but the spells seemed to move like they were locked onto me.

A wind wall appeared and took the brunt of the strike. That was Celeste. I took a breath as the attack was blocked and I was able to regain my feet. It looked like fighting in a group was still the best. I attacked the knight again. Celeste managed to finish off the ghost all while keeping the witch lady busy. Once the ghost was defeated, she concentrated on the lady, and all the pressure on me was finally gone. I defeated the knight. I wouldn’t call it an easy fight. Had I been another man, I would have been half dead. However, with the cheat-like White Mage, I repaired all the damage.

I pointed my sword at the little boy. “Your turn.”

The kid looked at me, threw back his head, and then started crying. His wails caused the fighting between the witch and Celeste to die down. The witch lifted a finger as Celeste was about to attack. Celeste stopped her attack, and the witch ran over and kneeled to the boy, and started dabbing his tears with her robe. She then shot me a scathing look. Celeste caught up in the moment, also looked at me, and shook her head disapprovingly.

Suddenly, I made a small child cry and all the women were glaring at me. When did I become the bad guy?

Chapter 1195

“Bullying! Meany!” The kid wailed, still not satiated by the witch turned mother figure. “You killed my family!”

Wait. Don’t tell me. The witch was his mother, the knight was his father, and the ghost was… I don’t know, his dog? It looked like a traditional blob ghost, so who knew what it was in its former life. It didn’t appear very bright though. So, we barged into his home, killed his dad and his dog, and now he was crying.

“Can’t you just bring them back?” I responded stiffly, realizing for the first time I wasn’t that great with crying children.

“Bring them back?” He sniffled. “How if you’re just going to kill me too? I didn’t even do anything to you!”

“Master should apologize.” Celeste frowned at me.

“What? Wait! You said that you killed Miki! She’s my family! You’re not going to turn this on me!” I responded angrily.

“And you believed him?” The witch asked.

“Geh!” I stumbled back.

I mean, I didn’t believe him. If I believed she was dead, I would have just used resurrection first. Had her soul been in the dungeon, she would have resurrected.

“Bad master…”

Celeste was not helping…

“If Master is so bloodthirsty, he’ll even slaughter crying children, I must harden my heart.”

Alysia wasn’t helping either!

“Whether I believed him or not, that is what he said.”

“Why wouldn’t he say that! A big scary person breaks into our dungeon starts breaking stuff. It’s just bravado!” The witch declared.

“Bravado! He tried to kill me!”

“He’s just a child!”

“He’s a dungeon master, this dungeon is 50 years old!”

“Hmph! A dungeon master is what a dungeon master is… you cannot change that.” The woman sniffed. “Our dungeon master is a child. No matter how much time passed, he’d still be a child.”

My mouth opened and then closed a few times. I didn’t know how to argue with such logic. This kid sets up death traps, approaches me all arrogantly, traps me in a boss room, and then sicks his minions on me, and dares to act like it was all my fault.

His crying had finally diminished to sniffles. I took a breath to calm myself and then tried to take a new method. I put a gentle smile on my face and then kneeled to his level while keeping enough distance between us that I wouldn’t appear threatening or be in danger.

“Look… little boy,” I said through my teeth as I smiled. “I’m sorry I came into your dungeon. However, I’m missing someone very close to me. That fox girl that came in here was my friend. I won’t poke holes into who is at fault here, but if you could just tell your big brother here what happened to her, I will be on my way.”

“B-big brother?” He finally looked up from the witch’s arms.

An idea struck me, so I decided to go with it. “Exactly, your big brother. You said you lost your family. Well, I’m a nearby dungeon master and my dungeon is stronger, so I’m like your big brother in a way, right?”

The boy seemed to be pondering my words for a bit. I had gotten through. This would make everything a lot easier for me. He took a step forward, looking innocent.

“Big brother is a poopoo head!”

“Pfft!”

I shot a look at Celeste, who had suddenly made a noise before turning away. Her shoulders were shaking. Meanwhile, I was feeling irritated. I was the bad guy then? Fine! I’d be the bad guy!

“Look, kid, either you tell me what happened or-“

“You’ll kill me?” He responded hatefully, the witch stepping in front of him defensively.

I pulled out a glowing orb in my hand. “Or I’ll take your dungeon lore!”

When I had opened up the floor to this level, that was also in the ceiling of the boss room, the place where the lore always descended from. As I jumped down, I had just seen it so I grabbed it just in case. The boy’s face turned white and he fell to his knees. His appearance was more satisfying than I cared to admit.

{You have tamed the Dungeon Master Mathew. You have Conquered Matty’s Maze of Mysteries!}

“S-seriously?”