My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1226

“Deek? How is it?” Pait asked nervously.

I shook my head as I stood up and patted myself off. “I’m not able to resurrect them. Their souls are already gone.”

“Based on the level of decomposition, this couldn’t have occurred much more than a month ago.” The dwarf stated.

“There are no physical signs.” One of the other adventurers spoke up uneasily. “No cuts, no bruises. It’s like they all just dropped dead.

“Oh, no…” Dav was holding onto Pait, her face shoved into his shoulder as she wept.

Pait held her comfortingly as she avoided looking at the grisly scene. Previously, the adventurers had just been looking outside, but after seeing the first sign of death, they started barging into homes. That’s where they began to run into the scenes of horror. There were dead people everywhere. Some died sitting at the dinner table with food left out to go bad. Whatever happened, it had happened suddenly without warning. It also hit everyone. Men, women, and children had all died where they stood.

“This had to be some kind of soul attack,” I concluded.

“Can such a thing be done without a soul reaving dagger?” the lead adventurer asked.

“There are many ways to destroy the soul. Entire jobs are dedicated to damaging souls, not the body.” I explained. “Soul reaving daggers are only a convenient method because it completely hides who did it. This method, on the other hand, could only be done by someone with a certain job.”

I only gave a tidbit of information. The general public knew about soul reaving daggers, but there were dozens of ways to kill someone in a way that was permanent. You could trap their souls in their bodies like Miki had done to Lord Aberis. You could toss them into a dungeon as Lord Aberis had done to Xin. You could cut someone with a weapon that could suck in their soul like Alysia, which is different from a soul reaving dagger that only damaged their soul.

Physically damaging a soul would bring about a lot of pain. I knew this from personal experience. I cut my soul in half and had also refined my soul. Yet, these people’s expressions were mostly surprised, if even that. Had their souls been destroyed, then they would have expressions of pain and fear. This had happened so quickly and absolutely that they didn’t even have time to realize what was happening to them. That meant that the connection between their body and soul was severed, and their souls were taken. Why would someone take their souls?

“It’s more than that, though… they’ve lost more than their souls,” I muttered to myself.

“What is that?” Pait asked.

“So, you noticed.” The dwarf cleared out his teeth with his tongue.

“Notice what?” The lead adventurer asked.

“It’s like… their lifeforce was pulled out too. That’s why the smell isn’t worse. It was like all of their life was sucked out of them.”

“What kind of thing can do that?” Pait asked in disbelief.

“That is…” I began, but then my eyes jerked. “Someone’s coming.”

I still had the map open, and I had seen a sudden group much larger than ours enter the edge of my map. This was still about ten minutes away, so the others didn’t have a clue. That wasn’t completely true. The dwarf must have been a dungeon diver, as he looked in the direction the dots were coming from and nodded to himself.

“What do we do?” Dav asked. “Do we go back into the dungeon?”

Pait shook his head. “My mission is to find out what was happening in Dioshin. If I left now, there would have been no point in coming. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

I had already decided I was going to stay. I couldn’t guess if this had anything to do with Miki. Maybe there was a soul problem that led them to needing to find her. Either way, I wasn’t leaving until I had an answer, so all we could do was wait.

Chapter 1227

The adventuring team was the one group who looked the most like they wanted to leave. They had been hired to bring the group through Gram’s Passage. That job was done. There was no reason that they couldn’t return immediately. However, they were still part of the adventuring guild, and if it got out that they had just taken off running as soon as things got tough, wouldn’t they become laughing stocks that lost all respect?

In the end, they waited with us. As for the old dwarf, he mostly just seemed curious and too old to be running around. Plus, as the only lone person among the group, he had to go where the group went. If he tried to return through Gram’s Passage alone, he was experienced enough to know his chances of making it to the other side were slim.

Ten minutes later we could hear the sounds of an approaching group. When they broke through the forest line and came into sight, they were nearly upon us. We didn’t just wait for them to come. We left the village and returned to the dungeon entrance, and then we had moved into a defensive position where we had the opportunity to escape back through the dungeon if things went south. The group that appeared in front of us were all soldiers.

They were dressed in a manner I had only seen once before, in the memory from Matty’s dungeon. They were also riding wild cats. They weren’t like the giant cat I had once tamed. Instead, they had green and brown coats that blended in with the forest well and thick legs and broad shoulders. It also had long teeth like a sabertooth tiger, although it also had many elements that resembled dogs, such as a long snout. Out of a curiosity, I used my skill on one of the creatures. It was called a crag cat.

The men made a half-circle around us, but we answered with a similar protective circle, our weapons drawn. I was particularly mindful of some kind of soul attack. If they were testing some kind of weapon, and we had walked in on it, they’d want to kill us to remove all evidence, right?

Pait, despite being the shortest one there besides Dav, took a step forward. “I am a representative of Esmore. I come on a diplomatic mission. I have permission to be here. We’ve also brought a gift to the Dioshin people.”

He immediately held out the papers of the invite. Although they were a bit old, they were likely invaluable to the situation.

A leader seemed to come out in front. He appeared to have the features of a wolf, like Raissa, although where she was a white wolf, his hair was black. His eyes had a distinctly predatory gaze to him as he looked over the group of us.

“You are to come with me.” He stated in an authoritarian voice.

Pait frowned, not giving an inch. “Where do you wish to take us? The adventurers and dwarf have already completed their journey. After a brief rest, they would like to return. As for me, I’ve come with only two servants.”

I had to give him credit for being able to keep his cool as he gestured to me and Dav, while still being looked down on like he might be a meal.

“Leaving is no longer possible. You will be taken to the castle of Lord Duran. He will be the one receiving you.”

Pait was officially the leader of the expedition, so all eyes were on him. On the one hand, going to see the lord was exactly what Pait wanted. On the other hand, they were not being given any choice in the matter. Whether he chose to leave or not didn’t affect me much. Now that I was in Dioshin, if their disguise no longer worked, then I would simply portal back in tonight with a new disguise, perhaps once that resembled an animalkin. If he tried to leave, things would get violent though.

“Very well.” Pait finally agreed.

Chapter 1228

The plan to disguise me in his party seemed to work splendidly. Even though I appeared as an Osterian that towered over the others, they didn’t bother to take more than two looks at me. There was one problem. Pait and the others were given crag cats to mount, but I was left to walk. I stood as tall as the Dioshin men mounted, so they must have felt that I was too big to sit on one of their animals. I didn’t care that much anyway, as I never took to mounting animals.

The only time I ever rode was when I had to. Typically, my blue mage spells and personal speed were enough to get around. At some point, I had noticed in my dungeon skills that there was a long-distance speed skill called Travel Speed which increased my endurance and speed for running. This differed from things that amplified my battle speed like Haste, as it only affected the legs. If I put enough points into it and with my long legs, I could run faster than a horse. So, that was an option too.

We ended up traveling wide of the village and eventually came to a road that cut through the forest. If you didn’t know where the pathway from Dioshin to Esmore was, you wouldn’t be able to find it at all. Was this a part of Dioshin’s defenses? By keeping things embedded in the forest, it was a means of hiding stuff?

We traveled down the long dirt road for about an hour before we came out to a long decline. I was able to look down into a valley that had been clear of trees. There was a large city there. The outer wall had been made of stone, while the buildings within the city were all made of wood. The city wasn’t at the level of treehouses or something like that, but there was a raw, wild feel to the way the city was built. Entire trunks were used to denote walls and it seemed like a fire hazard to me. Maybe, when you had access to magic, you didn’t need to worry about fire spreading.

We were brought down into the valley. I noticed that the guards at the front entrance seemed on edge. They all seemed to be somewhat fearful. The men bringing us in had to announce their presence from quite a distance away, and even as we entered the town gate, there were arrows drawn on us with itchy fingers. I was half expecting someone to lose by accident and cause a disaster.

As I walked down the dirt paths of the town, I saw many beastkin of various types. Pait said that beastkin kept to their own. All of the guards who brought us in had been wolfkin. In this city, there was a larger assortment of people, but if one paid close attention they’d notice that the ones dressed up nice and clean were mostly wolfkin, while the other kin were in poorer conditions. It painted a clear picture to me. They looked like the people who had come to Chalm after the bandits took over the west of Aberis. They looked like refugees fleeing some kind of destruction.

Everyone had haunted or fearful expressions on their face. It may not look like it on the surface, but Dioshin was in a lot of trouble. Our journey came to a stop just outside the main castle. Something had been written on the wall in red paint during the night, and a guard was trying to scrub it off.

The words written were ‘Death is coming.’ Other than the guard cleaning it, everyone else was going out of their way to avoid looking at it. Just what had Miki walked herself into?