My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1235

“Are you truly confident that you can deal with this creature?” Pait asked.

“As certain as I can be.” I shrugged. “If my only other option is to turn back or become guests of Lord Duran, then I’d rather keep going forward.”

We had finalized the agreement with Lord Duran and were shown to our rooms. Incidentally, if we had refused, we likely would have been permanent guests of Lord Duran, not allowed to leave until this crisis was over. Well, that is what Pait had stated. Since he and Dav had no intention of risking their lives, they’d remain here in the safety of this castle while I went out to fight.

However, I wasn’t going to go out alone. Even if I wanted to, Lord Duran wouldn’t allow me to wander around Dioshin. Dioshin wasn’t necessarily a place of mystery like Shie Gescar, but it was a territorial place, filled with animalkin that had each cut out their slice of land and didn’t necessarily take well to trespassers. If you entered some areas of Dioshin without doing it properly, you were bound to end up dead. It was truly a wild country. Thus, I was given a small adventuring group of four wolfkins.

These guys were hunters, skilled in tracking. They were also A-class adventurers in a party known as the Wolf Pack. Lord Duran and I had decided it would be best if I didn’t reveal my presence to anyone else, so I would be temporarily joining their party and taking on this request as part of a mission. Thus, we depended on the adventuring guild as well as my ability to disguise myself. I returned to the appearance of an Osterian. Alysia’s presence on me sold my scent to the others, as a former Osterian. Considering these were wolfkin, renowned for their powerful noses, the fact that she smelled like an Osterian rather than something else made her quite happy.

Other than that, Lord Duran and I didn’t discuss much else. He admitted that he knew very little about the soul-sucking creature, other than the direction it was moving. That was only based on the reports from villages and groups that had been wiped out.

The adventuring guild had also been at a loss. Stopping this menace was an S-level mission now, although knowing S-level adventurers had taken the call to complete it. It wasn’t that Dioshin didn’t have any S-level adventurers. It was more that these adventurers were the top people of the nation, and were either reclusive and hard to find, or were busy on more important things, like taking down dungeons or fighting in wars. While completing this mission would net us a lot of adventuring guild credit, since I wasn’t registering under my true identity, it wouldn’t help me level at all.

Pait and I discussed everything he knew about Dioshin deep into the night while I also went over the bets map that the lord could provide. I used my Map ability immediately to copy the details into my skill. Now, if I wanted to, I could redraw this map in just a few minutes if needed. Unfortunately, it was rather incomplete, with entire swaths of land blank except for the label of the tribe in control of that area.

After discussing everything I thought was worth discussing, I took my leave and slept in my prepared room. Come the morning, Pait and Dav arrived to send me off. Dav brought me something to eat. I didn’t tell her that my provisions I had prepared tasted better, and instead took her food appreciatively with a smile.

“Then, there isn’t much else to say other than to be safe.” Pait put out his hand. “I suppose we’ll be parting ways until this is resolved.”

I nodded and grabbed his hand. Although I was taller, it wasn’t like I was bulky. Still, Pait’s hand looked nearly like a child’s in my own. We shook and then let go.

I left the castle with four wolfkin adventurers to defeat an unknown monster. In some ways, this felt like the first true adventure I had gone on in this world.

Chapter 1236

The wolfkin known as the Wolf Pack didn’t have the most imaginative name, but they were A class adventurers and thus had a good idea about what they were doing. They moved forward with a distinct purpose. We left the main city of the wolfkin tribe before I even had a chance to check the place out. It was probably fine. Since I had been there once, I could return whenever I wanted without any issue. Along with my disguise ability, I could even appear as a wolfkin. The only problem would be that my smell wouldn’t match, but I could probably come up with a solution for that.

The four I was traveling with didn’t talk too much, or rather, a lot of their discussion seemed to be done without opening their mouths. They had a series of gestures and looks that seemed to be telling each other things. I just didn’t know what those things were, and so I felt left out. That’s when I wondered if this was what non slaves felt when they moved around with my party. I’d use Slave Communication for the majority of the speaking, and it had to look something like this.

We entered the forest, traveling off the main road. The men had originally given me sidelong looks, but as I kept up beside them without complaining or speaking, they started to act more respectfully. After a long day of travel, I cracked out the food and began cooking. At that point, I had won to men over completely.

“I was uneasy about traveling with an Osterian. I was worried you’d be holding us back, or do something to get us killed.” The leader of the Wolf Pack spoke up as he ate the fried meat of a rabbit they had caught along the way and I had cooked up barbeque style. “However, despite your size, you’re not too loud.”

“Lord Duran isn’t much smaller than me,” I stated.

“He is a wolfkin like us.” The man spoke like this was obvious. “Still, the forest is a place for our kind, but you have a wild air about you, like an animal. It is reassuring.”

“Um… thank you?”

The man nodded as if this was all that needed to be said.

I wasn’t sure how to take being called a wild animal, but they seemed to mean it. As for the skill that impressed them, I’d like to take credit, but I had cheated here. The reason I wasn’t loud was that I was used the dungeon skills Silent Feet and Hide Presence. Once we entered the forest, I became mindful of how loud I was as I was thumping along. After receiving a few looks from the wolves, I realized I had to change things up. They didn’t cost me very many points, so I splurged on a lot of these skills. Also, I had been watching how the wolfkin moved with Advanced Learning activated, and I was quickly getting a feel for their footwork.

After that, I was able to get them to open up a bit more. They didn’t know that I was Deek Deekson or from Aberis. They knew the mission was to take down the soul eater that had been threatening the land. They had also been told by the lord that I could handle this monster. They had been close with a party that was previously sent and never returned, so they had volunteered for this mission. Their best trait was that they didn’t ask too many questions.

I wasn’t lonely though, since on the journey I still had Alysia I could talk to. Then again, she was a woman of few words as well. I was starting to miss a chatterbox in the group like Celeste or Salicia.

Our progress continued the next morning, and it was around afternoon when we started running into more bodies.

Chapter 1237

“It’s… evolving…” One of the wolfkin stated as he stood up.

We weren’t in a village, but a farmhouse. We had noticed all of the animals were dead passing by and decided to check on the house. There was another family wiped out. This time was a bit different though. They had a more desiccated look to them. It was like the creature was getting better and sucking out lifeforce. Where the previous bath had only looked a little dry, these guys looked halfway to mummified.

Seeing the dead seemed to have lit a fire under the wolfkin. They started to take this threat more seriously, and thus increased their pace. They began to realize that every minute we didn’t end this threat could mean another person dead. I was able to keep up with them but had I had a shorter stride, I probably would have needed to depend on dungeon skills to increase my speed. I mean, I still equipped them, as they increased stamina and made it easier to maintain a quicker pace, but I didn’t need them just to keep up.

We reached a town in the evening. It was already eerie approaching it because there was no lights lit. We looked through and found nothing but dead. We ended up taking a house that was empty to stay the night. I noticed that they didn’t seem to be interested in doing something with the dead. They had left them lying there. It was the same thing in the first town. They had known about the town filled with bodies, but had seemingly left them to rot. As I was cooking, I decided to ask.

“Do you have any rituals for the dead?”

It was the leader of the pack who spoke. “It’s customary for the dead to be left to the wild, to rejoin nature. As you took from the land, you will return to the land. Maybe, you will become food for a passing creature, or only food for the worms. We prefer to let nature take its course.”

“I see…”

The wolfkin leader took a drink and then leaned back. “Once the soul has left the body, all that is there is a husk. It has no value. Only a soul is needed for resurrection, right? With a powerful soul, a body can be rebuilt from scratch. There is no value in it.”

I nodded thoughtfully at his words. In a way, he was right. In this world, there was no value in the body. It could be recreated with magic in an instant. It would also be just as strong as the previous. No matter how physically powerful you became, it wasn’t like you had to rebuild that body once you were resurrected and lost all of that progress. Your soul contained a blueprint of your body. It was the lore of your life and a summation of your being.

“There is something nearby!” One of the wolfkin jerked. “I smell death!”

“We’ve encountered them so soon?” The leader cursed.

The men immediately grabbed their weapons and stepped outside. I joined them just as quickly, summoning Alysia by my side. Although the village was dark, I was able to make out a figure that seemed to be running straight at us.

“Who are you!” The lead wolfkin demanded.

“Help!” A voice cried out. “Help me!”

Their voice was hoarse and desperate. They sounded like someone who was in danger. The wolfkin still kept their guard up, waiting for the man to reach them. He stumbled down and fell to the ground, and I could see that he wasn’t a wolfkin. Rather, he appeared to be a catkin.

“Help me! She’ll kill me! She’ll kill all of us!” His hood fell back, revealing a fairly normal catkin who looked to be panicked.

“She? She who?” The wolfkin leader asked, grabbing the man. “The soul-eating monster?”

“Soul eating…” The man shook his head. “There is no soul-eating… there is only her.”

“Her… who is her?”

“Lady Death!”