My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1247

“Come with me.” The man touched a button next to him, causing a wall to open up and reveal a staircase. “Shortcut.”

He gave a strange smile before turning and walking away. He was a shady character, but I didn’t know a single dungeon master who wasn’t. I was a dungeon master. Let’s not get into thinking ill of them. I followed him down the staircase, although I maintained a fair distance and kept myself ready. With dungeon diver, I had a good awareness of potential traps, and there didn’t appear to be any.

The flight went down several levels. I wasn’t sure if that shortcut had always been there, or if he had created it with the intended purpose of taking me. It would have used up a lot of the dungeon’s remaining miasma to do something like that. The pair of us came out into that might have been a boss room, except that the room was refitted into something that instead of looking like a laboratory. There were various tables filled with chemicals, but it was the tables with straps that looked like they had once had people on them that caught my interest.

“Alright, you were doing experiments.” I declared. “What for?”

“The experiments were rather simple. They’re about obtaining immortality.”

“Immortality?” I blinked. “Not a weapon? I thought this had to do with the issues with the rabbitkin?”

“Perhaps, in a way, it does.” The man shrugged. “The King is getting on in years. He died recently from a sudden sickness, and had to be resurrected.”

My eyebrows began to rise. I had never thought about such a thing before. This was a world with resurrection. Exactly how did old age work here? I knew some lived for thousands of years, not to mention the dungeon copies like Elaya. Death was always a screwy thing here. For most commoners, getting resurrected was a costly business. Most died simply because they couldn’t afford to be resurrected. This wasn’t an issue for the rich though.

“If he was resurrected, is there an issue?” I asked, expecting there was.

“You may not understand this, but as the body grows older, so does our soul. Souls only become larger and more fragile the longer we go. The more bloated a soul becomes, the more fragile it becomes, and the harder it is to resurrect. The reason there is an uprising is that our King has become weak with age. Inevitably, he will come to his final rest. It might not be the next time, but he will only find himself more and more susceptible to death until it finally takes him. This is the nature of life. No one can avoid it. Of course, there are some that attempt rebirth, but are you even you after such an event?”

“So, the king set up research out here so that you could buy him time, right?” I tried to keep him on topic. “Why here?”

I wanted to ask why Miki, but I held off.

“You haven’t figured it out?” He asked, an arrogant look in his eye. “The foxkin. Who is closer to death than a tailed foxkin?”

Chapter 1248

“The villagers were all too eager to give up their cursed relatives.” As he spoke, he walked along with the tables, his hands dragging along as if he was experiencing a nice memory. “We started with the four-tails and higher, but there were only a few of them. We eventually took any fox with a spirit tail. They started to resist when we came for the two-tailed foxes, but they quickly succumbed to our requests. This research has been going on for a while now.”

“You were researching spirit foxes and spirit fire to try to circumvent death?”

“Ultimately, it is a weakening of the soul that leads to death. Those spiritual tails, connect directly to the soul. What we ultimately discovered was that we could take the soul energy from one person, and grant it to another.”

“That’s… what a dungeon does.” My eyes narrowed.

“You’re correct. It’s no accident that the research was carried out in a dungeon. We desired to create a means of enhancing a soul, rejuvenating it. You know, no matter how powerful a healing spell, it will only ever heal the body. Even spells that nurture the soul only purify and refine it. They don’t grow the soul at all.”

Growing a soul is much different than what he was suggesting. A soul was a person’s lore, so it only made sense that the lore grew the longer the person lived. However, just as an old person starts losing their sense and memory, that lore becomes unstable and eventually falls apart. The fact that as the body grows old, it also becomes more susceptible to death, and repeating resurrections damage the soul, it’d no wonder it is only a matter of time before people die.

However, if someone can create new lore, they can graph it onto the old lore, strengthening it. This was the essence of my dungeon blessings. They were a type of lore graphed over my soul. I had an exceptionally powerful soul, and there was no saying how long a life I’d live because of it. I hadn’t thought of it much, but there was a very real chance I could live hundreds if not thousands of years because of what had happened to my body and soul. It was a thought I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

As for this king, it sounded like he was reaching his limit and was willing to do whatever it took to live a little longer. That meant that he opened up a laboratory and started experimenting on foxkin. I felt that I already understood the majority of what had happened now, but I still needed to confirm things.

“I take it you succeeded?”

“We were close for the longest time.” He sighed. “However, every conduit we created was insufficient. Souls are much too cumbersome, and too much was lost in the transfer process. The souls were ultimately destroyed. Even when we used the soul of a foxkin with another foxkin, it still ended up not succeeding.”

“You would do this to your own people?” I asked in disbelief. “The king didn’t force you?”

“Force me? Why would he need to? Is there something unique because my tail looks one way and not another?” Her snorted. “Who could understand death better than a foxkin? No… I volunteered for this.”

I had been feeling out if there was any level of redemption possible for this man, and he was found wanting. My expression continued to darken.

“I take it, you eventually succeeded.” I decided to keep him talking.

” Yes, failure after failure, I realized we were missing something. That’s when I heard about a certain foxkin who had left the village. They had stupidly sold her as a slave only a few months before we had started our experiments.”

I trembled slightly, trying to keep myself under control. “Lady Death.”

“I needed a nine-tailed fox to complete the conduit, and luckily, I found one close by!”

Chapter 1249

“So, what?” I asked, hearing Alysia trying to calm me down. “You captured her and forced her into your experiment?”

“That wasn’t even necessary.” The man chuckled. “She volunteered just like me.”

“…”

“I might have convinced her that if she allowed us to do it, that she would be able to find a way to bring back her precious, deceased Master. It wasn’t a lie. In theory, if she became powerful enough, she’d have the ability to track down and recover even the most damaged of lore. Of course, we’d never have allowed her to do as she wanted. When the time came, we tried to activate her slave mark.” His gleeful expression turned ugly. “Then she somehow sucked in the power of the dungeon core and became a living dungeon, then killed everyone. I had to flee using my dungeon privileges. I had to play dead so that she’d leave. It seriously cost me much.”

Miki had gone through such a fate. I felt anger, but mostly I felt guilt. I could have prevented this. If I had been there, I could have…

“It’s alright… we can still fix this,” Alysia whispered soothingly.

If she hadn’t been there, I might have already lost myself.

“Thank you…” I responded, restoring my breath to a normal rhythm before glaring at this foxkin man. “So, you’re trapped down here?”

“To an extent, I still have been able to communicate with the outside world. The king is making his move now. He’s sent an army to meet her outside of the rabbitkin city. Of course, he could let her destroy them, but when he captures her, he’ll be the rabbitkin hero. At that point, how can they continue to revolt?”

“Why have you told me all of this?” I asked.

He smiled, lifting his hands. “This is my life’s research? What scientist doesn’t want to talk about what they’ve done? Besides, I’m a dead man.”

“…”

“I’m was merely the head scientist for this laboratory, I didn’t even want to be a dungeon master, but that responsibility was thrust on me. The core is gone. Had it been destroyed, then my connection to it would have been severed. Instead, I’m stuck in a state of half-death. I can’t undo my connection to it, and the king isn’t going to sacrifice the conduit to recover my core so that I can live. What’s one scientist and one dungeon compared to living forever? The kingdom has abandoned me and left me for dead. Keeping me up to date through a communication stone is the only consideration they’ve given me. I’ve held on as long as I can, but in a few weeks, I’ll be dead.”

“Good.” I didn’t feel any pity for this man.

“Heh…” He smiled at that. “Well, that’s what would have happened. There is a way I can remain alive. That is to take another dungeon core as my own. I’m far too weak to hope to conquer any established dungeon, but when a dungeon master walks through my front door, how can I say no?”

It was my time to chuckle. “I figured you’d only be speaking so frankly because you intended to kill me.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t have anything against you. However, I need your core to live, and once you’re dead it will be ripe for the picking. I told you my story to lead you down here where I am at my strongest, and now I will kill you.”

I pulled out Alysia. “You think you can?”

“I may be powerless anywhere else, but within this boss room, I have the entire dungeon at my beck and all. I’ve been working with death for a long time and know more about it than anyone. I can kill any living thing in an instant. Now, die!”

He lifted his hand, and all the remaining miasma in the dungeon shot out at me. I could tell this was a death spell.

“Alysia.” I swung out my blade.

“On it!” Alysia cut the spell apart with ease.

The man staggered back, his eyes wide with shock. “H-how? What? What are you?”

“Alysia…” I lifted the blade, my eyes filled with coldness. “Don’t leave even a spec of his soul remaining.”

“Yes, Master.”