My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1319

“Seal Undead.” I raised my hand and cast, causing the movements of all of the dead in front of me to slow to nearly a stop. “Purify!”

I had been fighting so many different enemies of late, I had nearly forgotten just how well built a White Mage was at fighting undead creatures. The priest seemed to be designed more for dealing with spirits, but everything a White Mage had weakened, restrained, or damaged undead in some way.

I could use level 41’s Harm Undead to directly harm the enemy. I could stun the undead, seal their movements, sanctify the land so they were damaged every moment they were near me, and that’s when I didn’t go for directly healing them and causing massive damage.

At level 50, I had unlocked Great Heal, the next evolution of Weak Heal, Moderate Heal, and Strong Heal. It could wipe out just about any undead in a single hit. At level 60, I had unlocked Mass Heal, which was a more powerful version of Group Heal Plus, which could decimate a population in moments. Of course, these spells consumed a ton of mana, even more than that of Resurrection. Mass Heal also took some time to cast.

Then again, the simplest method was just to cut them down with Alysia. The armored undead was more trouble, but the vast majority had weak skin and her blade was able to cut through them with minimal effort. However, I could even sanctify water and make holy water, which I could then toss in their direction. There was no limit to how I could take care of these guys.

If anything, I found fighting the undead to be a bit boring. It was good for leveling White Mage though.

{White Mage has increased to level 63.}

{You have unlocked Holy Glow.}

I tried out Holy Glow to find that it was a spell that I could cast on myself. It caused me to emit a glowing light. The light could be used to see, but it also damaged all undead that it touched. I could hear a sizzling sound as they approached like they were being burned. A few weaker ones even cowered away from the light.

It was a nice function, but here in the Deep, I found it typically safer not to emit any like of my own. The Light spell that created a game-like radius of light around me was preferable, even if it did occasionally blind me to enemies outside of the range of the light.

“Are you noticing anything off about the recent undead we’ve been seeing?” My face twitched uncomfortably.

“They’re a bit small, aren’t they?” Alysia observed. “I’d say they were children, but those beards.”

“Deep dwarves.” I nodded slowly, looking at the recent undead who had just crumbled to the floor.

These guys were armored, but they had the bodies of young adults and massive beards on their faces. It was hard to see what color their hair had once been what with them being dead, but some of them appeared red or blonde.

The biggest difference between deep dwarves and surface dwarves was that deep dwarves had paler skin, blond or red hair, and a more youthful appearance. Garnet herself appeared as a young woman under fifteen unless you looked carefully.

“What does this mean?”

“We must be close to the deep dwarves territory.” I declared.

Chapter 1320

Just because there were deep dwarves didn’t mean that I was necessarily in their territory. It also wasn’t clear if Garnet and Terra were near the deep dwarves’ territory when they were taken. They had been on the run, and it wasn’t clear how long or how far they had gone. As for the dwarves, even an area near their territory could create such enemies. Although that assumed there was a dungeon present.

I also was never exactly clear on when a dungeon generated undead and when a dungeon generated the actual product. In the case of the Twilight Dungeon, the human beings were all represented by skeletons and undead. Meanwhile, in the Bandit’s Respite, it was clear that human beings could be generated as dungeon mobs, and there was also Mina’s Dungeon, where the undead was a clear result of a necromancer at work.

Perhaps the difference was that the humans died inside Bandit’s Respite, so their lore was registered while they were alive, and in the case of Twilight Dungeon, it was only their dead bodies that were absorbed. As for the demons, didn’t they spawn from the demon lord’s castle? It was possible Aberis used pieces of the demon lord’s castle to spawn Twilight, so it only made sense that the demons were their actual appearance, while the bodies of the battlefield were already dead before being consumed by the dungeon.

In that case, did this prove that there was a dungeon involved? Was that dungeon the reason that the deep dwarves came to the surface? I wasn’t so naïve to believe that the deep dwarves came to the surface in some kind of power grab. It seemed like they had tried several attempts to breach the surface, only to be tossed back by Osteria, Esmore, and Dioshin each time. They were running from something.

Was that the same something that now had Garnet and Terra? I didn’t know, but I had to do my best to save them regardless of the threat. For that, I needed lore. I needed information. The creatures of the Deep weren’t exactly full of words, but that didn’t mean the mana they contained might not have the answers I needed.

We continued, fighting increasingly more deep dwarves. They came in many forms, from nights to commoners. Those that didn’t have beards were likely once women. There seemed to be less of them. Was this because it was the men who fought on the borders while allowing the women to reach the surface. It wasn’t hard to imagine what happened to those women, captured and slavery. Perhaps animalkin maintained such youthful appearances because they all had a bit of Deep Dwarf in their bloodline from sex slaves.

Of course, the deep dwarves weren’t the only undead I faced. Various animals were undead, and also undead goblins, trolls, and various monsters of the deep. It didn’t matter much what form they came in because they all had the same weakness, my White Mage spells.

“We should be getting close,” I predicted after finishing off another group of undead. “The boss will be close to hear.”

“How do you know?” Alysia asked.

“The mana is getting richer. It seems like wherever you are, mana makes the world turn around. Bosses will pick the place with the greatest mana to make their home.”

Chapter 1321

It wasn’t just the mana became thicker, but the farther we went the enemies began to decrease. Normally, most mana creatures would be attracted to the place with the highest concentrations of mana. This is part of the reason mana springs were considered too dangerous. They had many advantages, but they also drew the eyes of those that might cause danger. I had been lucky that we had a dungeon built right on top of the mana spring, eating off of it and preventing it from showing up clearly.

That changed recently, and I had heard that the wildlife had started getting bolder. However, this was happening concurrently with the Osterians reclaiming the forest and slaughtering anything that stood in their way. It was hard to say if that wasn’t causing the wildlife to act up too. In time, I would need to take care of the remaining dungeons and finally reclaim the wilderness for Aberis, but there were always more important things to do. Even Lord Reign, a clear enemy, was left alone for months, although I didn’t know how much autonomy he had left after Aberis was removed.

Anyway, the fact that the undead avoided a mana-rich area suggested there was something that kept them from doing so. Just as the Osterians were holding back the wilderness, the boss of this area had to be keeping back the undead. This wasn’t a dungeon, so it wasn’t like the undead were all under the control of a boss. They were free-roaming creatures with their own goals. Like creatures traveled together, sure, but I was certain this boss wouldn’t hesitate to destroy any undead that got out of line. Ultimately, that was the only command structure down here.

After walking for some time, we came to a mysterious set of large double doors. The walls were still that of tunnels and dirt, not some brick hallway, which made such a room especially suspicious.

“The boss must be behind this door,” I concluded. “It likely knows we’re coming.”

“I’m ready.” Alysia declared.

“I’m not!” Pait growled.

I ignored Pait and then moved up to the door. It had a large handle on it and seemed to open out, not into the room. I found the doors difficult to budge, so I put all of my strength into it. With a great heave, the door started to make a grinding sound. Ever so slowly it started to open, scraping across the ground loudly as it went. Even if the boss didn’t have some way of detecting me coming, he’d know I was here after listening to such a loud scraping noise.

Once the door had opened a large enough crack, I stepped through into the room beyond, only to find thousands of eyes staring back at me. I was standing in a room filled from head to toe with zombies. Before this, I had encounter packs of 3-5. The largest was ten. Yet, crowded in this small space the size of a boss room was a literal horde of undead, and they were all staring right at me.

The problem wasn’t being able to kill all of the zombies. The problem was that I was here to tame the dungeon boss. I was certain they were in this room, but when I used Detect Undead it detected only one massive signature. That was right, all of the undead were considered the same creature! A zombie horde moving with one mind. So much for the other zombies remaining distant from the boss. This fight was going to be tricky!