My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1343-1345

Chapter 1343

After naming Sapphire, I opened my map to find a completely unmapped area. It was more than that though. My mana wasn’t able to penetrate far, even straight down the corridor. My mana distance was similar to when I first unlocked the Map skill a long time before. At the time, I hadn’t known Map used some kind of 6th sense, as I hadn’t developed my mana sense yet, but my draw distance would have been similar. It felt blinding to the current me, especially given how dangerous this place supposedly was.

“This is the abyss, huh?”

Sapphire nodded silently, her hand tightening on the back of my shirt. I put her into a party with me, and then I cast light. Just like the Map, the light distance seemed to be smaller. It was like the darkness was pushing against the aura of light around me. If it wasn’t for this odd atmosphere, I would have said this place was no different than the rest of the Deep, but as was, I could feel the danger.

“King Diorite said that you would know the way?”

She gave another nod. However, she didn’t lead the way. Instead, she just pushed gently on my back. I started to walk forward, and she followed behind. I had been using her horde as a shield, but unless we found some more undead, she’d be rather useless. On top of that, even if the abyss had undead creatures, those that were outside of her control seemed to extensively avoid her. It was like they could sense she was dangerous to them and tried to avoid her as a result.

Thus, our opportunity for her to recruit was nonexistent. I could only move forward into the dark while she pushed me from behind. Although, the farther we went, the more I grew concerned. It wasn’t just the undead we couldn’t find. There didn’t appear to be any monsters. When he spoke of the Abyss, I had been thinking of a place filled with dark and dangerous creatures, but we didn’t hear a peep. It was deathly quiet, like walking through a grave.

Out of curiosity, I activated my Temperature Gauge, giving me heat vision. I couldn’t see anything past the light. It wasn’t just infinite darkness, but infinite coldness as well.

“Sapphire… I probably should have asked this sooner, but what happened to the Deep Dwarves? What were you guys running from? What is King Diorite holding back?”

I kept walking, but I felt my shirt being pulled. Sapphire had stopped in her place. I looked back at her. She looked reluctant, but after a long moment of silence, her mouth opened.

“Darkness.”

I waited for her to continue, but she pushed my shirt again, and I finally started walking once again. That seemed like all I was getting out of her. Terra and Garnet had said something about the darkness in that video. The king had also said something that I could recall. He had said my mind was lost to darkness. The farther we walked, did the darkness seem to be closing in? I swore the light distance had shrunk a bit since we had started. It was almost like the darkness was weighing down on us… like it wasted to consume us.

Of course, I was just letting my imagination get the better of me. I let out a soft chuckle, but unlike in the hallways before, there was no echo. The darkness swallowed all noise.

Chapter 1344

As we continued to move down the hallways of darkness, the environment began to change. The dark stony hallways started to take on a more crystalline structure. I also started to feel the heat. The underground was generally a chilly temperature. It wasn’t cold enough to bother me in armor, but if I had water splash on me, I could imagine it getting pretty chilly. That said, even tunneling down into the Deep didn’t seem to change the temperature.

After having walked through along these corridors for a week, I immediately noticed the temperature change. Using Temperature Gauge, I could see the heat increasing, but I couldn’t see any specific source. As I was investigating this, I noticed we came to a massive archway made out of stone. It seemed purely decorative, with various carvings on it. I looked at the carvings, but I wasn’t able to make out any of them. It was like they had been scoured away.

It was more than that. The rock had various pocks in it like it was being dissolved. Given an environment free of wind and rain, I couldn’t believe that this would take that much damage, even after a long time. There wasn’t exactly acid rain down here, so what exactly was eating away at it? Was it the same thing that was eating away at my light and mana?

“Home.” As I was examining the arch, Sapphire said that single word.

I only nodded silently. Although I couldn’t make out who was carved into that arch, I was certain that it would have been dwarves and dwarf-related images. This had to be the home of the Deep Dwarves. We had reached their city.

I wasn’t sure how extensive the deep dwarf settlements were. There could be mushroom farms, villages, and bases all over the Deep. The place where we had encountered the king might have been some fort they had escaped to. I regrettably didn’t know, and since my plan to digest the Deep had fallen through, it was hard to say if I’d ever find those answers that had been lost to time. Still, given that I had been dealing with the king, I had a feeling he had sent me to their largest city, the one that would contain his seat of power.

“He said you’d know where to go, but I don’t need to go to the city. I need to find Garnet and Terra. Do you know where they are?” I asked wryly, not expecting an answer.

To my surprise, Sapphire cocked her head for a moment and then nodded. She knew where they were? Was it because they were undead? That thought worried me, but something told me that wasn’t it. I wanted to ask her a lot of questions, but it didn’t feel like the best time to start overloading her with questions. We were heading toward the girls. That was all that was important. As for escape, I would worry about that later.

“Come on.” I gestured.

The pair of us passed under the archway and entered the abandoned city of the deep dwarves.

Chapter 1345

The city was completely empty. Clusters of gems or various collars sparkled. The deep dwarf planted clusters of gemstones and crystals like someone would plant flowers. One home had a line of ruby red crystal clusters lying on the street leading to their house. Another Had a crystal hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier that had grown in place.

I had also found the source of heat. There were streams of lava, which came out like fountains and ran down into drains beneath the earth. They gave off an eerie red glow, but I could only see it when they were within range of my Light. The lava gave off a lot of heat, which told me I had been right when I hypothesized the deep dwarves had a natural heat resistance. I had accessed my dungeon store and active some of my resistance. I only needed to be at Heat Resistant to be comfortable walking up to the molten rock. Sapphire followed me and didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat either.

The place was as beautiful as Garnet has said, but there was something off about it. I had been bothered about something for a while, and I was only just starting to grasp what it was. Everything was too pristine. The archway had been completely decayed, but these buildings and all of the fixtures were perfectly fine. Was the city somehow protected where the archway was not? I considered that for a bit, but then I thought of another possibility.

What if it wasn’t the stone that was being eaten away? What if it was the images themselves? It wasn’t like acid rain at all. Something had deliberately eaten away at the archway. Why had it done that? I continued to walk along the empty streets, trying to see what was off about the city. The deep dwarf city was already so foreign to me that I could find a hundred things about it that felt off, so finding what was missing was difficult.

However, when I was passing by a shop with a sign on it, I froze. The sign was made of stone, and it hung precariously out over the street. It was completely unremarkable, but I had just noticed what was off. There was no text on it. There was no image and no text. It was a sign that hung there for seemingly no reason, not to explain why it existed.

That’s what the city had been missing. There wasn’t a single piece of writing. There wasn’t anything that indicated any kind of information. There was something that had eaten away at all of the words and pictures. Not just those… where were the bodies? There were no monsters, sure… but shouldn’t there be skeletons? Dwarves ran and died, and yet there wasn’t a single corpse. Whatever had dissolved the people had also dissolved the statues.

“Lore…” My eyes popped open.

It wasn’t words, images, or even people. It was lore. A horrifying event that wiped out the deep dwarves would have created enough resentment and corruption to easily create a dungeon, if not a dozen dungeons. Underground where miasma and mana couldn’t flow freely, that dungeon would have assuredly implanted where it was created. That’s what happened to King Diorite. He held something back, and his dungeon flourished. Yet here, at ground zero, there wasn’t even the sign a dungeon had ever been created.

Had monsters swarmed in and slaughtered everyone, that would have been one thing. This was something completely different. Something had devoured all the lore. It had consumed history… all information. Just what was the Abyss?