My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1373

Part of me had always prepared for the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to bring everyone back. After all, I had been gone for months, and a soul’s lifespan outside of the body should theoretically only be a single month. After that, the chances of a successful resurrection quickly dropped. I was already lucky that Terra was able to survive through her unique properties, both her strange relationship with Gaia and her enduring golem body. It only stood to reason that Garnet, who didn’t have anything special about her, would have passed on and been absorbed.

I still had to try to resurrect Garnet. I understood that pulling her from the clutches of Twilight wasn’t quite like resurrecting someone from Gaia. However, unlike Gaia who broke a soul away, Twilight merged with the souls. That meant that the soul would remain intact. Even if it had been several months since they died. Yet, I also realized that with the slave bond severed, I had nothing truly connecting me to her soul. I looked through the stuff in my soul world, and I quickly realized that I had nothing of Garnet’s, nothing with her signature that could be used to resurrect her.

The silvthril sword that she had a hand in making was still in the dungeon treasury. It had remained unperturbed even through the Maid’s Lament. Powerful enchanted items tended to not be digested by dungeons for mana. The effort of doing so often exceeded the energy that could be gained. This was probably also why certain souls weren’t digested by a dungeon. Powerful souls and strong lores survived. It was too much effort to break one down.

I started to realize there was probably a second reason too. Strong lore had a chance of changing a dungeon. Seeing the lore that made up Twilight, and just how insignificant I was compared to her world lore, I began to realize that’s likely how a normal soul felt when it was being devoured by a dungeon. However, if that balance wasn’t so exaggerated, then the absorbed soul would alter the lore just as much as the lore would alter the soul. Suffice it to say, that this experience with merging with Twilight had given me a lot of insight into the lore and what soul absorption truly meant.

However, those thoughts were only a means to an end. The point was to bring Garnet back. I shot Terra a look.

“Where is her body? Clothing? Did you keep anything?”

“It’s not that simple.” Terra sighed. “You remember the difference between karmic souls and mana souls, right?”

“A karmic soul is made of miasma, and a mana soul is made of mana,” I responded impatiently.

She nodded. “What happens when someone with a karmic soul leaves it?”

I blinked. “They… slowly are converted to mana?”

She nodded again. “And the opposite is true as well, when a person enters a dungeon, their soul is slowly corrupted by miasma and becomes karmic. Do you remember the difference between miasma and mana?”

“Mana comes from this world, and miasma comes from other worlds…” I frowned as the meaning behind her words started to click.

“Miasma is essentially mana with a different life signature, one coding to a different lifestream. That’s what all of this is… it’s the congealed miasma from Twilight’s lifestream.” She gestured haphazardly. “The fundamental reason you can’t resurrect a person from a dungeon is that once their soul is exposed, the dungeon will begin to alter them, turning their soul karmic. It isn’t just that their soul is broken up and turned to miasma, but the signature changes completely. Their soul becomes unrecognizable.”

Her words made a lot of sense. I had always assumed that priests didn’t both resurrecting the dead in dungeons out of fear of dungeons, and because of the way dungeons broke apart souls quickly to feed themselves. While that was certainly a reason, one could theorize that a priest could make a good profit just by waiting at the entrance and then resurrecting anyone who died within a day or two.

However, there was a second problem at play. The very act of the soul becoming karmic changed its nature. Every soul had an identity, its unique code. You could only resurrect someone by summoning their code. That signature could be read off of various things.

Something that they imparted their mana into, a slave bond, or a drop of blood. However, if something started to scramble that signature… resurrecting them would be impossible. Priests didn’t have a resurrection spell or the mana reserves of half of my own. It was likely they didn’t resurrect people from dungeons… because they never succeeded in doing so. I felt like this was something I should have known already. I should have had more conversations with Mary. Since my White Mage ability always seemed better than the Priests, I had never really asked very many questions about them. Plus, they were mostly secretive and closed off, not wanting their secrets to leak outside their respective religion.

However, the point of Terra’s words was crystal clear. Garnet’s signature had already changed. That’s not to say she had a karmic soul already, but it probably wasn’t fully mana either. Even if I had her body, and even if I had the strength to pull her from Twilight’s clutches, I wouldn’t be able to summon her.

Regrettably, I didn’t have time to dwell on it any longer. Shadows began to rise from the ground, forming into three-dimensional shapes all around us. Twilight had started her move.

Chapter 1374

“Master, we need to go!” Terra warned.

I pulled out my blade and slashed the closest shadow wraith, only for my sword to slide right through it.

“Right…”

Without Alysia, it was just a sword capable of doing physical damage. These shadow wraiths were like ghosts. That meant that they weren’t something that I could fight that way. However, I also didn’t have Miki or Celeste.

“You said that White Mage would be effective against them, but they aren’t undead,” I said while backing up.

“I don’t know, I was just repeating what Gaia told me,” Terra responded worriedly.

Unfortunately, these wraiths weren’t Terra’s forte either. She was a physical fighter and had almost no soul protection. In a lot of ways, she was the exact opposite of Miki. If she couldn’t block it or punch it, then she was rendered useless.

“I wouldn’t suppose Gaia gave you any tricks up her sleeve?” I asked hopefully. “Perhaps you can conjure Gaia?”

Terra shook her head. “I can’t do it here. This is Twilight’s domain. I can only summon Gaia when I am close to her.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. I tried to think about how White Mage would be useful. The pair of us were backing away, but the shadows were coming from all sides and there was nowhere to run. More and more wraiths were appearing every second, seeming to crawl out of every shadow.

“Shadows… that’s right, she turned off my light!”

I used Orb to create a light orb and then tossed it down the path. The darkness immediately responded to the light, sizzling like it was being burned. The shadows near the light immediately retreated, and the shadowy corner the light struck no longer spawned any more enemies. My relief was momentary when the darkness closed in on the light. It lasted for a few moments, before sputtering out like the miasma had just eaten away all of the mana. That was probably what had happened.

I created another orb, and then another one. I started tossing them in one direction, forcing back the shadow creatures as I grabbed Terra’s hand and fled. This entire place was a maze though, and figuring out how to get out was near impossible. We turned a corner, only to find a hallway filled with shadow creatures.

“There are too many of them!” Terra cried out.

“Let’s see if they can handle this.” I pulled some fairy dust out of my soul world and lifted my palm toward the crowd. “Create Waters of Life!”

A stream of water shot out, and whatever it struck sizzled and cried out. The pair of us began to move forward, the area the water fell becoming ground the shadows wouldn’t walk. Our movements were slow, and the shadows from behind were catching up, but we managed to slowly make our way through the hallway as I spurted water everywhere. The hallway was thick with smokey miasma, which seemed to be released from the burning black stuff, only confirming my belief it was congealed miasma, the karmic equivalent of waters of life, which rather than resembling a liquid, instead had a mucous-like consistency.

When we reached the end of the hallway, I suddenly grew a bit dizzy. Terra grabbed me, keeping me standing.

“Master, you shouldn’t use up mana so fast.”

I shook my head, pulling out a vial of water of life and drinking it, making what was doing feel a bit redundant. However, the vials I made came from the fairy spring and were much more concentrated than what I made on the fly, so even after dumping gallons of liquid, the vial helped. Yet, it shouldn’t have been needed. While waters of life did use a lot of mana to cast, I was in an environment rich with miasma. It might be that a normal person would struggle with a low mana regen deep in a dungeon surrounded by miasma, but I had a god soul. I could absorb miasma too, and convert it into mana.

“This is her miasma…” Terra seemed to understand what I was thinking and gave an unfortunate answer. “She can deny you access to it. You can forcibly refine it, but…”

“But… it would be a slow and grueling process.” I finished.

In other words, in Twilight’s space, this was a low regen area. I felt like I was at the bottom of a mega-dungeon. The difficulty level was just way too high.

We turned to run again, and then my foot hit something and I stumbled. I glanced down to see a body. At first, I had feared it was Garnet, but I realized this body had been here too long and was nothing but a skeleton now. I stopped as something in the back of my mind stirred.

“Master, we need to go!” Terra encouraged me again. “It’s just a body… they’re everywhere. This place is a graveyard!”

“A graveyard?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just what I needed!”

Chapter 1375

One thing had happened right after another. I had barely had any time to think. I had originally thought that the bodies of everyone who died were completely digested. It turned out that this wasn’t the case. Instead, they were brought down where someone tended to bring bottoms, the catacombs under the castle.

How did I know we were in the catacombs? I pulled out the menu and was able to discover above us the area of the city. We were directly under the castle. As for how we could make it from the castle to where I was knocked out, the map didn’t give me that information. I had also tried to use Portal and found myself unable to make it through this junk. Twilight was trying to keep me from fleeing and was blocking that spell, I knew it.

That’s when I recalled someone I had completely forgotten, someone important. I lifted my hand, praying that this would work. Since I couldn’t Portal out, maybe I could bring someone to me.

“Summon monster!”

Terra was confused as I began to cast a spell, a magical circle forming on the floor as the spell took. That’s when a little girl seemed to appear from glowing light. She was curled into herself, her knees up and her head pressed down. Her body was shaking, and it looked like she was as terrified. I let out a breath as I looked down at the little girl. It hadn’t been sure it would work until that moment.

How long ago had I been split away from Sapphire? After taking me, the darkness had seemingly ignored her. Perhaps it feared that King Diorite had done something to her, in the same way, Gaia and managed to infect my soul. She was connected to his former dungeon, after all.

That would mean that she had been waiting abandoned in the darkness for seven days. Feeling a tinge of guilt, I kneeled and put my hand on her gently. She jerked at the touch, slowly looking up at me.

“I’m sorry I left you here, but I will always come back.” Her eyes turned watery, and then she jumped on me, wrapping her arms around mine.

“Another girl?” Terra sighed. “Aren’t they getting younger, Master?”

I cleared my throat. “Never mind that right now, Sapphire, I need you right now.”

The path we had blocked with waters of life and slowly been eaten away, and the lines of shadow creatures were starting to close in on us again. Sapphire seemed to understand the situation, and so she pulled away, wiping her tears and giving an assertive nod.

“What can she do?” Terra asked uncertainly.

“We have an army of shadows following us.” I declared to her. “Do you know what we could use? We could use our army.”

Terra continued to look confused, but Sapphire’s eyes brightened. She lifted her hands and then began to move them not unlike a puppeteer. A moment later, I could hear rattling and movement. There were countless forms scattered around that all started to move at once. The person I had tripped over suddenly started moving, ripping his way out of the concentrated miasma until he could stand before us. The dark shadows that were getting closer had frozen, seemingly caught off guard. All around us, the undead began to awaken.