My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1439-1441

Chapter 1439

“B-boss!”

“How are things?”

To make things simple, I returned to my place in Alerith. As soon as I stepped out of the bedroom, I had allocated for portaling, Drake and his men were sitting there playing cards. They jumped up as soon as I walked in. I didn’t bring the girls to follow me for much the same reason as before when I went to Matty’s dungeon. They could come on their own if I called, and if there was a trap, I’d rather we all not be captured at once.

“W-we’re doing good sir! Have you been getting my reports?” He asked.

He was making reports? I kept my mouth shut instead of revealing my ignorance. It was probably better to just focus on the important things. I ignored his mention of reports and decided to just ask him anyway.

“How are funds holding out?”

“Funds are doing well sir. The shipment of steel we stole we’ve slowly been selling off, and have managed to keep the coffers level. Other than that, we profited substantially off the gladiator fights. We bet on you, and once word came of your survival, there was quite the payout!”

My solemn expression couldn’t help but slip slightly. They had been selling stolen goods back to the enemy and had been placing bets on my life. This is ultimately how Drake had survived the last few months. I probably shouldn’t give them much lip. I had given them no guidance. They were already a streetwise bunch used to surviving by themselves, so it seemed they had done a pretty decent job considering.

“You’ve done well…” I managed to force out some praise. “What is the leadership like in the city since I left?”

“Hmm? Quiet.” He responded thoughtfully. “There was a large number of knights growing in the city, and it was causing a great deal of unrest. Taxes were also becoming obscenely unreasonable. There was about to be an uprising any day. Then… the knights all left. Lord Reign issued a formal apology, sent out a massive tax refund, and then lowered the taxes considerably. The people were appeased, and the city has been quiet ever since. We’ve been able to live like lords thanks to our winnings and-” one of the other men kicked him. “Ahh… I mean… comfortably! Just normal. Boss knows we work hard, right?”

Hearing Drake’s account of the rise and fall of Demon Lord Aberis was perhaps the most terrifying part. He had snuck his way into Alerith, put up a puppet lord, controlled the city for nearly twenty years, built a massive army of demonic knights, and then attempted to cause a civil war in Aberis, invading another lord’s territory, and nothing. No one here knew about it at all. The commoners were completely in the dark about the war, the nature of the demonic knights, or even the reason for taxes.

That was the difference between the lords and the common folk. I wondered if my people in Chalm were equally as clueless. To them, was I just some busy body who occasionally left and came back with more people? No, they had to know more. Lord Aberis publicly announced his intentions in Chalm, and I had personally freed many slaves. I had a personal connection to my people. I wasn’t some aloof lord sending out policies the normal riffraff didn’t understand.

There was one problem with Drake’s account though. He didn’t help me understand the true situation in Alerith. I called Lord Reign a puppet, but I had no clue. I had only met him a few times, and he hadn’t left nearly as much of an impression as his Master. Was he freed now, or was he some kind of thrall? It was still possible he worked with the Imperial Cloud Meadow too. That had been my original guess.

Perhaps, the best course of action would be to overthrow him without the commoners ever knowing. Simply wipe him out, declare myself the lord, throw them a tax rebate, and then start recruiting for my battles. It felt slightly cruel, but it seemed like how things were done here.

Chapter 1440

I reported my findings to the girls, and decided to leave the three to keep doing what they were doing. Simply holding a place in Alerith was a benefit to me. My residence in the capital was only collecting dust, after all. I should find some people to station there as well. As for his so-called reports, I found out how he was sending them, and corrected them so that the reports would reach me.

Before Lord Aberis left to try to kill me, he had created an information blackout in this city. He shut down the travel guild by claiming there was a need for renovations, and he also made sure no messages left or came to the city. Such a blackout would have been extremely suspicious in my world, but I had to consider it had only been a few months since then.

Any given message sent would normally take months for a response, especially for commoners who couldn’t afford expensive surfaces like the blue mages. The blackout had managed to hold, and the few people who knew something was up only had started to grumble about it. It could be another three months before they started having issues. This was the far west, nearly on the border of the wilderness, after all. Everything this far from the Capital occurred slowly, at least when I wasn’t involved.

I finished with my spy network, which admittedly was subpar. After all, they hadn’t found anything out that a commoner wouldn’t know. It was probably better to call them house sitters. When I was done with Drake and his gang, I left and headed for the mansion. I brought up my map to check the place. I had once been in the mansion, so I had the area once mapped out.

“Nothing…” I sighed.

As I become skilled, I found I could read more out of the Map skill than I used to. In the past, the map would always just update arbitrarily. For example, I could use an old map, and it would update the Map, but it wouldn’t be until I went to the area personally that the changes that had occurred over time would be reflected in the Map. It was pretty simple to tell if a part of my Map was accurate or not. I just had to send a portal. A portal could only connect if the area was recognizable. If it had changed too much, then the portal would no longer work. This was one of the great advantages of owning a property in a city. As long as it wasn’t knocked down, you could maintain a familiar signature to connect with.

However, I no longer needed to test out a place in such a manner. I could tell instinctively which areas of the map were valid, and which areas were dates. The dated areas were still useful, but you could arrive there only to find it no longer the same. For example, if I went to a mountain and then home, and then someone came along and blue up that mountain, I wouldn’t want to portal into the middle of a now-empty sky. It was that kind of mechanic.

That said, despite the fact I had been in the mansion fairly recently, it was out of date. I don’t believe this is because Lord Aberis started redirecting shortly after I left. There must have been some kind of spell that scrambled the local mana to keep the place from being mapped out in this manner. Perhaps, he had realized after I escaped in Twilight that I was too much of a risk, and used this spell accordingly. That meant that the only way I could enter the castle was the front door.

The last time I had entered the castle without warning, I had ended up nearly losing my life. My soul had been split in two and I had to face numerous trials, some of which I was still coping with today. It had given me a great deal of trauma, and my girls had probably suffered the most.

However, I wasn’t the same man I was back then, and my girls weren’t the same. I took a breath. It was time to face Lord Reign a final time.

Chapter 1441

“I am Earl Deek Deekson of Chalm.” I announced at the entrance. “Asking for audience with the Lord of Alerith.”

I made sure to show my credentials. The guards look at it and nodded. They didn’t act suspiciously as the guards might have. It seemed like all of those under Demon Lord Aberis might have been purged.

“Master, don’t worry. If there are problems, we’ll fight through them.” Alysia reassured me. “Together.”

“Always.” I smiled.

The guards didn’t waste too much time before letting us in the room. I kept Map on standby and Sense Life running just to make sure there weren’t any abnormalities I was about to run into. I could detect hostile entities. I noticed that these guys weren’t necessarily shown as allies, but merely neutral to me. That was fine for the moment, as the last time I was there, they read all enemies. I considered that an improvement.

We have met a servant who slowly lead us to a receiving room, however, unlike mine which was set up for comfort, this one had the look of a throne room. Even though Lord Reign lived in a mansion and carried out his duties without a castle or palace, he still seemed to go for the throne at the end of the hallway look. I let out a sigh, and let the servant open the double doors and announce me before I entered.

It wasn’t as impressive as the Capital’s palace throne room, but it would be rather questionable if it was. At the end of a long carpet, a chair sat, and a man was sitting in that chair. He looked nearly identical to the man I had seen months prior. He was clean, prim, proper, and had the presence of a lord. He had a crown on his head which seemed to make him more important. The first time we met, he was a rank higher than me, but now I was a rank higher than him. That changed the dynamics of our meeting completely.

“Count Reign.”

“Earl Deekson.” He responded as the doors shut behind me. “You’re still alive after all.”

“I’m harder to kill than I look,” I responded.

“Is that so?” He raised an eyebrow. “I wonder if you’re the man you claim to be. I seemed to recall there being two of you once.”

“I am me… but I wonder if you are you. I seem to recall that you were the puppet of a Demon Lord once.”

Lord Reign made a bitter face. “That was a long time in the past. You defeated him, and I am no longer influenced by his karmic control.”

So, it had been some kind of control like that. It made a lot of sense. The Demon Lord Aberis who stayed in Aberis was the kind of man who liked to play with dungeons. Using karmic control suited him extremely well. I just wish I knew his connection to the Twilight Princess more. Were they really lovers? How did she tie to Twilight from the deep? I had destroyed every last remaining piece of the demon lord’s lore. He was too dangerous, even in pieces. So, I’d have to find those answers another way.

“In that case, let’s start over.”

“Start over?” Lord Reign’s expression changed. “I have a different proposal.”

“What?”

“Die!”

He reached into his pockets and pulled something from them. I only had a moment to realize what they were. Guns? Where did he get guns?

Alysia appeared as he pulled the trigger, and bullets started flying at me, striking her instead. It took me a second to realize where I had seen those guns before. They were the custom ones I had made for Bernice. Lord Reign had captured Bernice and taken her guns. Feeling a sudden surge of anger and betrayal, perhaps amplified by my helplessness when it had come to Astria and Lydia, I let out a roar.

I exploded forth, and with the wave of my sword, the bullets were swept aside. Lord Reign leaped out of his chair as it exploded into two, but I honed in on him. Fueled with anger, I raised my sword to chop him down, but at that moment he slipped, his foot caught on the carpet. As he fell, I lunged down with my weapon.

“Wait! Master, something is wrong!” Alysia cried out, her blade disappearing from my hands suddenly.

My balance was completely thrown off as I was giving the killing blow, and instead I braced myself with my hands, which ended up landing on Lord Reign’s chest. As this happened, the crown on his head fell off, and his body suddenly morphed. The area under my hands grew somewhat softer.

“Ahhhn!” A girl’s voice cried as my hands gripped onto two soft things that felt somewhat familiar.

“Bernice, is that you?” I squeezed.

“P-p-p-pervert!”

I was slapped in return.