My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem - My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1442-1444

Chapter 1442

“The crown is a magical artifact which makes you appear as that specific person. The illusion is supposed to be perfect.” Bernice spoke quietly.

She was sitting on the throne with her head down, a complicated expression on her face as I tried to get to the bottom of what was going on.

“Are you saying Lord Reign is an illusion?”

“I’m saying that anyone who wears the crown will appear as Lord Reign.”

“That meant that the man I saw back then was someone else wearing this crown.” I contemplated out loud. “It was probably Demon Lord Aberis or one of his goons. It was no wonder when I handed him that anti-illusion artifact, he acted so affronted. He probably thought I knew his true identity. That would explain why he ultimately sent the knights to assassinate me.”

“The real question I want to know is how did Bernice end up wearing it?” Alysia asked.

“It’s not that strange. It was only a couple of weeks after Demon Lord Aberis left Alerith that the bond I had to you was cut. I took the opportunity to return to my home city. The rumor was that Lord Reign gave an order that he wasn’t to be disturbed. He retreated to his chambers, and no one heard a thing from him for two weeks. Everyone who came was denied.”

“So, it was something so simple…”

“I grew curious, so I use my position to stay as a guest in his mansion. I then snuck into his quarters one night and found the crown. Realizing what this all meant, I put on his crown and came out of seclusion. I realized I could do more good pretending to be Lord Reign than I could as Viscount Castille.”

“What? You’re a Viscount?”

Bernard blinked. “I’m a noble. You didn’t know?”

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

“It should have been obvious?”

“H-how is that obvious?”

Her eyebrow twitched. “First off, I have a last name. Second off, I was known as the Demon-slaying hero.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. It was true that only nobles had last names. When you became a noble, you were able to select your last name and sigil, and that would represent your house. This was how situations arrived like the Aberis family. The former King Edward named himself Aberis after his defeated foe, or perhaps he named the kingdom Aberis and then named himself after the Kingdom. Either way, it gave me a headache sometimes. There was also Xin Greggar, who was a princess of the Greggar family. Even though my real last name was Williams, the prince had selected Deekson without consulting me, so that was my family name.

I had never considered that Bernard, at least when she first introduced herself, had a last name. Furthermore, while you didn’t need to be a hero to be a noble, most heroes eventually earned noble status. It was also advantageous for a low-level noble to get a hero job, as Otto Tibult had tried to do when I first came to to this world.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were a Knight, but how did you make it to Viscount?” I asked.

“You’ve never shown interest in my story before.” She grumbled.

“I guess there is a time for everything. Humor me.”

I had promised myself that I would make an effort to know more about the girls, and not take so much for granted. In a way, this was my first chance to spend more time learning about the girls and their past.

Chapter 1443

“I grew up on the streets of Alerith.” Bernice started.

“I thought you came from the Imperial Cloud Meadow?”

“My parents were refugees. We lived on the north side of the continent, alongside the corrupted lands of the demons. Our city was ransacked by demons, and we barely managed to escape. They tried to conscript my father to fight in the military. It wasn’t that my father was a coward. It was just that the Imperial Cloud Meadow has very little in upward mobility. No matter how well my father fought, he would never be anything more than a commoner in the army. He wanted better for us.” Bernice explained.

“So, you came down to Aberis?”

“It was a few years after Demon Lord Aberis had been defeated, and with the forming of a new country, that brought new opportunities. Not only was it safer fighting down here, but dad would have a chance of becoming a Knight. That had always been his dream. So, we gave everything and traveled south, eventually ending up in Alerith. A lot of refugees were moving back then. The demon lord was far more aggressive with gaining territory and spreading his corruption. When you wanted to get rid of demons, you fled as south as you could go. That meant Aberis. My family ended up in a city filled with refugees. There was nowhere to live, this was even before the taxation for owning property was ridiculous.”

It seemed to be a pattern that living in cities was extremely difficult in Aberis. The Capital only accepted knights and higher. For Alerith, you could get a place if you had the money, but becoming a knight would have been the only way to get property in a city without the money of some successful merchant or dungeon diver. Perhaps that was why Chalm was growing so quickly. Few places offered intercity housing for nearly free.

“Did your father succeed?”

She gave a short nod. “They started a program for raising and selecting knights, and my father was excepted into it. Afterward… is behavior started to change.”

“The demon knight tokens…”

“My father was one of the first test subjects.” She lowered her eyes. “I only found out about it since becoming Lord Reign. One of the first things I did was look into the program.”

“I’m sorry…”

“My father disappeared and left, and my mother grew ill and infirmed. When I had only myself to depend on, that’s when I changed my identity. A girl alone on the streets only had a few opportunities available to her. So, I called myself Bernard and started to act like a man. To earn money, I participated in underground fighting, dungeon diving, and dangerous adventuring missions. I still wasn’t able to save my mother from dying.”

“That’s… so sad,” Alysia said the words running through my mind.

“Eventually, as if by chance, a demon appeared in the streets of Alerith. There had been rumors about it for months, soldiers suddenly turning into feral demons and attacking people on the streets. It was the final phase of Lord Reign’s token research. I happened to be at the right place at the right time to encounter a demon attack. A whole hoard of soldiers turned at the same time. We fought, and I survived after a difficult battle. That’s when I was called the Demon-slaying Hero. I believe that one of the demons I had killed, was none other than my father!”

Chapter 1444

“How did you know that it was your father?”

“He… had my father’s sword. Physically, he no longer resembled my father though. It didn’t matter though. At that point, I had been getting popular fighting as a gladiator in the colosseum. When the public saw me kill the last demons and remain the last standing, I was named the Demon-Slaying Hero. Funny how the guards who fought valiantly and gave their lives beside me are all but forgotten, while simply by luck, I became a hero for surviving.”

“Is that how you were given a noble position?” I asked. “If Lord Reign gave you a Knight token, why wasn’t it a Demonic Knight token?”

“Pure luck…” She snorted “The public was pressuring him to make me a knight. He declared that I had to win the next competition. He didn’t expect King Aberis to suddenly show up with his daughter and son. The King was giving them a tour. They watched as I won the competition, and then the King himself brought out a token and I took it from him. I didn’t understand Lord Reign’s glower as he watched the King hand it to me until… well, very recently.”

“And Viscount?”

“The King told me that since I was a demon-slayer, then I should live up to my title. He put me in charge of the demon-slaying committee in town. It was our job to look out for more demons. I was to predict when they would come and defeat them. Over a year, we had a few dozen more demon appearances, but I quickly wiped them out. That’s when I was promoted to Viscount and taken off the demon-slayer team. I realize now it was because I was getting too close to the truth. I was only promoted as a means of distracting me.”

“R-really…”

“I even remember that conversation. He had asked me if I wanted to continue battling demons my entire life. I told him I just wanted to reach Viscount, and then I’d look for a wife, get enough money for some land and I’d leave. The next day, I was Viscount, and a new gladiator championship appeared which included a cash prize and a female slave.”

“A wife?”

“Is that a problem?” She demanded darkly. “Actually… now that I think about it, I recalled something else between my conversation with Lord Reign. He had asked me if I’d like big breasts. I had instinctively thought he was talking about me, and I immediately declared I didn’t. That’s probably why the slave he picked was a flat-chested dwarf!”

“Dwarf… you mean, Garnet?”

She nodded. “I think the reason he snagged Garnet was to deal with me. That’s why… partially, I felt responsible for her in Twilight Dungeon.”

It was a complicated web. I had to wonder if the time King Aberis brought his kids was also when Eliana freed Raissa from Lord Reign. Did that mean Raissa had been Demon Lord Aberis’s slave? As for Garnet, she had been taken by Lord Reign. I had assumed he wanted to put a Deep Dwarf into Twilight to get someone to make his precious silvthril weapon but had he known she was a Deep Dwarf already or did he realize it only after kidnapping her. The way the championship had suddenly changed, ending with me, Bernice, Carmine, and Garnet being tossed into the Twilight dungeon, perhaps it had been a sudden decision, hoping to deal with all of his problems at once. Bernice was a demon-slayer who was tracking his identity, Carmine was a Paladin who had also suddenly shown up, and then there was me. Lord Reign, or should I say Demon Lord Aberis’s actions made a lot more sense with this context.

I patted my hands. “Either way, what is done is done, but, um… why did you shoot at me?”

“You should be dead! You could have been a double!” Bernice responded defiantly, giving me a pouty look. “B-besides! You deserved it!”

If I recalled the greetings from the other girls, whether it was Astria trying to kill me, Celeste’s supersonic love, or Miki’s death aura… being shot at was actually rather gentle. I decided to leave it even between us.