My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1475-1477

Chapter 1475

“They’ve begun moving.” Shao reported as soon as she jumped back through the portal.

I took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s begin.”

Although Terra had finished one layer of the wall around Chalm, I wasn’t confident that it would be able to hold against magical attacks. In that respect, fighting in the city would only bring chaos. It’d bring death and destruction to the citizens, and there was no saying that it’d do us any good. Instead, we selected a place to engage with the Dioshin army several days travel from the city.

Various portals opened via the girls. Siti was naturally able to create the largest and most stable portal, which was where the majority of the army traveled through. The travel guild also aided in moving large quantities of supplies needed to maintain the army. Although officially, the traveling guild was under the same restrictions as the adventuring guild, that mostly went to such things as transporting armies directly into enemy territory. The wilderness was a neutral area, and I had already staked a claim on it and mapped it out, so in that respect transporting troops and supplies was allowed.

As the army marched through, I tried to remain optimistic. Although we still had fewer soldiers than them, we had the home advantage. We were selecting the battlefield, and in the day it took them to arrive, we’d have numerous surprises built and ready. The location we picked was a break in the wilderness, a large area with basically no trees. According to the lore I could access from Karr’s blessing, this location would roughly be the spot of Astria’s original fairy spring. After Karr had burned the forest to the ground, for some reason, it had not regrown in these last twenty years.

The reason I had picked this spot was that there were no trees. The Dioshin lived in the jungles and forests of Dioshin, and in the wilderness, they’d be at a significant advantage. Thus, I figured plains would work better. Plus, this allowed Terra to work on creating walls and other obstructions for us to take advantage of the terrain.

Once I stepped through and looked over the grassy area I had only visited once before, I gave a nod and turned to those following behind me.

“General Nova, take some Osterians and push out the local wildlife. We don’t want to experience any monster attacks in the middle of battle.”

“Yes, my lord!” He struck his chest and left.

Ever since I had utterly defeated him, Draven Nova’s entire attitude had seemingly changed. He acted extremely loyal and seemed to hold no grudge regarding his defeat or his embarrassment, not to mention losing not one, but two brides. In Osterian culture, it was the strong who took charge. I just hoped I’d be able to continue to show that strength.

“Terra, get started on the structures we discussed.”

“Yes, Master.” She turned and began to thump away, currently the tallest thing in our army.

“Celeste, Shao… scouting duty. I want to know when they’re an hour away.”

“As Master commands.”

“Yes, Master!”

Celeste shrank and flew up into the air, disappearing in a blink. Shao melted into the shadows.

“Miki… set up a triage unite. Collect some blood from our top soldiers down. If they break, resurrect them immediately.”

“Yes, Master…” She nodded. “Although, wouldn’t it be better that I’m on the field with Master.”

“In time,” I responded, looking slightly uncertain. “I feel we’re all going to be pushed to the edge soon enough.”

Chapter 1476

Despite everything I had been through, this had only been the second battle I had ever really been part of. The battle between Aberis and the Ost Republic ended without either country attacking. It had been more of a personal battle between me and the Demon Lord Aberis. As for my fight against Aberis’s army, that had been done with two of me, and we had planned the fight mostly against each other. It had been an insane move, and it probably didn’t have any right to work, but we had succeeded in catching the Demon Lord by surprise and managing to defeat him.

This battle would be completely different. Two armies that knew everything about each other would engage in earnest. King Roth had even seemingly given me every chance to prepare, recruiting as many soldiers as I could.  In the end, I had done pretty well for myself.

We had the Chalm soldiers, those who had slowly joined the guard since I had reclaimed New Chalm. This was mostly made up of slaves, both animalkin and humans. I had asked around, and the animalkin of Chalm almost universally had no problem fighting against Dioshin. In their minds, Dioshin was a country that abandoned them. Many were sold into slavery, while others were refugees exiled during tribal disputes. We had fifteen hundred that were at the trained level and another five hundred which were militia level from Deeksville.

Then there were the Osterians, who had two thousand soldiers able to fight in this battle. This excluded the women, children, and those too old or otherwise incapable of fighting. The Deep Dwarves offered another two hundred fighters, and while they looked like children, especially compared to the Osterians, I didn’t doubt that they possessed fighting prowess. After all, King Diorite had been the most dangerous foe I had faced to date, and he was much smaller than me.

“We’re going to fight.” A group of girls suddenly appeared as if from nowhere.

“Hmm?”

I realized that it wasn’t that they had appeared from nowhere, it was just that they had been so tiny that they slipped through the portals without being noticed, and then grew to adult size. These were the evolved Faeries, those that Astria had personally altered. Although they were technically fairies, they had more in common with the fae. They were vampires, banshees, nymphs, naiads, dryads, and there was even a sylph like Celeste had once been. They were an exotic lot, and there was only a handful of them. They had mostly been kept in control and out of sight by Astria, who felt personally responsible for bringing them into this world. The last week since she had been gone, I hadn’t known what they had been doing, and this was the first time I saw them all.

There were close to a hundred of them, and there weren’t more than a dozen of any given type. Each variant had its unique appearance and hair color. The vampires wore black hair, the banshee’s purple, the dryad’s green, the nymph’s blonde, naiad’s blue, and the sylph was pink like Celeste.

“Master, we want to break some skulls.”

“Celeste told us what they did to Boss!”

“We want to mess them up!”

They still sounded like mobsters though.

Chapter 1477

Since the fairies wanted to help, I wouldn’t turn them down. I knew I couldn’t expect them to fight at the level of Astria or Celeste, but their magical ability and monster-like nature should put them at the level of a soldier, at least. They also had more reason to fight than anyone. They were dependent on the fairy fountain. If it was taken over by King Roth, they would likely be turned into his slaves, forced to run the fountain for his benefit. They might even end up becoming part of his harem.

It had been Roth who had destroyed the first fairy fountain, and even if none of these fairies had been alive for that, in some ways their relation to Astria gave them an impression of it all. Deep down, they wanted vengeance, and it would be cruel to deny it to them. If they died, they should be able to be resurrected just like anyone else. Their souls and bodies had already been altered by my dungeon too much to be like normal fairies any longer. So, I sent them to register their mana signature with Miki, and left it at that.

There was one final group that I had put off. With the wave of a hand, I created a portal in the spot we discussed. A few moments later, Bernice stepped through. She was wearing armor that obscured her sexuality, very similar to what she wore when she fought as a gladiator. If I didn’t know she was a woman, I would have been excused for being confused. Although, most people in Alerith knew that Bernard and Bernice were the same people at this point.

“My lord, I almost thought that you were going to forget about me.” Bernice declared somewhat nervously.

“I would never forget about you,” I replied, causing her to blush a bit.

I wasn’t trying to be suave. We did need every soldier we could get. There was no way I would have forgotten about her. I would have gone to fetch Carmine too if I didn’t fear that I’d end up wrapped into some other event. I had experienced far too many distractions to realize that a quick trip to a city across the nation was never a quick trip. I couldn’t afford to take on a side quest at this point.

A group of people came out of the portal behind Bernice. They were nearly as varied in appearance as the fairies, although there were both men and women in this group. Despite myself, I realized that I had been looking among the faces eagerly for a certain one. When I didn’t see her, I couldn’t help but feel just a bit of melancholy. Lydia hadn’t come. Even if she didn’t remember a thing about me, I had hoped that once she woke, she might decide to join the others in defending Chalm. It turned out that my hope had been in vain.

In the end, I ended up with another two hundred soldiers. These were mostly gladiators and underground fighters used to a one-to-one fight, not a battle where they had to take orders. They came for money and the chance of becoming a knight.

“Report to Xin. She’ll get you settled in your units.” I declared, sending them off.

That was it. We were all there. Progress continued through the night. It was early in the morning when I received a call back through Slave Communication.

“Master, they’ve arrived!”