My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

Chapter 1526

After kicking King Roth, First spun around, her tail lashing as she walked away, not saying another word. Slowly, King Roth got back up. This time, he crawled back to the shore on his hands and knees, his face stony and thunderous.

“You… you will all pay… for this insolence.” He snarled.

“I wonder about that.” I lifted an orb in my hands.

As his eyes fell on it, he went white and grabbed for his robes. I had managed to grab his dungeon lore before. On the other hand, I pulled out another dungeon lore. That was my that I had finally recovered. His lore was a little more substantial than mine, it seemed. My hand began to tighten on the lore. A cracking sound started to fill the air.

“N-no!” He shouted, raising out his hand.

I used all of my strength, and the lore shattered. The pieces didn’t fall to the ground though. I began to absorb them the moment I crushed the lore. They began to float in place, but they started to give off a white light, but as soon as it was emitted it was sucked into my dungeon lore. He let out a scream, grabbing his chest like he was in pain. Meanwhile, the pieces of his dungeon began to evaporate, being eaten by my dungeon.

The process started slowly, but I increased the speed of absorption, and increasingly more lore was released and consumed. This had been my plan from the beginning. Although things hadn’t gone as smoothly as I had hoped, it turned out in the end. Compared to the girls that my dungeon had absorbed earlier, this was far more mana. I could feel the energy of the dungeon quickly growing, and I had a feeling like my dungeon was reaching another sudden growth period. After this, the dungeon would become a much deeper dungeon, perhaps 30-40 levels rather than 20.

The process took about fifteen minutes, and King Roth shouted and writhed as his energy and his link to his dungeon was slowly drained to nothing. He was powerless to prevent it. To think, had he just left his dungeon lore in the dungeon under proper protection, he might have still had a chance. At the very least, when he died, the dungeon lore would have recreated a corrupted version of himself. Given his nature, he was sure to eventually break free of the dungeon and return to life. Lore could be a problem like that.

This was exactly why I drained the lore before dealing with King Roth. I didn’t want to end up having to kill him again as I did with Aberis. There was no saying there weren’t other dungeons out there that had an imprint of King Roth in them or Aberis for that matter. The more of their lore you destroyed, though, the less of their story could be passed on. At some point, they wouldn’t even be the same person anymore, like what I had feared happened with Lydia when I saw half her soul destroyed.

A copy of a future copy of King Roth might not even see themselves as a king, or a harem master, or a lionkin for that matter. There was just no telling with these things.

The last of the dungeon wisped away to dust, and my dungeon lore had seemingly grown several centimeters larger.

[Roth’s Dungeon has been absorbed. The dungeon battle has been concluded.]

Chapter 1527

Roth’s dungeon was gone. I had been hoping for some kind of reward, but I didn’t absorb the dungeon myself. The lore neither dispersed nor became a blessing that attached itself to my soul. The benefit instead came in the growth my dungeon would experience as it took in the rogue lore from Roth. As for the man himself, he remained there on his knees. He had gone from almost certain victory to defeat. It was bound to weigh him down.

At this moment, I felt a separation, and Lydia and I separated. At one moment, we were together, and at the next moment, we were two people again. I felt extremely exhausted, but I was able to remain standing. My arm was still attached, and most of my wounds were healed. The massive amount of energy pumped into the dungeon had seemingly given me strength too. Lydia still held me like she didn’t want to let go, and I held her back.

After a long moment of silence, Roth raised his head. His once regal appearance had become haggard and filthy. His clothing was in shreds and covered in filth. His hair was matted and clumped. His face suddenly showed an age several decades greater than how he had looked before. He was a feeble, old man who had been holding onto life desperately, and now he finally looked on the outside as the man on the inside.

“You’ve… taken everything from me.” He spoke slowly, his voice sounding as old as he now appeared. “It appears that I cannot escape my fate after all.”

I sneered. “You’re no hero, Roth. I think that the entire notion of heroes is flawed. There is nothing I’ve seen from the many heroes that have fated them to be good people, or to even perform a positive influence on the world. Heroes are just another form of dungeon.”

That’s ultimately what I had concluded. Dungeons came in many different forms, but the source of them was always the same. A lore that ran contrary to the nature of the world came to a bad end and then became cursed. That lore was revised, relived, and revived until the lore became a jumbled mishmash of the true story. It desperately wanted to complete the story, the change a sad ending into a happy one. This was the case where the dungeon was a physical place, a soul world, or even an attachment. In a way, heroes were merely an externalized dungeon, reenacting the legend of a certain character type out every generation.

“Then, I was cursed!” He responded. “A man who dies in a dungeon and is remade a monster cannot be held responsible.”

I bit my lip and shook my head. “I had thought that might be the case too, once. I had thought that being attached to the mantle of a hero was a curse on people. They were fated to reach a bad end. That’s what I thought. That’s when I saw Faeyna’s story.”

“Me?” Faeyna blinked as I turned to her and smiled.

“It’s ultimately a person’s choices that make them the person they are. The hero lore is no different than the job lore. It finds someone already suited to accept this lore, and then it clings to them. The harem lore didn’t turn you into the man that you are. The harem lore attached to you because of the man that you are!”

“Wh-what are you trying to say?”

“Curses are neither good nor evil. They exist because they hope to fix what is broken. The hero lore is no different. It finds a path on a path to self-destruction, and it gives them the strength to overcome it. You could have changed your ending. You could have become a better man, you could have had a harem that stayed by your side, but you were so afraid of your fate, that you caused your fate. That is the ultimate failing of the hero’s mantle. It isn’t the hero mantle that’s the problem, but the failing of the people it selects! This is why I’ll say it again, you are unsuited to be the harem hero!”

Chapter 1528

“I see… so I am a failure…” King Roth chuckled, his eyes turning to Astria. “Oh, and look at you. Astria, Astria, Astria… It was so fun tearing off your wings. I see you’ve grown new ones… the old ones are hanging above my fireplace.”

Astria stiffened, making a disgusted face. “Your filthy lips don’t deserve to speak my name.”

“It was… so easy to poison Karr. He was so trusting. I also convinced him to have all of those affairs. I used to regal him with so many fanciful stories of harems, he desperately wanted to be just like me. Convincing him to tell me where he found that fairy water was easy, and even at the end, he never suspected it was me. I even altered his diary and manipulated his lore. I thought you’d run away from him. Then, I could capture you and you’d make my fairy spring. I never thought you’d turn into Karr’s soul into a dungeon. At the time, I believed your corrupted form would never be able to build a spring, so I left. I had never guessed such a thing could be done as a miasmic spring. Still, you were so easy… so stupid.”

Her eyes flashed, and then a moment she sniffed. “I’m not so foolish anymore. I won’t be the one to kill you.”

His eyes flashed and then looked at Miki. “You! Death girl! I subjugated your entire people. I experimented on countless foxkin, you included. I’m the one who spread the rumors that foxkin were connected to ghosts and inherently cursed. Only by forcing you altogether was I able to concentrate your line and strengthen the spiritual tail trait! I couldn’t have you breeding outside your species and diluting it, how could I? I wonder how many foxkin children died because of my actions.”

Miki raised her chin. “Hmph! I won’t be the one to bring you death.”

He bared his teeth before shooting his gaze at Lydia. “You should be dead. I hunted all of your variant species, wiped them out. To think, some parent would go so far as to sell you into prostitution to keep you from me. I wonder how much money they paid the slave traders to label you as a catkin rather than a tigerkin. You’re fate as a slave, it was my fault.”

“If I was never a slave, then I never would have met Master.” Lydia smiled. “By that reason, I should thank you.”

He let out a snarl throwing his gaze at all of them. “Kill me! I would have killed you. End my life! First! Second! Lionesses! I never loved you! I never cared about you! You never meant anything to me! Doesn’t that infuriate you! Kill me!”

Each girl looked away, unwilling to match his eyes.

“They know what you’re trying to do,” I responded with a shrug. “You want to die in my dungeon, because if you die, your lore will be absorbed, and in some way, you’ll still be an immortal. Even if it’s in pieces, and even if it’s just as a boss, you’ll exist. Who knows, maybe in time, you’d be able to overthrow me as the dungeon master, and take control of the dungeon yourself. You do fear the end, King Roth.”

I lifted my hand, and the spear in the ground turned to light and flew toward me. When it reached my hand, it became a sword once again. Once again, King Roth’s face became full of fear.

“N-No! No!”

“I’m sorry… but your story ends here.” I moved with an explosive speed, using Alysia not to strike his body, but to destroy his soul.

The blade slashed through him in a flurry. I struck once, twice, and then a dozen times, cutting him over and over again. When I was finally finished, I pulled my sword back. His body didn’t have a single piece of damage, but his expression had become white. He opened his lips, his last words coming out as a whisper.

“I… was supposed to live forever.”

He collapsed to the ground, but he was dead before he hit it.