My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1569-1571

Chapter 1569

I waited out on the deck as we grew closer and closer to a particularly large island. I could see a string of smaller islands wrapping off into the distance, numbering seven in all just as I had been told. From the look of it, they were rather tropical. There was a stretch of sandy beach, waves, and even tropical trees. Compared to the day at the beach I had taken with the girls on the coast of Aberis near Kingsport, this was a far nicer place. No wonder it was popular despite being a dungeon.

Now that I thought about it, the more south we went, the hotter and more humid the weather had become. I didn’t know the exact dimensions of the planet, but perhaps we were just North of the equator? As I pondered irrelevant questions, I was soon joined by Cici and an ill-looking Chance. Under the guise of scratching her behind the ear, something I had found that she liked in particular, I used some spells to help alleviate her nausea temporarily.

I didn’t know if it was an animalkin thing, but I found that they each liked to be touched in a very specific way. When it came to Lydia, she didn’t like her ears being touched. I mean, I touched them anyway, but it seemed to be a weak spot that made her squirm. She preferred to be scratched right above her tail. Such a touch got her purring. Of course, the claws came out shortly after that, but with White Mage, I usually could manage.

Meanwhile, when it came to Miki, she didn’t like her tail being touched. I wondered if it had something to do with the spirit tails. Either way, she liked it when I traced a finger along the edge of her ears. She became very affectionate and even nipped me a few times. Then there was Raissa, who seemed to live for head pats. Even the word head pat could cause her tail to start wagging.

“Mmm…” I heard a low whining noise.

I turned to see Cici watching me scratch Chance behind the ears. Chance had her eyes closed and a small smile on her face as she pushed her head against my hand. Cici had a frown and looked like she needed attention too. After living with a harem of women, I could tell when one girl was feeling left out. It was even more obvious when it came to children. I adjusted my position so I was in between the two girls and then I began to pat Cici’s head while scratching Chance’s ear. Soon, her eyes were closed and she was smiling happily too. Maybe this was a girl thing that had nothing to do with animalkin at all?

“Mmm…” I heard another whining noise behind me.

I looked back to see Anne standing there with nearly an identical look to Cici’s from early.

“Go scratch yourself!” I snapped at her, and put my back to her.

“Tsk! I can’t rebuke you for honoring the daughter properly, but isn’t the best daughter before you? It’s like eating ground beef when a steak is right in front of you!”

I decided it was better for my sanity to ignore her.

Chapter 1570

“It’s coming soon.” Eliana warned as we started to approach the dock.

“What?” I asked, but no sooner did I ask than I felt a familiar feeling, but it was the text that told me what happened clearly.

[You have entered the dungeon, Champion’s Gauntlet. Destroy the lore to break the curse, or complete the lore for extra dungeon points and a blessing!]

“What was that?” Chance asked.

“My chest skipped a beat,” Cici added.

I knew they said that the islands were a dungeon, but I had never met a dungeon that didn’t have some kind of distinct entrance. In my mind, I had imagined us sailing through some kind of ravine and entering into some watery crater surrounded by impassible mountains, although the maps I had seen didn’t represent such a scene. Instead, the distant landscape blended with the appearance inside seamlessly. There was no block or portal-like entry.

When it came to Karr’s dungeon and even Mina’s Dungeon, they had expelled out miasma that affected the external terrain and started to make it look a bit like inside the dungeon, but that terrain still wasn’t technically the dungeon until you went through the entrance. I had never encountered a dungeon before that was just part of the landscape like this. As we passed the unseen barrier, other than a slight shift in the mana as we entered a miasmic region, nothing else could be detected. Had I not had the text warning, I’d never even guessed we were in a dungeon.

As we sailed around the island, we came upon a massive cove, and in that cove was a modest-sized city complete with docks. Many boats seemed to be sailing in and out of the city. Some were heading to the mainland. These were usually larger. Others were heading straight to the other islands, likely for adventurers looking to train in this so-called champion’s gauntlet. The naming of the dungeons never seemed to have any steadfast rule. Some were named after the person or persons that instigated it, while others were named after their function or their story.

“I wonder why it’s called the Tearfall Isles instead of the Champion’s Gauntlet.”

“Oh? You know the name of the dungeon?” One of Alysia’s friends overheard me and spoke up. “Most people don’t know the true name unless they take part in the gauntlet.  They all just call it Tearfall instead. The name Tearfall comes from the shape of the islands. If you look at a map, they resemble teardrops falling from the Ost Republic. They were named before the formation of the dungeon.”

It turned out that every question didn’t necessarily need to have a complex answer about the lore that stemmed back hundreds of years. Hearing such a simple explanation was relaxing in a way. That’s when I heard the last part of her statement.

“The islands came before the dungeon?” I asked in surprise.

“Is it so surprising?” Eliana asked. “After everything you’ve seen?”

I supposed it wasn’t. In most cases, dungeons were like cancer, carving themselves out of the land in their little separate bubble of miasma. However, soul dungeons could exist bound to an object and took up no space. Why should I be surprised now by a dungeon that was indistinguishable from the world around it?

Chapter 1571

The boat had to wait a bit before a place to dock became open. It wasn’t that the docks were small, but there was so much traffic coming in and out of it. Since my mana was able to reach the shore, I was half tempted to just create a portal and leave for the city yet, but that would go against Eliana’s policy of needing to be seen entering. Officially, portals couldn’t be used within dungeons, so if I started using them it might cause some alarm.

Then again, the miasma here was so light, that I was sure even a normal blue mage could open a portal, even if he couldn’t necessarily open one to the mainland like I could. Now that I had visited the Tearfall Isles, nothing short of a massive rearrangement of the mana and miasma in the surrounding area would prevent me from being able to return whenever I wanted. Most rules that people seemed to know to be truth seemed to be simple mana math anyway.

You could project mana from your body. The more things that were in the way of the mana, the more obstructed the draw distance would be. Depending on the spell, the distance varied substantially. A portal, which required cutting through space, used a lot of mana. Slave Communication, which was more like a phone call, was much easier. Dungeons, as the miasmic obstructions that they were, disrupted this flow of mana. For someone with weak mana and low levels, these obstructions were absolute.

No barrier was more absolute than the separation between a dungeon and the world outside it, which were completely separated environments. To the typical commoner and even soldiers, breaking through these barriers could not be done. This was why portals and resurrections were considered impossible from dungeons.

When I had unlocked the blessings, they boosted those powers by using the lore and mana reserves from a dungeon. Without realizing it, the strength of my portal had been boosted, as did the strength of my slave bonds.

Although the system had explained them as being absolute, I had come to learn there was nothing absolute in this world. I had learned that when I had dimensionally traveled and ended up on the wrong side of the planet. I didn’t have the necessary mana to create a portal home and had to depend on extreme measures to make the trip. Although I was only half of myself back then, I had killed and consumed quite a bit of people. I was very angry back then, and perhaps a bit desperate to see those that I cared about again.

This dungeon was another one of these anomalies. The miasma was paper-thin, so resurrections could be performed by those who were a lower level. The dungeon miasma didn’t block the soul summoning that was necessary with any resurrection. I imagined portals would also be easier to do. I knew my Map skill could reach the entire island. This is why I knew that Carmine was currently not on the main safe island.

“Where are you… you better be safe.” I muttered to myself as the ship jerked to a stop.

“We’ve arrived.” The captain announced. “Welcome to the Tearfall Isles.”