My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1599-1601

Chapter 1599

“You think the Fey have sailed her from over the seas to invade Faerith?”

“I know that is what is happening.” She responded, giving a little smirk.

“So, they took care of our little pirate problem? Aren’t they just doing us a favor?”

“Taking the pirates was just a matter of convenience. There were supplies, ships, slave labor, and a port that they could launch their invasion from.” She shrugged.

I wanted to argue more, but what she was saying was starting to make sense. With the pirate stronghold under their control, they could probably launch all kinds of attacks. At the moment, they had just been attacked feeling out our defenses. They wanted to know where we were at our weakest, but they didn’t want us to think that it was something major and mobilize our forces. In a way, Prince Edward had made the right decision by treating the situation so seriously, or they might have already landed on Aberis’s shores.

“What about the Tearfall Isles? Why have they come down here?” I demanded.

“They’ve come for the same reason anyone comes to the Champion’s Gauntlet…” She responded flippantly.

“Anyone… “I frowned, and then my eyes widened. “They want to complete the gauntlet and take whatever reward the dungeon master is offering?”

She snapped her finger. “Exactly. At the end of the Champion’s Gauntlet is an extremely dangerous power. The gauntlet was created a long time ago to prevent that power from falling into the wrong hands. Only someone who is determined worthy will be granted the power. The Fey seek that power, which they will use to begin their invasion on Faerith.”

“How do you know all of this?” I asked suspiciously.

“There are some things that I know, and some things that I do not know.” She shrugged. “This happens to be something I’ve very knowledgeable about.”

“I have verified anything she has said.” The Inquisitor cut in, “Give me a few days, and I will know the truth of these words.”

“In a few days, they’ll have already finished the gauntlet. If they already are on the SS island, then they might even finish it tonight.” Eliana declared.

“Please… the islands are hardly so easy.” Calypso waved her hand dismissively. “Even they need to sleep and rest. They won’t attempt to take the SS until tomorrow, and the SSS will take even longer than that.”

“Then, our best option is to go to the SSS boss room and wait for them.” I declared.

“You wouldn’t have a chance.” Calypso chuckled.

“I’m not so weak!” I shot back.

If I gathered my girls and we all worked together, I believed we could make it to the boss room, especially if we did it before the fog appeared. Then, we could plan out a trap.

Calypso only shook her head. “You misunderstand. No matter how powerful you are, you’ll be handicapped by the dungeon. They will defeat you because they have the gauntlet’s blessing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you not heard how this gauntlet works? Every time you beat a boss, you are awarded an enchantment. This enchantment lasts for a specific amount of time. You must collect the enchantment from the previous island before fighting the next boss. If you do not, you’ll be significantly disadvantaged.”

“I may have heard something like that,” I responded dismissively. “However, what does that have to do with them?”

“By the time they reach you, they’ll already have collected five of the six enchantments. All six are needed to enter the final boss room. At best, they’ll initiate the battle and you’ll be kicked out, forced to wait on the sidelines. At worst, the enchantments will allow them to easily overpower you and your allies, and you all die. If you want any chance of victory, you’ll need to do the gauntlet!”

Chapter 1600

Calypso’s words didn’t put me into any better of a mood. Defeat the gauntlet? Fight 6 bosses, essentially back-to-back?

“I don’t have time to play some dungeon master’s game.”

“It’s not a game, Deek.” Calypso sighed. “The very future of this continent may rest on it.”

I gave her a suspicious look. “What is this power the dungeon will give?”

“Naturally, it would have to be a lore, wouldn’t it?” She chuckled. “A lore dangerous enough that it could change the course of a war.”

“That’s preposterous!” The councilman spoke up. “What story has that kind of power?”

I found myself wanting to agree with him, but I knew better. I had seen Twilight, and she had even given me lore that allowed me to manipulate the soul itself. I knew how powerful lore could be. The right lore could turn someone who knew nothing into a powerful expert. Bad lore could cripple a nation, and good lore could lead to prosperity. If this lore even had a chance of having such power, I couldn’t let it fall into the hands of the Fey.

I didn’t know much about the Fey, and I didn’t have any hateful feelings toward them, but I knew what they thought of humans. When they weren’t treating us as slaves, they feared us as monsters. I supposed, in the beginning, we were monsters. I only had a vague understanding of it, but from what I understood, when lore became large and complex enough, it could become a world onto itself. The story of a world, also known as its live stream, was a powerful and sentient thing.

Everything that lived in this world was connected to its current lifestream, Gaia. Gaia’s original species were fairies and fairy-like creatures. This is why fairy’s intrinsically gathered lore and could somehow create mana. They were Gaia’s servants. Some of those servants had eventually evolved into the Fey, who had started to build a civilization on Gaia. This presumably had happened after Gaia had subjugated Twilight. To the best of knowledge, Twilight’s servants were the shadow people, and the Demons were their offshoot.

By the time Gaia came along, the demons were all dead and Twilight was slowly rotting away. It was only because of the war and Gaia that this planet hadn’t fallen apart, much like the Twilight Dungeon. Anyway, sometime after the Fey had established themselves, dungeons had started to form, and other species from other worlds began to invade their space. This included the animalkin, the esmore, the dwarves, osterians, new demons, the elves, and most notably the humans.

After a long brutal war, humans won out, and the reason for that was simple. We could resurrect ourselves. Our connection with Gaia was weak enough that our soul could resist Gaia while we had time to remake our bodies and come back to life. The Fey could not do that, as their mana was too closely aligned to Gaia. They saw us as monsters at ends with Gaia, and they would stop at nothing to see us subjugated at best. If war was coming, it was bad. The best option was to take the power they were seeking and use it ourselves.

I shook my head. “Even if I wanted to complete the gauntlet, the doors are shut. We can’t get in to encounter the boss.”

“Come on, Deek. You understand dungeons better than most.” Calypso declared. “Do you think a dungeon door could just remain permanently closed?”

I jerked at her words. She was right. A dungeon had to be completable for anyone who wanted to participate. How could the doors just be closed?

“Just say it, Calypso.” I leaned toward her.

“Naturally, they were able to block the entrance… because a second one was available!”

“And just where is that second entrance?”

Calypso’s smile started to grow once again, and I got a bad feeling.

Chapter 1601

“Let her go? That’s impossible!” The councilman slammed his fist down.

“We’re not letting her go,” I responded quietly. “I’ll have her in custody the whole time.”

“And just who are you!” He responded accusingly.

“I’m the one who captured her in the first place?”

He blinked for a second. He had forgotten that!

We were no longer in the dungeon. After Calypso had laid out her terms, we had gone up to the building above to speak about it. Calypso was clear in what she wanted. She would lead me through the gauntlet, but she wouldn’t tell me where this alternative entrance was. This naturally lead to the Inquisitor demanding that she be given a few days to break Calypso, and it all had descended into a mess. It was Eliana who had suggested we not argue in front of the prisoner and finish this discussion somewhere other than a dungeon.

So, we were now in a well-lit receiving room with some boiling tea in the corner, but I didn’t feel like the conversation had become any better. I was seriously considering ignoring this councilman, grabbing Calypso with Portal, and leaving on our own. I didn’t need his permission there. However, as I considered it, I saw Eliana’s desperate eyes and I realized that we had to do things diplomatically for her sake. I had to do it for the baby. I knew the baby had nothing to do with it, but it made me feel better when I said that enough times.

“Have you ever heard of any second entrance?” Eliana asked, trying to redirect the conversation once again.

“There is no such thing. We would have found it by now.”

“Yet, you agree that the doors are shut and that such a thing should be impossible.” I cut in.

He gave me a look and then sighed. “From what I understand about dungeons, to even semi-permanently shut a single boss room, let alone four them, should be an impossibility. The longest obstruction I’ve ever seen lasted twenty-four hours. The C-ranked boss room has been closed for at least twice that long.”

Accidents did sometimes happen and dungeons could be sealed. Otto Tibult had once caused an avalanche that blocked me and Lydia down in a dungeon. At the time, we had thought we were trapped permanently. Had I known it would have been gone within a day, that whole thing would have gone a lot differently. Then again, the King had once kept the boss room closed for months in the Widow’s Dungeon. While a dungeon master was “in combat” the door could be left closed. I believed that even in that case she had opened the door though, and only closed someone got close to the entrance.

I had once heard about an old dungeon parable. Supposedly, a man had entered a dungeon, but whenever he got near the door to the next part, the dungeon would close one door and open another. When he walked over to that door, the dungeon would switch. He was unable to progress, because every time he approached a door, it was shut, but at the same time, the dungeon rule wasn’t broken. There was always a means of progressing forward.

The story was made as a warning. Dungeons were tricky things, and when they wanted to, they could seriously screw with a person. What the Fey had done was a trick, nothing more. The real path through the Champion’s Gauntlet was still available.

“If we don’t go through the gauntlet, the Fey will,” I spoke up. “And then you won’t have a dungeon to rule over anymore. The choice is yours.”

The councilman stared at me for a moment, and then let out a long sigh. “Fine, take her. I just hope you don’t regret it.

I was hoping the same thing.