My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1680-1682

Chapter 1680

“Hmm?” I took my first step into the first level of my new dungeon.

I had been expecting a traditional dungeon maze with closed-off corridors, but I ended up stepping into a large open outdoor space. Astria, Elaya, and Xin joined me a moment later. The sun was overhead, and there was a forest, grass, and a gentle wind blowing nearby. If I hadn’t known I was stepping into a dungeon, I’d be mistaken for thinking I was still outside or had stepped through a portal to someplace nearby.

“It’s quite nice,” Elaya commented.

“You guys haven’t been through it first?” I asked, a bit surprised.

“Of course not, we wanted to enjoy the experience for the first time with Master,” Xin responded.

“I’m not seeing any mobs.” I pulled used Sense Life, and while there were life forms, they weren’t monsters, but normal animals. “This floor doesn’t have any enemies?”

“It also doesn’t appear to have any miasma.” Astria rubbed her arms as if an environment free of miasma was just a bit uncomfortable to her.

“Why would a dungeon like this create a flood that was indistinguishable from the land outside?” I asked curiously.

“Dungeons are odd things,” Elaya explained. “They are only a reflection of the lore that makes them. With all due respect, your dungeon never had true lore. It wasn’t a corrupted or unfinished story that was allowed to fester. Furthermore, you’re dungeon even became a god dungeon, obtaining a kind of unity with the world around it. It’s a dungeon at peace with itself. It’s kind of pleasant, isn’t it?”

“It may be pleasant, but will this place help the soldiers train?” I asked hesitantly. “Will it truly protect the core?”

I didn’t know what I was expecting when I entered the dungeon. It had always been a tool for me to use, a mana and miasma generator that I could tap when I was in a jam and a means of training troops and creating items when needed.

“How about we head down a bit farther and see if anything changes?” Xin suggested.

I agreed with her, and the pair of us headed toward the 1st floor safe room. I had never been in the dungeon in its current form, so I didn’t have a map of it. When I was in my dungeon, I could teleport just about anywhere. There was the dungeon master skill Dungeon Transport which gave me free rein of the dungeon, but I didn’t know how to use it without Map. As useful as the Map skill was for me, it had also become a bit of a crutch. Since I had rarely experienced the need to Sense Life without a map, or teleport without selecting a place on the Map, I wasn’t that good at doing it.

Thus, I decided it was better to map out the dungeon slowly so I knew what I had. It wasn’t all bad. The miasma was an extension of myself, so as soon as I connected with it on any given floor, it became mapped out completely in only a few minutes. Furthermore, I could instinctively feel where the route needed to go and where the safe room was. Still, to save time, once the floor was mapped, I instantly brought us to the 1st floor.

“Ah, that reminds me, how many floors are we looking at here?”

I could give an educated guess but wasn’t so familiar with feeling out the dungeon that I could instantly determine it by myself.

“It’s ten floors.” Elaya declared, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Just ten?” I blinked.

She nodded, and the other two girls confirmed it. What the heck was wrong with my dungeon?

Chapter 1681

“That’s…”

“The battle against Demon Lord Aberis,” Xin confirmed.

We had entered the safe room of my 1st floor, and for the first time, I saw a mural. The dungeon had created a story out of the lore I absorbed, and that story appeared to be my own. I’d need to see the other safe rooms to be sure, but this mural depicted me fighting the demon lord Aberis when he tried to invade from Alerith. It showed our frantic battle. I had read many stories formed out of those mosaic tiles, but it was strange seeing me and the other girls a part of it.

I touched the kiosk, only to find I was already registered to two other safe rooms. I could jump straight to the tenth floor, but I had become curious about what was happening here, so I continued. As soon as I stepped out into the hallway of the second floor, the entire theme of the dungeon had seemingly changed. The open concept dungeon had been replaced with the hallways of an elegant mansion.

“This is…” Astria’s body shook as she felt the familiar environment.

“Karr’s Dungeon.” I glanced over at her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes…” She blinked a few times. “I just never expected to see this place again. When they rebuilt the dungeon, they made sure not to style it in the same way as that place. I had imprisoned so many souls, my daughter… my own, for twenty years. Even the miasma is familiar.”

“I’m still not seeing any mobs.” I frowned.

I was happy that this level looked more like a traditional dungeon, but it was still devoid of any enemies. The enemies wouldn’t fight me, but I still expected them to be there. Maybe, I should have wasted more time directing the dungeon. I just didn’t understand what was going on. I quickly followed the path to the end of the floor and headed down to floor two.

“I don’t recognize this one, but it feels familiar.” Xin frowned.

“It feels like a graveyard.” Elaya shook.

“It’s Mina’s Dungeon. This was the first dungeon I ever entered. I think I’m starting to realize the theme of these levels.”

I wanted to go down another one before, I was sure. A level later, I was certain.

“The Illusory Sword Realm.” We came out into a familiar arena. “Let’s keep going.”

“So, my dungeon is here too,” Elaya commented as we entered a ruin-like dungeon.

The levels were based on my blessings. I had absorbed the lore from many dungeons to date, but I had often used the energy from some of them for different reasons. As a result, I only had nine blessings in all, two had evolved with additional lore into heroic marks. The first floor had looked a lot like Bandit’s Respite, now that I thought about it. We kept going down. The next one resembled the underground, that was Terra’s Dungeon. After that, it was a city, that likely would have been Shao’s Dungeon. After that, I found a place I wasn’t familiar with. It had architecture I felt was familiar though, and I realized that it must have been Calypso’s Tower… which was now the Human Heroic Mark. The final one was a battlefield, which would have been Twilight’s Dungeon. Along the entire path, there hadn’t been a single enemy or mob. Even Selena had been ejected during the evolution, so the dungeon had no official bosses or defenses at all.

“Alright, what will the final floor show us.”

There was a door, and then a safe room. The 5th-floor safe room had shown me teleporting to this world. The girls already knew my origins, so it was nothing particularly surprising to them. The final safe room showed my battle with King Roth. Surely, my story was incomplete with only ten levels.

I walked out into the boss room, only to find a nice and comfy bedroom that didn’t look much different than the one I had before the evolution. Before I could say anything though, a small form came flying at me. Before I knew it, I was being hugged by a little girl.

“Daddy!” She cried out excitedly.

“…what?”

Chapter 1682

“I missed you, daddy!” She whined. “But I worked really hard, is daddy happy?”

I frowned, looking down at the girl who was clinging to me. She was only about eight years old, and she had blonde hair and brown eyes. She was a devilishly cute little girl, but since I had no daughter, I didn’t understand what was going on at all.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“Boo… daddy, don’t tease me like that! It’s not funny.” She let go of me and then put her hands on her hips, scowling with her cheeks puffed out cutely.

“I…” I didn’t even know how to respond.

“Wait, Master.” Elaya grabbed my arm. “Didn’t you say that Calypso had given you a crystalized copy of your daughter’s soul?”

I frowned. “Yeah, she did. I put it in my soul world right next to the crystalized soul of that little girl from the Illusory Sword Realm.”

Her words had shaken me slightly though, so I naturally immediately checked my soul world and the little house built there for the crystals. Yet, I immediately found that both of them were missing.

“They’re gone!”

I felt shocked, and then I felt extreme fear. How could I have misplaced my own daughter’s soul?

“Master, I think that the dungeon took them.” Astria shot the little girl an uneasy look.

“Huh? The dungeon?” I frowned, feeling just a bit angry.

“Master…” Elaya gave me an awkward look.

I had thought everything I put in my soul world would be safe, but wasn’t my soul world just the other half of this dungeon? The core of the dungeon connected to my soul world, and my soul world was part of the core of the dungeon. Anything I put in the dungeon could be accessed in my soul world, and vice versa. My daughter wasn’t suddenly turned into miasma, was she?

It wasn’t until my eyes landed on the little girl again that my mind started working, and I realized what Astria had been implying.

“No…” I gasped.

“A dungeon core isn’t so different from a karmic soul,” Elaya spoke sympathetically. “If a core advances far enough, it can form a sentience of its own. All dungeons have their personalities, but there have always been rumors that the great dungeons actually can manifest an avatar that speaks for the dungeon itself. Many believed people were just mistaking the dungeon master with the dungeon, since they have such a mutual relationship, but a dungeon can become intelligent.”

“This… isn’t a karmic growing a karmic soul!” I cried out. “This was my daughter’s soul! Wait… the Illusory Sword Realm…”

“I never was in that dungeon,” Elaya admitted. “However, the way you described it, it sounds like the father and his daughter were in a master, dungeon relationship, although who was the master and who was the dungeon sort of got lost over the years. If I could guess, I guess that the dungeon used all of that extra mana, and instead of growing larger, or becoming more complex and well-defended, it instead focused on becoming intelligent. It used the soul of that nameless little girl, and the soul of your daughter, and created an avatar.”

“So… that’s it,” I asked. “My girl… she’s gone?” I just felt like my heart was in a vice grip.

All the pain I had managed to put past me came flooding back in an instant, and the memories of that time nearly crushed me. However, at that exact moment, I felt a tug on my pants. I looked down to see a beautiful little girl looking up at me. I realized I recognize her. She looked like a little Eliana.

“Am I no good?” She asked, her eyes teary, and her lip quivering.

I was wrong. The dungeon did have one mob, and its attack was a KO.