My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1779-1781

Chapter 1779

I wasn’t able to get very much more out of the workshop master. He was willing to give us a tour of the facility, and he even gave me an example of one of his golems which I put away in my soul world. As he stated, it might have been possible to build something that looked like Terra, but to have it both have her enormous strength and defensive ability while the same functionality of a woman, Jespain was still lacking. Sapphire was excited to gain a few insights, but very little else was earned from this trip.

Terra didn’t say anything one way or the other when we finally left the workshop. She had become extremely quiet. As I put her back in my soul world so that we could take the ride back home, I entered my soul world as well once the horseless carriage being driven by the golem was back in motion.

When I appeared in my soul world, I found Terra kneeling in a field of herbs I was trying to grow, next to a makeshift pond. My soul world had been destroyed and remade so many times, that it seemed kind of pointless to try to grow things, but I did find that I could grow them faster in my world. Alchemic ingredients that might take years to grow could be done in weeks as long as I dedicated a little bit of energy to it. The ability to move life energy throughout the soul world was something I was underutilizing for certain.

I wasn’t worried about the soul world though. My focus was on Terra instead. She wasn’t saying anything and her face gave no expression, but the way her shoulders were slouched seemed to exude the feeling of giving up. She threw a stone that bounced along the surface of the pond, creating ripples as it went.

“Terra, we’ll find a way to rebuild your body.” I declared. “It’s not like we’ve turned over every stone. There is still Shie Gescar, and also the Abyss. If your body was built once, it can be built again.”

“That’s… not the problem.” Terra sighed.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Terra looked up at me reluctantly. “Master, I’m not like Lydia, or Miki… or any of them.”

“I know that,” I responded, feeling a bit confused.

Terra shook her head. “I mean, Lydia is happy as long as she can please Master sexually. Miki just doesn’t want to be abandoned. She doesn’t want to lose her family. Shao is obsessed with you, and she doesn’t care what had to be sacrificed as long as she can be by your side. Then, there is Celeste… well, she’s Celeste. Do I need to say more?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Do you want to know why I slept with you back then? After we defeated the clockwork dragon, do you know why I joined you in that pool and gave myself to you?”

I blushed awkwardly as she said that. There had been a time when I didn’t understand what any of the girls saw in me. I had assumed it was all just a matter of my high charm and the affinity I gained through my various jobs. I finally just decided to accept their love for me unconditionally, and I never really asked why.

“Why did you do it?”

“It was because… you gave my life meaning. However, I’m afraid that meaning is being lost!”

Chapter 1780

“Terra, you still mean a lot to me.” I declared, reaching out but stopping just short of grabbing her massive arm.

“My purpose was the be a guardian,” Terra continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I wanted to protect those that I loved, but everyone that I loved ended up dying. I might have eventually taken down that clockwork dragon with your help, but it didn’t change the fact that I had woken up in a world that had passed me by. I was a guardian without anything to guard.”

“Everything doesn’t fall on you.” I defended. “You don’t need to hold the weight of the world.”

“Shouldn’t I?” She turned around and gave me a blatant look. “I’m Gaia’s avatar, remember? Maybe I need to hold the world on my shoulders.”

I reached to grab her this time, but she stepped away, lowering her head. “Terra… what is this really about?”

“I’m not like the other girls,” she said. “I’m not bisexual, and I don’t like the idea of a harem. I… get jealous when I see you with the other girls, and I want you all to myself.”

I opened my mouth, but then closed it again, biting my lip. What was I supposed to say? I knew that it wasn’t fair to expect everyone to share. Jealousy was always an inevitability of such a relationship. I had always taken it for granted that the girls were so amendable. I had wanted to spend time getting to understand the girls and their individual needs more, but it always felt like one thing after another came up and I never had the time to do it.

“I’m sorry.” I finally responded. “I love you, and I want to give you the time you deserve.”

“You’re not the problem!” She cried out. “I am!”

“How can that be?”

“Look at me!” She stomped her foot, causing the ground to rumble slightly. “I failed to be the guardian I was supposed to be. However, you didn’t need me to be a guardian. All you wanted was my love, and so I gave you my heart and my body because it was the only thing that gave me purpose. Now, I’ve even failed at that! Not only can we not be intimate with each other, but my jealousy has kept you from being intimate with the other girls.”

“They’re fine with it. They don’t blame you.” I tried to cut in.

“I blame me!” She yelled. “I should have just died down there in the deep. My body was yours, and I gave it up for you, and that should have been the end of me.”

“Don’t say that…”

“It’s true… this body isn’t me!” She hit her arms. “I’m not me anymore! If I’m no longer myself, then what am I?”

“Terra… you’re still you.”

“I’m not… I’m this… freakish golem…”

“Your soul can’t be so easily changed. Your lore can’t be so easily reproduced.” I declared, stepping toward her. “You’re my Terra, and no one else can be you.”

“Y-you’re wrong…” She took another step back. “Just look at me!”

“I am!” I declared, gesturing down next to her. “I see you, and this is how I see you.”

She had backed up until she was right next to the pond. When she looked down, she looked like the same small girl she had always looked like. She looked like my Terra.

Chapter 1781

Terra gasped as she saw the image. She looked at her arms, and then her body, but no matter where she looked, it was the way she had looked before, back when she was a golem. She finally looked back at me, her eyes growing teary as she showed an expression I hadn’t been able to see on her face in a particularly long time.

“How did you do this?” She asked.

“This is how I always see Terra.” I smiled.

Alright, that was a lie. Also, I was cheating a little bit here. If Terra thought about it closely for a little bit, she also would have figured it out. She was in my soul world. In this world, I had control. I could have made people in my soul world appear as anything. She could have looked like Lydia or Alysia. It was a bit easier to make her body be in sync with her soul. It was the same way that Alysia was able to exist in this world. Doing something like this was extremely simple.

I reached out and grabbed Terra around her thin waist and brought her to me. “I don’t want you to think of yourself negatively ever again. You’re always my guardian, my Terra, and I will never let you go.”

“M-master…” She had been physically larger than me for some time, so she was quickly overwhelmed when she found her face being buried in my stomach as I hugged her tightly.

In a single moment, our dynamic had changed. She used to tower over me, but now I towered over her. However, there was something right about having it this way. It felt more natural for both of us. The feeling of being held was transmitted to her completely. After all, my soul world wasn’t limited by her body’s inputs, but by her soul. Thus, the warm and soft feeling was something she hadn’t felt in months.

This seemed to cause her to reach her breaking point, and Terra started to cry in my arms. I felt a bit guilty. She had been hurting so much all this time, but she always acted so strong, and her expressionless golem face hid the rest of her emotions. Since I couldn’t see her react, I presumed she was getting along. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized just how much mental damage my little guardian had to bare silently on her own.

“So, you see, just because we’re not able to make you a body doesn’t mean that you’re trapped. In this world of mine, you can be you again. Furthermore, we could probably design your body a bit like Alysium. I have a fair amount of experience when it comes to affixing souls to objects, and we could probably make it so that you could take on a human form temporarily. It’d be a soul form like hers, just a projection, but you could look like you to everyone.” I explained when I suddenly felt a pinch on my hip. “Wh-what?”

“Are you telling me you could have returned me to my original form at any time and we could have been intimate?”

“Ah! That’s true!” My eyes widened as I realized we could have always gotten it on in my soul world. “I didn’t think about that!”

I learned something that day. First off, even if she was in her small form, I still felt the full weight when she stomped on my foot. Secondly, once she told the other girls we could have been sleeping together all along, I received nothing but icy silence that night for dinner, and no one came to my bed that night. I guess you could say that not much changed after my revelation.