My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

“What does that mean?” I asked, no less confused than I was before. “You said you manufactured my lore.”

Her lips thinned slightly. “I had hoped you’d be able to figure it out on your own. I thought that you might understand. After all, you’ve tied so much lore to your soul, I thought you would be able to reason it out.”

“Tied lore to myself? Do you mean the blessings?”

“The blessings, the slaves, the monsters, the jobs, the dungeons… heroes become heroes by creating such lore that it cannot stop from being told. They are those who have changed the world. You’re different. Your lore is rather a support for those around you. All of your lore comes from the ones you’ve bonded to: your friends, your slaves, and your family. That’s why I hope you can understand me.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, you’re just not making sense.”

She closed her eyes, muttering under her breath for a second before speaking up. “We no longer have the time. I wish there was more time, but that damned king has started planning to launch an attack against me. He plans to attack my lore, to attack my children. How could I not react in kind?”

“A king…” My memory started to return slowly, things that felt like a distant past becoming much more vivid. “King… Diorite?”

“Yes…” She frowned. “King Diorite is the one who trapped me down here all those years ago. Although I suppose he is also the one that freed me.”

“He… gave me seven days.”

“A little less than two now. Lore is… slow in here. It’s why Gaia has always performed better than me.”

“Gaia? The planet?”

“Yes… the planet…” She looked at my blank face and sighed. “I tried to use your memories to explain it to you, but it seems like you’re far too naïve to understand such things. Thus, I will tell you a new story. Everything that is and ever will be is simply a story. Stories begin, stories live, stories die, stories evolve and change, and stories end. You possess your lore, what you understand as a soul, and a world possesses its lore, which it understands as the lifestream.”

“Every world has its own lore, and that lore connects with everything living on that planet through what you know as mana. Every planet forms a symbiosis with the lifeforms on it, and the story that is told makes sense within its narrative. However, sometimes, an element runs counter to a world’s lore. This is what you know as curses, and when those curses grow, they become dungeons, a thing that eats and feeds on the lore of the world.

“Sometimes, these lores are excised, and if they can grow enough, they become new worlds, with their own stories, and their own path. Some of those paths are so strange that they run counter to the lore of other worlds. Sometimes, those worlds become connected, and the only path is the complete destruction of one of those lores. Curses that run so deep that they connect to other worlds of a similar disposition. If those connections aren’t cut, then only devastation is the answer.”

What she was saying confirmed a lot of theories I had heard, and even some I had considered myself. I distinctly recalled that this woman was named Twilight, and the dungeon that Lord Aberis once threw me in was called the Twilight Dungeon. I had originally assumed it was named after the nation of Twilight, which the demons conquered. However, lore had a tendency to create false truths, especially lore as ancient and as damaged as that dungeon’s lore. It was possible the name came from something bigger, something related to this woman.

“So, you’re saying that you’re a very old dungeon?” I guessed.

She shook her head sadly. “You misunderstand me. I am not the dungeon… I am the world! Gaia is the dungeon that destroyed me!”