Chapter 499

“There really are no enemies, huh?” I asked as we made our way to the safe room.

“According to the guide, the first enemies don’t appear until the 5th floor. The 5th floor only contains the boss. Then, on the sixth floor, regularly enemies can be seen. Furthermore, there are no treasures.”

“Yeah… I was afraid of that.”

I saw the same as she said, that there were no treasures on my Map. It was just five levels of confusing mazes filled with crystals, some of which created reflections and really tricked the eyes. On the one hand, the way the light kept tricking you into seeing movement would make levels with true enemies truly stressful. On the other hand, I wasn’t feeling terribly thrilled about this dungeon, no matter how pretty the geological crystal formations looked.

The key aspect of a dungeon was that it continued to consume mana. It could do this two ways. First, it could grow, engulfing more land to suck mana from, much like a tree with roots. The second way is to draw mana containing creatures, like humans, into it, where it would use miasma to feed on their mana. If they died, it would get a giant meal. If they lived, it could continue to consume them for weeks or even months. This sucking of mana was also the same reason that dungeons wore on a person’s mental state over time.

There weren’t too many long-term studies on people in dungeons. There was one story of a magician who was trapped in a dungeon for almost 18 months before he managed to escape. His mind had deteriorated to the level that he was an invalid, and his ability to use magic had been whittled away to nothing. Another story told of an adventurer who had lived three years in the dungeon and experienced nothing serious. He had remained mostly in a safe room, which was free of miasma and wouldn’t suck mana away. I had heard rumors that there were entire levels free of miasma, such as those alternative world levels, but these were very distant rumors from a guy who knew a guy.

This wasn’t even a problem I, nor any of my girls would ever have. Between Miki and myself, the miasma wasn’t able to affect us. We theoretically could remain in a dungeon our entire lives, although I wasn’t going to try it. Even with my own Dungeon Creation skill, I had no desire to build my own equivalent of a demon lord’s castle. Karr’s Dungeon was all the cursed mansion I could take.

With the map at hand and my own map to locate us in the dungeon, it was rather easy for us to find the safe room. After only thirty minutes of walking, we arrived. However, we had taken enough twists and turns that had we tried to make it here on our own; it would probably have taken weeks. When we arrived, I was surprised to see that there were several parties of people already in the dungeon.

“A new dungeon diving party? No one mentioned a new dungeon diving party.” Someone spoke up.

“You guys just arrived at this dungeon?” Another guy, who looked to be in charge of a three-man party, spoke up.

“Um… yes, yes we have,” I admitted, attempting to act polite.

“Well… bugger off! This cave isn’t for lightweights!”

Amazon Vella is up, and I have two stories on it, Getting Lucky and Automatic Girlfriend. Getting Lucky WAS on scribblehub briefly, but I made it into a membership-only story. It's currently up to chapter 90 or so. 

If you've not been interested in being a member of my website (which gets you up to volume 16 on MDL with two bonus volumes, where you currently on V7), yet have had an interest in some of my membership only stories, this is your chance to read them. The first three chapters are free... and you can continue to read using Amazon tokens which is all done through Amazon. You will also get 200 tokens free signing up, so that'd be enough to plow through all I have so far on Amazon.

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-Whatsawhizzer

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