My eyes slowly fluttered open. I was still in a lot of pain, which was good. It meant that I was alive. I was also still in the dungeon. That was less good. I looked around the room to see that it was in much the state that it had been before I passed out.aster...”

I looked over and winced to see the zombie queen. She was still missing half her body, so just her upper torso had crawled over to me. She was still alive though. I hesitantly put my hand out and patted her head. There were a lot of broken bones. If I had an HP bar, it probably would have been flashing red. I attempted to cast heal, and immediately found I couldn’t do so. I couldn’t access my mana at all.

“You’re probably looking for this.” A melancholy voice sounded out.

I looked to see the dwarf king sitting in his throne room. In his hand was a glowing orb which he held casually. The orb was different from the dungeon orb. Besides being rather large, it also had a certain darkness to it, which swirled around ominously with the white light. I didn’t know how, but I was able to recognize it immediately. It was my soul.

“Wh-what?”

“Your soul is an interesting thing. You’ve built an actual soul world? At your age? One could imagine what potential you’d have.”

I stared hard at the soul in his hands, but no amount of willingness seemed to be able to bring it back.

“And what am I supposed to do in the abyss?”

“Escape...” He responded.

I raised an eyebrow. “Escape?”

“Once I realized you had a soul stone, I took the initiative to peruse your inventory. I saw that soul stone of yours. Those two friends... got too close to my barrier and were sucked into the abyss. The fact they were even able to get a message out, that was commendable.”

“You’re going to let me rescue my friends?” Even saying it seemed hard to believe.

“I’m not letting you do anything. I’m ordering you to rescue them.” He frowned. “You will bring them back alive, or you will die. I will give you one week to return. If you fail, then I will use your soul to ignite the barrier, and blow the entire Deep to hell as I had originally planned.”