Chapter 173

The completion of a lore, the ending of a story, people often think that this means that everyone lives happily ever after. They want all of the holes to be filled, all of the plots to be explained, and for everything to wrap up in a tight little bow. Life is rarely so one-dimensional.

Take Karr, a young boy from a rich family who just wanted to do good. After witnessing a slavegirl being abused, he vowed to be a hero who fought for justice. He spent many years adventuring in his youth, seeking to be a hero like many young nobles fancied.

One day while pursuing a quest for the Water of Life, Karr nearly died only to be rescued by the fairies of a fairy spring deep in the forest. You see, the Fairy Queen had seen him battling, and had instantly fallen for him. She nursed him back to health and then began to lavish him with gifts. However, Karr couldn’t stay, and even though he knew the Queen had fallen for him, he was convinced her love would dwindle with time and separation.

Karr returned to his home with a large barrel of water of life, a product of the fairy spring. Selling it, he was able to help many adventurers and also accumulated great wealth. Pressured by those in need to collect more water, and also tempted a bit by his own greed, he made many trips to the fairy spring. Each time, she would lavish him with whatever he asked for, and the light and purity of her spring began to diminish. Karr decreased his visits hoping to create some space between himself and the Queen, so that she could finally move on and rejuvenate her spring.

After that, Karr used his gathered resources to build the free city of Chalm. He dreamed of a self-governed city where humans could live alongside all other demi-humans without any slavery. He built this city in a location not too far away from the fairy spring, deep in the wilderness and a distance from the countries who tried to subjugate his people.

As time passed by, other women began to throw themselves at Karr. He looked toward his friend Artemis, who often spoke of wanting a harem to the point that he eventually adopted the name, Harem Hero. Karr saw the misery caused when he rejected the slave women who fell for him and started to think that perhaps Artemis was on to something. Not every girl would be happy moving on and not every slave wanted to be free.

Years passed, and he returned to the Fairy Queen, wondering what had happened to the woman who had made everything he built possible. Although it had been nearly a decade since the last time he was there, the Fairy Queen’s colony which once included hundreds was now down to fifty, and the fairy spring that was supposed to have rejuvenated failed to thrive. It was because the queen had grown depressed in his absence and had mishandled her fairy colony until she and it might have died out after a few more decades along its current course.

Yet, when he pleaded with her to return to the mansion with him, she wouldn’t. She was bound to her spring, just as he was bound to Chalm. Around the same time, Karr was being pressured by the slavers for his slavery emancipation projects, and it was getting close to a war. Karr decided there was only one choice. He’d allow the slavers to take the fairies, and with her Colony destroyed, only then would the Fairy Queen finally abandon her dying land.

Returning to the mansion with the fairy queen by his side, Karr began to finally start accepting the love of the women in his life. At first, Astria was simply happy to be by Karr, but as she saw him canoodling with other women, she grew jealous. Worse, she was pregnant, and thus frightened, as she had never had a child before. Normal fairies, it seemed, were not born of a Fairy Queen. Rather, they were spontaneously created from an accumulation of fairy dust.

Then, one day, she decided to go to Karr and finally confess her insecurities, only to find him dead. He had been poisoned, and sitting on his bedstand, open to a certain page, was his journal with all of his deepest darkest secrets. She read his journal and learned about what he did to her colony. Growing filled with rage, she put collars on all of his servants, enslaving the entire mansion and closing the doors to the city of Chalm.

At this point, Karr’s death was already primed to form a dungeon curse, but Astria didn’t allow it to drift away. Instead, she bound Karr’s soul to the mansion. Even though she couldn’t get her answers, she wallowed in self-pity until the day she had Celeste. After birthing Celeste, the half-human/ half-fairy reminded her of everything that had happened. She threw a collar on Celeste too. However, a few weeks after she was born, a group of the enslaved staff tried to smuggle Karr’s child out of the mansion to freedom and failed.

At that point, Astria tied herself to Karr’s curse and used the energy to wipe out all of the humans and release the ghosts onto the city. After lashing out at everyone, she went into a deep slumber and allowed the curse to run its course, infecting even herself in the end. Her daughter whom she assumed died in the spell, survived as well. Her spiritual body combined with her fairy body, and she roamed the halls, lost and confused, having the broken thoughts of her mother channeled through their bond as Fairy Queen and fairy.

Twenty years passed, and then we came. When I told Celeste to be herself, she combined her ghostly form with a fairy form permanently, becoming one with her fairy self, which fell under her mother’s control. In her defiance of the current leading fairy queen, and perhaps with leveling help, she was able to evolve into a fairy queen herself and shed off her mother’s influence.

Then, I summoned Karr. Karr gave Astria the closure she needed, and Astria gave Karr the peace he needed. Was either of them good or bad? It wasn’t really my place to say. They both did bad things, and they both tried to do good. In the end, it was Celeste, their daughter, who had been hurt the most. What they felt about each other in the end, no one but they knew. One thing was certain, they both could agree to step aside and make way for their daughter Celeste. It was her future now, as a new Fairy Queen and slave to the next hero of Chalm. That was how their lore ended.

I finally stopped screaming as a shining tattoo formed on my shoulder. Like the previous one, it wrapped around from back to front like a serpent, containing text in an unreadable language.

{Congratulations, you have completed Karr’s Dungeon.}

{True Dungeon Diver has increased by ten levels.}

{For completing the lore, you have gained 10 dungeon points.}

{Karr’s lore is now a part of you. You have gained Karr’s Blessing.}

{You have increased affinity with nature. Animals and natural creatures will like you more.}

{Slave Bonds are now permanent. You cannot remove or swap a slave bond.}

“Wait… what was that last thing? Oh… you bastard!”